Where the old Chinese Imperial court was concerned richness was the watchword of the day. They constructed huge palaces for themselves, filling them with the most expensive luxuries of the era. The Summer Palace is the pinacle of this blatant opulance.

Opulence and comfort, rich luxury, immense amounts of cash, headonism and indulgence. Thats what the Imperial court was all about. They tended to let their eunochs rule the country while they were busy chopping off heads and seeing to their Royal hareem. The Summer Palace (about 12 kilometres from the Forbidden City) is no exception. On the contrary, it is the pinacle of the Emperors' dramatic flair for spending. It is spread across a vast expanse of carefully manicured, perfectly planned gardens, a huge lake, islands, pagodas, stupid marble boats, statues, monuments (to themselves) and beautiful buildings. We tried to make it here a few days ago but got waylaid by my need for a new pair of specs. Today we managed to get there (through a combination of train and bus and a lot of tourist questions) with time to spare.

First impressions are of an overwhelmingly beautiful garden. It's old name means garden of clear ripples because of the lake. Now it's Chinese name means "Garden of Nurtured Harmony", for no reason I can think of. The Chinese love these ridiculous names; Longevity Hill, Cloud Dispelling Hall, Buddhist Temple of the Sea of Wisdom. We wizzed about trying to fit them all in along with the veritable mob of Chinese tourists that seem to follow us around wherever we go. My favourite was the 'Boat of Purity and Ease', built by the Dowager Empress Cixi with money that was supposed to have been spent on the Navy. It is made of solid Marble and doesn't float!

We all had an ice cream (thanks John) and went on a little boat cruise on Lake Kunming, it was a nice change from the train, watching the parkland slowly glide past with the ocasional Chinese pagoda leading down to the water. Our destination, South Lake Island was mostly under restoration for the Beijing Olympics,(as with everthing else) so we didn't get to see inside many of the buildings. The big bridge back to the mainland was a good place to stop though. It is covered in lion statues, each in a different pose, which occupied our time for a while.

The tallest and in my eyes most impressive building in the Summer Palace is the Tower of Buddhist Fragrance, which actually smells just like a normal Buddhist temple. It also has a massive statue in the top level (which is a long climb from the bottom level) of Buddhain one of his scary incarnations. He's huge, towering above the tiny mortals below, clutching all sorts of bits and pieces in his many, many arms. I for one was quite impressed.

A few more bus and train rides through Beijing saw us in Chongwenmen, quite close to our hostel. This was shopping country, malls and fast food restaurants crowded the wide, many laned streets in defiance of the Chinese political ethos. We ducked down a small alleyway and walked through the innocuous back streets for a while (till we were almost lost), went through a non-descript door and found ourselves at one of the entrances to Beijing's enormous underground City.

Everyone got a bit paranoid during the cold war. Americans in suburbia started to dig bomb shelters in their back gardens, CND made a killing on badge sales in Camden and the Chinese built a bunker under Beijing big enough to house more than 300,000 people! It's really, really massive, mile after mile of corridoor. We were taken round by a nice man in camouflage uniform and white trainers (which sort of spoiled the effect), who tried to tell us its history. His Accent was very strong however and we only got a few words. We didn't want to hurt his feelings so just nodded and smiled where we thought it was required and carried on.

The damp, mouldy-white tunnels had seen better days, intersperced with alcoved designed as meeting rooms, playrooms, libraries and whatnot. Along the walls were hung hundreds of framed photo's of military hardware from all over the world, planes, tanks, guns, subs... it all added to the ever increasing surreality of the place. To top it all off we came to the end and our damp warren opened out into a large hall lined with silk products. Our guide took us to a little table to show us how silk was produced (from silk worms) and told us to browse at our leisure... and feel free to spend lots of money. I couldn't believe they were pulling this one in China, a hater of the Wests evil capitalist ways. Then I remembered what Vietnam was like.

John and I waited for Amanda and Judith to do the obligatory shop, then went to get the train back to the hotel. I stopped off to give blood at a mobile donor centre, but they turned me away. Maybe non-Chinese blood isn't good enough.

We saw all a fantastic acrobatic show. The performers were utterly inhuman. From bending their bodies in a hundred directions whilst holding trays of wine and rolling about on the floor without spilling a drop to throwing piles of bowls onto each others heads using only their feet, whilst riding a seven foot tall unicycle! They were amazing. The tumblers defied gravity, a group of women did things with a diablos I never thought possible and a gang of lads threw themselves through tiny hoops high above their heads. Everyone was amazed,even the Slovakian gymnastic group we were with. We all needed a good couple of beers to calm down before bed.

