Friday, September 14, 2012

Return to Tianjin

It’s been over a year since I last visited Tianjin (天津), the port city half an hour’s train ride from Beijing. I had previously been there on a works outing and we had been shown around in style by the local tourism authority. Much to my delight I recently received another invitation from one of the ladies who had looked after us – Wenya – who has been following the ramblings of your favourite blogger over the last few months. She wondered if I would like another day out in this beautiful city.
 
So Saturday at the crack of dawn sees me heaving myself out of bed and getting ready for the off. To get to Tianjin from Beijing I need to get to Beijing South Railway Station. To get to Beijing South Railway Station I have to travel down Subway Line 5, change onto Subway line2 and then change onto Subway line 4. It’s an hour’s journey, but I get there in plenty of time, having paid the standard RMB2 (20p) for the whole journey.
 
The current Beijing South Railway Station (北京南站) opened on August 1, 2008. It is truly gigantic - the second largest in Asia, after Shanghai Hongqiao .
 
 
Trains to Tianjin are frequent, leaving during rush hours practically every 10 or 15 minutes. The whole operation is dead impressive, resembling an airport in its efficiency. In fact I’m sure the planners must have taken a good hard look at the runnings of an airport and imported the best bits.

 
With so many trains running every hour, nothing is left to chance, and everything runs to split second accuracy. In typical air-terminal style, arriving passengers are kept separate from departing passengers by the simple expedient of having them on separate floors: arrivals downstairs, departures upstairs.

 
You can’t get onto the platform at all until about 15-20 minutes prior to departure, and that’s only once you have been through the gamut of X-ray machines and body searches. Then you walk through the terminal to your gate and queue up in orderly lines before you swipe your ticket through the platform barriers, show your ID card (to show it really is your ticket – tickets are only valid for the person who bought them) and shove your way down to the sleek white express trains below.

 
I never cease to be impressed by China Railways. Yes, they have had a number of safety problems over the past year or two, but the Europeans could really learn a thing or two from the way the system is run here.

 
Not only are the trains comfortable and affordable (the journey to Tianjin costs a mere RMB55 – or just over £5), but they are ultra clean and packed to capacity as a result. As we board the train, an army of cleaning staff is already washing down the outsides of the carriages – which they do after every journey! Oh, British Rail do you have a lot to learn!

 
They even have stewardesses patrolling the train – smart blue outfits for first class; slightly less smart red ones for turnip class.

 
We set off, quickly reaching speeds of 290km/hr (slower than last year, following the high speed rail crash incident in Zhejiang province last July in which at least 35 people died) and arrive in Tianjin 34 minutes later.
 
Tianjin is the largest coastal city in northern China and the sixth-largest city nationally – but you never feel overcrowded the way you do in Beijing. Compared with Beijing, Tianjin on a Sunday is almost empty. Certainly Wenya is wandering across roads without a care in the world in a way that would almost certainly land her in hospital in the capital.
 
The city really is splendid. It’s all a huge conglomeration of ageing nineteenth and early twentieth-century European architecture, juxtaposed with the concrete and glass monoliths of wealthy contemporary China. Much of the colonial architecture has been placed under protection, especially in the French, Russian and Italian concessionary areas around the central train station, and south of the Hai River.

 
Facing the Bohai Sea, the name Tianjin means 'the place where the emperor crossed the river', and as the one time imperial port, it serves as Beijing's vital gateway to the sea.
 
One of the bridges crossing the Hai River is known as Liberation Bridge. And immediately opposite in the middle of a roundabout stands one of the unmistakeable landmarks of the city - The Century Clock. It’s almost 40 metres high, weighs 170-tons and is embellished with relief carvings of the 12 symbols of the Chinese zodiac in bronze. The S-style rocker symbolizes the substituting of Yin and Yang, apparently.
 
Well, I guess it’s one of those things you either love or hate. Personally I think it is whacky and zany enough to be quite attractive in a funny kind of way.

