It’s been over a year since I was last in China, as the guest of a telecommunications equipment vendor (see if you can guess which one), with the then-CEO and owner of Orcon, Seeby Woodhouse. We spent around a week there, flying into Hong Kong and driving across the border to Shenzhen; flying from there to Shanghai for a day; then flying to Beijing for the last three days before heading back to Hong Kong. Some of my photos from that trip can be found here.

One of the first things that struck me when driving into Beijing from the airport on Saturday afternoon was how clear the sky was. A year ago, in the middle of summer, the entire city was bathed in a thick soup of smog, like nothing I’d ever seen before - you could quite literally stand on one side of a major road and not see the other side clearly. Shenzhen and Shanghai had both been uncharacteristically clear; we had been up the Pearl TV tower in Shanghai and had fantastic panoramic view of the entire city. So it was a bit of a surprise seeing the scale of pollution here in Beijing. Not so today. I’m not sure how much of the change is simply down to the season - its autumn over here now - or whether some of the changes that have been enacted to clean up the city ahead of the Olympics have actually had some lasting affect.

Regardless of the reason, it meant that the first day was spend mainly taking photos. We decided it would be a good idea to visit the Forbidden City; I’d been told that first thing in the morning would be the best time as it’d be (a) cooler and (b) quieter. So we walked there; the hotel we’re staying at is about 15 minutes walk from Tienanmen square and the entrance to the Forbidden City. It was certainly nice and cool, however, “quiet” was the last word that sprung to mind when we rounded the last corner to the entrance. This was my second time at Tienanmen and the Forbidden City; last time had been busy, but nothing like this. We had the good fortune to arrive at the same time as a marathon was passing through the square, and also as a busload of VIPs was being delivered to the city itself, complete with police escort, bulldozing through the crowd with a fairly callous disregard for pedestrian safety. So, chaos, basically.

We managed to pick up tickets with no problem, and made it into the city without incident. The crowds spread out a bit once we were inside, which made it easier to get some pretty decent photos…

These photos are all in one big slideshow, so you can click on one and just run through them. I have included some commentary below for those who are interested.

I also had the GPS in my phone running the entire time we were out, recording the path we wandered. Unfortunately it did a very bad job of it; were were out for around 5 hours and it only recorded a dozen waypoints, and the accuracy is clearly way off. Regardless the trip recorded is below - for some reason the different layers of Google Maps coverage of China don’t seem to line up properly, so satellite is the best way to view it:

A good excuse to go and buy a dedicated handheld unit.

So, the photos:

This is the south-east corner of the city, taken from outside as we walked around to the entrance. The city is surrounded by a massive moat, which actually does have fish in it and is actually quite pleasant at 8am on a nice day.

Just outside the entrance; and clear enough that the moon is visible.

The entrance area with its five bridges.

Detailing on the buildings in the first courtyard. The more animal carvings on the corners the more important the building.

The main courtyard.

Sort of the “inner sanctum”, as far as I can make out. The building directly behind me is where one of the Emporers thrones resided. Unfortunately visitors aren’t able to actually enter the room but need to scrum in with hundreds of Chinses tourists to peer through a small window to get a look.

Detail on one of the large pots that scatter the city. They were filled with water and kept there to use in the event of fire. In winter they had to be heated otherwise would freeze solid.

View north across the top of the city to Jingshan park in the background. I didn’t even know it was there; last time I was here it was totally obscured by thick smog.

Status of lions, symbolizing power, are all through the city.

The north half of the city is a rabbit maze of these alleyways interconnecting various courtyards and buildings. The crowds drop off dramatically through here and some of the buildings are set out displaying  relics from the various dynasties.

More detail from one of the building walls. The level of intricacy is incredible.

This odd structure, the Palace of Prolonging Happiness - appropriately enough, given that it was used in part as bedchambers for the imperial consorts - was build within one of the courtyards in the north half of the city, in 1420. It has been built, destroyed, and rebuilt several times, and was a largely burnt-out ruin. It was build partially below ground.

Another one of the iron fire-fighters pots.

The imperial gardens are near the north exit of the city, and in the middle of them is this huge artificial rock pile. A small temple is build on top, and there is a path winding up to the top. Sadly this was closed off but it was still a pretty impressive sight.

A copper elephant by the northern exit.

The northern exit.

As we were walking back to the hotel from the city, we were approached by a dapper-looking Chinese man who started talking to us - asking us where we were from, how long we’d been here, if we’d been to China before. He was a painter, and he invited us back to his studio to show us some of his work. Having nothing better to do we decided to play along, and he took us up to a small studio above a noodle house a couple of blocks away. There he managed to sell us some calligraphy on silk - which I was happy to pay for, and I took a few photos of (his colleague actually) at work.

The characters are those for Chinese names for me and Fiona, and the character for “happiness”. Awww. Still, they do look quite cool. My name is Shǐ Mài Sī, or in Chinese, 史迈思, which means “stride forward, thoughtful”, and Fiona’s is Huò Fěi Nà (霍斐娜), which means “with striking literary talent, slender and graceful”. I had a good laugh at that.

We pretty much spent the rest of the day at the hotel - we were pretty tired and still a bit jetlagged from the flight. I had a pretty nasty scare when I tried to turn my camera on and it sat there doing nothing - after pulling it to bits and putting it back together again it came back to life, thankfully, and I suspect that one of the cards I’m using is a bit flaky. Still, seems to be okay again now. We’ve booked a private car to take us north to Jinshanglin, a ruined section of the Great Wall around 2 hours drive north, and we’re going to walk to Simatai, where the car will pick us up. I’ve been to the Great Wall before, but at a place called Juyoung Guan, which was rebuilt and heaving with tourists. Looking forward to it - should get a few more good shots out there…

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