Beijing
After our time in Yangshuo Peach had to go back home again. Cooking beer fish is over -now he's developing turbo chargers again!Well and I was alone on the road again but I'm quite used to it after all my travelling. But as a traveller you're never really alone because you always meet other backpackers, you join them and you do things together. Well it was like this in all the other countries I've been before. But after travelling a little time in China I saw that it's not the same here because not many tourists come to this country because of the language problems. Chinese don't speak english and the signs of streets, restaurants, time schedules for trains or other things are written with the chinese symbols. So sometimes it's quite a big thing to go from A to B or just a daily thing like order food can become a big problem and challenge....
But I tried my best and could manage it...and anyway one needs challenges in his life, isn't it? ;-)
But now about Beijing...
On the first view Beijing the capital of China seems just like a normal big Chinese city. Big and often very modern buildings, alot of traffic, mainly bicycles and alot of air pollution describe the city with one sentence.
On the second view one can see that the city offers much more and discovers the numerous old buildings in the old Chinese style, which show the long and interesting but also tragic past of China. The building shown below is an old city gate which allowed to enter the inner city which was surrounded by walls completely in the past but nowadays they don't exist anymore.
Among other things in the inner city you can find the emperors palace which is also known as "forbidden city". But more about that in the next report.
For the ones who are not so familiar with the latest history of China I try to give a short summary here...
China was controled and ruled by emperors for thousands of years
until 1908 the then-empress died and the two years old Puyi became the new emperor. So the state became rudderless and very soon a revolution brought down the emperor as the national leader and founded the Republic of China. But various civil wars, strikes, and commotions between the new government and the upcoming communist movement carried off the country. Finally 1931 the Japanese captured China, ruled the country for several years and built up a puppet state with the still young emperor Puyi. The detailed story of Puyi is also shown in the very famous movie "The last emperor". Finally 1941 the USA beat the Japanese in the World War II and the Japanese had to leave China.
China's government recovered very slowly from the war time and was again place of several strikes and civil wars until the communists 1949 took over the leadership of the country and founded the People's Republic of China. After that the head of the former republic government and with it thousands of Chinese fled to the Chinese island Taiwan (more about that in the Taiwan report...yes, yes, it'll come soon...no stress!!). The communists aimed not only the totally authority and control over China but also they closed the border and stopped the flow of information between China and other countries. So the government under the command of Mao Zhedong, the founder of the Chinese communism, could realise their ideas unconcernedly with an iron hand. Political opponents and critics were arrested or killed. Today still a lot of political enemies are imprisoned which is a reason for a lot of international critic concerning the human rights.
In spite of everything Mao Zhedong is very popular in the population and is worshiped as the father of the Chinese communism. According to this you can see the picture of him relatively often in public buildings, stores, by the hair dresser or at home...more precisely: everywhere!!!
Here for example a big picture by the entrance gate to the emperors palace...
But that's not enough! When Mao Zhedong 1976 died the Chinese built a big building as gravesite for him on the Tiannanmen Place -in the heart of Beijing! Unbelievable how they worship their national heroes here!!!
In the past the Tiannanmen Place many times was spot of demonstrations and bloody conflict with the police. The most terrible incidence was 1989 when hundreds of students died because the military shoot into the masses after the then president Deng Xiaoping gave the order to stop the riots. Here a picture of the Tiannanmen Place...
The communist system has lasted until today but China oppened itself to the outside world around 20 years ago and had to moderate its hard way to be accepted internationally. Since then China has developed to a important economical power -the goods in the import and export markets are enormous. For example buys China the metal market empty at the moment and has after the US the second biggest demand of oil which is noticeable on the international markets. Furthermore since last year China is the thirt country which sent a man to the universe and is planning a moon expedition.
But the rapide economic development also has its disadvantages. For example pollution control is not a well known word, to mention just one of Chinas current problems.
Here a few pictures of Beijing by night
Here the city gate by night...
Tiananmen Place...
Does this boy know about the things which happend in this place 1989? I don't think so! But he was very interested in my camera and didn't want to move out of the way when I wanted to take a picture of the parlament hall.
Maybye you noticed that since Hong Kong I have night shots on my homepage. The reason is: because I got ropped in India I had to buy a new camera in Hong Kong and I bought a good one....so getting ropped can also have its good sides ;-)
Nihao from Beijing
01.06.04, Beijing, China