Beijing: The Great Wall

(This is part of a series of posts on our trip to China last June. We'll be posting for the first several weeks of the school year.)

I think it's safe to say that, when most Americans think of China, they think of the Great Wall (or pandas, maybe--that seems to be the other Chinese-takeout cliche). And rightfully so--the Wall is both a monument to China's long history and an amazing feat of engineering, well deserving of its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list. What most people don't know is that there have been several "Great Walls" throughout Chinese history, the most famous of which was constructed by the Qin emperor Shi Huang (yes, the terracotta warrior guy--more on them later) in the late 2nd century B.C. Most of what survives as the "Great Wall" today dates from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), including the section of the wall that we visited, at Jingshanling, just outside of Beijing.

There is an ongoing debate among tour guide writers as to which is the best spot for viewing the Great Wall. Badaling is probably the most popular spot, thanks in part to its strategic spot at one of the major northern routes out of Beijing and in part to Richard Nixon's visit during his trip to China in 1972. In fact, Badaling will serve as the finish line for an Olympic cycling event during this summer's Games, and today the enormous Badaling Expressway still runs through the narrow valley the fortifications there were built to protect.

Southwest of Badaling lies Jingshanling, another narrow pass leading north. Jingshanling has an advantage over Badaling in that it really showcases the tenacity of its Chinese builders in their effort to leave no slope unguarded, no matter how steep. On the other hand, Jingshanling is a brutal little hike, with its highest guard tower perched at over 3,000 feet above sea level.

And Nana and I did it, 1.5 hours straight up and half an hour straight down, in the August haze and heat. No wonder people tell me I'm the dumbest smart guy they know.

Anyway. The Jingshanling hike starts at an elaborate gatehouse that stands alongside a mountain stream.

And from there, the wall goes up. And up and up. The photo below is about 1/6-1/5 of the way to the top.

And the photo below records the first time, about 1/4 of the way up, that we considered turning back. But let it be known that I married one tough woman--after a short breather, we pressed on.
As you can tell from the photo below, this section of the Wall has been heavily restored. Some prefer the more ruined-looking spots, but the two of us enjoyed seeing the Wall as it would have looked when it was an active fortification. To each his own, I suppose.

And as you can tell from this photo, the Great Wall (or at least the sections near Beijing) run through some very rugged mountains, specifically the mountains on the northern edge of China's coastal plain. For some reason I had imagined the Wall standing monolithic in the wasteland . . . though I'm told there are spots like that, too, only much further to the west. Not that I'm complaining, seeing as I got some superb photos out of the deal.
The wall itself wasn't the only attraction, however. This lizard had made a home of one of the guard towers--and we would have missed him if it wasn't for Nana's sharp eye.
The odd sense of camaraderie among visitors to Jingshanling was also a highlight of the trip. We kept leapfrogging a handful of the same groups as we climbed--Chinese, American students, French pensioners, Saudi Arabians (I think)--all of us offering encouragements in whatever languages we knew. Nana's Chinese was an especially big hit here--she even had the chance to help one of the Saudi Arabian tourists try to haggle for a souvenir. The photo below was taken by a couple of French retirees we met on the climb.
Last but not least: the views from the top. From this point, the wall turns back towards the valley, and thus downhill, to the gatehouse about 1,000 feet below.


Whew!

Whew! First Day of School

Well--after a solid week of mad preparations, the students finally arrived for the new school year today. It's amazing to me how much easier it was this year than last year. I think I speak for Nana, too, when I say that knowing a bit of what to expect--and having known ahead of time exactly what I needed to prepare--really allowed me to enjoy all the back-to-school excitement in a way I couldn't last year, what with all the rookie nerves.

Anyway: now that our classrooms are set up and the school year is off to a running start, maybe we can't finally get to some of that enormous China trip backlog . . .

APIS Faculty & Staff Retreat

This week, we took three days and two nights out of our frantic rush to prepare for the first day of classes (Tuesday, August 19) for a trip to the Dream Mountain Retreat Center, near Danyang, in the Sobaek Mountains of North Chungcheon province. (That's just about right smack in the middle of South Korea, about a 3-hour drive from Seoul.)

