DPRK: Prelude in Beijing, Lunch with Mr Liu

When we had all gathered we immediately split up again. Some of us had booked a tour of the Hutongs, the narrow alleyways that are the back streets of Beijing. Others were off to see the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium; others had their own individual plans. Those of us off to the Hutongs were taken by bus and dropped off in a small square where a row of pedal rickshaws were waiting.

First however we had a lunch. For this we were led into what appeared to be somebody's house. I wasn't very hungry so I just had a single bottle of beer while the others ate what seemed to be a very nice meal. As lunch was finishing we were joined by a local guide, a rather loud and confident young woman, and by Mr Liu, a man who though now retired was once a figure of some importance in the world of Singing Crickets and Fighting Grasshoppers. Mr Liu was a gap-toothed and weather-beaten elderly man carrying a rather odd assortment of items. His fame as a breeder of insects was readily apparent from the number of books he showed us featuring pictures of him with some of his prize specimens. Apparently, so our translator informed us, he was also famous for holding a record for cooking dumplings.

He showed us the tools of his trade: a fighting bowl, a living bowl complete with a separate connubial chamber, a long thin feeding spoon, a long flat (yet oddly delicate) cricket pooper-scooper, a long thin brush to encourage recalcitrant insects into the aforementioned connubial chamber.
Most intriguing were a set of miniscule scales for ensuring that the grasshoppers were fighting in the right weight class.
Someone asked, via our translator, how they knew who had won a fight. It seems that they operate not so much a "last-cricket-standing" as a "last-cricket-not-eaten" principal.
As he talked, Mr Liu bounced around the room with irrepressible energy, swooping and leaping like some demented thing. His enthusiasm was manic, his patter at a Gatling-gun speed that taxed the translator's abilities to the full. I felt worn out just watching him.

When he was finished he packed everything away - two ornate earthenware jars containing a grasshopper each vanishing into pockets in a trick worthy of Tommy Cooper.
It was fascinating but when I thought back to it later it reminded me of the last of the Rocky movies. In that film, Rocky is retired and running a restaurant. He is a convivial host, joining in with the guests, signing autographs and recounting tales of his past glories. Mr Liu seemed a little like that; a man who has seen some glory days and some acclaim now endlessly retelling his past for the tourists.
I felt a little sad at the idea.

Afterwards we went back into the square and into those bicycle rickshaws. They pedalled off down the streets and we sat back eager to see the famed Hutongs. I'm not sure what we had expected but what we got was a bit of a disappointment. The route led us through dull grey streets with dull grey walls. We stopped once at a gate but we didn't go through it, just looked at it. Finally we stopped at a market. It was predominantly a small local food market and not terribly interesting though it was, as markets almost always are, a good place to take pictures.

DPRK: Prelude in Beijing (The Forbidden City)

Back outside, in that smoggy atmosphere, we headed north towards the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the southern entrance to the Forbidden City. As we queued to go in we were entertained by the bizarre callisthenics of the Chinese Army guard. These exercises seemed to consist of some weird oriental mix of running, marching, wrestling and barn dancing. They were an odd but momentary distraction, all but forgotten as we entered the Forbidden City itself.

For those who haven’t been there then I can do no better than recommend that you hire a DVD of the Last Emperor, which was filmed there. It is far more than just a palace being, as the name indicates, a city within a city. It was the residence of the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1420 to 1912 and contains almost a thousand buildings with over eight thousand rooms. Now it’s a World Heritage site with many thousands of visitors, both Chinese and foreign, every day.
I wandered around taking pictures and looking at a couple of the museums that are contained inside – the museum containing the various jade sculptures was particularly fine.
I noticed, as I had done the last time, a rather odd phenomenon. To describe it you need to picture the layout of the City. It is more or less symmetrical about a North-South line. The main palaces within are set at the ends of a series of courtyards in such a way that you can proceed from one to the next through the courtyards by following a central line. They have names like the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Complete Harmony, the Hall of Preserving Harmony and the Palace of Earthly Peace.

