Travel
A crazy shopping maraton underneath the great chinese wall
No matter what is the reason you visit China, it will be as though you have not been there, if you do not climb the Great Chinese wall and also, if do not try the dish “a duck a la Pekin”.
Situated at 80 km away from the capital, the area of the wall, called “Badalin”, looks more like a lunapark than a fortress. The capital is located at 300 meters above the sea surface and the wall – at 1200. The scenery around is more than moony. More than 2000 years ago everything around has been a magnificent forest. A “wise” emperor decision has ordered for it to be cut down to the last root and this is how the erosion started. Since the 60s till now every man from Peckin awards 1 day volunteer labor per year for the re-foresting; however the soil revenges by only allowing not good trees to grow. To the first part of the Great Chinese wall you can get with carts, very similar to the sleighs that we used to have in our childhood. You pay 80 iuana /or around 100 $/ and you mount the cart, which takes you up the mount. You barely have a chance to get of the vehicle and you are been attacked from all sides. The place of the 4 horsemen is filled by many salesmen who “wave” t-shirts and caps with the image of the Wall. Stone gravers are ready for 5 minutes to curve your name on an exquisite material. You have3 just arranged to buy it for 20 iuana and then it turns out that you need to dig in your pockets one more time for 20 more for the ball with the ink, plus another 20 for the box.
However, there is no guarantee that they have managed to carve exactly your name and not something funny that they have seen in your “big-nosed” face.
A girlie with a digital camera attacks you. “Click” with the background of the Wall, you put your signature under a certificate that you have been to this extraordinary place, they laminate it and for the modest amount of 10 iuana you have an official document. You go slowly up, mumbling due to the unthinkable bend of the mount, while you creep to the first tower. Now you find there…a camel. How they have put the animal on the wall, nobody knows, but the photo with it costs 20 iuana. For another 20, you go inside a studio as a European and you go outside as a Chinese mandarin or a local version of geisha. So in order to be able to fulfill this funny sultanate, 1,2 million people has died during the building of the Wall…
Next thing you need to conquer is a great test for your will 0 above 100 “unequal” steps. In the black stones they are cut as follows – one with height 50 sm., climbing. Around the long-legged Europeans the Chinese people make noises as do they are put on command breathing. For them one step is really like an acrobatic exercise. However, obviously there is some kind of curiosity to climb the most important part of the Wall, since they do not give up at all, but creep up. On the next tower you are again attacked by the traders. This time they have put a memorial stone with a sign in Chinese. Click! And another 20 iuana. If you dare and you have enough money, you can overtake one more phase. If not – what`s next is extreme feeling to get in the cart that looks of bobsleigh cart and continue your trip.
Astonished by the speed, you`ve gotten down once again and again you are attacked by the happy and friendly Chinese people who make you urgently write down your name on a piece of paper. “oh, maybe they are going to write down your name in a book of all the people, who have climbed the Wall”, you think to yourself, but it turns out that they have already calligraphically put your name on a red leather with 100 seals, saying “He climbed the Great Chinese Wall”. For the modest amount of 10 iuanas, of course. So they “move” you slightly like a baggage to the next step – graving your name on a memorial medal /10 iuanas/. After which – it is the end of the attention.
The next stop is ‘The graveyard of Emperor Ming”. However, there are several more money making Chinese attacks that are about to happen to the newly coming tourist. Trap number one: the fabric for pearl jewels. On the entrance you find out that the pearl shrimps are like the trees – you can guess their age by the circles on their shell. So you get the privilege to take out from the water a shrimp with hands. It turns out that it is full of pearls /with tracks from glue/ and they give such to the whole tourist group. Big fun! The trick, however, is that soon after the express training course that you get on the entrance, they immediately lead you to a huge hall, full of pearl and other jewels and they do not give up till you do not buy something. A necklace with round and flat beans with the size of hazelnut is 25 000 $ /in the center of Paris the same costs with one 0 more/. The negotiations are inexhaustible. You can get even a necklace of 50 $ for 1/3 price, if you are persistent enough. The guides are in a hurry. For them every buy means a received commission.
Trap number two: the fabric for nephrite. A stunning beauty! The eyes become blind due to the warm radiation of the beauties of the green stone, which as it turns out – can be white, pink, brown…the most expensive is the white /diamond/ nephrite. It is the hardest, can be easily cut with glass. The fake diamond can be recognized exactly by the lack of this quality. However, the goal is the tourist to watch as little as possible and buy more and more. The local guide passes like an express train around the greatly arranged nephrite piles, the naturalistic sculptures of animals. It is clear that it is harder to buy a monument from nephrite due to the cargo, while the small figures are all equal. Then the shop assistants rush towards you too. They are also working on a percent of the sales, by the way.
