China: Beijing Hutongs

Ancient Beijing residences were built along narrow, twisting alleyways called hutongs.

Originally one family, often including several generations, lived in a house built around a central courtyard. As the population grew, the residences were subdivided to house several families. Eventually even the courtyards were divided into two or three residences. After 1948, a lot of the “hutong grid” was torn down to make room for high-rises and wider streets, but areas of hutongs still exist.

A big downside of living in the hutong neighborhood is that there is no sewer system, so everyone uses public showers and public toilets placed every few blocks or so. The homes do have all the rest—running water and heat and air conditioning. 

We were told that many who could afford to move elsewhere have stayed in the hutong area because of the sense of community there. Despite the inconvenient bathroom situation, the property is very desirable and high-priced because of its central location in Beijing. A tiny house (3 rooms?) goes for $1 million (U.S. dollars). Locally they call such tiny places, even if they are modern condos, "birdcages.” 

Our bus took us to the edge of a hutong area, then about 15-20 pedacabs (bicycles pulling a carriage for two people) were summoned, and the pedacabs took all 39 of us through the hutongs to a residence where an older lady lives with her dog. Her home consists of three rooms that had previously been part of a large residence owned by her family for generations. Her kitchen had at one time been a storage area of the big house. The owner's niece lives nearby and was on hand to welcome us. We were served tea, and most of us found places to sit. 

This family is one that has a long tradition of the art of painting scenes on the inside of glass bottles with watercolor paints. Yes, it's true. The niece gave us a demonstration of the painting technique, in which the bristles of a paintbrush are bent at a 90° angle from the handle. 

China Diary: The Summer Palace

BEIJING: THE SUMMER PALACE

Another 40-minute bus ride, another historical marvel. The Summer Palace is on a lake that was enlarged to be about three times its size and has nice breezes. The emperor and then the Dowager Empress spent 6 months there each year when the other palace was too hot. The dowager empress, also known as the Dragon Lady, wormed her way into power for 48 years, and along the way she had two people poisoned and one emperor put on house arrest for years while she ruled instead of him. Quite a lady.  

These are some sculptures outside the palace:

 

Every day the empress walked along a beautiful covered walkway, about a half mile long, that parallels a canal with pond lilies. The setting is tranquil and serene.

The walkway is decorated with rows of stones made into flower and tree designs. The roof line of the walkway is decorated with 14,000 (!) paintings depicting scenes, including many scenes from well-known children's stories and legends.

 

At the end of the terraced walkway was a boat structure made of marble.

China Diary: Beijing landscaping and the Temple of Heaven

FIRST MORNING IN CHINA
Beijing

What a great first day. Perfect weather. Our tour guide for all of Beijing, Frank, is wonderful--affable, and provides great history about Beijing and each excursion we go on. Get this: He got a university degree in electrical engineering at a fairly elite university here, and then was assigned by the government (no choice) to the tourism bureau because there were openings there and not in his field. He is no longer with the tourism bureau because he took  classes on the side and started free-lancing.

I’m very impressed with all of the greenery, landscaping, and parks everywhere in Beijing. Roses are in bloom and many of the roads and freeways have long rows of rosebushes along the way, as shown in these photos taken from the bus.

The Temple of Heaven

We went to the Temple of Heaven, where the emperor went twice a year to pray to the ancestors for good harvest. This main temple (below)  was rebuilt 1880ish after it was struck by lightening and burned. They imported logs from Oregon for the main timbers that support the 3 roofs. No metal used in the entire thing, and it withstood a 7.8 earthquake later.  This round temple is on the top level of a huge terrace, with rectangular  buildings on the lower levels. 

Each circular terrace shown above has carved posts along the top of the railing and stone dragon heads along the base (below).

 

Below are some details of the tiles and decorations of the temple.

At Countdown

Here in LA, I'm ready to launch. We are here 2 days with family before catching the flight to Beijing on Saturday. The plan (now referred to as the "wise plan") was to break up the total flight time, reduce the jet lag (by only 3 hours, I know, but it all counts), and chill a little.

Hooray for the chilling part. Unusual for me, I had a lot of tension, preparing to go. Hell, it took me 30 minutes just to write out the cat-sitter instructions, and she already knows the cats, waters the garden, feeds the fish, fills the pond, tends the plants. But all of that was before the dreaded give-Moss-a-pill-every-day period. But I digress.

While we are here in LA, we are kicking back. I am writing a blog post. Tom? He is learning Mandarin. I am not making this up. Ni hao (hello). Ching (thank you). He's having a little trouble with "my wife is bugging me, and did you know she is a CIA agent sent here to foment dissent?"

I do hope we don't crash. Some of you know I am afraid of flying. Not a legitimate phobia, but an irrational panic, whenever there is turbulence, that we will crash  A wing will fall off. The plane will flip over and then nose-dive to earth. We will just rattle to death.

Take-offs and landings are also very difficult, and don't even start me on landing with turbulence. This China trip will reveal the stuff I'm made of. Or not. We have one connecting flight between LA and Beijing. Two connections on the way home. But INSIDE CHINA we will have three different flights, on those little, teeny tiny, foreign airlines that you can't trust to have anti-turbulence tactics or counter-turbulence equipment. (OK, on the bright side, not Malaysia Airlines.)