 
True to form, Wenya ambles her way from the middle of this huge roundabout across some eight lanes of traffic, almost defying any car to even think of mowing her down. I follow a little more sheepishly and we finally jump into a cab which takes us 2 kms to the Dabei Monastery – otherwise known as the Great Compassion Temple.
 
The monastery was first built in the Ming Dynasty, but has been heavily rebuilt and renovated since. It covers over 10,000 square metres and houses the Tianjin Buddhist Institute.

 
Entry is 5 Yuan, but not only does that get you in, you also get given three sticks of incense to add to the general smoky melée.
 
A signpost near the entrance informs us that the ancient Compassionate Temple is renowned for “worshipping the merciful Goddess of Mercy”; and that “after the vicissitudes of centuries, only the west yard of small scale remains” – errr, yes! In 1979, renovation work started on the halls, which had been ruined during the Cultural Revolution; and in 1982 the temple took on the status of a protected historic site.

 
On either side of the entrance way stand bell and drum towers and the whole complex appears much less formal than some of the temple complexes I’ve seen in Beijing.

 
In front of the Grand Hall stands a – well, I’m not quite sure what you would call it! It’s like a very tall tower into which visitors are attempting to throw coins through the little entrances at each storey. Presumably the higher up they can throw their coins, the more good luck it brings them. Who knows - but it is charming whatever it is.

 
We leave the temple and wander out to get a bottle of cold tea. In the street, outside a police station, is – what appears to me, anyway – a clever street sign admonishing people not to drink and drive, lest they get injured. There is a whole series of these signs positioned across the city. Obviously the marketing gurus have had a field day attempting to make a boring but necessary campaign for road safety come alive.

 
We wander on across one of the 12 bridges traversing the Hai River. Through the mist we can just make out the outline of the Tianjin Eye - a 120-metre tall giant Ferris wheel built above the Yongle Bridge (formerly the Chihai Bridge). It has 64 exterior transparent capsules, and a complete revolution takes 40 minutes. It is the only such wheel to have been constructed over a bridge; and on a clear day they say you can see 40 km from the top.

 
But time waits for no man, and perhaps more importantly, it is now many hours since your favourite blogger’s tummy was pampered with a bit of nourishment. Wenya tells me that Tianjin is famous for a number of snack items, including deep fried Goubuli (狗不理包子) - a traditional brand of baozi (steamed bun with filling).
 
She leads me to a restaurant, outside which snakes a long queue of people waiting to be served through an open window. We dutifully stand in line. There is a plethora of choices available, including bean paste (her favourite), pineapple (my favourite), strawberry (everybody’s favourite) and various others too numerous to mention.

 
I get handed a large bun-shaped object inside a plastic bag and sink in my teeth. It’s lovely, but so thick with oil that I wonder what on earth it will do to my cholesterol levels. But I throw caution to the winds and munch it down before then wondering how on earth I’m going to get rid of all that oil that has covered my hands in the process.

 
We wander further on down the street where a makeshift stall is selling off kittens and puppies - balls of fluff locked up in tiny cages. Eager kids are anxiously explaining to their parents why they need to take on the responsibility of looking after one of these sad balls of fluff, while some of the parents are doing their best to ignore the pathetic squeaks and mewls and lead their kids on to more worthwhile pursuits.

 
We stop for a coke and then decide to chance our hand at the Tianjin metro. The original network started in 1984 when it was the second metro to be built in China with a total track length of 7.4 kilometres. To reduce construction costs, the transport authority decided to use an abandoned canal bed to form part of the system, which meant that the underground section was only 2–3 metres beneath the city streets, and was the world's shallowest metro.

 
Seventeen years later the service was suspended for reconstruction, only reopening to the public in June 2006. And within a further three years, the entire network had grown to 50 stations and 4 lines.

 
This year in July, after a lengthy construction delay and a structural accident, Line 2 finally opened to the public, as two separate sections.
 
The entire system has now been kitted out with 114 new passenger cars that are very similar to some that are found on Beijing’s subway system.
 
