A slight wind shakes the leaves from the north, some leaves glide cautious outlook on the table prepared in half the wide sidewalk. Spring in Beijing. I sip my Yanjing Beer, while Beppe Grill (stage name, ed) is doing the styling with the hair dryer the unfortunate ordered skewers of our hungry neighbors. It seems almost to be in Buenos Aires, at any moment I expect a curvaceous porteña quit the tobacco shop, indolence Latin American benevolent around the streets and makes a warm blanket to Beijing that jovial down in his pajamas and slippers to drink and talk with friends.
Coming from Shanghai, one almost has the impression that Beijing is a huge village: trees everywhere, almost no one honks while driving, in some areas not seen on the horizon even a tall building and the people seem much more relaxed and willing to stop talking. Mind you, Beijing is the capital of the world's most populous state, is simply cut off (just just think they are building on the seventh ring ... ring road around the city), and also here, particularly in areas of recent expansion, the office towers sprouting like mushrooms and the compound. But ... a doubt creeps. Perhaps due to the very wide streets and the unperturbed flow of people and resources, or obsessive geometric and urban planning of each element, the largest in the most minute, the fact remains that the strange feeling you have is that of a city afterlife, where the inhabitants do not deal with common and frenetic activity, unstable trading, commerce and everyday subterfuge, but repeated with the cadence unflappable precision mysterious rituals thousands of years.
along the trails and stopping in the pagodas of the Summer Palace seems almost to be in one of the elegant and balanced Chinese paintings from the imperial period, scoured every inch of ice by greedy consumers. The compact and monochrome
hutong, old popular quarters of the distant ancestors lilong Shanghai, have retreated in search of safety around the shores of the lakes Hou Hai, and any red door, guarded by the ubiquitous national flag, suggests parallel worlds and forgotten stories. Hugo Pratt would have been here countless short discount from which to start the Maltese to yet another adventure, or just him sipping tea and playing mahjong with a wise old man.
Tiananmen Square, under siege from public buildings and huge and ungainly impregnated with insightful historical mood, seems the wrinkled skin of an elephant covered with tiny flies and annoying. The heavy tail, with the regularity of a pendulum, pushes them towards the three doors giving access from the south to the Forbidden City. I walk the middle, it was once reserved only to the emperor, I would cut off his head for that. Now times have changed, and the huge portrait of Mao watches over his father's noisy swarms. The yellow color of the Emperor, and red dominate, symmetry and repetition here are absolute laws, repeated like a mantra that expands from the Buddhist temples, refreshing and shady oasis polychrome. Another law that applies is that of one-way pedestrian rather bizarre in a country where everyone behaves in the streets as if they were a large pasture, and there's no way to convince the brigade inflexible (adjective and name here highly interchangeable , ed) to make an exception to the rule (usually Italian you say ...).
Exhausted at the right point to be sacrificed, then we move to the Temple of Heaven. The complex of monuments, the temple proper follow another temple surrounded by the famous Echo Wall circular altar, where the emperors and priests held their good luck rituals.
The buildings are arranged in a rigid and traditional north-south axis and are connected by the Via Sacra high above the ground.
Evenings in the meantime we have spent in the company of Sylvia and Angela, two Italian girls that we met in Shanghai and Beijing to have stopped working. The absolute star of the dinner was the roast duck, Beijing's famous culinary specialties, accompanied by generous helpings of other tasty dishes. The evenings are often then proceed to San Li Tun, an area famous for its bars and nightlife. In this context, Beijing leaves something 'to be desired and the comparison with Shanghai is merciless.
last day following, after having a look at construction sites of the structures for the next Olympics, we go to the Midi Festival, which is the main reason why we have come to Beijing during the week of national holiday (otherwise worthy choice for someone who is of sound mind).
The Midi Festival, held for some years during the first days of May, is the largest and most important festival in China. There are five boxes of different sizes, the groups involved are Chinese and international, ranging from Scandinavian black metal Caribbean ethnic music, from punk to electronic music of China International. The average level of performance was pretty good, and some concerts have been very intense and of excellent quality. The best aspect of the festival, regardless of the music, the atmosphere is very relaxed and positive you breathe, very different people (from punksenzabbestia young ladies in heels and miniskirts, young Chinese to European metalheads vintage men) live for several days, sharing the same music and the same spaces. It is also possible to camp for four days with their own tent, but only negative, the concept of public showers struggling to make inroads. Maybe next year will
advice ... then comes forward to one of the most insidious traps that await tourists in China: the Great Wall. During the trip I find that one of the three companions of misadventures Bergamo, Danilo, already spotted sumptuous Easter dinner in Shanghai, knows my countryman Luigi, as working for the same company, and often saw in Hong Kong. There are numerous pitfalls and challenges to overcome along the way: the reckless bus with air conditioning and speaking guide at the wrong times (twenty minutes after waking up ...) and is silent when it should say something, the notorious state factories for tourists, in 'order to jade, where they teach to distinguish jade from the original plastic and glass, and ceramics that, during the tour where workers on their lunch break you free ride merrily rations between tools of the trade regardless of sleepy tourists. To our great luck we have avoided the most feared of all, that is the laboratory of Chinese traditional medicine, in which a worried doctor usually diagnostic strange diseases, disorders and imbalance of yin and yang as it happens only treatable with expensive herbs and potions who are present there.
In a sequence worthy of the legendary Fantozzi trip to Postojna Cave, then we get to the paradise of the allergies to pollen, which is the entrance to the valley of Ming Tombs: an avenue of more than five hundred meters, in which alternate rows of willows and colossal statues of animals and mythological characters, wrapped in a soft storm of white lint. This pleasant avenue is also called Sacred Way: remarkable translation of the flyer, which was indicated as Scared Way. Perhaps they wanted to warn us of danger. Hence the Chinese traditional lunch: to signal the waiter handyman, able to make pretty good espresso but also unparalleled seller of one of those items where he felt the lack: a cross between a match and a zippo. With very full belly, the guide will leave the foot of the Great Wall, Mutianyu section for accuracy. Between gasps, snorts and sweats overcome the steep climb and reach the coveted goal: the view is magnificent, every step we make this the effort made in the past centuries to build and maintain efficient, and a pair of China really wants to follow us at breakneck speed calling loudly to make a picture with us in the West. Nice to feel ten pounds of freshly caught trout from the lake and photographed for the enjoyment of future generations.
We are now the last day, and Silvia Angela invite us to breakfast in their room. The apartment, shared with two other pairs of Chinese, is located in one of the traditional settlements built for danwei (work units) in recent decades. The six-story buildings are surrounded by trees and small spaces for commercial activities or group functions, such as parking of bicycles operated by an elder of the place. It is the second time later in an apartment inhabited by Chinese, was the first time in a new compound in Shanghai, and I must say that the difference is pretty obvious: the common areas (bathroom and kitchen) apartment in the old Beijing rather leave something to be desired, but the services atmosphere enjoyed by the citizens are much more comfortable than the modern compound shanghaiese.
From their room, plastered with posters from the previous tenant soft porn heartbreaker, we move to the famous flea market Panjiayuan, where I led a long and fruitless negotiations with a seller of old drawings and paintings. Needless to say, as between the various stalls of the extensive market is everything and more, including bizarre and large stone tools for female masturbation probably of the Ming period. At that time the vibrations were still manual.
Along the way back we see the huge construction site for the new CCTV tower designed by the IMO. Now it's late, and Angela Silvia salute and return to the glittering Clacsonville.
0 comments:
Post a Comment