Beijing

by Linda Jaivin

  Well in the grounds of Prince Gong’s Mansion with good-fortune cards bearing Kangxi’s calligraphed fu.

  In the midst of the disastrous Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5, Cixi recalled the elderly prince-councillor out of retirement. He died of illness three years later and the mansion passed to his descendants. When the Republicans overthrew the Qing in 1911–12, his descendants sold off parts of the estate and mortgaged others to fund a movement to restore the Qing as well as pay off personal debts. In 1937, Fu-Jen Catholic University moved their women’s campus and school of fine arts onto its grounds.

  After the Communists took control in 1949, the chiefs of the Public Security Bureau responsible for the protection of state leaders moved in, along with Soviet KGB agents and advisers. As a result, as Geremie Barmé has written, it ‘effectively disappeared from the map of Beijing, becoming literally a “secret garden”’. Later, the Chinese Academy of Music and the Art and Literature Research Institute of the Ministry of Culture set up in another section of the expansive estate, coexisting there with the security personnel and a factory manufacturing air conditioners.

  This was not unusual – even the Temple of Heaven ceded some 4 sq. km of grounds to shops, schools, factories and a radio station bristling with antennae. Central government offices occupy a considerable portion of the Forbidden City; the China Heritage Quarterly has reported that as late as 2004, of Beijing’s 3,500 historical buildings, 60 per cent ‘still accommodated legal “squatters”’. Over the years its tenants knocked down many of the garden’s old buildings and erected new structures in its courtyards. Gardens that once rivalled those of the south have been neglected into decay and remaining antiques funnelled into private and public collections.

  Less than two dozen princely mansions survive, in varying states of preservation, today. Banks, embassies and the Communist aristocracy occupy many of them. All are in the vicinity of Shichahai and Beihai Park. It is sobering to think that of all the ones that are open to the public today, Prince Gong’s (rebuilt) Mansion, which bears the designation Princely Mansion Museum, is despite all that’s been done to it still the best-preserved of all those open to the public.

  The rooms from the Palace of Tranquil Longevity recreated by Heshen, remade again for show.

  The last time I was there, I happened to arrive at the theatre in the peony garden just as it was letting in a mix of foreign and Chinese tourists for a show. There would be Peking Opera, I was told. Unlike most of my Beijing contemporaries and nearly all my younger Chinese friends, who can’t abide it, I actually do love Peking Opera. I didn’t have great expectations for the opera. But I did want to have a look at Prince Gong’s celebrated theatre. Buying a ticket, I filed in to be seated at a table and served with sticky snacks and a cup of something that was to good Chinese tea what floor sweepings are to fresh herbs. I gritted my teeth throughout the first act, an accident-prone performance of juggling and acrobatics by what appeared to be very small children with extremely forced smiles. When the ‘Peking Opera’ performance turned out to involve the depiction of a flirtatious young woman by a prancing, badly made-up, middle-aged man with swinging jowls and the clumsiest hand gestures and worst singing I have ever heard on a Beijing stage – possibly any stage – I felt the end of civilization had come. As the plainly bored attendants herded out the benumbed audience, I lingered as long as possible to restore the sense that once, here, things had been different: as beautiful and as cultured as anywhere in this wide world.

  Stacks of tea, Maliandao Tea Street.

  LISTINGS

  HOTELS

  Aman at Summer Palace

  No. 1 Gongmen Forward Street, Yiheyuan, Haidian district. www.amanresorts.com/amanatsummerpalace/home.aspx

  Live large like an emperor or empress in the Aman, close by the East Gate of Cixi’s Summer Palace. Fabulous food, cocktails and atmosphere at imperial prices.

  The Orchid Hotel

  65 Baochao Hutong, Gulou East Street, Dongcheng district www.theorchidbeijing.com

  A small, beautiful, well-run and welcoming designer hutong hotel in the shadow of the Drum Tower.

  Mao’er Courtyard

  28 Mao’er Hutong, Dongcheng district. www.maoer28.com

  This intimate converted family courtyard home is a much-awarded treasure for those on a budget wanting to experience hutong life. On a historic hutong linking Shichahai with Nanluoguxiang.

  The Opposite House

  Building 1, Taikoo Li Sanlitun North, 11 Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang district. www.theoppositehouse.com

  Chic, architect-designed boutique hotel just steps away from the Village at Sanlitun. Spot the celebrity.

