Imperial China – Temple of Heaven in Beijing

The day after my arrival to China, my former colleague Abbas took me sightseeing. To the southeast of the Southern Gate of Beijing City lies an extensive ancient garden. When overlooked from the sky, it is circular in the north and square in the south, a pattern symbolic of the ancient belief that heaven was round and the earth square. A stone-paved main road is running from the north to the south. In the south there is the white Circular Mound Altar; in the north there is a round main hall with blue tiles and golden roofs; to the west of the main road there are exquisite square palaces.

It was a beautiful and hot summer’s day, perfect to see the Temple of Heaven. Built by the Emperor Yongle during the Ming Dynasty in the early 15th century (1420), this was where the emperor renewed his mandate with heaven at every winter solstice, offered sacrifices to Heaven and prayed for a plentiful harvest.

Abbas at Zhaoheng Gate (South Gate)


Me at the Circular Mound Altar

In 1530, people offered to Heaven and Earth separately, so the Circular Mound Altar was built. It has three terraces made of Artemisia leaf gray marbles. In the center of the upper terrace there is a raised round marble called “Heavenly Center Stone” or “Supreme Ultimate Stone” with a special acoustic resonance so that when you stand on it and speak it gives a loud and resonant effect “as of speaking with God”.

First the emperor would enter the Imperial Vault of Heaven (the smaller circular hall on the photos below) where he meditated and prepared himself. Then he crossed the Danbi Bridge, to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests with its 3-tiered blue-tile roof. Both the Vault and the Hall of Prayer are round buildings enclosed by square courtyards symbolizing the journey from earth to heaven by the emperor.

Imperial Vault of Heaven

Danbi Bridge - The path is one meter high at its southern end and rises to four meters high at the northern tip, signifying that it is stepping up towards heaven.

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

Me in traditional costume at the Temple of Heaven

China – The Beijing salsa scene

Due to a huge workload and many late nights at the office the past few months I haven’t had much time, nor energy, to go salsa dancing. But every time I’m abroad, I try to find some time to test the local dance scene. It’s such a great way to relax, meet new people and get a good work-out! I simply had to try the salsa scene in Beijing and looked for some tips on the web.

On the day of my arrival – after having slept 9 or 10 hours at the hotel! – I called the owner of Latinos, supposedly the premier salsa club in Beijing. It was Saturday night so the club was open till 4am and I decided to take a cab there and try it out. Cab fares are cheap in Beijing. The 10-minute drive only cost me RMB 17 (roughly equivalent to the same amount in Swedish Kronor, i.e. approx 17 SEK). The club was located in a historical building on Dong Si Shi Tiao 22. They had a nice bar and a good, wooden dance floor. There was no cover charge and the drinks cost RMB 40, so it was rather cheap.

A 9-piece band from Venezuela plays every night except Mondays (when they have other theme nights like Swing, Tango) but since I arrived about 2am I came too late to catch them. The band plays from 9pm during weekdays and 10pm during weekends. The band alternates with local and international salsa DJs. But nobody spoke English – well, the bartender at least understood “Vodka Tonic” – so I had to get by with my limited Spanish, which wasn’t so much of a problem in a salsa club where most visitors are Latin anyhow. There were few people and I only danced with a few different guys: a Colombian that thought he was God’s gift to women although he couldn’t keep the beat, a couple of very nice guys from Venezuela called Jorge and Javier (see picture to the right) and some Cuban guy. Unfortunately I didn’t see any Chinese dancing that night.

I had more luck with the level and quality of the dancers on the following Wednesday night. Two of the most well-renowned dance companies in Beijing are Phoenix Dance Company and Sunbeam Latin Dance International, see below flyers. Representatives from both of these dance companies were present at Latinos this Wednesday night.

Every Wednesday there is an “After Work Salsa Party: Let's Dance Mambo @ LATINOS”, which is a special mambo night with Phoenix-Dance Company. As I arrived this particular Wednesday, there was already high intensity on the dance floor, so I took a moment to watch the dancers and figure out which ones were any good that I should ask to dance. ;-) I quickly saw one high-quality mambo dancer emerge from the rest and as soon as he became “available” I asked him to dance with me. It was a very good pick, since it was “Mambo Jack” himself. I didn’t recognize him, but when he heard I’m from Stockholm, he told me he had visited Hot Salsa Weekend (the annual Stockholm salsa congress) a couple of years ago to perform and instruct. Small world!