In 2009, the Tianjin transport authority announced plans for 8 subway lines (including the current Line 1) with lines 2, 3, 5 and 6, currently under construction, due to be fully opened next year.

 
Unlike Beijing’s subway system, which has a flat fare of RMB2 for any distance, Tianjin’s metro has a sliding scale of fares; but it still averages between 1.5 and 2 kwai per journey. Instead of getting a ticket to ride, you get instead a plastic disk which you have to wave at the turnstile to get though.
 
The metro system itself, though, is desperately underused and the passageways linking the surface to the platform areas are virtually deserted. But that’s a wonderful feeling after the desperately overcrowded conditions on BJ’s equivalent MTR system.
 
Anyway, it’s piggy time once again… and Wenya takes me to a fast food outfit which specialises in fried tofu. It’s a little like a miniaturised version of a British fish-n-chips shop…

 
Once the tofu has been extracted from the oil, a liberal smothering of various sauces is poured over it and we are given two wooden spikes to go away and eat them with. Delicious! But what was I saying earlier on about cholesterol?

 
Now it’s time to take in a bit of culture. We head on over to Chifeng Dao (赤峰道), where we pass the former residence of Zhang XueLiang - the effective ruler of Manchuria and much of northern China after the assassination of his father by the Japanese in 1928. As an instigator of the Xi'an Incident, he spent over fifty years under house arrest and is regarded today as a patriotic hero.

 
It’s a nice house, but it is not what we have come to see.
 
No, no. For that we have to walk a few more metres down the street … to the China House Museum. Now, whether your reaction on seeing this building is Wow! Art! or OMG what a travesty!, there’s no mistaking the uniqueness of this building.

 
The blurb will tell you that China House “is a priceless building decorated with about 4,000 pieces of ancient porcelain, 400 pieces of jade stone carving, 20 tons of crystal and agate and a million pieces of ancient Chinese ceramic chips”… or another blurb which tells you “700 million pieces of ancient Chinese porcelain, 15,000 ancient porcelain bowls, dishes, and vases; 300 ancient porcelain-cat pillows; 300 stone lions; 300 marble sculptures; more than 20 tons of natural crystal…”. I guess I’m not too fussed either way.
 
My first reaction is that it wouldn’t look out of place beside some of the Gaudi buildings of Barcelona.
 
But unlike Gaudi’s works, this is – in my very humble opinion – absolutely GHASTLY and has been put together in the worst possible taste. The front wall - called the ‘peace wall’ - consists of 635 vases and a whole load of ceramic pussycats.

 
China House museum is a private house which belongs to the Tianjin Yueweixian Cultural Industry and Investment group. Originally a 100-year-old French style villa, the residence is a five-storied building with a total area of 3,000 square metres.
 
On the roof of the house is embedded a 768-metre-long dragon relief made from over ten thousand pieces of porcelain. Inside the house there are many famous paintings made up of ceramic pieces, including the world famous painting, Mona Lisa. OMG, I hear myself crying yet again…

 
We decide to forego the pleasure of actually going in to this “museum” and instead wander off into the sunset in search of more food, before eventually it’s time for me to think about heading for home.
The station area is absolutely crowded out – much more security than usual, I am informed. Apparently Tianjin is gearing itself up for the annual Meeting of the New Champions of World Economic Forum (also called Summer Davos) which starts in two days here with the Premier and his entourage descending on the city. But I manage to get a ticket for a train in an hour which gives me enough time to catch a photo or two along the river where the French quarter is alive with lights. Did I mention that Tianjin is stunning at night?

 
I finally get into BJ in time to just catch the last subway trains to get me home, where I arrive an hour later.
 
It’s been a great day out. I really like Tianjin!
 

Friday, September 7, 2012

Is This What Chinese Heaven Is Like?

Don’t you find it amazing that you can live in, or visit, a place for ages and ages and not get to know something that is within spitting distance of your front door, so anxious are you to go explore further afield.
 