  Grace Beijing

  No. 1, 706 Houjie, 798 Art District, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao, Chaoyang district. www.gracehotels.com/beijing

  The only hotel in the 798 art zone, a luxury boutique hotel on the site of a nineteenth-century crystal factory. The decor is a mix of Chinese tradition and modernity.

  MUSEUMS

  The Forbidden City (Palace Museum)

  Entry through the Meridian Gate (accessible via Tiananmen or Donghuamen on the palace’s eastern flank). www.dpm.org.cn

  The home of emperors and empresses from the fourteenth century through to the early twentieth, its architecture is the greatest treasure on daily display today. Best visited off-season to avoid what can be crushing crowds. Imperial treasures, from textiles to rare calligraphic scrolls, are featured in changing exhibitions above the Meridian Gate and in the Hall of Martial Valour (Wuying Dian) in the southwest sector of the palace – the side corridors are also well worth exploring. A Beijing must-see.

  Beijing Urban Planning Exhibition Hall

  20 Qianmen East Street, Chongwen district. www.bjghzl.com.cn

  This superb museum on the southeast corner of Tiananmen Square tells the story of Beijing itself with clever, multi-media exhibits that include models illustrating how the graceful ceramic roofs and eaves of Beijing’s courtyard dwellings are constructed, a 3-D scale floor map of the city, an introduction to the most famous artisans and guilds of the Qing dynasty, and much more. Highly recommended.

  Beijing Capital Museum

  16 Fuxingmenwai Dajie, West City. www.capitalmuseum.org.cn

  This newish museum at the west end of Chang’an Avenue features interactive, multilingual and multimedia exhibitions on Beijing history, court life, folk customs and art. There’s a floor on hutong life and a level devoted to Peking Opera, with a recreated theatre and a valuable collection of Mei Lanfang’s original costumes and scripts.

  National Art Museum of China

  1 Wusi Dajie, East City, just northeast of the Palace Museum. www.namoc.org

  Built in 1958 and renovated in 2005, this enormous museum has some art from the Ming, Qing and Republican periods, but its focus is on the post-1949 era. Its exhibitions have ranged from Salvador Dalí to contemporary Chinese art and artists. Although it tends towards relatively staid fare these days, as the China Art Gallery it hosted the first major exhibition of China’s ‘unofficial’ art collective, the Stars, in 1980, and the wildest postmodernist exhibition in China’s history, ‘No U-Turn’, in 1989.

  Police Museum

  36 Dongjiaominxiang Lane, Dongcheng district

  Housed in the former Citibank Building in the old Legation Quarter, this fascinating museum offers an insight into Beijing crime and punishment through the ages. Displays include policemen’s whistles, badges and uniforms from different time periods, a Cultural Revolution-era wheel-shaped filing cabinet for local residential permits, guns that have belonged to various Communist leaders, and the formerly top-secret map of Kim Il-sung’s 1987 Beijing tour.

  Gongwangfu

  17 Qianhai West Street, West City. www.pgm.org.cn

  On a hutong that runs off the Back Lake of Shichahai, the Mansion of Prince Gong, or the Princely Mansion Museum, as it is now called, is the best-preserved residence of a noble family in Beijing that is open to the public – and its story is a micro
cosm of the last several hundred years of Beijing history (see pp. 231–7).

  Guanfu Museum

  18 Jinnan Road, Zhangwangfeng, Dashanzi, Chaoyang district. www.guanfumuseum.org.cn (in Chinese)

  The first private art museum in China holds the extraordinary collection of the autodidact antiquities scholar and television personality Ma Weidu. Standouts in this intimate, well-designed museum not far from the 798 art district are the ceramics and furniture, including a fabulous assembly of traditional doors and windows.

  Former Residence of Lao She

  19 Fengfu Lane, West Dengshikou Street, East City

  This is the home lived in by the iconic Beijing writer Lao She and his family from 1949 until he died as a result of persecution in the Cultural Revolution. The calendar on the desk is left open to the date of his death, and on his bed, cards are laid out in a half-finished game of solitaire.