At first, I wasn't thrilled about the prospects of leaving my woefully unready classroom for three days, and I was even less thrilled taking was being billed as a "camping trip" in the middle of the monsoon. It turned out, though, that we were going camping Korean-style--that is to say, in air-conditioned cabins with running hot-and-cold water, en suite bathrooms, and kitchenettes (complete with refrigerators). I'm beginning to suspect "camping" isn't the right word . . .

It also turned out that the retreat was anything but a waste of our time. Aside from the obvious opportunities to get to know new faculty (who at this point outnumber returning faculty by about a bajillion to one), we spent a lot of time developing common goals for the year, as well as some basic procedures to go with them--and in the process generated some great ideas for the first few days of class. All in all, I feel much more ready for this year than I did for last, though partly because I'm not a first-year teacher anymore, and partly because I'm no longer new to Seoul. In fact, this year people are coming to US for advice on where to shop and where or what to eat--even (gulp!) on what to say in Korean!

But most importantly, the retreat was a lot of fun. (Dr. Kim and company have done it again! See selected entries on previous trips here, here, and here.) The retreat center was perched on top of a mountain overlooking the South Han river, providing us with the spectacular alpine vista you see above. To beat the heat, we had a refreshingly chilly pool (filled from a rainwater cistern, I think) and a leisurely rafting trip through the valley below, while we watched the mountains above peeking in and out of the clouds. Like many spots in Korea (Seoraksan comes to mind), the dim weather only made the scenery more beautiful. Even my getting stung on the finger by the most enormous wasp I have ever seen--the swelling still isn't completely gone, more than 48 hours later--didn't dampen the mood too much. Though later that evening I couldn't bring myself to touch the most enormous beetle I've ever seen, which Naomi, our Japanese teacher, picked up like it warn't no thang.

. . . In other words, I learned that my coworkers are good, fun folks who know how to have a good, fun time, which leaves me with a lot of hope for this year.

Look for another China post sometime soon.

Back in Seoul: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Nana and I made it back to Seoul last night, at which point we promptly collapsed from exhaustion. The trip in a nutshell . . .

The Good: This was our shortest transpacific trip yet. Two legs (Pittsburgh-San Francisco, San Francisco-Seoul), a big flight of only ten hours, no pesky little connection at the end. As an added bonus, we actually left the airport (with all our luggage, somehow) around 6 PM, in plenty of time to catch the airport shuttle. All in all, it'd be hard to ask for more.

The Bad: We found out in San Francisco that we couldn't earn miles on our flight to Seoul. Of course, none of this was advertised in any of the fare or booking information. Watch out for this from Asiana Airlines. The number of miles involved meant it would have been worth it for use to pay a little more per ticket to be eligible for miles. This is the first time it's ever happened to us, so as you might imagine, we were quite unpleasantly surprised.

The Ugly: First, a tip for folks making an international connection through San Francisco: schedule at least a two-hour layover, possibly more, if you want good odds of making your second flight. There's no way to switch terminals at San Francisco without going back through security, which is annoying enough. Add to that the fact that check-in desks at your point of departure can no longer print boarding passes for international connections and you've got some pretty long waits. Even though our flight from Pittsburgh arrived four minutes early, we had to run about 1km to the international terminal, wait 20-25 minutes in the check-in line, produce baggage claim tickets for our luggage (which had been checked through from Pittsburgh), run to the security checkpoint, wait wait wait, then run to the gate. We made it with about 5-10 minutes to spare. And we wouldn't have, if Nana hadn't done some quick thinking in Pittsburgh: when we got new boarding passes at the gate for seats closer to the front of the plane, we turned in our old passes, which had the baggage claim tickets on the back. She actually left the jetway to get the old stubs from the gate attendant. If she hadn't, who knows where our luggage could be.

