The End

Memories Will Fade

Qianmen

Boarded-up Shops


Ramshackle Buildings


Excavation


Vision of the Future


Symbol of the Olympics

Changes

This is our last week in Beijing, and as we pack up and get ready to leave it is feeling time to finish things up and ponder our time here.

I think the most striking feature of living in Beijing for 5 months has been the enormous rate of change. Even over this short period dramatic changes have taken place.


Demolished Canteen
The most dramatic changes, and the easiest to document, are the destruction. This is a picture of what used to be one of the student canteens on the BNU campus - the one where I used to enjoy having breakfast because one of the servers spoke English and could help me choose. This whole block of three canteens has now been demolished, and I now eat breakfast in the apartment!


Forlorn Pingpong Table
At the larger city scale thriving shopping streets are suddenly boarded up and whole neighborhoods of the old hutong areas disappear almost overnight, as I mentioned earlier and was also written about in the July 12 issue of the New York Times. (I plan to make one more visit to the Qianmen area to see how much of what we saw at the beginning of our stay remains.)

The destruction is easiest to notice since reconstruction is inevitably slower, and it remains to be seen whether the results are an improvement, an assessment that may well depend on who you are - a visiting tourist or a Beijing native.... But there have been remarkable changes that are clear improvements as well. A dirty channel full of debris and construction equipment at the beginning of our stay has miraculously turned into a river with green banks and lotus plants.




There is also clear progress in the renovation of many of the tourist attractions - the Temple of Heaven was recently reopened and the Summer Palace renovation seems nearly complete - compare these two photos:


Summer Palace in March


Summer Palace in July

The sky was bluer in July too, but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be a real trend!

Another change: probably half of the enormous bus fleet has been replaced with modern air-conditioned vehicles so that it is now much more pleasant to ride the buses. And while we were away in May the system for paying fares on the buses largely changed from getting a paper ticket from the conductor (or from one of up to 3 conductors on the double-length buses) to waving a card at an electronic reader. (The old paper ticket system is still allowed.) The subways are making a similar transition right now. Many new lines are being built too - another cause for the rash of building sites across the city.

Souvenir Shopping

Since we leave China at the end of this week, we went hunting for souvenirs and gifts. We went back to Liulichangdong Street, with its refurbished Qing dynasty buildings, now mainly selling tourist items. The street is filled with the rickshaws looking for riders and salesmen pushing their wares that frequent this type of place, but at least today, the level of the sales-picthing was relatively mild. The part of the street to the west of Nan Xinhua is a little less intense, and we did most of our shopping here.


Decorated Store Front


Rickshaws and Tourists

A few doors down a back street right at the west end of the touristy part of Liulichangdong Street we wandered into a small shop which turned out to be the store of an artist who happily showed us his pieces and explained the stories behind the pictures. We swopped photo-rights: he took my picture and I took a picture of him and his wife.


Artist, Wife, and Paintings

Summer Palace - in Summer

We visited the summer palace in winter when we first arrived in Beijing, and in spring when the trees and flowers were blooming, and I wanted to visit one more time in the eponymous season. After two weeks of depressing overcast, hot and thundery weather when Beijing has been sunk in a soup of haze and smog, today dawned with bright blue skies and a fresh wind, so I set off early to beat the rush hour traffic for a final visit.


Marble Boat Looking Grand in the Crisp Light
The Summer Palace is my favorite of the main tourist sites in Beijing. It has the grandeur of the historical context and does not (yet) feel over-restored; it is spacious enough that it never feels crowded despite the hoards of visitors; it has the appealing collection of morning activities, such as water calligraphy and impromptu singing groups; and it is a beautiful place on a bright sunny day.


Calligraphy


Giant Lotus


Yellow Flowers and Blue Sky
The lotus plants in Kunming Lake and some of the smaller lakes were blooming. The picture shows a giant lotus standing 4 or 5 feet tall, with leaves over a foot across and flowers almost as big. There weren't so many trees flowering as in spring, but these yellow flowers contrasted nicely with the bright blue sky.



Tower of the Fragrance of Buddha


Tiled Roof
The renovation work appears to be nearing completion. The centerpiece Tower of the Fragrance of Buddha has shed its scaffolding and sparkled with its fresh paint. The Long Corridor stretching along the lake side is still not finished though.


