China
From Ancient To Modern: 11 Best Sights To See In Beijing – TravelAwaits
Published
3 years agoon
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Beijing, or Peking, is the capital of the People’s Republic of China. The vast, sprawling city of more than 21 million inhabitants, is a city that combines ancient history with super modern life. Seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites nestle in and around the city, while state-of-the-art skyscrapers reach dizzy heights in the Central Business District. The city that has accommodated leaders of a world power today, as well as hundreds of years back, is a constantly growing metropolis.
Yet, step out from the modern metro or turn an unexpected corner, and you see sights that have not changed for centuries, or even millennia, with traditional ways of life going hand in hand with modern stresses.
There is much to see and explore, but Beijing is also surprisingly manageable, whether you go on an organized tour with a guide, or take your chances in the metro by yourself, which is not as scary as it might sound. Either way, prepare for your mind to be blown by amazing wonders, historic facts, and sights not to be seen anywhere else.
While this list does not mention all the sights, these are my personal favorites in and around Beijing and come highly recommended.
Forbidden City has housed 24 emperors over the years, starting back in the early 1400s, when it became the residence of Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty and his family. The vast complex covers 7.75 million square feet, making it not only the largest imperial palace in the world, but with its 980 buildings and more than 8,500 rooms, also a formidable challenge to visitors trying to see even a fraction of it. Especially as some 40 percent of it is still out of bounds to them. Even if you were to move right in, you’d probably miss some hidden corners. I spent a few hours there, but eventually admitted defeat, with my head swimming from seeing too many dragons, turtles, and rich architectural details. What life must have been like in those days. Amazing.
You literally can’t miss Tiananmen Square as it lies by the entrance to the Forbidden City. Back in the 1600s, there stood the Great Ming Gate on this vast square, which today is hemmed by the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, and said entrance to the Forbidden City. It leaves a bad aftertaste because of the political tragedy that took place here in 1989, but it is the place where visitors are likely to meet up with their tour guides, and its sheer size is worth a look.
Strictly speaking not in Beijing, but an easy drive outside the city limits, the Great Wall of China is nevertheless considered a sight under Beijing’s umbrella. Some of the closest sections of the wall are a mere 45 miles from Beijing, so easily doable within half of a day. I had opted to visit the Mutianyu section for three reasons: It is one of the closest sections to Beijing, and I was under time restraints; it is one of the lesser visited, so fewer tourists; and also, it is one of the gentler sections, easier on the knees. Some sections, including the most popular section called Badaling, are practically vertical and, while interesting, I did not want to go mountain climbing, and rather preferred to walk comfortably as far as I could. Covering several lookout posts and fortified sections, this part meanders along the ridge of a mountain, with either ends stretching into the distance and beyond. I believe my mouth hung open throughout the visit, my mind blown by the incredible sight.
I do believe the locals refer to the Summer Palace also as the Winter Palace, which confuses things a little, but despite traveling there in winter, I officially went to see the Summer Palace. Whatever the name, it is a stunning palace and imperial garden of the Qing Dynasty, which preceded the Ming Dynasty of Forbidden City fame. My favorite part was the 2,360-foot-long canopied and ornately decorated Long Corridor walkway, which allowed the richly dressed members of the imperial court to stroll along regardless of the weather, looking out across the large lake that was excavated to add to the scenic setting. The dug-up soil of the lake formed Longevity Hill next to the path.
An architectural feat, laid out according to a precise method, and depicting the belief that Heaven was round while the Earth was square, this vast temple complex is not only a place of worship but also a site of statesmanship. The emperor visited twice a year, seated on a 40-foot-long sedan chair carried by 10 men, accompanied by horse chariots and elephants to pray for things like good harvests for his people. For those who understand architecture, this is a sight to be seen, as many of its constructions were ahead of their time, when it was constructed in the 1400s.
Jingshan Park might be one of the “lesser” parks in Beijing, but a little gem. On the opposite side of the Forbidden City, from Tiananmen Square, the hill in the middle of the park is the result of the excavations of the Forbidden City moat. As such, the park is a perfect place to climb after seeing the former Imperial Palace, for an overall grand view of the vast site. It is also a great place to watch Beijing life as it happens: The park is filled with families taking their kids there for a little bit of history, a walk in the green surroundings, and a few candies and balloons. The little temple at the top is lovely, and overall, it is a more manageable park than some, and the one with the best views.