Second, I was in the country for all of 30 minutes before my first serious ajumma attack--though this time it came from a twenty-something woman just a bit too eager to get through international arrivals. We were right at the doors too the arrivals hall when, coming up from behind me, she ran over my foot with her baggage cart. Seriously: she hit me so hard my left foot was lodged under the front wheels of her cart. The rest of me, however, was not, and I fell sprawling to the floor in front of a good eight dozen onlookers. To her credit, the young woman did stop to apologize--give her ten years, though, and even that formality will be out the window. For a while there the foot looked pretty bad--a bit swollen, a bit discolored--but I'm happy to report it's doing better this morning. No real harm done, except to my hopes for a warm welcome back to Seoul!

Annie: Pupdate the last! (But in a good way)

Annie, our dementedly wonderful scruppy (scruffy + puppy = scruppy) has been adopted! According to Tim of Animal Rescue Korea, resident champion of the dogs of Korea:

"She was adopted by Chung Wha to a lady from the Philippines who has had dogs previously, apparently she adores Annie and they are getting along like a house on fire."

So three cheers for our little girl! We will miss her very much. A brief highlight reel of the weirdness Annie has brought into our lives: (people who dislike self-indulgent descriptions of pets may skip this section)

1. When she welcomes you home, she barks so hard she flies backwards, like a cartoon character.
2. When she goes for a walk, she's so excited that she bites her shoulder harness and you can't get it on her. You have to distract her by giving her the leash, which she then shakes around, growling ferociously, like she's trying to snap its neck.
3. If you bend down to pet her, she throws herself to the floor because she thinks you're going to hit her. Six months with us did not break this reflex. Hopefully it will fade with time.
4. Sock thieving. We never did figure out what that was about.
5. She once stole a bag of bread and hid it in her bed, but never ate it.

We intend to foster another dog this year, because there's always need over there and we're always happier when we have a dog. But there will always be a special place in our hearts, and on our blogs, for Annie.

Quick Link: Chinese Food on Slate.com

In the spirit of all our recent food posts (here, here, here, here), allow me to point you to today's Slate.com article on a newly-published cookbook of Chinese minority cooking.

Back to Seoul: Likely Hiatus

Nana and I will be making the long trip back to Seoul on Friday, and with only T-minus-two days remaining, we're running around like mad trying to see everyone and get everything done. Then, upon arriving, we immediately flit away to a three-day faculty retreat, three days before classes start for the year.

In other words, the China posts will likely be put on hold for a couple weeks. We'll return to our enormous backlog once the fall semester gets into full swing.

Beijing: The Olympic Games

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

Believe it or not, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games is only two days away--right smack in the middle of our long odyssey back to Seoul (thank heavens for Tivo). To celebrate the end of China's long wait, and to provide some upbeat counterbalance to all the negative press China's been getting these days, here's a roundup of the Olympic sights in Beijing.

First, there's the ubiquitous Olympic countdown clock. This one is on the steps of the National History Museum, which is currently closed for "renovations" (I'm told it's closed more often than it's open, the Party rewrites its history so much). As a result, this clock can be seen from almost anywhere on Tiananmen Square.
But these babies are everywhere--most major tourist sights, big department stores, a few restaurants . . . I even spotted a small one on sale for use in the home.

These fellows are also everywhere: the Fuwa, or "Friendlies," Beijing's Olympic mascots. Below you can see Nana with a four-foot Huanhuan, an anthropomorphic torch.

There are five Fuwa in all: Beibei the fish, Jingjing the panda, Huanhuan the torch, Yingying the Tibetan antelope (I see what you did there!), and Nini the swallow.Together, their names read "Beijing huanying ni," which means "Beijing welcomes you." Each of the Fuwa is associated with a specific set of events. We can only be eternally grateful to the person who gave shooting to Jingjing the panda, because--well, see for yourself.Each of the events also has a symbol done in the style of ancient Chinese oracle bones, which sport the oldest extant form of Chinese writing.
Nana is apparently boxing. I should watch out! (On a side note: I wonder how the Chinese and Japanese feel about Taekwondo, and not, say, Kung fu or Aikido, being included in the Olympic games.)

