Beijing: Arrival, Tiananmen, economics and the Forbidden City

Chairman Mao in the haze

We left North Carolina on June 16 for Beijing via Chicago's O'Hare airport. The flight schedule was a seemingly impossible arrangement where we left Chicago at 9 pm and we arrived in Beijing about 10:30 pm the next night. We were immediately struck by a blanket of fog which we discovered the next morning was actually smog. This haze continued for the remainder of our trip in Beijing, breaking on slightly on the last day when one of my colleagues gasped and pointed upwards - "Look, blue sky!"

We followed AJ's red hat to get us through the crowds.

We began the next morning by visiting Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. You probably know Tiananmen from the 1989 protests and Tank Man, but you may not know that it's also the largest square in the world. It was very crowded the day we were there, despite the 95 degree heat and humidity. Beijing and Durham (NC) are on about the same line of latitude and so the climate was similar to ours, but I thought that most of the Chinese people were handling the heat better than I was. (Look for an upcoming post on the people of China featuring something we called "the Beijing belly.")

Workers quickly cleared trash.

To access the square we had to pass through airport-like security, but it was quick and relatively painless. In fact, much of the security measures we encountered in China were very similar: pervasive (cameras everywhere, screenings to enter museums and subways, police and security presence) yet surprisingly non-threatening (police didn't carry weapons, security agents were pleasant and efficient). 

Fans were an ideal good to sell on this hot day. 

 

The other thing that we encountered for the first time here and which would continue for the remainder of our stay was the presence of vendors, such as this woman. Since we clearly stood out as tourists,  we were magnets to wave after wave of vendors who approached us selling all kinds of merchandise. The minute one of our group bought the first souvenir the "game" was on, as we quickly learned that 

• a) prices were never listed, 
• b) prices were negotiable, 
• c) the exchange rate was in our favor (about 6.4 yuan/dollar) and 
• d) walking away from a vendor was a very powerful negotiating tactic.

The Forbidden City was for centuries the home of various emperors, their families and their staffs. It was called forbidden because no one was allowed to enter or leave the walled city without the permission of the emperor. We made our way through the city quickly because of the combination of a limited amount of time and the heat, but were able to get a good sense of both the power of the emperor and the continuing respect for the Forbidden City by the tourists, who appeared overwhelmingly to be Chinese (unlike at other venues).

One thing I liked was the decorations on the corners of the roofs: the more little "beasts," as the audio guide called them, the greater the status of that building. The Hall of Supreme Harmony had the most so it could easily be seen as the most important.

Below you'll see one of my colleagues from Western North Carolina as he heads off to visit the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Stay tuned for more Beijing posts this week, and please be sure to leave any questions that you have in the comments below.