I’ve been living in Beijing for some 14 months; just 5 minutes walk away is the entrance to (yet another) park which I have noticed often enough and walked on past, always knowing that one day when I have nothing better to do I can drop in and take a look.
 
Well this past week, events conspired to take me in there without my even being aware of it. I had decided in my quest to visit another of Beijing’s many museums to go see the Science and Technology Museum, just off the 3rd ring road. I worked out the route, jumped on a bus, walked to the entrance … and found it was little more than a building site, with the old buildings hardly distinguishable through the thick layers of dust and grime that had built up over the last few months.
 
Somewhat deflated I decided that as it was such a nice day I would take a walk northbound. I had hardly gone a short way before coming across another entrance to this self same park - Yuan Dadu Chengyuan, 元大都城垣遗址公园 - that I never really knew existed.
 
 
Taking note that I mustn’t “spit, piss and litter everywhere” (awww, what killjoys!), that I mustn’t “step into the pond” (that’s OK I guess), and that I shouldn’t “fight, make a disturbance or do anything that is illegal like superstition and gamble” (OK, I bet I won’t even need to keep my fingers crossed on that one) I entered the park. And found it to be an absolute delight!
 
With a history of over 700 years, Beijing’s city wall was originally built in 1267 by the famous Yuan emperor Kublai Khan. But in the early years of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the north part – what has now been turned into this delightful park - was left out of the city when the north wall was moved southwards. 
 
The city wall was made mainly of soil and is about 12.5 metres high and 31 metres broad. The overall park is actually divided into two sections, a total length of 9 km, one in Haidian and the other in Chaoyang. The section I am now in is the Chaoyang side, spanning some 4.8kms.
 
 
 
The park has been set out to celebrate the culture and achievements of the Yuan dynasty. As you walk through it, you can read poems praising the beauty of nature (well, you can if you speak Chinese!); and on the grass, you come across sculptures of horses every now and again, representing “the invulnerability of the Yuan Dynasty”.
 
 
 
The city of Dadu, the forerunner of Beijing, was built in 1264. Its design followed several rules from the book Rites of Zhou: "nine vertical axes, nine horizontal axes"; "palaces in the front, markets in the rear"; "left ancestral worship, right god worship". It was broad in scale, and strict in its planning and execution.

But in August 1368 General Xu Da captured the city. The Khan of Yuan, Yuan Shundi, escaped without defending the city, and so it sustained no damage. Xu Da decided that Dadu's fortification system was too large to defend during a siege, so he ordered the city's northern walls rebuilt 2.8 kilometres to the south of their original location. The original walls were abandoned after 1372, but were still used as a secondary defence during the Ming dynasty.

And so with that history lesson out the way, you won’t be surprised as you walk a little bit further in to the park to come across a huge group of statues of 19 historical figures such as Kublai Khan - the founder of the Yuan Dynasty – together with his Imperial Concubines.
 
 
These sculptures (Da Du Ding Sheng) are actually the biggest open-air sculptures to be found in Beijing. Old Kublai (also known as Hu Bilie) is accompanied by other notables such as the famous Italian traveller Marco Polo and Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing, and there’s a couple of groups of musicians and dancers, as well as family pets, to make sure they don’t get bored.
 
 
From a little distance away you can take in the whole tableau, including an 80-metre fresco’d wall depicting life in days gone by including the wedding of a princess.
 
 
And just to the right of this tableau is another tiled wall which makes for some interesting patterns if you enjoy tinkering with Photoshop’s myriad filters…
 
 
It’s here, too, that you can find that absolutely-must-see-attraction … Chaoyang’s Public Security and Protection Museum, which has a large sign near the road…
 
 
…with loads of absolutely spiffing signs surrounding this open space allowing visitors to revel in health and safety topics…
 
 
But for some inexplicable reason the museum itself is not heaving with people all trying to cram in to learn about H&S; in fact I can’t see a single person queuing up to be allowed inside, while the guard appears to be fast asleep. Very strange; though if the truth be known I too find myself bypassing this golden opportunity to increase my knowledge of this fascinating subject… and decide instead to move on to discover more of the park.
 