On Friday night, I decided to visit the other salsa club in Beijing that I had heard of. The Salsa Caribe Latin Club, located at 4 Gongti Bei Lu (across the street from the Loft on San Li Tun, only a few blocks from Beijing City Hotel where I was staying) in the Chaoyang District in Beijing, is open every day but is best on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s open at least until 2:30am but longer if enough people stay. Check out some cool bartender tricks from Salsa Caribe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRiiO6-Po0. The band Sabor Latino from Venezuela plays every night. The place was packed and the band in full swing as I walked in.

The club offers the largest hardwood dance floor in the city. It claims to also be the largest salsa club in China, and the place to be seen if you are a salsero. I was invited to join a table with a couple of Italian girls whom in their turn knew some other people so I ended up having a fun evening. I was very surprised when one of the Chinese guys, Richard, all of a sudden started speaking Swedish to me. It turned out that he had lived in Gothenburg in Sweden and studied at Chalmers University of Technology ten years ago so I was quite impressed that he remembered the language so well. I also got to know DJ Diack a little and when the club started emptying he invited me to dance Zouk (a music style originating from the Caribbean islands Martinique and Guadeloupe) with him since I seemed to be the only person at the club who had actually been to Paris and enjoyed this type of dance.

Some photos from my night at Salsa Caribe are pictured below.

Making new friends at Salsa Caribe

Two Italian girls (Elisa and Sara), a Cuban and Richard Li

DJ Diack and I

China - My visit to the Great Wall and one of the Ming Tombs

Time flies…I’ve been extremely busy since I came home from China but here is finally one more of my planned reports from the China trip in May.

The Great Wall of China is in reality not one wall; it consists of a series of walls totaling some 6400 km, some of which date back to the 5th century BC! Wikipedia contains some great background info and history, so I will not try to pretend I know better…

I got help hiring a private driver for the day and set off to see the Great Wall. I really wanted to go to one of the older parts of the Wall to avoid tourists and be able to take in a more ‘genuine’ feeling of the ancient China. But according to the driver, the roads were very poor and he recommended the Wall at Badaling. The Badaling Great Wall is located in Yanqing County, 60 km northwest of Beijing. It took about 2.5 hours to drive there from my hotel in east central Beijing. It was a very hot summer’s day, around 35° Celsius.

As he dropped me off at Badaling I realized he had taken me to the most tourist-dense place imaginable. The Great Wall at Badaling has apparently been awarded Guinness records for the Great Wall scenic spot receiving the most tourists and the most state leaders, whatever that’s worth… There were probably thousands of tourists from all over the world climbing the sometimes quite steep wall and there was hardly a single square meter free from people. Sigh…

What’s more, the Wall was really fortified or even partly reconstructed in the last decades here at Badaling. However, the view over the green hills and surrounding mountains was absolutely breathtaking (see photos below). Despite the large crowds of tourists I thoroughly enjoyed walking around on the Wall and imagining historic times.

I attracted a small fan club of little old ladies that followed me around wherever I went. When I stopped to look at the view, they stopped. When I started walking again, they were always only a few steps ahead or behind me. It was slightly disturbing at first but then I saw that they were smiling and looking at me quite fascinated, so I found it kind of endearing. Then all of a sudden, they asked if they could take pictures of me. So I had to pose with each of them while the others snapped away on their cameras. My only guess is that they had never seen red hair before.

Two of my fan club

China’s hosting of the Olympic Games with the motto “One World – One Dream” was promoted also here.

After a few hours’ sweating and drinking lots of water in the heat, I was ready to head back to my driver. I decided to try the ‘Sliding Cars’ down the mountain, a form of plastic-seat rollercoaster which was operated with a man at the front with a manual break…

Sliding cars: “Here we’re coming down the mountains, here we come (toot toot toot…)” – remember the cartoon character Goofy (‘Långben’ in Swedish) in Mickey Mouse’s camping trip?! Our down-trip was just as bumpy and hazardous but the driver seemed blissfully unaware and relaxed...

I thought it would take me back to the Badaling center where I entered to climb the Wall but it took me to the other side of the mountain and I ended up next to a zoo with bears.

Visiting Ding Ling Tomb, one of the famous Ming Tombs

The Ming Dynasty had 16 emperors who reigned for a total of 277 years (1368-1644). All the tombs of the Ming emperors, except for that of Emperor Zhu Yunwen, are still preserved today. Together with the tombs for posthumously crowned emperors, there are 18 tombs altogether, scattered in Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei provinces as well as Beijing’s Changping District. Read more here>>

Spread out over a total area of about 80 km² (click on the photo below for an enlarged map overview), located in a broad valley to the south of Tianshou Mountain (Longevity of Heaven) some 50 km from Beijing, 13 of these imperial mausoleums can be found, along with seven tombs for imperial concubines and one for a eunuch – together forming a complex called the Imperial Ming Mausoleums. Construction of the Imperial Ming Mausoleums began in 1409 and was completed more than 200 years later when the Ming Dynasty collapsed in 1644.

