As Beijing readies itself for the 2008 Olympic Games in August, Otago Daily Times Illustrations Editor Stephen Jaquiery explores some of the city's hot tourist sites.
During a five-day visit to Beijing, I marvelled at the Great Wall, had my head "blown off'' by spicy crayfish, could not believe the amount of construction, walked where eunuchs once walked, and vowed to return.
With a 5000-year history, this city has retained its rich architectural and cultural past, but is rebuilding at a furious pace. One minute you can be speeding past the new Olympic Stadium on a packed motorway, and the next pull over and wander down a hutong (ancient alley), where
you can see daily life with the authentic flavour of old Beijing.
The narrow alleys accommodate up to 20 compact houses, often shared by several generations of family.
Also shared, unlike my hotel room, thank goodness, is a communal toilet block where used toilet paper is placed in a bin rather than flushed.
Here, wealth is measured by plain clothes, a reliable bicycle and a simple house. In this People's Republic of Bicycle, shabby bicycles still outnumber cars by more than two to one.
Simple observation proves that you can carry anything from used reinforcing steel, four members of your family, or your office, and the contents of your house by bicycle.
Statistics say that on average you will lose seven bicycles during your lifetime in Beijing. But with seven million bicycles in the city, and sometimes crowds of 80,000 people at a public gathering, it is not hard to find a replacement.
Wiggling live scorpions on skewers ready to be deep-fried, boiled silkworms, fuzzy eggs (fully formed unhatched chicks still in the shell) or sheep's nipples are just some of the offerings at the bustling Donghuamen night market.
I passed up these treats to try famous Beijing Peking duck at a restaurant where Kissinger, Nixon and Mao had previously dined.
Insects aside, I found Chinese cooking to be not too foreign to my taste buds. They tend to serve numerous dishes at the same time, allowing diners to eat what they please.
The spicy little crayfish on the pretty, red lantern-lit Ghost St did take me by surprise, however.
I must be a heathen because, although my tongue was numbed by the dish and I sweated like a marathon runner after only one mouthful, according to Fiona Smith, of Cuisine magazine, no less, they were very, very good!
I didn't remember the food at the celebrated Lan as much as the decor - it is said they paid $30 million for a Phillipe Starck interior design.
He cleverly hung paintings from the ceiling and had a throne in the little boys' room... probably the prettiest penny I will ever spend.
Tiananmen Square, one of the largest public squares in the world, bore no sign of the events of bygone days _ unless you count the police and military searching the bags of locals entering the square, looking for troublemakers in the countdown to the Beijing Olympics.
A stone's throw away is the Forbidden City, the home of emperors for 491 years. Whereas once the emperors lived with as many as 55 empresses and concubines, now thousands of tourists, mostly from China, wander through the nearly 10,000 buildings making up the outer court, inner court and imperial garden.
As the city rockets ahead, not all the development is at the expense of urban dwellings.
One former industrial site has been transformed into an avant-garde art centre called 798.
Here, many of the artists are internationally recognised. Some of the art, however, is way over the heads of mere mortals such as myself _ the stuffed rats running up the wall, or the old refrigerator cut in half and displayed in a glass case, for instance.
Dating back to the Ming Dynasty and established for the Empress Dowager's amusement, the Beijing Zoo has 20,000 animals, with one standout star attraction, its cute giant panda bears.
Visit in the morning if you can, as the characteristically soporific beasts are even less active in the afternoon.
When we arrived, the Great Wall was shrouded in mist following overnight snow. I saw just a few hundred metres of this structure, which stretches more than three times the length of New Zealand.
But I may well have brought a new, distinctively New Zealand trend to China.
I showed the locals that frozen snow on a steep and uneven surface can be crossed safely by employing the old Dunedin ice trick... pull off your socks and wear them over your shoes.
- Stephen Jaquiery was hosted in China by Air New Zealand, which begins a direct, twice-a-week service to Beijing in July.
