Playing Tourist - Jingshan Park, the Forbidden City, and Tiananmen Square

The first few days went by really quickly, as one can imagine. The very first day, Saturday, was a tour around campus, combined with a “get to know you” and my first Chinese meal in, what I would guess to be several years. More on that later. Saturday, January 13, the next day, was the beginning of the program in earnest. We boarded several buses in the morning, and headed to downtown Beijing.

Beijing, composed of the two characters for “bei” and “jing” roughly translates into “north capital,” referring to its historical status as the administrative and power center for the Chinese empire, stretching back thousands of years. Today, Beijing is a major city, a province (the rough equivalent of a state), and the capital of the People’s Republic of China. The city measures roughly 1,700 square miles, and the greater metropolitan area houses roughly fourteen million people. All in all, a lot larger than Washington, D.C.’s comparatively small 67 square miles and 700,000 people. I got this sense traveling downtown, crossing four major highways and taking over a half hour–buildings, high rises, office complexes, restaurants, and more.

Our first stop was Jingshan park, which I wrote at the time, is a “sort of cross between Rock Creek Park and the National Mall.” In retrospect, it wasn’t quite the same, but was still a fascinating visit. Upon entering, we were greeted by one of the most unique art forms I think I’ve seen yet. Taking advantage of the cold, artists used brushes dipped in water to write words and make shapes on the cement, which promptly froze into ice, creating a (for the time) permanent image. Later, we ran into a group of locals doing what looked like aerobics, to bad America pop music. I had to laugh. The park is also notable as the location of the last of the Ming Dynasty’s emperor’s suicide site, as he hung himself as rebels overtook the capital.

After lunch, we stepped into the Forbidden City. Ornate, grandiose, and insular, I could see how an emperor could feel at home–but only during the summer. It was freezing at the time. Looking around, it was quite the site, although marred by the presence of several construction points. As Beijing gears up to host the Olympics in 2008, it seems every part of the city is undergoing renovation or reconstruction. Travel books do this place justice more than I will, but it was clearly awe inspiring, with over 800 buildings and 9000 rooms.

Leaving the “front” of the Forbidden City took us to our third and final destination for the day, Tiananmen Square. This, I thought, was much more of the “National Mall” for China–although I feel D.C.’s is much nicer (and greener). Tiananmen is known as the world’s largest public square, and I believe it, taking ten minutes to walk from one side to the other. To the north lies the Forbidden City, complete with a large painting of Chairman Mao overseeing the square, to the east the Chinese National Museum, to the west the Great Hall of the People, the rough equivalent of their Capitol Building (the National People’s Congress recently completed another session in this building), and to the south is the Gate of Heavenly Peace–but not before one passes by Chairman Mao’s mausoleum (closed for renovations until 2008).
This is also the site of the aborted democracy protests (and killings) in 1989. Needless to say, I cannot envision anti-war protesters gathering in this environment, not with armed soldiers every few meters. Although we have a monument to George Washington at the center of our public space, I still think it would be just a bit creepy if we hung a large portrait of Washington–or more appropriately, Franklin Roosevelt, on the west lawn of the Capitol to oversee the Mall. Regardless, the square was a neat place, reflecting some sense of the power and majesty of the Chinese as a people and as a nation.