My driver took me to one of them, the Ding Ling Tomb, which was excavated and opened to the public in 1957. It is located just east of Mount Dayu. Here you also find the Ming Tombs Museum, which is one of the renowned ancient imperial tombs museums in China. Ding Ling is the first imperial tomb excavated so far in accordance with the state’s plan since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It’s the joint tomb, constructed in 1584, of the thirteenth emperor Zhu Yi Jun of the Ming dynasty and his two empresses.

Zhu Yi Jun (1563-1620) – see painting to the right (sorry, it's a little blurry) – came to the throne when he was only 10 years old and reigned until he died at the age of 58. Construction of the Ding Ling Tomb began already in the 12th year of his reign and was completed after six years. The Ding Ling complex covers over 180,000 m², see photos below. The models of the whole complex and the tomb, or Underground Palace, as it was called, gave a rather good impression of the size of these imperial mausoleums. It was widely held in the Ming Dynasty that although dead physically, a person's soul remained, still having human needs. Consequently, the 13 emperors' tomb complexes look like imperial palaces.

Model of Ding Ling Tomb

The Underground Palace

The Underground Palace was located inside a circular wall overlooking the valley and surrounding hills.

However, I must say that I was disappointed. I felt there was not much to see. The mausoleum compound looked rather colorless and dusty and the Underground Palace itself – composed of five halls which upon excavation in the 1950’s unearthed over 3,000 cultural artifacts (not sure where all of those are today but some of them were exhibited in the Ding Ling / Ming Tombs Museum on site, see photos below of the empress coronets) – more looked like a concrete bomb shelter about 25 m below ground. Maybe I’m being unfair, but it had little resemblance with what I in my imagination had compared to Pharaoh Tombs in Egyptian pyramids or Catholic crypts in cathedrals in Europe. Since I’ve been to Japan once and was extremely impressed with all their imperial palaces and temples, sadly many Chinese remnants are just dusty and pale in comparison.

Empress crowns with Phoenixes and in gold

If time had permitted, I would have liked to go the center of the valley where you can apparently walk down the Sacred Way (Shendao) or “spirit path” flanked by large stone statues of animals and humans on the Avenue of the Animals. If you want to find out more, there is a very interesting read about the architectural lay-out and spiritual meaning around the imperial tombs here>>.

China – first impressions of a modern Beijing

I have been to China for the first time in my life. Beijing is one of the four great ancient capitals of China (Xian, Nanjing and Luoyang are the other three). Beijng is today recognized as the cultural, educational and political center of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), proclaimed in 1949, whereas Shanghai and Hong Kong dominate in economic fields.

It has taken me a couple of weeks since I came home to gather my thoughts from all the experiences and I will divide my travel report from China into several parts. Below you’ll find my first consolidated impressions of the work related part, of Beijing as a city, the Chinese people and local customs. In my next parts, I’ll take you with me on some of my sightseeing excursions and salsa clubbing.

I was staying for five nights at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel Beijing, a fancy hotel just outside the east Third Ring Road, and for three nights at Beijing City Hotel which was more centrally located.

A breath of China
You can try and learn some Chinese characters (and associated culture) by visiting http://zhongwen.com/m/hello.htm

Browsing the web for other travelers' comments can be quite enlightening. "Lasse G" from Sweden says that Teresa Teng (Deng Li Jun) is one of the most popular singers in China (or at least was in 2005). Click here to hear one of her songs and catch a breath of China - quite nice, actually!

Sony Ericsson Developer World China launch
The reason for my trip was the official launch of Sony Ericsson Developer World China with a fancy launch event for developers and close to 50 Chinese media in mid-May. This was an interesting happening in comparison to all developer events I’ve been to representing my company in the US, UK and other parts of Europe so far. The Chinese are very pompous and ceremonial in their ways and this was considered a formal opening of business operations of the new program launch. A famous anchor man from Beijing TV, their big TV channel, was the moderator and presenter at the event and all the foreign guests (including myself), technology partners and the company’s Chinese senior executives were prominently lined up on the front row with a name sign placed in front of us. There was lots of talk about "building bridges for a successful future", "let's join hands for mutual success", "achieve win-win" etc and "Thank you, Mr So and So, for your infinite wisdom and expertise". I couldn't help but being somewhat amused.

