Beijing: The Old

Beijing has been China’s capital for most of the last 700 years, beautifully blending old and new. I saw a lot in my five days, so I hope you’ll indulge me in this tour de force of the city’s magnificent historical sites. I’ll start with what they refer to here as “Ancient China” which encompasses everything until the toppling of the imperial order in 1911.

Were you to have one day in Beijing, the best place to spend it would undoubtedly be at Tiananmen Square and the adjoining Forbidden City. Truly, this area is China’s cultural, historical and political centre. The logical starting point is the National Museum. The 65,000 square metre complex is the third largest museum in the world. It’s home to over a million artefacts that cover 1.7 million years of Chinese history, fabulously weaving together a fascinating narrative of one of the world’s greatest civilisations. Or so I thought for the first 20 minutes. After that, the precious porcelain and jade palled pretty quickly. Feeling more than a little discombobulated by China’s innumerable dynasties (that all sound unhelpfully similar), I lost my historical bearings and with them my interest. It’s not that I’m a philistine; I just think there are only so many Qing vases a man can reasonably admire.

What I found more interesting were the ways the museum tried to propagandise China’s imperial past. The messaging was generally subtler here than other places I’ve been to which I suspect reflects the content’s chronological distance from communist China but also the fact that, as a mainstream tourist attraction, there’s a greater awareness of foreign audiences. There were the usual paeans to Xi and the museum definitely exuded a sense of Chinese exceptionalism. However, the emphasis was on imperial China’s diverse composition and international trade routes, occasionally making explicit links to the government’s current Belt and Road Initiative.

Saving the adjacent Chairman Mao Memorial Hall for the next post, we come to the Forbidden City. This grandiose imperial palace complex was the primary residence of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Though horribly trite, I’m going to say it anyway: the place is enormous! Yet size isn’t everything. Similar to my experience with the Qing vases at the National Museum, I lost interest after the first couple courtyards. Perhaps I would’ve benefitted from having a guide, as I just seemed to walk around desultorily without understanding what I was seeing. I think part of the problem is that this style of imperial Chinese architecture has been cheapened by the plethora of ersatz imitations you see in Chinatowns and things of that ilk all over the world. It also somewhat detracts from the majesty of the place when you have people constantly spitting on the floor (no wonder it was forbidden to the masses!)

The other two famous imperial landmarks in Beijing proper are the Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven. Neither of these are essential to visit. The Summer Palace was definitely the more impressive of the two and did offer some fantastic views overlooking Kunming Lake. It’s also more historically significant, being destroyed by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860. I was disappointed that there wasn’t much information on this or its subsequent restoration.

All of these wonderful places aside, the most popular landmark for people visiting Beijing actually lies a two-hour drive outside the city. I’m of course referring to China’s most iconic site: the Great Wall. Though it’s really an amalgam of different walls constructed intermittently between the third century BC and seventeenth century AD along the country’s northern border, most people when they think of the Great Wall will picture the Mutianyu section which is the longest and best preserved. I visited on a picturesquely clear day so got a fantastic view of its meandering crenellations as my car approached the base of the mountain. From afar it’s certainly magnificent. Yet it’s only when you begin to walk along it, seeing up close the imposing fortifications that bestride this rugged terrain, that you realise what a spectacular engineering feat and projection of imperial power this is, one that has rightfully earned it a place as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I walked the southern trail before going up the longer northern one, opting to take the cable car down (a cool experience in its own right) to give my geriatric knees some much-needed respite.

A trip to the Great Wall is typically paired with a visit to the Ming Tombs. I thought these were fairly underwhelming, especially after visiting the more impressive imperial sites in Beijing. A good afternoon filler but not worth going out of your way for.