South Lake Island and Downtown Beijing from Longevity Hill


Sweeping


17 Arch Bridge
One of the nicest parts of the Summer Palace is the Garden of Harmonius Pleasure. (This is what it looked like in spring.) Now the lake is lush with lotus plants and green willow, and people were relaxing in the shady pavilions listening to the music groups.


Lotus in the Garden of Harmonius Pleasure


Pick-up Choir


Pavilion Roof

Table Tennis

BNU Tabble Tennis Room
Table tennis, of course, is a popular sport in China. I played a lot as a teenager, but that was forty years ago, and I have only rarely picked up a bat since. But I couldn't leave China without playing again, so when some students in the group invited me to play, I happiily accepted. I was surprisingly good - many of my old good shots were still there, although there were also lots of new bad ones!

Speedboat Ride

On our final day at the Wuling retreat the bus took us to a nearby lake where we went on a fast swooshy speedboat ride. We had seen such a ride at various other rivers and lakes, but never expected to participate!

Wulingshan

Today the group planned to climb Wulingshan (Wuling Mountain) itself. "Wu" means foggy or misty, and the mountain lived up to its name!

The hike turned out to be a walk up about 1500ft through a pretty wooded valley with a stream at the bottom and, today, damp and mist.


Misty Forest
Chinese hiking trails tend to be very well constructed, with stone steps at the steep bits. Every pool and prominent rock is inscribed with characters either giving a poetic message or telling some history.


Inscribed Rock
After climbing 1500ft we came to a small cabin/restaurant, and it turned out we were to take a bus from there to the summit (which was still 3000ft higher). The summit, which is the highest point in Beijing, was shrouded in cloud, so we didn't get to see any view.


Halfway House

On the way down the brakes of the minibus started smoking, so we all jumped out and walked the last few hundred yards back through the village. This gave me the chance to photograph a mother dog with cute puppies and a little boy playing with them (as well as see a woman strangle a chicken and cut its throat to drain the blood onto at the side of the street - which I didn't photograph!).


Mother and Pups


Little Boy and Puppy

Wuling Excursion

The BNU Physics department arranged a weekend retreat for its faculty, and kindly invited us along. The location was the Wuling Mountains, about a 3 1/2 hour drive, and right in the north-east corner of greater Beijing. In the afternoon we went on a short hike. The scenery is green mountainous with farms in the valleys and on terraces up the hillsides. The main crop seems to be corn, which surprised me since I don't see much corn being eaten. There are also some unreconstructed pieces of the Great Wall here.


Distant Great Wall


Farming Valley


Unreconstructed Great Wall


Arches and Wall


Colorful Butterfly


White Flower


Corn Terraces

Qiao Home and Zhenguo Temple

On our last day in Ping Yao we hired a car to visit some more distant attractions. We first went to the Qiao Family Home, a courtyard estate of 313 rooms of a rich family built in the eighteenth century. A recent television series was filmed here, and so it was very crowded with Chinese tourists groups. The buildings were elaborately decorated with paintings and carving, but the most interesting part for me was the furnished interiors that gave some impression of what life was actually like in these old homes. Other buildings housed local museum pieces. The most interesting was a display of the instruments/noise makers that different salesmen used to announce their wares.


Interior


Nine Dragon Lamp


Roof Painting


Carving
After a lunch of local specialties in a restaurant definitely off the western-tourist track we visited Zhenguo Temple which has what is said to be the oldest wooden building in China. The umbrella roof was a very impressive layered structure of crisscrossing beams.


Wooden Roof

The halls housed various Buddhist sculptures and frescos, again with no photos allowed. Some of the outside paintings were good too.






Temple Paintings
This temple too seemed rather neglected, with many of the figures flaking straw from cracks and breakages. One of the side buildings was propped up in an alarming way.


Wall Struts

Xiaoqin's parents live at one of the city primary schools, itself converted long ago from a large courtyard house. School was out for the summer break, except for some surprisingly young children taking a computer class. Here are a few pictures of the school.


School Yard


Blackboard


Class is Out!