After some opening presentations there was a formal launch ceremony with the elevation of a golden plaque sign with the logo and date (May 15th) of the official launch of the Developer World program in China on it, paper fireworks and a photo opportunity for all attending media in front of the back drop on stage. These photos showed up in a lot of the media coverage after the event.


Launch ceremony



I was there as the official spokesperson for our global program and also conducted a couple of group interviews with ten reporters from a mix of IT, telecoms and programmer publications.


Here I am with my boss Ulf and my Chinese colleague Joyce at the launch event

After three days of working till midnight I finally got a few days off to explore Bejing and its surroundings.

Shopping
A lot of foreigners come to China to shop like crazy. These days, there are even long-weekend, direct charter flights to Beijing from Stockholm, so that Swedes can go on shopping esprits. I was taught by my friend and former colleague Abbas and his Tai Tai (=wife) Christina, who have been living in Beijing for the past two years now, that bargaining is customary at Chinese clothing and silk markets. If you can get the price down to 1/6 of the original price mentioned by the seller you have done a very good job. You should never pay more than 1/3 of the price. They took me to Pearl Market, where they showed me the ropes and I made some really good bargains on silk bed-covers, table cloths and dresses. They also took me to a place where you could buy fake (but good-quality) Omega, Swiss Patek Philippe and Gucci watches.


Drink stand outside Pearl Market


Abbas & Christina at a Sizzler’s


Me at the Sony Ericsson shop in a modern department store


Band playing in a department store

The day before my departure, I went to the Yashow Clothing Market which was very close to the Beijing City Hotel and I managed to do some decent bargaining on my own. Normally I hate bargaining but it turned out to be quite fun, like a challenging sport which gave me a few good laughs. The sales persons always try to tell you that your counter offers will not even cover their manufacturing costs (“C’mon, no joking!”) in order to make you up the bid, and sometimes even pretend to be angry, but no matter what your rock-bottom offer is and you turn around and start walking away, they almost always call you back and eventually say ok. If they don’t, you at least knew you have reached as low as they can or will ever be willing to go – anything above it is just a game. I am sure they have a very good profit margin on what they sell to all the foreign tourists who come to Beijing for the first time, and I am sure I paid over-price on a lot of the things I bought, but nonetheless it was good fun and much cheaper than back home.

Yashow Market

The Place – a new shopping area with one of the world’s largest outdoor electronic advertising boards. As you look up, you will see swimming sharks and dolphins in the “ceiling” – very cool!

Preparing for the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008
As a foreigner you may be a little disappointed to see so few traces of ‘the old China’ in its capital, and apparently many older buildings have been torn down to make room for new, modern buildings and skyscrapers, like the World Trade Center with its ice-skating rink below.

World Trade Center

There are a lot of construction sites and restoration work going on in Beijing right now. This is part of the overall face-lift that the city is undergoing in preparation for the Olympics next year. Similar to the Japanese, it’s very important to the Chinese not to lose face. One interesting aspect of this is to keep up appearances, and in construction business it means putting up a facade with a nice glass front and lots of shiny windows so that people won’t be able to tell that the building is just an empty concrete skeleton that may never be finished, or that it takes years before it’s completed – that is, if investors are long-term enough to see the project through, which apparently is not always the case. It seems a little strange to me that the finances for a whole building project have not been secured before the actual construction work starts. This seems to indicate very short-term thinking.

SoHo Beijing

I’ve heard of the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” in Italy but didn’t think that anyone would be adventurous enough to construct a building that is leaning from the beginning… On the photo below you can see one of many construction sites in Beijing and an example of some new, innovative architecture. These two towers are leaning towards each other and there will be a walking bridge between them to offset gravity and keep them from falling. Interesting – hope it works…

The leaning towers of Beijing
Modern business center

In some back streets you can still see some remnants of the days when millions of Chinese bicycled to work every day, but the streets which have several lanes and broad sidewalks are not new and are probably so broad thanks to the bicycle history when a lot of room for all the people to pass was needed. Today, there is a growing middle-class which can afford to buy brand new cars. There are few cities in the world where you see so many new cars of the latest model.

There are about 16 million inhabitants of Beijing. Unless they work for an international company and are used to traveling abroad or entertaining foreign guests, the Chinese are in general very poor at English, as can be see from the photo below.


The merchant handing me this business card must have used one of those online automatic translation tools which typically turns text into incomprehensible nonsense English

Taxi drivers don’t know any English apart from “thank you” and “bye” so you have to hand over a written note or a business card with the destination address in Chinese characters in order to be understood.

