I have been briefed many times that the locals see a tourist as not dressed in cotton, polyester or wool, but a thick coat of $20 bills. The only issue therefore, is how easily, legally or nefariously, can the tourist be divested of that readily accessible bounty. Conversely when we are that tourist, it is incumbent upon us to be acutely aware of this dynamic and to act accordingly. Despite situational awareness on our part, intentional and unexpected events can still conspire against us.
I was part of a tour group in Beijing in the spring of 2001. I had a free morning and decided to do a solo trip. Sundials have been a low-grade hobby of mine for a long time (1) and I wanted to visit the Beijing Ancient Observatory that has several fine examples. With a trusty little tourist map from the hotel to guide me, I planned my trip; taxi to the observatory, walk back to and then through Tiananmen Square going south, take the subway from there to this station over here and then walk the final leg along this road back to the hotel. Keep your wits about you, it should be a safe, fun morning with minimal drama.
In reality, a cab ride in Beijing is not minimal drama, though I did arrive safely. The Beijing Ancient Observatory is on the top of an isolated section of the old city wall. (2) It has a number of fine astronomical instruments, including armillary spheres, that were designed by Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish Jesuit Missionary who had won a contest to become Director of the Observatory in 1669. Unfortunately, the day of my visit was overcast, therefore I could not take any interesting photos with the shadow of the gnomon showing the time. These wonderful instruments are conserved and displayed in their original location. However, in today’s sterile city, dwarfed and hemmed in by commercial high-rises, having these artifacts crammed together in a tiny space on top of a remnant of the city wall seemed to me to diminish their grandeur significantly.
I checked my tourist map, took the stairs back down to the street, then headed due west a mile or so, walking purposefully towards the northeast corner of Tiananmen Square. I mentioned that the sky was overcast, though it was from neither cloud nor smoke. It was dust from the Gobi Desert. The Gobi is less than 1000km from Beijing and every spring, dust storms blow in on north-west winds. The one that I experienced was comparatively mild. It was just thick enough to diminish the sun to a pale-yellow disc, sometimes obscuring it completely. We’ve seen wind-driven clouds being blown by the moon, I witnessed clouds of Gobi Desert dust scudding by the sun. Interestingly, when the obscuration was just right, I could repeatedly see a couple of dark spots on the sun, one quite large, in the 3 to 6 o’clock quadrant – sunspots.
Tiananmen Square was quiet with a few loose flocks of tourists and their shepherds here and there. I slowly meandered from the Forbidden City towards the massive Qianmen (Zhengyangmen) gate at the southern end of the square. To my right was The Great Hall of the People. I was just soaking in the location and its history. My wanderings took me by the place where, during the June 1989 “civil unrest,” an iconic, lone protestor had defied a 40-ton Type 59 tank. There was no plaque to mark the spot.
My singular presence had not gone unnoticed. I was approached by a young Chinese woman. How young? That was very difficult to judge, mid to late teens, perhaps early twenties. Probably more towards the lower end. She greeted me with a shy smile and passable English. Being polite, I replied and we established an opening conversation. I was very aware that our encounter was being keenly watched and probably recorded from a distance. After a minute or so she asked me if I liked artwork and when I said, “Yes,” she volunteered that she was a painter.
“Oh, where are your paintings?” I had a flash of cognitive dissonance, briefly recalling memories of Montmartre in Paris or basically any artsy street market in the west, and instinctively looked towards the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong expecting to see her pictures hanging on the railings around it. Nothing there. Of course not. What an absurd thought. This is China.
“They are at my apartment, just around the corner,” she gestured with her left arm. “Would you like to come and see them?”
At that moment, I was staring into a black hole from which nothing good would ever emerge.
Very politely, but firmly, I said “No thank you” and bid her farewell. I turned and, at a quicker pace, headed towards the Qianmen Gate; thankfully, she did not follow. My imagination still recoils at the plethora of negative possibilities that could have followed my acceptance of her simple invitation.
The Qianmen Gate was built to be impressive, intimidatory and impregnable. Standing in front of it, looking up, and up, and up to the top, I imagined myself in times past being a weary traveler from afar, perhaps a country peasant freshly arriving at the big city or even a foreign spy. It was all of those things. Shelley’s “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” from “Ozymandias" came to mind. China has been erecting walls to keep foreigners out for centuries and then trying to fleece them should they get in. Old habits persist.
