Beijing : Olympian dreams and Neighborly impressions

The idea of the Olympian has traveled a great distance. From the dusty, hot Hellenic mountains to the verdant plains of China it has indeed been a long journey. The Olympics has come and gone in Beijing but its legacy is scattered around the city. It is to explore this Olympian legacy of Beijing that i ventured into on my last outing in China. And also hoped to get some neighborly impressions along the way.

December 15, 2012, Saturday

Olympian dreams

The winter was settling into the vast Chinese landscape. It was a foggy morning indeed with visibility down to the few nervous meters. This was my third visit to the capital and i aimed to visit some of the other major attractions in the city.

Soon after arriving at the Beijing railway station i was onto the by now much familiar metro. The Olympic park was on the northern end of the city. In fact it stretched the famed historic axis that passed through the Tiananmen square and Forbidden city in a northern direction. Since the Olympic park was in the northernmost end of the city i had to do around four metro switches . However this showed the breadth of the Beijing metro as i seamlessly moved across the city and without once being over ground reached my destination in under half an hour!

A pall of fog had enveloped the famed Olympic 'Bird's nest' stadium. The iron twigs of the Bird's nest were vaguely visible in the fog and beckoned us to come closer for a clearer view. On going further the view became much clearer and also hit home the vastness of the Olympic park.

The Bird's nest affirms its name brilliantly with the numerous iron beams bending like twigs and forming a huge metallic nest. Even the uneven shape gives it a distinct view as opposed to a regular stadium. Although a great sporting success, the Olympics were also viewed as a kind of coup de grace over the Chinese economic miracle. And the Communist party left no stone unturned in ensuring that it was a resounding success. The Olympics were controversially awarded to Beijing even as the world was recovering from the horror that had unfolded at the Tiananmen square in the summer of 1989.

But China led by the party had moved forward in great gusto and built remarkable sporting infrastructure and also more importantly readied a crop of spectacular athletes who could win medals by the dozen.However as the Olympian tryst loomed on the horizon, the Tibetan protests around the world came in as a rude reminder to the party in early 2008. Tibet had long claimed independence from China claiming a distinct religion and tradition from mainland China. However it inevitably got caught in the fervor of the Communist revolution in 1949 resulting in the en masse displacement of the Tibetan monks along with the Dalai Lama to India. Bulldozers thundered into peaceful towns strewn with monasteries and in no time entire Tibet was under Communist rule. Thus the embers of human rights violations had been festering for over half a century and the Olympics gave the perfect opportunity to bring Chinese misdeeds into the world's attention. However the situation was rescued in time and the Olympics went on as planned.

And what an Olympics it was. It was kicked off by what is by far the most spectacular opening ceremonies in Olympic history. It was so good that even the Greek gods must have smiled at the audacious display. China had pooled in its resources in a way no other country had and delivered a spectacular ceremony.

'Friends have come from afar, how happy we are' chanted the enthusiastic bunch of drummers as China greeted the world. This Confucian aphorism symbolizing the famed Chinese warmth towards foreigners was quite an apt way to welcome the world. However it was just a start and performance after performance by the various enthusiastic troupes of singers and dancers and musicians had the world spellbound. The piece de resistance however was the lighting the torch by a former gymnast who seem to run across the ceiling of the stadium without any harness.It was one of my great TV spectacles i had ever witnessed as i watched it from the comfort of my drawing room and making a mental note of visiting the place if ever i had a chance. And as luck would have it i was there at that very place!

Apart from the Bird's nest there are various other stadiums around the Olympic park, however the pick of them would be the famous 'Water Cube' swimming stadium. This stadium which hosted the swimming and diving competitions is shaped as a huge water cube. The brilliant blue as well as the elastic appearing exterior gives the impression of a water container. With all the snow around it , it looked as if the water cube was on ice!

After roaming around the Olympic park for a while it was time to turn attention to another aspect of China, its affiliation with that great neighbor to the south.

Neighborly Impressions

India and China have been great neighbors over the centuries, sometimes reluctantly so but neighbors all the same. They have affected each other sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. Like two enormous giants they have embraced each other with passion and shared each other's genius and also at other times bickered with each other to show that the world is imperfect.