WOW! What a seriously GREAT wall. No really, it's amazing, enormous, gigantic... HUGE. This is some heavy acomplishment, a major undertaking, a big job indeed. Miles, and miles, and miles of wall like an everlasting ribbon of rock stretching out to the horizon on either side, immutable, almost eternal, timeless, impressive and ultimately completely useless. Of course the Great wall of China failed catagorically in keeping anyone out whatsoever. My brothers old hampster Shandy could have fought its frenzied way through. But it sure as hell looks good.

Being a cut above the rest with our guests (and maybe a bit slower on the hills) we went and came back by taxi, got dropped off at one lonely stretch of wall and picked up 10 km down the 'road' at Simatai. Obviously we weren't the only ones with he same idea but it was surprisingly quiet out there. Especially when we remembered the day before and the crush at the Forbidden City. The wall in this part of China is laid along the crest of a long range of hills and snakes round and round, doubling back on itself constantly to retain a unified front. In true champagne backpacker style we took the cable car to the near top and were able to appreciate the incredible views without nearly killing ourselves on the climb. Once on the wall we were approached by the usual array of hopefull 'guides', t-shirt salesmen, water vendors and the like. A new addition to the collection were several people who immediately claimed to be disposessed Mongolian herdsmen and farmers (I was suspicious immediately, there are three actual farmers in Mongolia tops. They don't do vegetables). I was delighted at first and asked how they, their families and their animals were doing in Mongolian. Their blank faces and chinese replies (please give me some money I'm a poor Mongolian repressed herdsman) gave the game away. They weren't even slightly Mongolian, just playing on a possible heart string to milk the cash of human kindness from unsuspecting topurists. One such guy followed us for at least two hours as we hiked our way along the wall. I quite missed him when he eventually gave up.

That GREAT but ultimately useless wall



The views from the hilltops were utterly amazing. Like the pictures you see of a big long snaking wall shooting away like a river out towards the horizon on the Chinese tourist brochures. There were no roads, not many tourists, less and less hawkers as we continued; but much more hills, streams, sheep, crevaces and bricks... oh so many bricks. Not quite as wide as I thought it would be, but much longer, an enormous yellow brick road we could skip down (given enough short people) till we got to make wishes of our own somewhere under the rainbow. Judith and John took the steeper of the steep inclines (and some of them were indeed very, very steep) like absolute troopers and we managed to avoid the worst of the t-shirt vendors. Most of the tourists that day seemed to be Spanish, which was quite a novelty, I even said hello to a few as we got to about half way. The walk we were doing, all 10 kilometres, was supposed to take about four hours but we decided to take our sweet time and make the taxi wait a bit (in fact the tour bus would have gone well before we got to the other end). Eventually though, after much sweating and climbing, group photo taking, wall admiring, tout avoiding and general sheep spotting we descended into our last big valley, this time spanned by a large chain bridge as opposed to a big wall type structure. Security has obviously gone downhill of late now its obvious the Northern barbarians aren't going to invade (they're too busy dressing up in spangly pants). A little walk on blissfully horizontal road later and we found our ever patient taxi driver, waiting with a smile on his face. Apparantly we were the last people to arrive that day, a fact I am still very proud of. Four hours later, into the Beijing rush hour we insist on being dropped off near the optitian I need to visit to pick up my shiny new specks. No more superglue specials then.

Spectacular views from a wonder of the world



The Great Wall is possibly the worlds largest folly. Thousands of years old, immesurably costly and ultimately totaly bloody useless. But it is an amazing sight to see, and walking along it for a day gives some amazing views of the countryside, almost all the way to the Gobi desert of the barbarian side. I'd do it all again, just not tomorrow. I might need a day or two to let my thigh muscles heal up.

Tiananmen square! Chairman Mao, in his wisdom had it built to accommodate more than a million people at a time. It is the biggest city square in the whole wide world ever! It's just that after the wide open nothingness that was Mongolia it seemed pokey and small, hardly like a big space at all... There must have been twenty or thirty thousand people there that day, half as tourists, the other half to sell them cheap Mao watches and oddly enough, kites. We wandered about for a while, took in the big flag pole, the tall monument to long gone Chinese heroes of the glorious revolution, and finally the Mao Memorial Hall where the man himself lies in a mummified state for the faithfull to come and see. But it was closed! Gutted! Both Amanda and I really wanted to get in and say hi to this crazy dictator in person, unfortunately the renovations before the influx of the 2008 olympics are obviouslly more important at the moment. We're going to have to come back and see it again one day.

Evil and Crazy Chairman Mao

Which is no bad thing by the way. I came to China with an enormous amount of preconceptions mainly from the other travellers I have met who have been here and the books I've read about it. I thought the Chinese would mostly be rude, arrogant, obnoxious and horrible, the air would be unbreathable, the traffic insane and the queues anarchic. Yes, of course there is an element of that but against my better judgement I find myself liking the Chinese more and more every day I am here. They really don't know how to queue, thats true, but thats just the way things work. In reality they have a great sense of humour and tend to laugh at my bumbling chinese alot, which I have to admit actually is very funny. Even the spitting is over exaggerated. I'm liking this place more and more all the time... I'm not sure why, it's just cool.

