Last Stop Beijing

Bi Ran’s friend picked us up at the airport and we got a splash dive into Beijing food with a super spicy meal. Frank’s Red Hot has met it’s match.


We started off exploring the Summer Palace, which translated means the Gardens of Nurtured Harmony. As we walked around, I kept being reminded of Olmsted’s Central Park with its blowing willows, organic paths and pools of water. The palace’s central feature is Kunming Lake. Emperor Qianlong, who started work on the property in 1750, traveled and transposed elements of other landscapes. There was Hangzhou’s causeway and a mini Suzhou. Everywhere we saw images of the dragon and golden roofs, both symbols of the emperor. There were also phoenixes, representing the power of the empress. Empress Dowager Cixi spent much of her time at the palace. She seemed like quite the control freak with an unmatched superiority complex.

In Beijing we set up visits with three of the top Landscape Architecture School’s in the country. At Beijing School of Forestry, Bi Ran’s alma mater, we gave a talk and sat in on an evening lecture by Sun Xiaoxiang. At 90, he is the oldest ‘student’ of Landscape Arch. and still very passionate about it. According to him we should be five things; a poet, a painter, an architect, an ecologist, & a horticulturalist. I have much to aspire to.

We paid visits to and talked with students from Peking University, connected with the firm Turenscape and watched a lecture on boundaries at Tsinghua University. Both programs had strong focuses on sustainable design.


The 2008 Olympic site is still very much buzzing with activity. The giant infrastructure is still used for sports and its shear size brought people like us there to gawk. Is this what the future looks like? Side-note; apparently it is a practice in schools and many workplaces to begin the day with a series of exercises, common to the entire country. We watched on and tried to take part as a group of waiters did them in Bi Ran’s first plaza design.

Tiananmen Square, the largest square in China, is across the street from the Forbidden City. It was the imperial palace from Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty to Puya of the Qing Dynasty; 1402 to 1912. If you’ve watched the movie the Last Emperor, its that one. Now the colors are less intense but the buildings themselves are still just as grandiose. Many buildings were rebuilt after 1860, when Anglo-French forces burned much of the imperial palace as well as Summer Palace.

Culture is rich in Beijing. We visited many market areas where traditional practices such as jade carving are passed on to family members. We visited a 100-year old peking duck restaurant, silk stores, a Chinese medicine shop and chopstick manufacturers.

The Beijing Botanical Gardens are incredible. They have a rich diversity of plants, are well laid out and have a greenhouse with an excellent tropical and arid plant collection. We came in time for the rose festival and of course, we stopped and smelled them all.

The art/industry district 798 etc. was the last stop in Beijing. It’s a place where old factories have been converted into art galleries and studios and other factories are still running. This culture clash is a must see.

Traffic made more sense in Beijing. The subway infrastructure was older, dating back maybe to the ‘90’s, and there were plenty of crosswalks and trained drivers. To date, Xi’An’s traffic is the most insane I have seen.

Goodbye China - Hello Thailand!

Mount Huashan

We started our hike at a temple, like some sort of Indiana Jones movie. According to inscriptions on the mountain, people have been climbing Mt. Huashan for the last 2,300 years. In those days legendary kung-fu masters climbed to meditate and practice their art, scholars and poets climbed to reflect, and others climbed to gain wisdom and center. Now we climbed to climb.


Lot’s of steps and a steep climb were balanced by loads of peanuts and the best Chinese snack: ‘Beef Particles.’ Little did we know that we were in for the most sore legs of our lives in the next coming days. We kept our feet moving by singing, or in Yalin’s case, yelling off the mountain. These sometimes issued a singing response from climbers on other peaks.


Hiked to North Peak, the shortest of the four peaks. The peaks of the mountain are arranged like a compass, one for each direction. We stayed the night in a hostel on East Peak, the second tallest peak. From here we sat up to watch the sunset over West peak. In the morning we all came alive to see the sunrise. We had a breathtaking view from our peak.


People who lived and worked on the mountain offered more daring excursions with rope equipment. I went out to the Chess Pavilion where a story has it that an Emperor of the Song dynasty played chess after traveling up the mountain… and lost.


As one of China’s five great mountains, the entire way was coated with symbolism, both ancient and new. Characters carved into rock told poetry, history and meaning. Hikers placed sticked below large granite bolders to perhaps reflect on lightness and power. Along the chain ‘fence’ that climbed the mountain with us, couples locked engraved locks and threw the keys off the mountain to seal their commitment to one another.


The entire experience was on the backs of many employees of the site. Because there is only two points of access (North Peak and the base of the mountain), food, drinks and building materials had to be carried up to each peak. With the mountains many houses, shops and paths, the work was definitely formidable. The people we spoke with were all older men who were severely underpaid, often with families to support. This reality hit us hard.


After playing around on East Peak, we climbed the highest peak, South Peak. West Peak came next and by that point our legs had reached the state of Jell-O. We descended back down to North Peak to ride a trolley back down.


Anyone up for climbing the other four great Chinese mountains with me?

View from 2,000 meters

Sunrise

Sunset