The centerpiece of the Beijing Games, however, is the Olympic Green, a park on the north side of town that's home to both the National Aquatics Center (aka "The Water Cube") and the National Stadium (aka "The Bird's Nest").
Both buildings are impressive feats of modern architecture and engineering. The Water Cube is an enormous open space enclosed by inflated plastic bubbles held up by a complex web of steel struts. The building has some green features: it will heat itself through the greenhouse effect in the winter and needs almost no electric lighting for daytime events. It's use of structural bubbles also makes it many times lighter than it would normally need to be, which cuts down on material use. At night, the bubbles themselves are lit with small, energy-efficient LED lights (I think--as I vaguely recall a TV special on the building telling me), causing the whole structure to glow.
The Bird's Nest is also an impressive architectural achievement. It uses a similar "chaotic" steel structure to distribute weight more efficiently, thus reducing material costs and, in the process, giving the building a pleasing facade. It's within walking distance of the Water Cube, which makes Olympic Green the only place outside of Tiananmen Sqare where you can walk between two major sights in anything less than half an hour.
The building above, which will house both foreign and domestic media during the Games, has received less fanfare. It's not hard to tell why: a looming skyscraper shaped like a torch is a bit tacky, even for Beijing. That the tower distracts from the Olympic Green beside it only makes things worse. Why not keep it low or at least low-key, like the Olympic offices behind it?

Anyway, enough kvetching. Here's a shot of Nana and me on a footbridge in front of the Bird's Nest, and then Nana with Shasha below.

Beijing: The Summer Palace

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

A short post for a short visit: our trip to Beijing's famous Summer Palace was cut short by intense humidity, high heat, and dense smog.

The Summer Palace

The Summer Palace, located on the outskirts of modern-day Beijing, was the major country retreat of the late Qing Dynasty from 1750 on. In the popular imagination, the palace is forever associated with Empress Dowager Cixi, commonly know as the Dragon Lady, who ruled China as de facto empress from 1835-1908. She was a complex and ruthless woman, but then you have to be if you want to go from concubine to empress, which she did. In 1888, Cixi expanded the palace to its present size by diverting funds from the Beiyang Fleet, China's modernized naval force, thus indirectly contributing to China's disastrous defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War. This defeat in turn fed the 1911 revolution in China which toppled the Qing, China's last imperial dynasty.

However, with the Summer Palace, or the "Garden of Nurtured Harmony" as it's called in Chinese, Cixi did leave behind one of the world's most spectacular gardens, a testament to the enormous wealth of imperial China even in its waning days.

The palace is dominated by two features: the sprawling Kunming Lake and the looming Longevity Hill. Both are man-made--Longevity Hill is made from the earth excavated during the construction of Kunming Lake.

Like most visitors, we entered from the southern end of the palace and crossed the lake in a motorboat done up to look like a 19th-century passenger barge.
Visibility was unfortunately very low: even in the heavily-edited photo below, it's hard to make out any details from about 200-250 yards.
One of the first things you see upon entering the palace from the south is its famous Seventeen-Arch Bridge, which connects a small man-made island to the rest of the park.
The centerpiece of the palace is a complex of temples, towers, and halls on a north-south axis from the lake up to the peak of Longevity Hill. Notice how thick the haze looks in the shot below, even after some tricky photography and some even trickier editing.
We declined an offer to climb to the Temple of Buddhist Virtue--in addition to the oppressive heat, we were also worn out from our Great Wall trek the previous day (upcoming post)--but we did tool around the base of the hill, which offers two of the Summer Palace's best-known sights.

The first is a riverboat-shaped terrace made out of stone, which is probably the most-photographed building in the Summer Palace--and one of the most easily recognizable.
The second is the Long Corridor, a covered walkway that runs along most of the lake's perimeter, allowing residents to enjoy the lake views (when available, of course) and move between buildings without getting drenched by one of Beijing's swift summer rains.The Long Corridor has been fully restored for the upcoming Olympic Games, and is full of pretty little details, as seen in the photo below of the interior roof of one of the junctions.
The grounds off to the side of the Long Corridor also feature some beautiful garden spaces. Below, you can see a typical Chinese landscaped garden scene, with its carefully planned sense of natural seclusion.

