The Forbidding City

On our last full day in China, we had one last planning-related presentation, then had the afternoon free to complete whatever final tour goals each of us had set for ourselves. For many of us, the final task was to attend the third fitting of the $150 hand-tailored suits many of us bought. For others such as myself, it meant visiting the sites that we hadn't been able to visit on the other days. This included the Planning Museum and the Forbidden City. But for five of us, the day began at 6:30 at the flea market.

The flea market has a permanent location in the southwest of the city and is held every Saturday and Sunday. It is about the size of a football field, with the area in the middle covered by a high roof, and the areas at the edges being occupied by tiny 10x10 lockable storefronts. I suspect the fleamarket is the wholesale source for all the trinkets that are sold by all the kiosks in all the tourist areas of the city. The storefronts house the most expensive goods with the most expansive selection, and are probably rented on a semi-permanent basis. The areas in the middle, long aisles with long tables hosting perhaps 40 sellers per bench, look like they could be reserved for regulars, rented on a month-to-month basis, with the better spots on the bench going to the highest bidders on a given week. Around the entrances and in remote corners of the complex are the amateurs who might go once a year in the same way we might hold a garage sale once a year. Those spots probably aren't reserved, and are assigned on a first-come first-serve basis. The aisles themselves were arranged by type of good, with a jade section, wood section, mask section, old farm implements section, and sections for every other type of tourist item. The sellers were not agressive in the least. It was a crowded but pleasant place to shop.

The prices here were not marked any more than at any other place, but for the smallest items, there was very little haggling, or need to haggle. Prices for bracelets started and ended at 7 Yuan. I could get beads at .8 Yuan per piece. Prices for larger items could still be negotiated.

We spent 90 minutes there then rushed back to the hotel for the huge buffet breakfast. This hotel had omelettes and breakfast steaks on offer. It was the best and most expensive hotel on the trip, but was worth it for the breakfasts that also served as lunch. Rumor had it that Hillary Clinton stayed here when she was in town once for a conference.

After breakfast we went to a newer district of town to listen to an Italian architect who has spent many years working in Beijing. We learned a lot about the design of Beijing, particularly the importance of the North-South axis, and about hutongs and their ability to serve as a mix of private and public space. Hutongs are endangered because an important element of their design is that they are one-story buildings, and thus can't handle the required densities of modern Beijing. Someone tried to develop a 2-story hutong, but the result lost the hutong flavor, and the locals didn't go for it. Either hutong or high-rise, nothing in between.

After our last lecture, I went to the Silk Market, where the hawkers were the most consistently agressive I had seen on the whole trip. Along some aisles, each hawker would claw at your arm in turn as you passed, and one of them grabbed one of us around the wrist with both hands and would not let go until support came. Nevertheless, it was the best place to buy nice silk shirts, and you could get them for 50 Yuan, about 10% of the initial asking price.

In the afternoon, some of us went on a tour of the Olympics sites, and the reports were all good. The Birds Nest stadium (it is made of long thin tubes arranged in a weave) and the Aquatic Center (it looks like it is made of blue bubbles pressed almost flat) were particularly impressive. I saw models of them at the Planning Museum, where I also saw a scale model of the city that filled half of the third floor. 3D was the fashion of the hour in the museum, as I saw another 3D model, smaller and in brass, on the wall in the stairwell, and they also offered a 3D movie showing the city and its development over history.

After the museum, two of us went to the Forbidden City. We may have been the only two in the group to have gone. The Forbidden City is under serious renovation, and the three main buildings were scaffolded up. Those smaller buildings that had already been renovated displayed rich reds, greens, blues, and golds. When the whole place is finished, it will be beautiful. The most impressive aspect to the place was the scale. The walls are huge and thick, and the plazas between major structures are vast. What the complex does not do well is vegetation. The whole place is stone, there are no incidental plants, trees, or lawns, and the one garden did not measure up at all to the peaceful and restful gardens of Suhzou.

We finished the evening with Peking Duck served in a restaurant that was probably once a hutong. We had a back room reserved for us. Our room overlooked the courtyard, where other guests ate and demonstrated their operatic prowess. The restaurant was located on a street that was lined with red Chinese lanterns, and was lined with one restaurant after the other. It could have been any place in the West.