Sunday morning; sleeping in a bit is of course mandatory, except when you’ve agreed to get over to Tian’anmen Square by 8.30 to meet Prash and Shanika and have a look in Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum. Or at least that was Plan A. The remainder of Plan A was that we meet Adam and Andy at the Lama Temple (about 6 metro stops away) at around 9.30, do a tour around the Lama Temple and then find our way over to the Summer Palace, which is said to be bigger and more spectacular than the Forbidden City.
Slight hitch; you can’t take any bags at all into the Mausoleum with you. Hitch number two; we were late to begin with. Hitch Number three; we couldn’t find the bag check for the mausoleum so we had to take turns holding the bags. The line-up to see Mao, even early on Sunday morning, is very long but moves amazingly quickly, so we were finished by 9.30. Hitch number four; we needed to change our USD into Yuan, and we hadn’t had breakfast.
In the Mausoleum I was struck by the difference between Mao and Lenin in repose; Mao is in a big crystal coffin which sits inside a glass case. He is definitely venerated but seems more like a display object, a museum piece. And you get moved through the whole show even faster than in Moscow. Having said that you still get a pretty good look at the old man, especially if you happen to be taller than most of the people there. He doesn’t actually look dead like Lenin does, he just looks like he could be asleep.
Coming out the other side, I discovered that there is a sizeable western part of Tian’anmen square around the other side of Mao’s Mausoleum, and began to realise just how big and imposing the square would have been before the mausoloeum was built.
On the metro we realised we were going to be horrifically late, and upon arriving we wandered around for a bit trying to find a. somewhere or something to eat, b. a bank to change our money, and c. the entrance to the Lama Temple. Eventually we stumbled on b, then a, and then c. Brunch at 11am was egg and tomato soup, spicy cold noodles, and a beef-filled pancake type of thing. Unfortunately, like the tourists we were, we ordered what looked like a small serving in the picture. The soup bowl was nearly a foot round, the noodles would have been enough for one except that the chillis were incredibly hot, and of course the pancake had beef in it and Alice only just ate half of it. Meanwhile my nose was running and the dandelion tea we ordered wasn’t slowing the spice down.
Just the same, it was fun and there’s no doubt we weren’t hungry when we left the restaurant.
The Lama Temple is quite small, but it has the right feeling of significant history hanging around in the air. Also there is an 18m high buddha carved out of Sandalwood inside one of the buildings. I can believe that there would be an 18m high Sandalwood tree, but what’s really amazing is that the statue is probably 3m wide at the base, and it was all carved out of a single tree. There’s even a Guinness World Book plaque posted up to say so.
There’s also another plague in another building saying something about the importance of respecting political aims, and about how the government thanks various religious leaders for helping to unify Buddhism in China. Yes. That’s what the plaque says. By that time it was maybe 1.30, so we gave up on going to the Summer Palace entirely, and instead went by Metro back to ‘town’, and on to Yonganli station to find the SIlk Market. Rumours of warm weather in Beijing were greatly exaggerated; it was warm during the middle of the day but still quite cool at night. So I bought a jumper at the Silk Market which we bargained from nine hundred and something down to 500. At that point I realised I should have started lower with my first offer; but there you have it.
Then we walked back to the hotel, had a bit of a lie-down, and met people downstairs for the final final final Russia and Beyond dinner. The restaurant which we went to on Friday night was closed, so we walked around the same alleyway and found a smaller restaurant which had an English menu, and ordered basically two of everything. Then we commenced to have a grand old time passing food around and having a last beer together, and giggling about how we even organised and ordered our own dinner without Ann to give orders to the ‘Fu Yuan’ (waitresses) and then say it was the Chinese way to be demanding.
After a saying goodbye to Dinesh, Nat, Prash and Shanika, we called it a night because we had to catch a bus in the morning to the Great Wall of China.
Greg