Time to head back to my hotel. I located the subway station, only 50 yards away. Unfortunately, the entrance was in the median of a multi-lane highway with traffic zipping by on both sides at 50 mph. There were also 4-foot barriers along the sides of this road to discourage suicidal jaywalkers. There was no pedestrian crossing light. There must be a way to get there. I looked around for a police officer for assistance. Not a trace. Perhaps they were back at the station, sipping green tea, monitoring the closed-circuit cameras, looking for “hooligans” and other trouble makers, no doubt keeping an eye on me.
Then I spied him, The Sweeper. Hiding in plain sight, clad in a standard issue blue coverall, a non-descript little old man corralling dust and detritus with his broom. Could this be Lu-Tze, sent here from Discworld by The Abbott on an important mission? Only time will tell. I approached cautiously, caught his attention, smiled and said, “Ni Hao” (Hello) with a respectful nod of my head. A little startled, he clearly had not expected that my intrusion would be a part of his day. However, he rallied well and returned my greeting several times. I then initiated a pantomime to try to communicate that I needed to get to the subway station over there, I did not know how, and would he help me please. It took several attempts until he realized my predicament, then our roles were reversed and I had to decipher him. He beckoned me to follow him and a few yards away was the entrance to a public stairway heading down. With hand gestures he indicated that I should go down, along, turn left, then up. I thanked him profusely, “Shi shi, shi shi,” and with much bowing from both of us, I descended below the traffic. Despite our very different cultures, circumstances and lack of a common verbal language, we had shared a very human moment of supplication and assistance for which I was very grateful. I just hope that he did not get into any trouble for that later on from The Authorities.
I reemerged in the central median of the highway to be faced with the entrance to the subway. I quickly consulted my map. I needed to go west on this line, here, that then swung around to the north towards my hotel. I hesitated a moment, caught in two minds. Was I really going to attempt my first navigation of the Beijing Subway solo? That was my original plan – let’s do it. I paid a very modest amount and again took the stairs below street level. It was not difficult to maintain my internal compass orientation as I descended, thus I knew that any train headed westward, which was “That” direction, was the one I wanted. I drifted away from the center of the crowd, carriages are usually less full at the front and the back. The appropriate train arrived and with slight trepidation, I boarded, standing room only. At 5’ 10” I was the tallest one in my compartment, my fair hair a little beacon. At the next station I was relieved to see that the station name in both English and Chinese matched the map for my desired direction. With each station the train became less full until I could sit down. I counted down the stations on my map. Mine arrived and I got off. O.K. Up the stairs, then a quick walk of a mile or so along this road here on the map and I’m back at the hotel. I’ll have a several neat stories for my wife and the other folks at lunchtime.
To my surprise, at the top of the exit stairs, I found myself totally engulfed by a large street market. Not a tourist one either. This one was replete with bustling everyday people, fruits, vegetables, chickens destined for supper and diminutive songbirds imprisoned in tiny bamboo cages, fated to sing on balconies till the end of their days. I was not lost, but I was temporarily disoriented. Thankfully, nobody had noticed me yet. The last thing that a single tourist should do is look lost, confused and helpless – as I most probably did a little earlier in Tiananmen Square! Lesson re-learned. This was not the place to pore over my map. Which way to go? Remembering the direction of my hotel from the subway station on the map, I looked up, located the dusty sun, took a quick mental bearing to orient myself, slung my backpack over my shoulder and purposefully walked towards the north. In a few minutes I was out of the market and found the road. In fact, I found a couple of parallel multi-lane highways with fast traffic. In comparison with the real world, my now wrinkled tourist map was severely deficient. I was not far from my hotel, but frustratingly, I could not determine which road to take and in any event, none was suitable for pedestrian safety.
Time for Plan B, hail a cab. The third one was empty and stopped. From hard earned experience, our tour group had known to provide each of us a business card with the hotel information in English on one side and in Chinese on the obverse. I gave my cabbie the card, Chinese side facing him. He proceeded to hold it at extreme arm’s length and squint. Well, he’s far sighted, I thought, better to be able to see the traffic and red lights than to be near sighted, I suppose. I hope he can read. He could, and he would get me there. I hopped in. A short $2.50 ride had me back at the hotel. To walk that route would have probably been suicidal.
Yes, a fun morning, spiced with a touch of danger, but also reassuringly leavened with human kindness.
1. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/5/2102373/-Why-are-sundials-always-wrong
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Ancient_Observatory