Trap number three: the Chinese traditional medicine. In every person live a secret hypochondriac and the tour operators have bet exactly on this feature. Hundreds of buses leave their “load” on a parking lot in front of a huge 1-storey building. A lady with a white apron attracts the new comers takes them around the cabinets where smart looking Chinese people, obligatory with glasses, do something. In a small hall the lady hold a speech on the pulse and iris diagnostic and about how good they are in mixing some herbs, after which she presents 10 “professors”. Next to every one of them there is a nurse in pink uniform in order to translate in English. The medical check is free of charge and the result is one and the same. You stand to one of the professors who hold you by the wrist and in case you are old and heavy, he claims that you have high cholesterol and you are inclined to diabetes. If you are young and slender, he says that you are likely to have high stress levels. Then he prescribes you a medicine with which you will be able to fight off the problem successfully, if you pay for it between 900 and 1500 iuanas. Even the biggest hypochondriac, however, counts this according to the exchange rate of the day and reckons that this is at least 110 $ and he backs off very rationally. Well, some agree…
Yay! The graveyard of Emperor Ming in the small town Tianshu, situated at approximately 50 km away from Pekine. Finally one historical disease. Endless going down on staircases. 6 floors underneath the earth. A tense waiting for miracles to happen. Absolutely empty hall. Well, this is the graveyard of Ming! It is found in this state from ancient gold seekers in the 70s of the last century after a destructive earthquake. As a slight relief the tourists throw small coins at the only marble throne. In order to come back here. But why? In the other hall are located the sarcophagus – huge, wooden, beaten from the weather conditions and the burden of time like the garbage containers at Central Railway Station in Sofia. A diamond wall! Nope! Pure brick! This is the place where the earth has erodes a little bit and you can see the graveyard! It is just that the shape of the hole reminds of a diamond! Such an imagination! Why not? It is cunning to connect everything in something extraordinary and to put it all together to a poetic fairy tale and… many souvenirs. The Chinese have an ancient history, but they have also made4 up an attractive package to sell them with. It is time for us to think about it too.
In the Forbidden City – the ex emperor palace in Pekin there is not even one tree – I was able to convince myself in this with my eyes. Because the emperor has been son of the sky and nothing else, except the sun, has to be above him. What has happened with the slender servants from the palace, the history does not tell us. However, they needed to creep bended, if they meet the emperor.
The Forbidden City is known scenery for everybody, who has watched the movie of Bertolucci “The last emperor”. Since then, however, the movie persons are persona non grata in the Chinese historical places. No matter how much they tried to be careful, they ruined lost of relics. Not that they did not pay off very well for this… The Bulgarian track in the movie is the work of Boriana /the daughter of the world famous master of the textile Marin Vurbanov/, who has been the designer of the costumes. Her mother, Sun /brought in Bulgaria for the first time the monks from Shao Lin/, arranged Bertolucci to take photos of the Forbidden City. The producer, however, liked her due to the dress of high class mother. The “last emperor” Pu I, who was crowned when he was only 3-years old, during communism has been a gardener, but also a deputy in the Chinese parliament, which is never mentioned in the movie.
For 500 years 24 emperors have ruled from the imposing complex in the center of Pekine /720 000 square meters surface, on 150 000 of which there are 890 palaces with 8 707 rooms/. According to the legends the rooms have been 9999, but the last check shows different numbers. As a whole, almost everything in the palace is obeyed to the number 9 due to the Chinese belief that between the life and the death there are 9 floors.
The architecture miracle is surrounded from a canal that is deep 6 m. and wide 20 m. the son of the sky has never left the Forbidden City and however entered it once, has never come back to the world of people. Every year the most beautiful mangurian and Mongolian girls at the age between 12 and 17 have been brought to the palace. They could not meet their families and relatives any longer. A high rock, looking like an alpineum, is blocking their way towards the outer world in the north part of the palace garden. The girls could speak to their relatives only through a “veil” of water that is surrounding the cave. /from the top of an artificially made rock the emperor and his wife used to observe in the beginning of September how the “autumn used to come to the capital”./ here we can discover the Bulgarian track – the mangurian ladies are “heiresses” of our tribes.
Many of the girls have never seen the emperor. Poor him! He has had to deal with around 3000 concubines, not counting the wives that he used to have /around 20/. In ancient times the tradition has been to bury the emperor girls /who do not have children/ alive with him after his death. In one of the internal courts from the one side can be seen the rooms of the women and from the other – the rooms of their guardians.
The Forbidden City looks like…square Russian dolls – looked at through heavy wooden doors, graved with 9 huge nails. You could go from court to court, some of which have been used only once per year and some – just once in the life of the emperor.
Everything is made out of wood, colored with dragons, mystic animals and decorative elements. The dominant color is yellow – after all the emperor is the son of the sky, or the sun. The palace has been heated with radiant heating. Underneath the stone floors there is a labyrinth of tunnels on which the warm air is going towards the rooms. Around every building are built huge copper pots /300 for the whole Forbidden City/ that have performed the role of pumps during fire. Clouds and dragons, bitted pearls, are chasing each other under 250-tons monolith block. It is long 16,57 m, wide 3,07 and wide 1,7 m. the legend says that the stone creature has passed the 300 kilometers from the mountain from which it is cut to Pekine thanks to “human arms”. In the winter they used to put woods, split water on them and waited for it to freeze. Then they used to roll over the heavy block, while the woods become pressed down…
In almost every court the sun clocks made out of stone show what`s the time, figures of tortoise predict long life for the emperor, gold plated bronze sculptures of lion and lioness guard the doors.
November 2008