Off to the sides things become slightly more labyrinthine, though no less interesting, with smaller buildings on smaller courtyards and paths. Some of these buildings have been pressed in to service as the museums. The odd phenomenon is that almost all, certainly over ninety per cent, of the visitors choose to follow the central route so that if you do the same things are crowded and at the entrances to the various palaces there are people six or seven deep taking pictures over each other’s heads. If on the other hand you wander off to the sides there is almost no one. You see a few visitors once you enter the museums but otherwise things are calm, peaceful, beautiful and devoid of crowds.
So, after seeing a couple of palaces, that’s what I did, following the eastern side of the complex through the museums until eventually I came to the end and turned left again to lead me to the Northern Gate, the Gate of Divine Prowess, where we were to meet up again with our guides before going our own separate ways for the afternoon.

It is, as my pictures show, a remarkably photogenic place.

DPRK: Prelude in Beijing (The Great Hall of the People)

As soon as we left the bus, a little way outside Tiananmen Square, it became obvious that China has changed a great deal since I first visited the city. For one thing nobody was wearing uniforms or red armbands. For another the ubiquitous coughing and spitting has, while not exactly disappeared completely, has been greatly reduced. It was the atmosphere that was most noticeable though. There is an openness, a lack of tension that wasn't there back then.


The people now in and around the square are clearly tourists, back then they seemed more like pilgrims. China may still be communist but it's a very capitalist style of communism now.


This new freedom seemed rather at odds with the frequent, and apparently pointless, X-ray checks that our bags were put through. I asked Bobby, our local guide, about it. He seemed rather amused.
"They bought a lot of X-ray machines before the Olympics," he explained, "So they feel they have to use them."


Our first vist was to something that hadn't been open to the public last time I was there - the Great Hall of the People. This is an impressive building that runs along the western side of the square and acts as a ceremonial building and the Chinese Parliament. Inside - among other things - are meeting halls for the various regions, a vast auditorium and various banqueting halls.


It's a magnificent building - outside and in. We were guided round for about an hour listening to descriptions of the building and the Chinese government, but, if truth be told, nobody was really listening as the look of the place was too distracting.
Eventually we returned to the reception hall. Through the glass doors we could see just how smoggy and dirty the air outside was, a fact that hadn't been immediately obvious to us when we were out there.

DPRK: Prelude in Beijing (Arrival)

The main trip was of course to DPRK, but at either end we had time in Beijing. Flying into North Korea is only possible from a few places. The UK isn't one of them. China is.
When I first visited Beijing, about twenty years ago, my initial impression was of greyness. Grey roads ran between grey buildings and grey dust covered the grey clothes of the grey people. Times have changed. Now the first impression is one that has been carefully designed and constructed specifically to leave visitors to the city gaping open-mouthed - the airport. Specifically Terminal three.

Of course we've all seen it on TV in the build up to the Chinese Olympics and during its construction. This one terminal is famously bigger than all five of London Heathrow's terminals together. It was, until Dubai overtook it, the largest passenger terminal building in the world. It looked impressive on television but that was nothing compared to the real thing. This place is designed to impress and it delivers. Vast cathedral-like spaces are filled with an impossible amount of light from walls of glass. Beamed domes with triangular skylights arch high above the gargantuan rooms. Uniformed staff look like toy soldiers in an aircraft hanger. The scale is immense and, as we arrived, it was, apart from the few disembarking passengers almost totally empty.


There was a bus ride from the plane to the terminal followed by a ten minute walk to passport control and then another walk to a railway station. A train journey of several minutes took us to baggage reclaim with another lengthy walk to conveyor belt 36. The buildings we pass by and through would not have been out of place in the glossiest of science fiction movies and the interiors were so pristine and gleaming they might have been polished only seconds before our arrival.
It was very, very impressive indeed.