A chaotic journey across half the planet by train — where bad planning collides with blind luck and sheer stubbornness keeps the story moving.
Chapter One: Their Last Meal
I’ve only been here a few times and never as a tourist. Beijing is full of tourists. This wouldn’t be odd except for the fact that the overwhelming majority are clearly Chinese domestic travelers. We caucasian tourists are a rarity. Our small Bed and Breakfast style hotel in one the old Hu Tong alleys not far from the Forbidden City has only three other guests. Two are Chinese families. Close to the hotel, a small street closed to motor traffic is at once ancient and trendy. High end boutiques, bars and cafés are built into 400 year old stone shop fronts. The clientele and window shoppers are young and hip. They travel in pairs or small groups of friends now. Here we don’t see the little armies with matching T-shirts and caps dutifully following the red pennant held by a miniscule tour leader with a surprisingly loud voice, even before amplification by the bull horn.
For a thousand years, only the most privileged and well connected could get past the moats and massive gate houses of the Forbidden City. Now anyone with 60 Renmenbi (literally: “the people’s money”) can drop by for an ice cream cone and a stroll through the gardens and squares where castrated security once protected the virtue of the emperor’s concubines from hungry ministers, functionaries and visiting diplomats. And the people exercise their rights. The most famous tourist destination + capital of the world’s most populated country + recently discovered domestic tourism =Huge Crowds. It doesn’t help that we managed to design our own walking tour to go against the flow of traffic.
Our swim up-stream against the masses continues through the south gate, under the nose of the Great Helmsman and along Tiananmen Square. The expansive spaces, monolithic buildings and visible security really are impressive. I wonder if these symbols of power inspire pride or fear amongst visitors. I suppose that depends on your point of view and reason for visiting. And I am sure the same was true when the Ming emperors where laying out their massive squares and palace foundations.
Something else has changed in the last 10 or 20 years. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely but I have narrowed it down to 3 possibilities. 1: People have become hard of hearing in China. 2: They are more impatient than they used to be or 3:My Chinese sucks now.
I swear it can’t be the last. I know exactly what I want to say and words come out of my mouth to but no-one seems to understand much of what I am saying. This includes the smartly dressed wait staff in the most highly rated Bejing Duck Restaurant in town: Da Dong Kao Ya. They bring us two small beers instead the one large one I clearly asked for.
Da Don Kao ya is stupendous. In addition to a celebrity chef (Mr. Dong) and a super chic décor, Da Dong has a third force in its well planned marketing attack: Beijing leanest ducks. I love the cleverness of this ‘positioning’. Like all of greatest meat dishes in the world, the secret to Beijing duck is the fat that cooks through the meat and the skin. To say that one duck is leaner than the next, while plausibly true, is meaningless from a health point of view. The tobacco industry has been busted using these mis-direction tactics: Light cigarettes aren’t any more health than regulars. Less lethal is still lethal.
We hope Mr. Dong gets away with his marketing ploy for a while a longer. His Ducks are outstanding. We like Chinese food. For us it’s a kind of comfort food. And we are glad we have the time to find some good shui jiao, xuan la tang soup and this amazing duck. The few guidebooks we have read tell us not to expect much from the cuisine we will encounter from here on out. This might be our last decent meal.some school kids.