Beijing : On Forbidden ground

Exclusion it seems to me to be the regnant theme throughout most of history. It is the one constant thread that ran through most cultures. However the wheels of history have turned since the advent of the modern period after which the ideas of freedom,equality and inclusion are fortunately replacing this as the prevalent impulse of history. But for most of history exclusion was enforced, if it was the caste system that bred exclusivity in India then it was the feudal order  of master and  serf that plagued  Europe, color and race  too became part of the mixture later on. This notion of exclusivity had its equivalence in China too and nothing exemplified it more than the Forbidden City - the famed residence of the Royal family whose precincts were the exclusive privilege of the King alone. It is to this place that i ventured into as part of my trip through China.

December 1, 2012, Saturday

It was a cold morning in Tianjin that signaled the arrival of the last month of the year. I had readied myself to visit Beijing shielding the cold weather with brash enthusiasm. I proceeded to take the new high-speed train between Tianjin and Beijing which enables the distance of 120 Km to be traversed in under 30 minutes. The fast train was built as part of the Olympics of 2008 and has been an instant hit as it connects Tianjin to the capital city so efficiently that you feel the two cities have merged. The train was very comfortable and very modern and had a speedometer at the head to boot which duly showed the speed. 150 Kph became 200 and then 250 and then reached a peak of 292 which was really exhilarating. Within no time Beijing had arrived.

Beijing showed all the signs of a big city with massive crowds everywhere. In a way the crowds reminded me of the ones back home. The infrastructure of the city which got a boost due to the 2008 Olympic games was simply outstanding. At least the inner city is almost on the level of some of the best cities in Europe in terms of infrastructure, efficiency and cleanliness. The railway station merged seamlessly into the metro station and soon i was inside one of the metro trains precariously wedged between the denizens of the city. After what seemed like eternity i was out of the metro or rather shot out of it and soon i was out above on the ground walking the promenade en route to the Forbidden city.

The first building that came on view was the Chinese communist party office. It was a dour, gray building symbolizing raw power. Apart from the bright red Chinese flag there was not much of color on the edifice. I continued for a bit longer on the promenade and soon the ramparts of the Forbidden city were visible, painted in bright Chinese red. A little further down and the Tianmanen gate - the magnificent entrance to the forbidden city - became visible in all its glory. Opposite to the gate was the equally famous Tiananmen square which with its vast expanse is the largest public square in the world. The square itself is surrounded by lot of buildings of the Chinese state including a mausoleum of Mao Zedong where the Chairman's preserved body gets a steady stream of visitors everyday. In the middle of the square is the Monument to the people's liberty celebrating the victory of the Communist party over the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) in 1949 which lead to the formation of the People's republic.

Magnificent as the square was it dimmed in the presence of the Tiananmen Gate. The Gate was the first of the numerous gates that comprised the palace complex of the Forbidden city. It was in bright red color and the magnificent wooden roof blazed with bright shades of red, green and blue. There was a slew of Red flags dotting its exterior , however surprisingly these were not the Chinese national flags but the red flag of the communist revolutionary left. The most noticeable feature of the gate was the huge portrait of Chairman Mao which hung in the middle over the grand central entrance. The Chairman seemed to fix his gaze on me as i enthusiastically galloped around the gate. The Tiananmen gate symbolizes power. In ancient times it represented the supremacy of the King, for a brief while after the overthrow of the monarchy a portrait of the KMT general Chiang Kai Shek was hung in the same place symbolizing the nationalists' seizure of power and eventually when the communists won power in 1949 and chased the KMT to Taiwan it was duly replaced by Mao's own portrait. So the exterior of the Tiananmen gate is almost a physical canvas on which the history of China gets written on.

After enjoying the exterior it was time to make a move inside. I proceeded to the entrance and as i did i was filled with a sense of awe about the place i was entering. If i were to be at the same place a 100 years earlier i would have been barred from entering and must have settled with just a fleeting glimpse. For centuries the precincts had been the sole preserve of the King and his assorted coterie of wives, concubines and eunuch ministers with the rest of the people actively forbidden from entering it which helped coin the moniker 'Forbidden city'. With these thoughts in mind i passed through the gates and i was finally on Forbidden ground!