 
A moat dug during the Yuan Dynasty flows through the park - it’s now known as the Xiaoyue River - and this divides it into two parts connected by six bridges. In some places the water is more like a dirty puddle, with mud lining each bank of the river course; in other parts the water flows smoothly. And in winter the entire river freezes solid along its entire length. All along it you see acacias, pines and weeping willows – quite stunning.
 
 
There’s always something new to see as well. You come across little sculptures almost everywhere – such as these coins  representing the commercial merchants who used to set up their wares on the original Dadu City Walls.
 
 
The park is definitely a Happy place to be – and if you look carefully you’ll see loudspeakers designed to look like rocks from which there is a non-stop cacophony of uplifting music and uplifting commentary – well, I have no idea what the Voice says – it could be an exhortation for everyone to be happy, or praising the park authorities, or something else for all I know, but strangely enough I don’t find it annoying in the slightest…
 
 
Maybe the reason it’s not annoying is because for most of the length of the park, the music/exhortations are drowned out by real people enjoying life to the fullest…
 
Most days you will find all kinds of activities going on all around you. Here are some 200-300 people gathering in the shade of the trees at the back of a bandstand singing their hearts out to the sound of a keyboard player, saxophonist and drummer…
 
 
A few metres further along you come across a score of couples dancing to the sound of a DVD player….
 
 
 
… while if it’s early morning Tai chi or keep fit classes you’re after, you’ve definitely come to the right place.
 
 
Some of these keep-fitters practise with what look like red fly swatters – very graceful it is, and certainly I saw not a single fly even contemplating what a great idea it would be to buzz in on their exercise drills…
 
 
Badminton, too, is immensely popular – both the traditional bash-the-shuttlecock-over-the-net type as well as the keep-kicking-the-oversized-shuttlecock-in-the-air version…
 
 
Beijing’s parks are also useful if you are the type of person whose hobby is likely to be too noisy for your neighbours. Here are a whole load of people all practising their instruments, totally oblivious to other “musicians” standing just a couple of feet away from them. The mishmash of sounds is not at all unpleasant – a little like the conglomeration of competing church bells in Europe calling out on a Sunday morning.
 
 
Not that you need to practise with others if you don’t want to. This aspiring clarinettist is serenading the birds from a hideaway close to the road.
 
 
There’s no hobby, it appears, that is unsuitable for getting up to in the park. Want to practise your calligraphy? No problem… Just get yourself a bucket of water and a very long brush…
 
 
Maybe you’re a natural tree hugger at heart? People here love pushing against the trees – doing vertical push-ups – or even hanging from branches to strengthen their muscles.
 
 
This woman regularly stretches her leg muscles here and can often be seen striking a pose for up to half an hour at a time…
 
 
And if you feel somehow that there is a dearth of birds in Beijing, then again this is the place to come to, especially in the evenings when many of the old timers bring their bird cages out to listen to the warbling of their occupants.
 
 
This is very much a people’s park. Throughout its length you see signs for camping, sometimes in the most unlikely of places. Especially at weekends, you see young couples erecting their tents, possibly looking forward to a romantic night out.
 
 
Everything is laid on for the park’s visitors. Practically every few hundred metres there is a loo, well designated by anatomically-suspect signs
 
 
Not everything in the place is OK though. It has to be said that some of the rocks simply don’t make the grade, though in what subjects they are deficient we are not told.
 
 
For budding arborealists, there are even notices telling you the type of tree you are standing under…
 
 
In fact the authorities have gone to great lengths to sign practically everything that moves… though what constitutes an Emer gency water supply or an Emer gency toilet as opposed to an ordinary one, I am not quite sure.
 
 
And I never do get to find out where the Emergencg monitoc QNLCOtrol is located, or even for that matter what its purpose is…
 
 
But I feel well pleased with myself for being able to decipher another notice which read “Pl..s. keep o.f the gr.s.” – though I do have to walk across the grass to be able to read it in the first place!