  Former Residence of Mei Lanfang

  9 Huguosi Street, West City

  Once part of a major princely residence, this is where China’s most revered star of Peking Opera, Mei Lanfang, lived after 1950. It screens footage of his performances and features a pictorial display of his most famous poses and hand movements as well as a great collection of scripts and so on, donated by family members.

  Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wanping

  101 Chengnei Jie, Marco Polo Bridge, Fengtai district. www.1937china.com/enweb

  The most comprehensive museum in China on the subject of the eight-year Japanese occupation and Chinese resistance is well worth the trip to the city’s southwest. Its exhibits of weaponry, uniforms, photographs and propaganda materials from both sides as well as from the Japanese push into Asia generally are riveting, especially if you’re a history buff. It’s located inside the Ming-era fortress town of Wanping, in Fengtai district. On your way out, look for the Japanese mortar holes in Wanping’s walls. Marco Polo Bridge is on Wanping’s doorstep and the Peking Man World Heritage Site at Zhoukoudian is not too far a drive away.

  SITES

  Great Walls

  The classic views of Badaling – a model of reconstruction in the style of the Ming Great Walls – attract the masses, but you might want to check out the walls at Mutianyu or other less-trammelled sectors such as steep Juyongguan. If you’re adventurous, fit and equipped for hiking, try the fragmented, unreconstructed and often breathtakingly scenic ‘wild Great Walls’ scattered throughout the mountains around Beijing.

  Tiananmen Square

  Dongcheng district

  The largest public square in the world, expanded to its current size in the late 1950s, has been the site of historical demonstrations, dramas and spectacles from the anti-imperialist demonstrations of 4 May 1919 to the Red Guard rallies of the 1960s, the student-led pro-democracy protests of 1989 that culminated in massacre, and the grand parades staged in celebration of such events as the 60th anniversary of the nation’s founding in 2009. Tiananmen Square is the site of the Monument to the People’s Heroes and Mao Zedong’s Mausoleum.

  Dashila’r

  Southwest of Tiananmen Square

  The narrow, old and winding hutong that still remain in this historic yet development-endangered neighbourhood that was once part of the Ming and Qing dynasty’s Outer City are as close as you’ll come today to the Republican era Beijing of Lao She’s early novels. As the bulldozers roll over Dashila’r, the area’s remaining old brothels, teahouses and temples have drawn hipsters, baristas and fashionistas to set up shop here – pop-up and stay-put alike. Full of surprises.

  Temple of Heaven (Tiantan)

  Enter by any of four gates (north, south, east, west); the east gate is on the No. 5 subway line. www.tiantanpark.com/cn

  Literally the ‘Altar of Heaven’, this is the site where generations of emperors enacted elaborate rituals to pray for good harvests. Its symbolically rich layout and unique architecture are set within an expansive park where locals exercise, sing, play chess and hold matchmaking events to find marriage partners for their children.

  Lama Temple (Yonghegong)

  12 Yonghegong Dajie, Dongcheng district

  At one time a princely mansion and home to the young prince who would become the Yongzheng emperor, the Lama Temple is the only temple in the city that is roofed with the golden tiles that denote an imperial palace. It is the largest and best-preserved Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing.

  Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace)

  Park entrance at 28 Qinghua West Road, Haidian district; on the No. 4 subway line

  The eighteenth-century garden palace, the name of which translates as the Garden of Perfect Brightness, once represented the pinnacle of the aesthetic achievement of three Manchu emperors. In 1860 British and French troops punitively looted and burned its legendary buildings to the ground. The elegiac ruins of the Yuanmingyuan have been a magnet for poets and patriots ever since. Like the Summer Palace nearby, the Yuanmingyuan is no longer in Beijing’s rural outskirts but part of the megalopolis, even meriting its own subway station.

  Summer Palace (Yiheyuan)

  Haidian district; one stop after the Yuanmingyuan on the No. 4 subway line

  On the shores of the Yuan dynasty reservoir of Kunming Lake stand the scattered pavilions, temples and walkways of the Yiheyuan, the preferred residence of the Empress Dowager Cixi in her later years. Among its attractions are the infamous marble boat, a long covered walkway that follows the course of the lake, and the hilltop Tower of Buddhist Incense.