One of my earliest memories of the Forbidden city was watching the famous movie 'The Last Emperor' based on the last days of Imperial China on a grainy black and white TV set. The movie came around midnight as English movies used to in those pre-liberalization days and i had stayed awake to watch it,i did not understand much though and slept mid-way through and was really angry with myself the next day for dosing off. So it was unreal to be at the same place and roam the same courtyard the young Emperor Pu Yi roamed in the movie. What must the little boy have felt i thought to have ascended the throne so young and to have caught up in the churning of history and losing his crown and driven away from the palace by the KMT nationalists and eventually dying as a lowly laborer  It must be one of the great tragic stories of the 20th century but history is sometimes like a force of nature and puny human beings are powerless to stop it.

I was always aware of the 'Forbidden' part but seldom thought of the 'City' part of the name. Once inside i realized why it was called a 'City'. The inside was really huge and gives one the feeling of being a city all by itself. There were bewitching ramparts and rooftops and courtyards wherever the eyes set their sight. There is no other country in the world which is connected to a color as much as China is to the color red, the color symbolizes good luck in Chinese culture and it was all pervasive within the forbidden city. Legend says that there are 9999 rooms within the palace complex and the figure seemed fantastic to me before i had been there but now i felt it could well be true , such was the expanse of the complex. Some of the rooms had yellow roofs which indicated the rooms used by royalty and the others had green or blue roofs denoting the rest of the people.

As indicated by the name, the number of denizens of the Forbidden city was quite limited. It was a very exclusive list. The King and his various wives and concubines and the eunuchs who ran the court were the only people inside the forbidden city. The eunuchs were a curious lot who owing to their impotence were

deemed to be 'harmless' and hence gained lot of power within the court , so much so that it became a quite sought after position. From here the Emperor of the middle kingdom as he was used to being called ruled over a large swathe of land with a huge multitude of peoples making him probably the most powerful man on earth. This feeling of being powerful also lead to hubris especially towards the end of imperial China, this is illustrated by a great story where an envoy who brought a request for trade from the English King was chastised by the Chinese emperor who asked the English king to '...tremblingly obey and show no negligence...' which must rate as one of the most arrogant utterances in history. Well such hubris met its nemesis soon enough as in a little over 50 years China lost the opium wars to England and had to sign away Hong kong along with other humiliating concessions.Its a lesson from history that irrespective of whether its a person or a country its best not to be arrogant and always stay humble.

As i moved from room after room, the splendor of the palace was increasing. In one of the rooms the royal throne was kept upon which Emperor sat while his court as well as foreign visitors kowtowed to him. Although China had lot of dynasties the Forbidden city is the work of mainly the Ming and the Qing dynasties with the Ming period like its name being the brightest period of China's history. Ming China produced some of the most sophisticated pieces of art in the form of paintings, porcelain and poetry. There was a room inside which exhibited some of them and it was simply spell-binding. What needs to be stressed is at the same period Europe was undergoing its Renaissance and yet Chinese art equaled and sometimes beat it. The Qings who replaced the Mings though originally not Chinese and who came from Manchuria quickly assimilated with the Chinese and became complete Chinamen and gave rise to the pigtails which was their way of marking out the Chinese as 'occupants' , how ironic is it then that the pigtails which was a mark of servitude came to represent Chinamen around the world. This way of assimilating peoples and cultures is something that China shares with India as even India has this capacity to absorb. I guess the fact that both India and China show little insecurity regarding their glorious cultures gives them the confidence to absorb external elements without any hindrance.

Finally after a long procession through the palace complex i entered the royal gardens. Though it was not verdant enough due to the winter it was still pleasant to walk through the gardens. What caught my eye was the beautiful pavilion in the middle with its circular base and multi-layered roof. One of the features of Chinese and indeed far eastern architectures is the extensive use of wood. Wood being as soft and malleable as it is lends a creative flourish that stone and metal can rarely provide resulting in such marvelous structures.

After exiting the royal gardens it was time to exit the forbidden city. It had been quite an experience for me to actually visit the place which i had only imagined in my mind and its memories will stay for a long time to come.

The Road to Cathay

In the Middle ages when Europe was in the doldrums and America was yet to be discovered two great cultures dominated the world space: India and China. They were the super powers of their age. It was the mission of every traveller and tradesman to set his sails to these two lands and harvest the dividends of opportunities they offered. 'The Road to Cathay' as Marco Polo famously used to call his journey to China was a turn of phrase that was prevalent everywhere as the great land beckoned people around the world.

In a way the narrow label of 'Country' does not befit places like India and China. It seems too inexpensive a box to place somethings so precious. I have always identified these two great places more as 'Lands'. The word Land encompasses something of a larger area in the mind space containing the exotic, the enchanting  and the enigmatic. It is to this great Land of China or Cathay as the medieval Europeans called it to which i set my sails.