The Chinese interaction with India started with the advent of Buddhism. China itself a very godless culture relied more on Confucian thoughts as a moral compass. At this time however India was being swept by a storm called Buddhism. Arising as a rebel movement due to the increasing inflexibility and dogmatization of Hinduism , Buddhism came as a new light in the tunnel with none of the affectations that plagued Hinduism. It was devoid of Casteism  hence inclusive in its appeal and its rejection of moribund rituals attracted it to the masses. It had also shed Sanskrit the famed 'Language of the Gods' and had embraced the vernacular thereby able to reach a multitude of people. Also unlike Hinduism it was a proselytizing religion which meant that more and more people were being converted from Hinduism to Buddhism everyday. The great emperor Ashoka's embrace of Buddhism was a turning point in Buddhist history as the religion of the heretics now got state sanction. It was similar to what happened to Christianity after it was adopted as the state religion by the Romans.

The Buddhist wave was not just confined to India but spread far and wide into Asia. Within a few hundred years it had spread to Sri Lanka, China , Japan, much of Indo-China and South east Asia. Buddhism was a typically Indian idea in that it did not seek to uproot the existing cultures but instead mingled with it and took shape in the contours of those cultures. This must be one of the great integrations in history and was so much successful that you could not distinguish the additive from the base in the mixture. Even to this day if you visit Buddhist temples around Asia it will be an effort to think that Buddha was indeed Indian, it is so seamlessly meshed with those various Asian cultures.

In order to explore this Indo-Chinese synchronization i visited the Yonghe Lamasery which is the second biggest Buddhist temple in China. It was built at the time of the great Mings and originally functioned as a residence of the Chinese royalty. However with the building of the Forbidden city the royal family moved there converting it into a monastery. As i entered the place it was redolent with 'Indianness'. The various Sanskrit and Pali inscriptions, the Buddhist incantations, the incense sticks and the way of worshiping of the devotees all were reminiscent of India. It was one of my proudest moments of being an India to see a quintessentially Indian concept being respected and adhered to in such a fashion. It was not as if Buddhism went to a backward culture, in fact China was one of the leading civilizations in the world and the fact that Buddhism found a place and respect there is quite instructive. It shows the universal appeal of Indian values and culture which made by chest swell with pride.

As i explored the temple further, i came across various statues of Buddhist legend which included Gods, incarnations, teachers and monks. It was interesting to know that Buddhism had a pantheon of Gods obviously inspired by Hinduism. The center-piece of the temple was the 20m statue of the Maitreya Buddha carved out of a single sandalwood piece. Also nearby was the statue of Kasyapa Matanga, who was an Indian monk who came over to China to spread Buddhism by translating numerous Buddhist texts to Chinese.

This interaction was not just one-sided. Several Chinese monks visited India which they viewed something of a pilgrimage visiting several places of Buddhist significance and also the great universities of Nalanda and Taxila which were the Harvards and Stanfords of the day. The Chinese had a strange predilections of writing history. In fact they were obsessed about documenting history, not only theirs but even of other people's and so as it came to pass monks such as Hiueng Tsang and Fa Hein wrote most of Indian history in the first millennium. 

Confucian tryst

From the place of Indian impressions it was time to go to a place quintessentially Chinese. The Confucian temple was quite nearby to the Buddhist temple and the contrast was obvious. The Buddhist temple and its street wore a vibrant look with buildings of various colors and the steady stream of incantations. The Confucian temple street was very sober and austere quite like the man himself.

Confucius was born around 600 BC at the time of Chinese history when it was plagued with constant strife and unrest. The period was aptly called the warring states period and as the name indicates was full of chaos and civil wars among the various states. This had a huge influence on Confucius whose thoughts aspired for an orderly and peaceful society , no doubt to counter all the strife around him. His teachings took the form of classical books , poetry and analects. In each of these he expounded values such as loyalty to elders, loyalty to Emperor and those in power , filial piety , peaceful interaction among people and such things. In fact this can be viewed as the beginning of humanism and considering that China started such humanist thought almost 1500 years before the Europeans simply boggles the mind.

Unfortunately Confucius seemed to be way ahead of his time as his China was not ready for it. He searched relentlessly all through his lifetime looking for a King who would patronize him and implement his ideas and bring peace to the society. Alas no such thing happened and despite a huge body of work and a handful of disciples he died thinking himself as a failure. But his ideas were preserved by his disciples for almost 400 years and when China was ultimately united his philosophy came across as the exact idea needed by the Emperor to control his people. Hence Confucianism was institutionalized and spread all over China as the primary moral compass of the people ensuring loyalty of the people to the rulers.