Built during the Yuan Dynasty in the late 1200s–early 1300s, the Hutongs are narrow lanes with single-story residences, in a square street layout, and all with hidden courtyards behind them. A time-wrap worthy neighborhood that is still viable in the middle of Beijing, the Hutongs allow a great insight into what life was like for those not residing in vast Imperial complexes. You can take a rickshaw through the tiny lanes and stop at the many small art galleries in some of the buildings.
The colorful Lama Temple, also known as Yonghe Temple, is a baby when it comes to historic sights in Beijing, dating to as recent as 1745. Still, it is a beautiful temple complex, the most sacred Tibetan temple outside of Tibet, and a working monastery. There are several halls to see, with the fifth one housing an enormous 60-foot-tall statue of the Maitreya Buddha, dressed in imperial yellow satin, and reportedly carved from one solid piece of Tibetan sandalwood.
This nighttime market with food stalls all along Donghuamen Street, within easy walking distance of the Forbidden City, is an assault on the senses. As you approach, it starts with sweet treats and candy floss, and then the savory stalls with live cooking take over. Anything from fat grubs, scorpions, lizards, insects, and even seahorses are being roasted on sticks and sold. Not for the faint-hearted, there are crowds of locals enjoying a snack as well as tourists daring each other on. Me? I chickened out, literally. The Satay chicken skewers are very nice. Just along from the market, you have the neon-lit, glittering, and loud shopping area of Dongdansan; a few hundred yards, yet a million miles away from the ancient Forbidden City. This is modern Beijing, and it is worth seeing as well.
The Beijing National Stadium was built for the 2008 Summer Olympics by architects Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Li Xinggang, and contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, which might explain its hyper modern take on an old Chinese favorite: the bird’s nest. It is a spectacular construction, and beautifully lit up at night, all set in the Olympic Park which can be explored via a self-guided walking tour. The stadium is set to also host the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
This is an entire quarter of the city given over to art. A former industrial space covering more than 5 million square feet of a former military factory complex is crammed full with galleries, art studios, shops, ateliers, cafes and restaurants. It’s dotted with sculptures on every corner — all set among large former warehouses and industrial spaces linked by tiny alleys and amazing reinvented spaces. If this was in London, it would not look out of place at all, and it rounds up the contrast between ancient and historic Beijing, and young and innovative Beijing, very well.
Pro Tip: While I am a fan of “going it alone” when traveling, in China, I hired a local guide to show me around — the same woman for several sights and outings. Not only do you learn more about the history of the sights, but also about the lives of the local people, many of whom do not speak English and thus have limited contact.
If you’re thinking about a trip to Asia, check out these articles:
A travel writer and guidebook author for the last 20 years, Ulrike’s work has been seen in National Geographic, BBC, The Independent, Australian Women’s Weekly, The Telegraph, The Australian, AFAR, Fodor’s, Brides, France Today, Four Seasons magazine, CNN Travel, numerous inflight magazines, and many others.
She has written three books for Moon Travel Guides: ‘Living Abroad in Australia’ (3rd edition), ‘Sydney & the Great Barrier Reef’, and the shorter version ‘Spotlight Sydney’ and are all available in print and as e-books.
Having lived in seven countries (Germany, UK, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Australia, currently France) to date and traveled to more than 90, she specializes in writing about travel, art and architecture, expat living, and life & style.
WASHINGTON (AP) — China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine, according to a U.S. assessment.
Two senior Biden administration officials, who discussed the sensitive findings Friday on the condition of anonymity, said that in 2023 about 90% of Russia’s microelectronics came from China, which Russia has used to make missiles, tanks and aircraft. Nearly 70% of Russia’s approximately $900 million in machine tool imports in the last quarter of 2023 came from China.
Chinese and Russian entities have also been working to jointly produce unmanned aerial vehicles inside Russia, and Chinese companies are likely providing Russia with nitrocellulose used in the manufacture of ammunition, the officials said. China-based companies Wuhan Global Sensor Technology Co., Wuhan Tongsheng Technology Co. Ltd. and Hikvision are providing optical components for use in Russian tanks and armored vehicles.
The officials said Russia has received military optics for use in tanks and armored vehicles manufactured by Chinese firms iRay Technology and North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics, and China has been providing Russia with UAV engines and turbojet engines for cruise missiles.
Russia’s semiconductor imports from China jumped from $200 million in 2021 to over $500 million in 2022, according to Russian customs data analyzed by the Free Russia Foundation, a group that advocates for civil society development.
Beijing is also working with Russia to improve its satellite and other space-based capabilities for use in Ukraine, a development the officials say could in the longer term increase the threat Russia poses across Europe. The officials, citing downgraded intelligence findings, said the U.S. has also determined that China is providing imagery to Russia for its war on Ukraine.
