November 15, 2005 Beijing, China
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Beijing, the political and cultural capital of the People’s Republic of China, is the perfect place to spend my last week. Most people start in Beijing, but I’m glad I didn’t, because I would have been comparing everywhere I went to it, and nowhere else compares.
Like its counterparts, Beijing is big, modern, and pleasant. But it doesn’t feel sterilized, because if you leave the wide, busy boulevards and head down a hutong, or alley, you enter another world, the China I imagined. People crowd throught the busy little streets packed with vendors selling food and trinkets, and shops and restaurants line the sides. It won’t be difficult to eat in Beijing.
All the excitement in the hutong would make Beijing an interesting place to live, but there’s lot’s to keep tourists busy too. Since I only had an afternoon today, I started with some minor sites around Tiananmen Square. If Shanghai was Chicago, Beijing is Washington D.C., and Tiananmen Square is the Mall.
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First I went to Mao Zedong’s mausoleum. I was prepared to find the site of the embalmed Great Helmsman disturbing, but we passed through so fast it was hard to see him, and what I did catch a glimpse of looked like wax. As we passed through the first room where people were leaving flowers, a woman started shouting. The guards promptly removed her to the next room, where the shouting continued. The people laughed uncomfortably.
Next I went to the Great Hall of the People, which would be the equivalent of the Capital Building, but built in bland Soviet style. But the body that meets here, the National People’s Congress, is more of a rubber stamp than a legislative body. It was interesting to see the room they show on Chinese TV where the cadres sit and agree with what their leaders say.