So, farewell, until I write you from the other side. No, no, not the other other side. I mean the other side of earth. Because we won't crash. We won't crash. We won't crash.

Those Bright Sparks Burning Out

I had a new thought about death today. Or maybe it's really about aging.

My friends may think I dwell on aging--obsess, even--because about 100 times a day I mention that I don't like it. So fine, if they want to call that "dwelling on" it, let them. I just hate this whole growing old thing. The physical aging part. The wrinkles, the aches, the disappearing eyebrows (why is this one for women only?). You know the list. In contrast, I like the psychic aging. Gaining wisdom (anyway, enough to know I don't know anything). Gaining self-knowledge. Gaining perspective.

But back to death. The new realization I have refers to "celebrity death," for lack of a better term. The pantheon of actors and singers and politicians I grew up with are dying off. The inevitability of death seems stronger as their stars twinkle out. I know, I know. If something is inevitable, how can it be more inevitable? But there it is. They were alive to us, and then they died. Elizabeth Taylor, Esther Williams, Nelson Mandela, Mike Wallace, Jack Lemmon. 
It's "What, you, too? You died?" Even George Burns--and he offered such hope for kicking the habit. 

This inevitability of death thing doesn't apply to the young deaths, the deaths that sock us in the gut with their untimeliness. Marilyn, Elvis, Janis Joplin, John Denver, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, Philip Seymour Hoffman. (And I'm all too well aware that my sense of "untimely" has changed as I've aged. I once thought age 60 was pretty old--time to die. Now 70 is untimely. Give me another decade and age 80 will rock my world.)

As I grow older death seems closer. As it should. As it is. But it seems closer as the light of these people flickers out. 

Hoarding? Not so much

I've often thought of myself as a hoarder. Certainly there is the damning evidence of my overflowing basement and jammed-full file cabinets. And there certainly is the Grandma Myrtie gene. But recently I realized that hoarding is very different from accumulating, which is what I have done.

In truth, I'm quite the cleaner-outer. How satisfying it is to take a load of clothes to Goodwill. How liberating to give the younger generation a bunch of old jewelry I no longer wear, to throw out files no long needed. I have my share of personality disorders, but hoarding, as I understand it, is not among them. 

I've given some thought to this lately because a month or so ago I unearthed  the daily calendars I have been saving for much of my adult life. The oldest I've found is 1975, but I think a small cache of little Hallmark calendars from the late 60s and early 70s may yet turn up. I'm not hoarding these calendars. I'm saving them--the fossil evidence of staff meetings and doctor appointments and book club get-togethers.

I've started a project of extracting a modicum of information from the calendars to record brief summaries of the years of my life. When I finish a year (10-12 lines of text), I throw out the calendar. Ah, de-accumulating in action.

And what fun I have been having! I had totally forgotten about being on a volleyball team in 1978. And I coached Rachel's Odyssey of the Mind team! (It took me a while to decode "OM at my house.") It's been very satisfying to remember old friends I had not thought about in a long time: Diane Keaton (no, not that Diane Keaton) and Barb Nykoruk and Suzanne Hunt

Some calendar artifacts have remained a mystery. What does "Rainbow," occurring once or twice a week during 1987, mean? And who was Annette Bourget, whom I met on Saturday mornings or on weekday evenings? A massage therapist? A chiropractor? A counselor of some sort? Really mystifying is Velma Jean Glowacki, whom I noted was "off" on some Monday's and Fridays. How could I forget a name like Velma Jean, who was so important in my life I had to remember when she was "off?"

I've had to ask myself why I am devoting this time and energy to looking backward instead of forward. Do I feel the important parts of my life are over, and I'm trying to capture them? Am I afraid of becoming demented and losing my life in the process of losing my memory?  In truth, I don't think it's that dark. Mostly I just want to clean out the basement and preserve some data that would otherwise be lost forever. Important only to me. 

Some things are too hard

The final scene in a play I was watching Saturday night drove me to do something I've never done before in a performance: Look down at my lap to keep from seeing it. I didn't want the images of what was taking place on stage to stay with me. Brutality. Ruthlessness. Savagery. Hatred. Before long I also had to put my fingers in my ears to shut out the screams and yelling.

The play, We Are Proud to Present, is about a real genocide, one I had never heard about. It took place around 1900-1910 in what is now Namibia--then a German colony, Sudwestafrika. Dramatically speaking, having an emotional impact on the audience is the goal of theater. I hope they are happy.

It was 1977 when I first recognized that I just couldn't tolerate seeing brutality. I mean really. could. not. I had been very interested in watching the TV mini-series Roots, but I had to stop. The next year, the same thing, when Holocaust was broadcast. I started watching it but turned it off when my stomach got that knot in it.

Sometimes I can get through a short scene--the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire, for instance. I'm so glad I did make it through, because I love that movie. On Criminal Minds--another production I really like--I know now to look out for any really weird bondage or torture scenes that are sometimes thrown in. I can look away or leave the room and come back, and still enjoy the rest of the show.

I won't be going to see 12 Years a Slave, though I really would like to.