The officials discussed the findings as Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to China this month for talks. Blinken is scheduled to travel next week to the Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Capri, Italy, where he’s expected to raise concerns about China’s growing indirect support for Russia as Moscow revamps its military and looks to consolidate recent gains in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden has previously raised his concerns directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Beijing indirectly supporting Russia’s war effort.
While China has not provided direct lethal military support for Russia, it has backed it diplomatically in blaming the West for provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the war and refrained from calling it an invasion in deference to the Kremlin.
China has repeatedly said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow, alongside India and other countries, amid sanctions from Washington and its allies.
“The normal trade between China and Russia should not be interfered or restricted,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman of the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “We urge the U.S. side to refrain from disparaging and scapegoating the normal relationship between China and Russia.”
Xi met in Beijing on Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who heaped praise on Xi’s leadership.
Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who returned to Washington this week from a visit to Beijing, said she warned Chinese officials that the Biden administration was prepared to sanction Chinese banks, companies and Beijing’s leadership, if they assist Russia’s armed forces with its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The Democratic president issued an executive order in December giving Yellen the authority to sanction financial institutions that aided Russia’s military-industrial complex.
“We continue to be concerned about the role that any firms, including those in the PRC, are playing in Russia’s military procurement,” Yellen told reporters, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China. “I stressed that companies, including those in the PRC, must not provide material support for Russia’s war and that they will face significant consequences if they do. And I reinforced that any banks that facilitate significant transactions that channel military or dual-use goods to Russia’s defense industrial base expose themselves to the risk of U.S. sanctions.”
The U.S. has frequently downgraded and unveiled intelligence findings about Russia’s plans and operations over the course of the more than 2-year-old war with Ukraine.
Such efforts have been focused on highlighting plans for Russian misinformation operations or to throw attention on Moscow’s difficulties in prosecuting its war against Ukraine as well as its coordination with Iran and North Korea to supply it with badly needed weaponry. Blinken last year spotlighted intelligence that showed China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia.
The White House believes that the public airing of the intelligence findings has led China, at least for now, to hold off on directly arming Russia. China’s economy has also been slow to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese officials could be sensitive to reaction from European capitals, which have maintained closer ties to Beijing even as the U.S.-China relationship has become more complicated.
Meanwhile, China on Thursday announced rare sanctions against two U.S. defense companies over what it called their support for arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy Beijing claims as its own territory to be recovered by force if necessary.
The announcement freezes the assets of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems held within China. It also bars the companies’ management from entering the country.
Filings show General Dynamics operates a half-dozen Gulfstream and jet aviation services operations in China, which remains heavily reliant on foreign aerospace technology even as it attempts to build its own presence in the field.
The company also helps make the Abrams tank being purchased by Taiwan to replace outdated armor intended to deter or resist an invasion from China.
General Atomics produces the Predator and Reaper drones used by the U.S. military.
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AP writers Didi Tang and Fatima Hussein contributed reporting.
China
China’s gambling hub of Macao holds its its final horse race, ending a tradition of over 40 years
Published
7 months agoon
March 30, 2024
MACAO (AP) — After more than 40 years, Macao’s horse racing track hosted its final races on Saturday, bringing an end to the sport in the city famous for its massive casinos.
In January, the city’s government said it would terminate its contract with the Macao Jockey Club in April. The decision came at the request of the Macao Horse Race Company, which cited operational challenges as part of the reasons for the closure.
On Saturday, gamblers congregated in the half-full stands and placed their final bets. Some tourists also visited the track.
Mai Wan-zun, a student from mainland China in Macao, said she wanted to get a taste of the atmosphere. “We could come to see horse racing here in Macao, but not in mainland China,” she said.
Helena Chong, a Macao resident, decided to visit the race course for the first and last time to see what it’s all about.
“It’s a pity to see the end of all this gambling and entertainment,” she said.
Horse racing in the former Portuguese colony has struggled with economic challenges in recent years and has yet to rebound from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its jockey club had accumulated operating losses of over $311 million, the Macau News Agency earlier reported.
Under the termination arrangement, the horse racing firm had pledged to arrange for transportation of owners’ horses to other locations by March 2025, and handle the company’s employees according to the law, the government said.
In neighboring Hong Kong, horse-racing remains popular and profitable. Its jockey club runs various gambling activities and is the city’s major donor of many charity works.
China
Migrant workers who helped build modern China have scant or no pensions, and can’t retire
Published
7 months agoon
March 28, 2024
BEIJING (AP) — At 53, Guan Junling is too old to get hired at factories anymore. But for migrant workers like her, not working is not an option.
