Beijing today is a living museum of the Chinese cultural legacy. Its most famous sites – the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Great Wall and Temple of Heaven – have captured the imaginations of travelers ever since the time of Marco Polo.
I visited <b Beijing to present a Scientific paper in the International Geological Congress. Beijing is a modern Socialist city that clings to its imperial legacy and conveys a certain kind of magic. It echoes in its palatial courts , cries out from its megaliths and monuments and whispers down the grand boulevards.
Traditional Chinese conceived the world as a square, a gigantic chessboard with the emperor at its very center. A city was meant to follow this cosmic order, laid out according to the principles of Feng shui, which strives for a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. Everything is balanced in a traditional Chinese city. Beijing, therefore, lies on a plain that faces south, considered the sphere of warmth and generosity.
In this modern socialist metropolis, the most popular store – and the only place where the locals queue – is McDonald’s hamburgers on Wangfuing. The streets crawl with Mercedes limos, portable phones ring constantly, and cadres swagger by in sharply cut suits.
But then in the midst of all this dizzying change stands Tiananmen Square, the world’s largest public plaza (it’s said to hold 500, 000 people, one for every checkerboard SqUare) geographic heart of Beijing and scene of many milestones in the history of the People’s Republic.
A place of profound political undertones, Tiananmen is the beginning of a journey back through time, starting with the creation of the Republic itself.
Atop the Tiananmen Gate, where a giant portrait of Chairman Mao hangs, the Communist Party leader declared that ’’the Chinese people have stood up.’’ If Mao’s prominent airbrushed visage is not enough to convince you of his significance, his waxy remains lie under crystal in a nearby mausoleum.
Art from throughout the Chinese ages is kept on impressive display in the Museum of Chinese History, flanking the square. To the west is the Great Hall of the people, where the cogs of the Chinese universe turn – this was the place where we had the conference.
Tiananmen Gate also leads to the Forbidden City, one of the architectural wonders of the world. In imperial times only the emperor could walk through the central gate.
The Forbidden City, now called Palace Museum, is located in the center of Beijing.
On the wall of the city are four gates with towers above them: Wumen in the south, Shenwumen in the north, Donghuamen in the east and Xihuamen in the west. On the four corners of the wall stand four turret towers, each with three roofs and 72 roof ridges. They are masterpieces of ancient Chinese architecture.
Almost everything in the Forbidden City has some symbolic meaning and reflects Chinese culture in one way or another.
Inside the Forbidden City today are more than ten museums. They are respectively for ancient Chinese arts, arts and crafts, painings, curios of the Qing court, bronze articles, pottery and porcelains, clocks and watches, treasures, carvings, and furniture of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Their combined collection amounts to about one million pieces, part of which are found nowhere else.
To the northwest and north of Beijing, a huge, serrated wall zigzags it’s way to the east and west along the undulating mountains. This is the Great Wall, which is said to be the only tourist attraction visible from the moon.!!!
The section of the Great Wall near Beijing runs for 629 kilometers with 71 passes and 827 wall towers. The Wall is so well preserved that it is as imposing as ever.
’’He Who Has Not Climbed the Great Wall Is Not a Real Man’’
This is a popular saying in China.
The Wall extends for a good 3000 miles from its origin at the seaside in Shanhaiguan (the Old Dragon Head), all the way to Jiayu Pass in Gansu Province. The most imposing sections of the Great Wall which have remained to the present day are those at Badaling, Mutianyu and Jinshanling. The section of the Wall at Badaling looms high above the Juyongguan Pass. It is admired for its majestic view. That at Mutianyu snakes along the mountain ridges. The wall is punctuated by fortresses and people like it for its architectural feat. The setion at Jinshanling, sprawling over mountain peaks, is known for its aweinspiring look.
About two kilometers southeast of the Forbidden City towers is Tian Tan, or the Temple of Heaven, where dynastic rulers in China used to worship the heaven.
The Round Alter is where visitors can amuse themselves by listening to echoes of whatever they pronounce. If a visitor standing at the center of the altar, where three stone slabs lie, gives out a shout, he or she can hear loud and deep echoes, which seem to come from deep in the ground or from above. The slabs are, therefore, called Three Echo Stones.
Yi He yuan, or the Summer Palace, is the best kept existing royal garden in Beijing. With a concentration of the best of ancient buildings as well as garden styles, it is a virtual museum of traditional Chinese gardens.
One of the most interesting features of the garden is the Long Corridor, a covered way of 728 meters with painted beams bearing more than 4, 000 pictures of landscapes as well as historical and fictional stories. It is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the ’’longest painted corridor in the world’’.