the city made of history

Beijing (29/08/13-01/09/13)

Population: 20.18 million.

Famed For: Being the Capital of China.

不到长城非好汉 (bú dào Chángchéng fēi hǎohàn)

'He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man.'

Chinese Proverb

 

 

The Great Wall of China is literally breath-taking. Undulating across the land, it dips and curves to follow the contours of the hills it sits on and in the morning light it emerges from the densely forested slopes like a great grey snake or the tail of a dragon, with it's ridged scaling turrets and winding pathways.

In some places the ascent becomes so steep and the steps so high and narrow that the handrail is the only thing left to cling onto. It stains the tourists' palms rust red and tests the muscles in your legs and the steel of your nerves. At some points the path becomes too constrictive to stop without blocking the way, so, with lungs heaving, you push onwards up towards the small fort that marks a stopping point.

But the view. Everything is worth it for the view.

It makes you feel...small.

Walking one of the new Wonders of the World, on steps which were two thousand years in the making, built by slaves and peasants and soldiers now long gone, for one of the world's oldest civilisations and here you are, one person casually standing on so much history.

The sense of perspective is both refreshing and terrifying. It's also coloured with a huge sense of achievement, because despite being one person you have in some way conquered the Wall, and followed in the footsteps of thousands of people before you.

 

You are now part of the history.

I stop to read some of the graffiti that has been scrawled along the Wall by previous travellers, hoping for some words of wisdom, some sense of profundity.

Eva + Carl woz here - '99

I can only assume they too were overwhelmed by the sense of history.

 

Meanwhile, in the heat of a cloudless blue sky day, the roof of the Forbidden City gleams gold and bronze and the sunlight picks out the small dragons that rest on the edges of the tiles. The white stone floors are impossibly bright against the sunburn-red walls and everywhere there is a sense of both grandeur and space. It's very different to a British Palace or a UK Stately Home, whose buildings are full of carpets and paintings, antiques and statues and so much clutter.

The Forbidden City exudes minimalism. The many Halls feature gleaming floors, a golden throne and perhaps a few vases as tall and wide as a grown man. The rest is space (the artefacts having mostly been moved to special museum rooms to the sides of the palace complex).

 

It means you have to use your imagination to travel back to 1420 A.D (when the Palace was finished) to imagine the smell of incense, food, the perfume of flowers thick in the air, servants running to and fro. The sound of courtiers trying to obtain favour, the echo of gongs, music from lutes, harps and drums. The Emperor seated on his throne, conducting affairs of state. The Empress sipping steaming fragrant tea. The concubines, secluded in their rooms, plotting their next political move.

 

Admittedly, this is quite difficult when half a dozen people try and take your photo at the same time.

 

To really gain a sense of just how big the Palace complex is (and to escape from the crowds) we took the short walk up to the top of Jingshan Park, directly opposite the Forbidden City. And once at the top the whole of Beijing unfurls like a large gilded flower opening at dawn, the hilltop providing a 360 degree view of the capital. The Forbidden City gleams and suddenly you can understand why they call the Palace a City because anything less would be ludicrous. It simply is that big.

Like the sprawling mass of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City seems larger than life, an impressive feat of planning, building and engineering. It's as though everything in Beijing is seen through a fairground hall of mirrors- everything is bigger, stranger and more exaggerated and it's been deliberately built like that. It almost seems like a type of madness, this obsession with size and grandeur.

But when you live in a country that contains one seventh of the world's total population, why do anything small?