Correction: Yongle's Tomb

For those of you who get your posts by e-mail: I just corrected the story of Yongle's spirit tablet at the end of our previous post.

Beijing: Ming Tombs -- Yongle's Tomb

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

CORRECTION: Nana was apparently listening much more closely than I was: I've fixed the story of Yongle's spirit tablet--see the end of this post.

We're branching out now to some sights just outside Beijing: in the coming days, you'll see posts about the Great Wall and the Summer Palace, too. Remaining Beijing sites include the Olympic venues and Dongyue Temple.

Changling Tomb

Tourists usually visit the Ming Tombs complex as the second part of a Great Wall day-trip: the tombs are roughly halfway between Beijing and the nearest stretch of the Wall. However, in true Ming Dynasty style, the tombs are too many and too widespread to visit in one afternoon. 13 Ming emperors are buried in the region (that's Ming emperors #3-16, for those of you keeping score at home--the first two Ming emperors had their capitals at Nanjing in the south).
Of these thirteen tombs, none is more popular than the tomb of Yongle ("yong-luh"), the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who moved the capital to Beijing. He ruled from 1360-1424, and his reign saw the construction of the Forbidden Palace, the construction of the Temple of Heaven, the final subjugation of the preceding dynasty (the Yuan, who, being Mongols, had fled to Mongolia), a major expansion of Chinese territory, the completion of the Yongle encyclopedia, and feudal China's only major attempt at world exploration. In fact, some hypothesize that explorers under Yongle mapped parts of the Americas and circumnavigated the globe in 1421-1423, though the evidence is circumstantial, and the Chinese records that could have proven the hypothesis were destroyed by Yongle's successor, whose advisors didn't want the costly expeditions to continue.

But for all his hard work and dedication, he gets the biggest of the Ming tombs.

Yongle's tomb, also known as the Changling (or "long mausoleum") tomb, follows the traditional feng shui layout. There's a mountain at the back (north) and the main gate at the front (south). Behind the main gate is a courtyard and another gate, followed by a ceremonial throne room/worship hall, followed by an inner courtyard. The emperor's spirit tablet is kept at the back of the inner courtyard; his ashes are buried under a large mound behind that. (For a scaled-down version of the same architecture, see our post on the burial mound of Korea's Yongle, King Sejong.)


As you can see below, the architecture of Yongle's tomb is very similar to the architecture of the Forbidden City. The yellow-tiled roof is a special signature of the Ming Dynasty, and was a symbol of Chinese imperial power from the 15th century on.

This is the gate at the north end of the first courtyard.This is a bell tower in the first courtyard.
And here is the ceremonial throne room. Are you getting Forbidden City flashbacks yet?Now, the throne room is no longer used for ceremonial purposes. Instead, it's been turned into a small museum dedicated to Yongle's accomplishments. Unfortunately, most of the signs are in Chinese--though a few exhibits need no explanation.

For example: here's a giant statue of the man himself.Plus the obligatory close-up. (Sorry about the light--it was dark in there!)And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what East Asians traditionally thought of when they thought of a crown:The Korean kings had them, too--but they weren't allowed to wear as many beads. By treaty. Seriously.

And finally, at the very back of the tomb is Yongle's spirit tablet. (There's actually more to the tomb, but visitors aren't allowed to walk on the burial mound.) The soldiers of a subsequent dynasty purportedly tried to burn the tablet, but succeeded only in firing the stone to its present brilliant red. Of course, why anyone would try to burn a stone is beyond me . . . and upon close inspection, I'm pretty sure the stone has been painted. (Actually, the communists tried to burn the tablet during the Cultural Revolution and settled for painting the thing red when they failed. No word yet on Mick Jagger's plans to paint it black. Stay tuned.)
Just ask that kid there--he looks like he has a pretty good view.

Beijing: I tong, you tong, we all tong for hutong!