I can’t really blame the Chinese for not knowing any English since I don’t know any Chinese. The only few words I’ve managed to learn and remember from my 8 days in China are (and apologies if the sounds are not written correctly in Latin characters):

• Ni hao = Hi / Good day
• Xie xie = Thank you
• Bei = North (like in Beijing = Northern Capital)
• Xi = West (like in Xi’an =Western City; but it was actually the eastern terminus of the Silk Road)
• Dong= East (like in Dongdu = Eastern Capital; old name of Luoyang)
• Nan = South (like in Nanjing = Southern Capital)
• Li = Street

I had heard stories about the, in Westerners’ opinions, generally bad table manners of the Chinese with loud slurping, burping and passing gas as a normal part of enjoying a good meal, but I was glad to discover that this must be a myth. One interesting observation I made, though, was that Chinese don’t push in the chairs when leaving a restaurant; they just stand up and leave. When calling on the waiter or waitress, Westerners typically sit silently and wait to catch the eye of the person waiting the table and then discretely sign at him or her to come to the table and take an order or bring the check, whereas the Chinese call out in loud voice and wave their arms, and if the waiter or waitress does something wrong or is too slow to serve, they simply yell at them. It seems that the service trade is part of an ancient hierarchical structure where the waiting staff is treated as inferior of the customer and that it’s accepted behavior for the customer to demonstrate this difference in social status in various ways. Of course this attitude also exists in the West but it’s not quite so blatant or widespread. Also, it’s not customary to tip in China, which is quite a relief for a Swede who finds the American way of having to tip for just about everything in the US somewhat tedious and discomforting (because you never know how much and you’re uncomfortable because the receiving party never seems to be grateful, just expects to be tipped without having to do anything extra for it).

The government has started campaigns to encourage the Chinese to improve their English language skills and general manners in time for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, of which they are a very proud hosting nation. My boss had someone jump into his cab from the airport asking to practice his English during the ride, and apparently just went back and forth to the airport talking to different Westerners to improve his language skills. Talk about determination.


Count-down to the 2008 Olympics at a local police-station


The five mascots of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing

The Chinese are quite entrepreneurial and are always trying to find ways of making a quick buck. However, they don’t strike me as the most long-term planners. I am not sure if this is due to some historic reason and inherent culture, or just due to new opportunities of the recent economic transformation which people simply don’t trust will last. The Chinese are very fond of gambling and various sorts of lotteries. In an effort to make people pay taxes and report business operations, official Beijing parking and taxi companies use receipts which have a silver-marked scratch area. By demanding a receipt and scratching the silver marked area, you can win a cash award or read the words for ‘Thanks’.


Beijing taxi receipt


Going out in Beijing
People away from home seem to always bundle together and find their own water holes where they can bond with other foreigners and feel more like home. Expatriates (meaning Westerners) in Beijing are no different. During the second part of my stay in China, I was staying at the very central Beijing City Hotel. On the street corner there was a very popular pub and nightclub called The Den. This was a loud place where you could go to enjoy a beer, a mixed menu of fish ‘n chips, Italian pasta, pizza, Chinese pork and vegetables with sweet and sour sauce or an American steak while watching soccer, American football, basketball or baseball on TV.


Even though I am usually keen to try more local food and customs when I travel, as you can guess by now, even I succumbed to the Western temptation, perhaps due to the fact that it was 50 meters from my hotel entrance and just too convenient after a whole day of exhausting sightseeing, or perhaps because being in a country where you can’t make yourself understood and you’re left out of regular conversations make you more tired than you realize and you just want to go someplace where you are among ‘your own kind’. Or perhaps I just couldn’t resist the sign with the Swedish flag talking about Viking Football hanging on the outside wall of The Den, naturally speaking to my Scandinavian patriotism…

Luckily for me, on my last night in Beijing Abbas took me to a typical Chinese restaurant with excellent home cooking. I had a Tiger beer and thoroughly enjoyed several courses of very well-prepared food; broccoli with garlic, sweet pickled cucumber, potato shreds, pork with peanuts and parsley, omelet etc.

Abbas at a Chinese "home restaurant"

It was good to walk off all the food later and we went for a drink on San Li Tun Street which was very close to the hotel. On a street with several popular bars like The Loft, Comfort and Rock Roll young people go to party. In this area you also find Beijing’s biggest salsa club, Salsa Caribe, which I’ll tell you more about in one of my other reports.