Beijing is Picturesque

To my Western ear, the names of the city’s major attractions often sound hard to take seriously: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the Hall of Supreme Harmony (not to be confused with the halls of Central Harmony and Preserving Harmony).

I mean, some of these classical superlatives you’d swear came straight out of National Lampoon, or some similar attempt to spoof Chinese culture. I am not making up the following labels on the various halls and sub-palaces that I passed during my wanderings around the Imperial Palace and the Summer Palace:

Literary Profundity

Beneficent Causation

Mental Cultivation

Eternal Safety

Tranquil Longevity

Reason Enhancement

Scrupulous Behavior

Proper Places and the Cultivation of Things

Earthly Tranquility

Heavenly Purity

Character Cultivation

Lasting Brilliance

Accumulated Refinement

Veranda for Rest Quiet

Eternal Peace

Endless Mists and Clouds

Chamber for Reading the Classics

Jade Islet in Spring Shade

Studio of Painted Boat

I saw no sign of plazas or monuments named after people. However, each sign did contain a modern twist. In small letters at the bottom were the words, “made possible by the American Express Company.”

Beijing is Patriotic

Saying that this could be the Chinese century has become a cliché, but the people there did strike me as no nonsense and all business as they leap forward. I was impressed by the resolute expressions on even the uniformed workers along the roads who are paid to hold signs reminding drivers to slow down. They stared at me as though the success of China, Inc. depended on them.

Throughout most of my lifetime, it’s been true to say that the country’s best years happened long ago. Even now, the tour buses seem never to unload in front of anything built since the late 1700s. Foreign visitors seeing only those spectacular (though somehow also quaint) attractions might reasonably conclude that China hasn’t had much to brag about in the meantime.

But when those same foreigners stop to look at who else is getting off tour buses, they realize that their fellow sightseers are now likely to be from inside the country, and that these domestic vacationers are not only doing lots of bragging, they have money in their pockets to back it up.

Patriotic tour packages are apparently now all the rage. Wherever I strolled as a tourist, I was surrounded by large herds of Chinese. They were shepherded along by guides jabbering away on portable microphones, and carrying tall, uniquely-colored pennants, the better to keep their charges in line.

Tiananmen Square fills every morning and evening with proud Chinese wanting to see an honor guard raise and lower the national flag. The people walking beside me at the Summer Palace had their shoulders thrown back. I couldn’t help contrasting the feeling of purpose with the last few years’ news from the United States, with its stutter-stepping over Iraq, and its red-state-blue-state divisions.

There’s only one direction and one color in Beijing. For better or worse, the entire enterprise seems to know where it’s going.

Beijing is Determined

I had heard about dust storms coating Beijing with a thin layer of yellow grime. People had told me that Chinese often spit on the sidewalk. As our plane landed, my British seatmate pointed out the window at the grey morning and said, “See, the pollution here makes you think you’re walking around in a black-and-white film.”

Yet the stories all turned out to be wrong. Or at least they weren’t true this past week. It was a fine time to visit China.

The sun warmed and brightened everything—by mid-afternoon, I was peeling off my sweater. The tourist spots, anticipating next year’s Olympic Games, all seemed to have just been washed and painted. In the air were the smell of fresh cut grass and the “snow” from shedding poplars.

No matter where I went, in fact, trees were nearby. Greening campaigns have resulted in row after row of closely spaced trees, planted in part to reduce the effects of increasingly frequent sandstorms in the city. Seeing them on my way in from the airport was another reminder that the Chinese make no little plans. When they want to do something, they really do it. Big tree farms, grand boulevards, imperial palaces: everything is on a much grander scale than I’m used to.

It’s been that way for some time. While clambering along a lonely stretch of the great wall, I kept thinking about how remarkable it was that successive administrations continued to fund such a kooky project. They no doubt had many chances to say “OK, that’s good enough,” or “we don’t really need to protect that province,” but apparently they never did.

As we drove out of town toward our hike, the friend I was visiting remarked that the highway we were on had been completed only a few weeks earlier. After we turned off toward the hills, he noticed a few places where shortcuts had been built since the last time he had gone that way. At several intersections, he pointed out men standing next to large earth moving equipment. “Those guys and their machines are for hire,” he explained, as casually as if they were parked there selling ice cream.

A few hours later, returning to the freeway, we joked to each other, “Was this road here this morning?”