(This is part of a series of posts on our recent trip to China. We'll be posting throughout the summer as we bum around at or near home.)

Every visit to Beijing, I'm told, should include a tour of one of the city's traditional hutong neighborhoods (more detail below). So Shasha, Nana's host sister and our dedicated guide for the second half of our week in Beijing, arranged for us to visit one on the northern edge of Beihai Park, in northwest Beijing.

Beihai Lakes

The first stop of our hutong excursion involved a stroll along one of several artificial (or artificially-enlarged) lakes in the northwestern quarter of Beijing. (Forgive me--I'm not sure which one this is. There are a bunch.)
The lakes march off in a long string from the Forbidden City to the emperor's Summer Palace (upcoming post) further to the northwest, so that the emperor, if he so chose, could actually travel between residences by boat. Historically, the lakeside properties were owned by some of the wealthiest people in the country, a tradition that continues today (see our fleeting glimpse of Deng Xiaoping's daughter's house below).

Today, the lakes are lined in most places with trendy bars, catering especially to expats and embassy folks. We declined to stop for a morning drink.

We did, however, stop for photographs. Here's Nana doing her best Tintin impression outside Lotus Blue. (A special shout-out to the Massie clan, at Nana's request.)
And, um, here's Nana with a giant yellow duck. Outside a Peking duck restaurant, mind you. Why is it considered good marketing to anthropomorphize the thing you're serving for lunch?
The Hutong

Anyway. Our stroll brought us to a (heavily restored) traditional shopping district at the edge of the hutong. This, like most of the hutong that haven't simply been bulldozed, has been cleaned up and repainted in preparation for the Olympic Games.


The hutong are an interesting phenomenon in city planning and in the history of Beijing. The word translates roughly to "neighborhood," and can be used to refer to a city administrative unit, but in popular usage it refers to traditional neighborhoods with low buildings and narrow streets. Originally, the hutong were formed by joining packed-together courtyard houses along a narrow alleyway, often interspersed with small businesses. These original hutong generally ran east-to-west, with main gates at either ends, and normally had one or two north-south alleyways forming, in some cases, a few small internal plazas. In the Beihai district, the original hutong were also very wealthy, sitting as they did on some prime lakefront property.

Over time, though, unplanned (and generally lower-class) hutong grew up around and in support of the older hutong, offering lodging for servants, retail, professional services, etc. Though most of these newer hutong did include a staight (if narrow) east-west thoroughfare, the other alleys were a tangled maze, and today most people associate the hutong with these crooked, narrow streets.

To give you an idea, here's a narrow east-west passage in one of the hutong that sprung up around Deng Xiaoping's daughter's place.
Pedicab Tour
The Beihai district of Beijing is famous for its lakeside pedicab drivers, who are themselves famously aggressive--walk along the lake for more than 20 yards and you're bound to be accosted by someone. Shasha kindly handled the details and scored us a nice, long ride along the lake and through one of the wealthier hutong in the area.
Here are a couple short videos of the ride.



I have to admit, the whole pedicab thing was a little odd--sitting there with the breeze in our hair while this poor sweaty guy lugged us around. At least Nana was able to have a conversation with him, which made it feel less like we were treating him like a pack animal. And, of course, we paid him well.

Anyway, a few images from the ride:

First, here's a shot of the entrance to the prince's residence. This is also in Deng Xiaoping's daughter's neighborhood--the neighborhood is still home to some of the most desirable addresses in Beijing.Second, here's an old shirtless guy practicing martial arts beside the road. Because, awesome. (See this post for more on senior recreation in Beijing.)

200th Post! And, hidden Tiananmen Square post

Turns out that last post was our 200th. Cool! I wonder if we'll be able to keep the same pace this year.

Also, those of you who don't get School of ROK by e-mail (you can sign up at right) may have missed Nana's post on Tiananmen Square and Mao's Mausoleum (here).

For some reason, Blogger lists posts according to the date and time when they were first saved, not the date and time they were first published, so that if you work on a post over two different days, the post may not publish to the top of the page.