China

As we touched down at the Beijing International Airport an hour to noon, the socialist vibe was palpable — just by looking out the window of a stalled aircraft, waiting to be assigned to a terminal. Once inside, it was swarming with soldiers and signs of no-photography at every corner, the November chill nudged us along. Through immigration and baggage reclaim, we finally found our escort, who took us to our hotel.

Through the initial rush, out of the airport, the thought of lunch had passed us by, and were famished by the time we reached the hotel. At the bar, we ordered a serving of Kung Pao chicken hesitantly. To our delight, it was tangy, and nothing like we had ever tasted before. We ended-up ordering more.

On day two, we were ushered-in by our immaculate English speaking guide, and boarded us on the tour bus at 8am. Our first stop: Tiananmen Square.

Humming with as many tourists as there were soldiers, it turned out to be a large open space surrounded by government buildings. Our timing could not have been better, because it was the day Chinese Congress was electing its new leader, and so the place was brimming with people. Next to the Square’s right is the Forbidden City.

Heaven is round, while Earth is flat and square. Made from jade symbolising beauty, constancy, immortality, nobility, perfection, and power. The starkness of this whole sprawling empty space makes for an odd landscape. It must have been to ensure visibility to be able to spot an intruder in a city that had one primary male occupant, the emperor. The imperial garden is much more refreshing to look at. Post a delicious lunch, we went to see the Temple of Heaven. It’s yet another sprawling but largely vacant space with a central, overlooking temple with nothing inside to see. Our day ended with kung-fu show at the Red theatre.

Third day of our visit to China was the day I was looking forward to — to scale a tiny section of the formidable great wall. The original itinerary included the Badaling, and we did rush there beating Beijing’s chaotic morning traffic and smog. But snowfall and traffic forced us to go see the wall near Juyong pass instead, the one that was used by Mongolian invaders, time and again, to breach the middle kingdom, which eventually forced the Chinese emperor to build one there to stop recurring attacks.

The single most fascinating reason to revisit China, if I would ever, would be to scale the Great Wall again. With as ancient as 2,200 years old, and over 21,000km long, the kind of exhilaration one feels being on that wall, as I jogged a section of the strategic Juyong pass early this month, is hard to adequately to express in words. In Ian Johnston’s translation, Franz Kafka’s essay on The Great Wall of China (published by Max Brod fourteen years after Kafka’s death) notes thus:

The hopelessness of such a hard task, which could not be completed even in a long human lifetime, would have caused them distress and, more than anything else, made them worthless for work. For that reason the system of building in sections was chosen. Five hundred meters could be completed in something like five years, by which time naturally the supervisors were, as a rule, too exhausted and had lost all faith in themselves, in the building, and in the world.

On our way back, the guide allowed us a glimpse of Beijing’s national stadium, the primary venue of 2008 Beijing Olympics. It is glorious to look at.

Xi’an. It was dark by the time we descended on Xi’an. Like any other airport in China, Xi’an’s airport is somewhere between large and staggering, and still expanding. It isn’t hard to hazard a guess why. Xi’an (or Chang’an, as it was known in the past) is one of those few cities in the world to transcend time in retaining their gateway status, with its claim to fame and prosperity being one to the ancient, legendary Silk Road.

As the trade artery between the East and the West, historians have also linked it to the Hellenistic period, followed by an era of breakthrough philosophy, science and mathematics in the 3rd century B.C. If one steps back to look at the entire scene, one can see that this was an era that had everything, together with danger and adventure thrown in the mix; and it all traveled back and forth from Xi’an all the way to Rome and possibly Alexandria.

Next morning, we headed out to see the Terracotta Army.

Like the Egyptian Pharaohs, it is apparent that Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, believed in the afterlife, and so he began a construction of an army to protect him in his afterlife soon after he ascended throne in his teens. Becoming obsessed with death later in life, he actively sought immortality presumably using methods by those who preached it. I mean we have to come to terms with the fact that some of the greatest art in the world is attributed to insanity of individuals with great power.

As a substitute of burying a real army, bless the person who advised this to the emperor, a life size army made out of terra cotta was approved and was built to perfection. That every detail, feature, position or posture is unique for each of those is stunning. And it is in these masterpieces — everyone of them — is where we have a glimpse of life, attires, shoes they wore (all with perfect soles and treads), their weaponry, and their horses.

The bow-trigger is just one of those details that offer a glimpse of sophistication in their weaponry, i.e., they apparently used crossbows with bronze triggers. The wood obviously rotted long ago, leaving only the metallic parts like the one above behind as evidence, which is still a remarkable discovery in knowing they understood the mechanics of a trigger to be able to develop one that would be efficient as a weapon, and issued to warriors in the emperor’s army. That this entire army was discovered as late as 1974 makes it even more remarkable; the world is just fortunate that it wasn’t discovered by the luddites of the Cultural Revolution.

In the afternoon, we went up to see the city wall. It’s part of the fortification, appropriate for a city such as Xi’an’s stature as either the beginning or end of Silk Road, that still survives for us to walk on.

Next morning, we paid a visit to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, established by Xuanxang, the second Chinese traveler to India after Faxian, in the 7th century in search of India’s culture, knowledge, philosophy, and spirituality. Xuanxang is known to have studied in the ancient Nalanda University for about eight to fifteen years, and he brought back to China the sutras and figurines of the Buddha that enrich the pagoda today.

Perhaps because of the Silk Road, with its access to Eurasia and Persia via Yarkand, Badakhshan and Bactria, Xi’an has a large middle-eastern influence, and it is nowhere more obvious than in The Great Mosque, which was likely built in the 8th century. We spent a pleasant afternoon there. And in the evening, we took a flight to Guilin.

Guilin. Next day, we visited the Reed Flute cave, the seven star park and the Elephant trunk hill. The richness and hue of the cave is astonishing, and I have never seen anything like it.

We began our next day traversing the Li river from Guilin to Yangshuo. Flanked by mountains on either sides, it suffices to say the scene from the boat keeps you on deck for all of the journey. Yangshuo’s rural life with rice fields in naturally picturesque setting comes across as a breath of fresh air. We cycled through a number of villages one evening, visiting the countryside.

Shanghai. The flight back from Guilin to Shanghai was uneventful, we checked in to a hotel and crashed for the day, but not before venturing out on streets for dinner and look at Shanghai’s towering sky scrapers.

On day 11, we visited the Shanghai museum, which is very good and the Yuyuan gardens. Later, we were at Tianzifang, the Bund, its western architecture alongside oriental, which makes for an interesting combination, and then the Nanjing Road. For the day’s remainder, we explored the city a bit on our own, before heading back home the next day.