Beijing endless sights, smells and colors
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By ALBA CELA
Welcome to Beijing!
Welcome to the capital, so full of history, full of beautiful breathtaking temples, red lanterns and endless markets full of goods, whose prices float in a endlessly wide spectrum, full of huge roads and avenues that even sit one above each other, chock-full of skyscrapers and, of course, full of people, more than 20 million!
Sit down and have some dumplings soup, savor the tastes of soy and chili oil and chew on the delicious chicken with peanuts. I haven’t had so much chili oil since…well since ever!
Beijing is sort of orderly, safe and even clean for its size and density so thumbs up to those running it. But there is the ordeal of traffic jams at rush hour. Beijing time rules are different but then so is everything. We made the mistake of thinking the Olympic Park would be open late at night to see those magnificent vistas of the lit up Bird nest (highly recommended). Tough luck! The pertinent smog is hiding everything behind the closed doors. We have missed the last metro (which runs at 11 pm), so we take a cab home. Taxi fares are pretty reasonable. We try to catch some beers at our university café before the bartender making sign language tells us it’s time to sleep. Dude, it’s not even midnight yet! I told you time rules are different, but then we could have hit the bar streets where the party never ends. Try Propaganda, a claustrophobic yet /hence adrenaline pump dancing bar close to (or in ?) San Li Tun for that if you want to.
We return the next day before dusk and catch up with the views, the willows park and an amazing show inside the stadium. A show with lights and music and dancing and acrobatics which after 45 minutes starts to lose viewers in droves. Chinese audiences leave before the show ends. The ever mob-scared person inside me is flashing alarm lights. Are they trying to avoid a stampede at the end? Show we leave? No need. Well-behaved everybody leaves quite in a regular and even polite fashion.
What I shall carry within me after this trip is the peace and wonder I felt so deeply in the temples, the smell of incense and the sight of backpack carrying teenagers praying or the squirrels chasing between the trees. Temple of heaven occupies an impressive space (hence it’s the largest religious complex in the world). The city is crouching upon the Lama temple with construction sites just a hair’s width apart from the temple walls. So many gardens to mediate in. So many Buddhas to see.
China is all about the word ‘many’.
Many sights and smells and sounds and colors -- so many colors. Many thoughts and many many things to buy or contemplate buying. The goods -- buying hysteria – shorthand for long bargaining exhausting shopping experience with Chinese vendors - that have already engulfed my trip friends is hard to resists (Hmm maybe I do need a selfie stick that holds my Smartphone after all? )
You crawl around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City trying to kidnap panorama photos from the crowds. The Palace Museum locks so many thousands of years of history inside that merely touching the white stones of the stairs sends shivers down my spine. I feel always overwhelmed in the places that have seen too much and now stand in resolute silence as to atone the sins of their owners. I feel the same way in Istanbul, in Cairo and in Berlin. And in my own city in Albania, the beautiful Berat that is counting its third millennium.
Words run low when we reach the Great Wall, which I climb holding on to my recently purchased pink thermos filled with fragrant jasmine tea. Its immense! Its beautiful! You think you know, you’ve seen it on the Internet. You don’t know! Its sheer size and the way it curves around mountain peaks invites reflection- a process made tougher by the crowds climbing next to me. Never quitting grandmas with no breath problems and small babies learning how to walk (I mean where better to take your first steps than in one of the world’s top wonders!) put my slowing pace to shame.
At the end I am left in need of borrowing a mantra from the sadly departed, true travel icon Anthony Bourdain: The only thing I know about China is that I will never know anything about China.