The Confucian ideal of Order is deeply ingrained in the Chinese people whether they acknowledge it or not. This can be traced right through Chinese history right until today in Communist times. The thrust has always been on Order even at the expense of personal freedom and aim is always to foster common views and avoiding of all possible conflicts. This was in marked contrast to India where the individual views and diversity of views were tolerated and in fact encouraged. This fascinating clash of world view was on display during the heydays of Indo-Chinese interactions when the monks from India argued so much with each other that it shocked the Chinese who looked along in disbelief.

In fact this obsession with Order in my view is the main reason for the continuance of Communist rule in China. The communists promised a war ravaged people order and delivered it even at the cost of freedom. What also play on the Chinese mind are the periods when chaos replaced order. This happened during the Taiping rebellion in the mid 19th century which started as a Neo-Christian cult and ended up in a massive civil war resulting in the killing of millions. Soon after that there was the Boxer revolt that started out as an anti-imperialist movement but again sadly ended up in chaos and civil war and millions dead. All these events have ensured that the peaceful Chinese put up with the communists even though they pawn their freedoms in the process.

The Confucian temple opened with the statue of the great man himself and even the temple built for him was unlike any temple. Instead of gaudy idols and incense it had placards which had words written on them. The Chinese in fact believed that words had divine power and this was an example. The Chinese were cultured and knowledgeable even in their superstition! It was not the prettiest of buildings as like the man himself it was very sparse and austere. What were beautiful were the rows of pavilions outside the temple which reminded me of the Forbidden city.

The temple also contained the Imperial college which was responsible for the training of the bureaucrats who would later govern the country. The students came through to the college from a unique system. This was the Imperial examination system. According to the system all the aspiring students from various parts of China had to sit for a rigorous central examination where their knowledge in Confucian classics was tested and the students who passed it were privileged to join the college and pass out to become bureaucrats. The system was started in the first century and went on right till the 20th century when it was put to an end on account of the revolution. Its remarkable to imagine that at a time when kinship and closeness to the King were the primary ways of become a bureaucrat China had a rational system to pick them. There is an adjacent courtyard where the students who had passed out from the college had engraved their names in stone. Its amazing to look at these names which are more than 500 years old. It just showed how much the Imperial examination mattered to young Chinese.

With that my visit for the day and my Chinese trip came to an end. It was satisfying to go to a country which i had always dreamed of but seldom thought it was possible to visit!

Badaling : Something of the gods

Walls are generally a bad sign. They are barriers between people and ideas as shown in places as diverse as Berlin, Cyprus and recently Israel. However sometimes these very walls can help guard people against advancing enemies and so keep the flicker of Civilization burning. The Great wall of China is one such monumental piece of human achievement that has served this purpose for Millennia. It is to this marvel that i traveled to on my next leg of my sojourn through China.

December 8, 2012, Saturday

It was a bright cold day and the clock was striking 7. The biting cold enveloped me as soon as i came out of my hotel. I was filled with excitement at the prospect of visiting a wonder. The Great wall represents China in more ways than one, it stretches for miles just like the way China's history stretches centuries, the sheer audacity of its constructions reflects the audacity displayed by China's myriad rulers, the rise and fall of the wall over mountains represents the rise and fall of China over time.

I caught the fast train from Tianjin to Beijing and the rapid pace of the train transported me to Beijing in no time. Beijing shown brightly in the sun and i proceeded to board another train to Badaling from there. The Great wall stretches for over 5000 KM and Badaling was the most visited place on the wall. It is about 50 KM from Beijing which makes it an ideal spot for foreign tourists to visit. The train to Badaling seemed to jog across the landscape as opposed to the fast pace of its fast train cousin. The slow pace however gave me an opportunity to gaze into the Chinese countryside.

Though it wasn't quite the season for greenery, the scenery was still captivating. As this was the northern part of China it was a mixture of mountains and plains with animals grazing the grass strewn grounds and people going about their quotidian lives. After almost an hour into the journey i sighted the crepuscular outlines of the Great wall for the first time. It was rising on the back of a distant mountain, at fist it appeared like a sliver but soon became quite distinct. Just thinking about the audaciousness of the idea of the wall was mind boggling. Its tough enough constructing any building but it was insanely tough to build something that covers that much distance through various landscapes. After another hour i was at the Badaling train station.