Imagine a culture that gifts the world among other things Tea, Silk, Paper, Gunpowder, Compass, Printing and Porcelain. Even inventing anyone of the above would have been enough of an achievement but inventing all of them and some more really boggles the mind. Apart from these the peaks to which artistic and aesthetic beauty were taken to in the various fine art forms also confounds one. Also unique among the ancient cultures it was the only one that summarily dismissed the idea of divinity and emphasised on rationality rather than superstition, any culture that can do that so early in history had to be special. Add to this a turbulent and interesting recent history and its comeback into mainstream world affairs it does make for a very interesting place to observe and commentate on.

My earliest memories of China were from the late 80s as i remember Rajiv Gandhi - the then Indian Prime Minister - along with his dainty Wife Sonia strolling through the vast expanses of the Forbidden City. This was a historic visit as it was the first time in more than a quarter century an Indian PM met his counterpart. It was indeed the beginning of the thawing of the relations between the two great neighbors. The 25 years interregnum was enforced due to the frosting of relations due to the Sino-Indian war of 1962 during the time of Rajiv Gandhi's grand father Nehru. These 25 years were an unusual impasse as it went against the grain of history wherein for millennia the two great Asian giants had been culturally bonded together , first by Buddhism and later on by a fraternal anti-imperialist mindset.However Rajiv Gandhi was determined to reverse this back flow of history and set its flow in the right direction. However the thawing has ebbed and flowed over the years and even as we come to our times the two giants if not dancing together are at least holding their hands in peace.

There were other brushes with China later on especially when reading Marco Polo's accounts of it. During the same time i remember a great documentary on Discovery Channel i think about China and its traditions that completely changed my view of it and awakened me to its glorious civilization. A little later i remember viewing the Oscar winning 'Crouching tiger hidden tiger' movie which again increased my fascination with Chinese culture, so much so that i went onto read a whole lot about Chinese culture and history.

The travel to China came as bit of a surprise and at the end of a roller coaster 'am-i-going-am -i-not' few months. At one point the trip looked certain to be cancelled so finally when i came to know that the trip was back on, i was happier than ever. Once the trip was confirmed the mind leapt back to the memories of the place in your mind space and dug up all the hidden remnants. Finally when the day of departure came it was a feeling of deja-vu as this was my fourth foreign trip and brought back memories of the previous ones.

This time however i was flying East. The first flight was till Chengdu which is in the center of China. As the flight got underway my thoughts went back to Ancient times when intrepid Buddhist monks from both India and China travelled several harsh months and miles braving the weather, the mountainous terrains and brigands to reach their destinations. How strange is it that nowadays lesser mortals like me get to cover the same journey comfortably in a matter of hours!

Finally it was time to get down at Chengdu in the overcast cold morning. When thinking of Chinese cities i usually thought them to be coastal cities either on the north or south of the country's eastern coast. So i was surprised to find that Chengdu was quite a big city even though it was miles away from the eastern coast. The airport seemed to match the size of the city with the number of departure ports running into 180. Used to as i was with port numbers in their double digits this number was astounding. What made it even more painful was the fact that our port was 160. As i walked through the airport i began to realise how big it was.

The exoticness of the place was unmistakable. The people looked different, and spoke a radically different tongue, the signage and shop hoardings were in a different script. That is something i dread as well as i look forward to on visiting a foreign country which is far removed from India. Its as if the grammar and rules of life that i am used to in India do not hold in such places and i needed to learn newer rules of life as it were. China was certainly one such place, it seemed more exotic than Europe where at least there was a semblance of familiarity. One thing striking at first was the fact that there were hardly any people on view which seemed a bit ironic since this was the most populous country in the world. But the people started to come later on and it became a quite noisy place so that it resembled India in a way.

Next i boarded by flight to my final destination, Tianjin. The journey was quite uneventful except for the bland airline food which made me miss the food back home. On arrival at Tianjin, it seemed to be a much bigger city than i thought. There was a number of construction sites dotted around the city proving the economic boom in China. I was surprised at how much similar to India the place looked. The people looked genuinely cheerful and wanted to help us but the language barrier prevented any real interaction from happening which was a real shame. The sense of urgency and the feeling of things moving around was also there similar to India.

The journey had just started and promised a lot more in the days ahead. More adventures abound in the next few days and i was eagerly looking forward to them.