  Beihai Park and Shichahai

  By Di’anmen, northwest of the Forbidden City

  The linked waterways of Shichahai and Beihai are among the greatest delights of old Beijing. Stroll, or pedal a boat in summer, skate or sled in winter, and drop in on Prince Gong’s Mansion while you’re there; if you have a taste for amplified pop music, stay on for happy hour. Shop for souvenirs on Yandai Xiejie (Tobacco Pipe Slanted Street), take a hutong tour by pedicab. Just don’t jump in the water. To the west, northwest and southwest of the Drum and Bell Towers, the lakes are in Xicheng district.

  Western Hills

  Beijing people love to visit the Western Hills in the autumn, when the changing colours of the leaves on the trees make the vistas a riot of colour. But the relative freshness of the mountain air and the area’s many temples, including the magnificent Biyun Si (Temple of the Azure Clouds) and Wofo Si (Temple of the Reclining Buddha) on the grounds of the Beijing Botanical Garden make heading for the hills an especially attractive idea in spring and summer as well.

  Peking Man World Heritage Site

  Zhoukoudian Village, Fangshan County

  The best thing you can say about the tacky statues littered about the place of Peking Man, Peking Woman, the sabre-tooth cats and other predators, and the deer that appear to be on the menu of all the above, are that they’ve passed into the realm of amusing kitsch. The museum, forced to display replica bones and skulls until the real Peking Man finally decides to call home (see chapter One), is a trifle underwhelming. You can’t get into all the caves. But this is it. It’s where it all began, or at least one of the places where it all began. Not just Beijing. Humanity. Awesome in the original sense of the word. And the view is magnificent.

  ENTERTAINMENT VENUES

  National Centre for the Performing Arts

  2 West Chang’an Street, Xicheng district. www.chncpa.org

  The titanium and glass dome to one side of Tiananmen Square, known officially as the ‘Pearl on Water’ and unofficially as the ‘Egg in Albumen’, presents concerts, operas, plays and other performances from around China and the world in four well-designed, purpose-built theatres.

  Mei Lanfang Grand Theatre

  32 Ping’anlixi Dajie, Xicheng district

  The home of the National Peking Opera Company (NPOC), this fan-shaped theatre was named for the most famous actor of the Peking Opera and former president of the NPOC. It hosts other shows as well, but whatever you’re seeing
, don’t forget to check out the display of Peking Opera costumes on the second floor. English-language listings for the Mei Lanfang as well as other theatres, including the popular Poly as well as the Workers Stadium, can be found at www.theatrebeijing.com.

  Workers Stadium

  Workers Stadium North Road

  Built in 1959 as one of Mao’s ‘Ten Great Structures’ and renovated in 2004, the stadium’s colourful history includes hosting the PRC’s first National Sports Meet, violent Red Guard ‘struggle sessions’ and China’s first local and international rock concerts. With a capacity of 80,000, today it presents a variety of sports, musical and other events.

  Yugong Yishan

  3–2 Zhangzizhong Lu, Dongcheng district. www.yugongyishan.com

  Named for the Maoist parable ‘The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain’, this venue pulls the biggest local and international rock acts; it also puts on film nights and DJS. Rock fans will also want to check out Mao Livehouse, a warehouse-style rock venue near the Drum Tower, also featuring local and foreign acts (111 Gulou Dongdajie, Dongcheng district).

  East Shore Live Jazz Café (Dong An)

  2 Qianhai South Shore, 2f, Di’anmenwai Dajie, West City

  Kick back and groove to jazz on the shores of Shichahai at Qianhai. Owner Liu Yuan is the legendary saxophonist from the band of China’s first rocker, Cui Jian; this is a place where musicians hang out. The views of Shichahai’s Front Lake (Qianhai) are wonderful. If you prefer the blues, check out Café CD Blues, owned by bassist Zhang Ling, another former band-mate of Cui Jian (39 Shen Lu Jie, 1–28 Ritan Upper Street, Chaoyang district. www.cdblues.cn).

  Lao She Teahouse

  Building 3, Zhengyang Market, Qianmen West Street, West City. www.laosheteahouse.net

  Named for one of the most famous plays by celebrated Beijing writer Lao She, this reconstructed, cleaned-up version of an old Qianmen teahouse offers meals, snacks and bite-size performances that may include Chinese opera, comedy cross-talk and acrobatics for an audience of mainly tourists and Chinese out-of-towners. Nightly shows at 7:50 p.m.