There was a hoard of tourists disembarking from the train at the Badaling station, despite the biting cold. The air was was so thick with cold that you could almost cut it with a knife. But even a cold as severe as this was no hurdle when you are aiming to visit a wonder, so the mind simply shut off the cold even as the body struggled to. A short walk from the station led me to the entrance to what seemed like a tourist base camp with shops of various hues lined up next to each other. The entrance itself was a magnificent gate in resplendent red and painted in various colors at the top.

A little distance from the entrance brought me to the base of the section of the wall. I climbed the wall through steps carved on the niches on the side and sooner than i could realise i was on the wall. The sight that greeted me was simply outstanding. Wherever i looked - either front or back or on the sides - the wall seemed to be omnipresent snaking through the mountainous terrain. The grey of the wall blended brilliantly with the sober color of the mountain and the whole scenery appeared very picturesque.

 The premise of the wall however was to be found in history and geography. The northern part of China bordered Mongolia. Whereas a supreme culture flourished in China, Mongolia was ruled by warlords with ferocious attacking abilities. Even though China's culture rivalled the best in the world they were no match for the Mongols on the battlefield, it was like an old cultured man facing an uncouth youth. So the Mongol threat was a real and present danger right through Chinese history and generations of Chinese grappled for a solution to this Mongol menace.

At this time China was being united by a maverick called Shih Huang Di who united all the warring provinces of China and gave rise to the Qin dynasty - due to which China got its name -  in the process giving himself the exalted title of 'First Emperor'. Once the internal issues were settled the first emperor turned his focus to securing China's northern border. He hit upon the idea of building a wall spanning from the sea on the east to the Gobi desert in the west, this wall he envisioned would stop the marauding mongol armies and protect Civilization.

Although the First emperor's intentions were noble and grand they were realised on the backs of the poor labor force of peasants. The peasants were forced most of the times against their will and made to break their backs building the wall. There is also an urban myth that some of the peasants who died in the process were buried inside the wall and that their revenants still haunt the area. Well, there is always the dark side to every monument i thought, be it the great pyramids or the great wall or even the Taj Mahal, these objects of grandeur and beauty always come at the cost of the proverbial have-nots. Their names and nationalities might change but the exploitation of the haves of the have-nots is the same everywhere. At least in our modern world the laboring have-nots seem to have got a better deal and such horrendous tasks appear not to be thrust on them anymore and we can be thankful for that.

As i was in this reverie, the wall with all its beauty was snaking in front of me. Even though the Great wall was started by the First emperor the wall was made 'Great' by the Ming emperors. Even the section of the wall that i was on which is the most well preserved section of the wall was a Ming accomplishment. Since the Ming period came around the middle of the second millennium the total time needed to build the wall comes to a staggering 1500 years which is more time than one could ever imagine. Even so it shows the determination that the Chinese had to resist the Mongol invasion.

The wall was dotted at regular intervals by watch towers and it is said that during times when messages needed to be transmitted fast, smoke signals bellowing from one watchtower being picked up by the next watchtowers was the quickest way to go. It sounds quite tedious for us now but at that time it was indeed a highly practical way of getting messages across.

The irony of the Great wall is that even as it took well over 1500 years to construct it really did not serve its purpose. As a little after its completion the enemies found a chink in not the wall but human nature as they merrily bribed the soldiers guarding the wall and sneaked into China. Soon the whole of China was raided and occupied by the Manchu armies of the north resulting in the Manchu or Qing dynasty which ruled China until the revolution in 1911. The failure of the wall to protect China gave rise to a contempt of the wall, it was forgotten for all practical purposes until it was rediscovered by curious westerners. This was later picked up by the Communists as part of their agenda of reviving Chinese pride and hence the Wall was rescued back to the present times.

Whatever be the effectiveness or otherwise of the Great wall it remains a prime example of what humankind can achieve when it thinks and performs to its potential. The realization that primates who looked and sounded like me were able to build something so monumental gave me a great sense of satisfaction and pride. A shared sense of humanity enveloped me as i left with a great thought from Nehru who said...

 'Whatever gods there be, there is something godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him'.

Yes, there is certainly something godlike in man and when he applies his mind he can rival the gods and produce things like these that resemble something of the gods.