We obviously didn't stay for very long in Tian An Men Square, it probably had about 100,000 sightseers that day and we didn't fancy flying kites. We headed through the network of ancient City gates towards the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City

For more than five hundred years the Forbidden City has been home, office, harem and opulent palace to generations of spoilt, priviledged and powerful Ming and Qing Emperors. It still stands as a bastion of all that is Chinese, it's past, its present and its future (it was on the front gate that Mao declared Chinese independence after all). Long gone are the days where no-one is allowed in save the chosen favourites of royalty (and pretty girls) On the day Amanda and I chose to take Judith and John it seemed that half of the population of China had decided to join us. I thought possibly it was an auspicious day for sight seeing, a national holiday, maybe they'd heard the "Forbidden Starbucks" had closed and wanted to check it out for themselves. The place was positively boiling with chinese tourists, there seems to be nothing they like more than to get about their capital on a few day trips for a look around.

Much to my surprise I discovered that these incredible crowds are perfectly normal for a weekday in Beijing. If I really wanted to see a crush I should have come on a saturday. I guess being in the most populace country on earth means having to share a little personal space every now and then. To make things go smoothly we took on the services of Jason (not his real name but he lets the tourists call him that so they don't muck up or forget his Chinese name... which I've forgotten), a student and guide, very good English, very knowledgeable about the area. He took us right through the crowds like only a life-long Beijing-ite can and showed us all around the Forbiden City. I won't go into all the details here but suffice to say, it's a really mad, interesting place.

The Emperors, and Chinese in general are a completely bonkers bunch, especially when it comes to honorifics for buildings. The hall of Supreme Harmony, the gate of Divine Might, the Palace of Heavenly Purity. It's all a bit ridiculous for a fat bloke who spent all day pleasuring himself with 3000 concubines while his army of palace eunochs held all the power. The buildings are so incredibly well preserved in the Forbidden City that it's hard to imagine that they're more than 600 years old. A couple of Halls of Infinite this and Palaces of undisputed that were closed for pre Olympic renovations, but we got a great general overview of the place, especially with Jason ushering us along.

He left us in the Emperors garden at the far Northern end, where we promptly went to find a nice cuppa. Then we wandered round the clock displays for a while (along with about 200,000 other people who walk really slowly and talk really loudly) and finished the day in a fantastic Chinese restaurant somewhere down the tube line. We of course had the Peking duck, which was cooked exactly how God himself intended. An absolutely delicious end to a great day in Beijing. I'm beginning to wish we actually had more time in China... a month is not enough, a year would be far, far too much!

Judith and John (Amanda's hardcore backpacking mum and her partner) had officially arrived for their 3 week jaunt across China, even the hostel bar staff were aware of this by now. They'd had all of half a day to recover from their jetlag (which never really came on Thank God) and we were all ready, excited and raring to take advantage of the first full day in Beijing. There was also a surprising lull in the level of pollution which we would have been foolish not to take advantage of. Beijing is after all the air pollution capital of the whole wide world so to be able to see to the end of the street was a bonus. It was time to get on the tourist trail... after I'd spent the morning picking out a new pair of specs that is.

Beijings Hutong are all that remain of the cities 'ordinary' imperial past. That is, what's left of the day to day, humdrum of life, not the royal grand palaces, towers and pagodas. The Hutong are the lanes, houses and shops of the common people. They're squeezed together in ever smaller areas, bulldozed with impunity by the government to make room for concrete residential blocks and monuments to the immense cleverness of its communist leaders. What's left are a maze of beautiful old, old houses and lanes clustered around the old Bell and Drum Towers (where hourly the time is struck for the whole city to hear, when the city was smaller anyway). We climbed to Bell tower for a view over the tiles and rooftops, then went for a laid-back trishaw ride round the lanes, past ancient courtyard-design houses (which Amanda and Judith couldn't resist looking inside). There are loads of brightly coloured original tiled door archways, mozaics and pictures spread throughout this area. It gave us a nice, relaxed start to our holiday, something we could count on not continuing with all we had to fit into it.

As the sun went down we wandered through windy tourist market streets and ended up at one of Beijings many lakes. From our rooftop restaurant we gazed over the water at the red-gold reflection on the horizon and chewed contentedly on various kinds of posh Chinesey food... Not a bad way to end a day. The next morning would see us up early (not for the first time) for a ten kilometres walk on the Great Wall of China. Apparently its quite rickety in places.