For decades, they have come from farming villages to find work in the cities. Toiling in sweatshops and building apartment complexes they could never afford to live in, they played a vital role in China’s transformation into an economic powerhouse.
As they grow older, the first generation of migrant workers is struggling to find jobs in a slowing economy. Many are financially strapped, so they have to keep looking.
“There is no such thing as a ‘retirement’ or ‘pensions’ for rural people. You can only rely on yourself and work,” Guan said. “When can you stop working? It’s really not until you have to lie in bed and you can’t do anything.”
She now relies on housecleaning gigs, working long days to squirrel away a little money in case of a health emergency. Migrant workers can get subsidized health care in their hometowns, but they have little or no coverage elsewhere. If Guan needs to go to hospital in Beijing, she has to pay out of pocket.
As China’s population ages, so are its migrant workers. About 85 million were over 50 in 2022, the latest year for which data is available, accounting for 29% of all migrant workers and up from 15% a decade earlier. With limited or no pensions and health insurance, they need to keep working.
About 75% said they would work beyond the age of 60 in a questionnaire distributed to 2,500 first-generation migrant workers between 2018 to 2022, according to Qiu Fengxian, a scholar on rural sociology who described her research in a talk last year. The first-generation refers to those born in the 1970s or earlier.
Older workers are being hit by a double whammy. Jobs have dried up in construction due to a downturn in the real estate market and in factories because of automation and the slowing economy. Age discrimination is common, so jobs tend to go to younger people.
“For young people, of course, you can still find a job, positions are available, though the wage is not high enough,” said Zhang Chenggang of Beijing’s Capital University of Economics and Business, where he directs a center researching new forms of employment.
“But for older migrant workers, there simply are no positions,” said Zhang, who conducted field studies at four labor markets across China late last year. “Now, the problem is that no matter how low the wage is, as long as someone pays, you will take the job.”
Some job recruiters contacted by AP said older workers don’t work well or have underlying illnesses. Others declined to answer and hung up.
Many are turning to temporary work. Zhang Zixing was looking for gigs on a cold winter day late last year at a sprawling outdoor labor market on the outskirts of Beijing.
He said he was fired from a job delivering packages because of his age about three years ago, when he reached 55. In December, he was earning 260 yuan (about $35) a day installing cables at construction sites.
Zhang Quanshou, a village official in Henan province and a delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, said some older migrant workers are just looking for work near their hometowns, while others still head to larger cities.
“Some older migrant workers are finding temporary jobs, so it is important to build the temporary job market and provide a better platform for such services,” Zhang, the Communist Party secretary of the village, said in an emailed response to questions during a recent annual meeting of the Congress.
Guan, who comes from a rice-farming region in the north, worked on a clothing factory assembly line until she was laid off when she was in her 40s. She then worked various jobs in different cities, winding up in Beijing in 2018.
She works seven days a week, partly because she’s afraid labor agencies won’t call again if she turns an offer down.
Over February’s Lunar New Year holiday, when migrant workers traditionally go home to visit their families, she stayed in Beijing as a caretaker for an elderly woman, because the woman needed help and she needed the money.
“People either want someone who’s educated or young, and I don’t meet either of those requirements,” said Guan, who dropped out after middle school because her parents had only enough money to educate their son. “But then I think, regardless of how other people look at me, I have to survive.”
Guan worries jobs will be even harder to find when she reaches 55. The retirement age for women in China is 50 or 55, depending on the company and type of work. For men, it is 60.
Lu Guoquan, a trade union official, has proposed relaxing age limits for jobs, judging workers by their physical condition instead of their age and making it easier for older people to find work through labor markets and online platforms.
“A large number of farmers have entered cities, making an important contribution to the modernization of our country,” said his proposal, made to an advisory body during the recent national congress and seen by the AP.
As workers grow older, “they are gradually becoming a relatively vulnerable group in the labor market and face a number of thresholds and problems in continuing to work,” it said.
Lu, director of the general office of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, declined an interview request.
Duan Shuangzhu has spent 25 years collecting trash in one Beijing neighborhood after giving up a life of raising sheep and cows in north China’s Shanxi province when he was in his 40s. He gets up at 3:30 a.m. seven days a week to make his rounds. For that, he earns 3,300 yuan ($460) a month and has a basement room to live in.
Duan’s wife stayed on the farm, where she looks after their grandchildren. Duan has managed to save money for himself, his children and his grandchildren, but never paid into a pension system, directing what little he earns to his family.
That fits the pattern Qiu found in her research, which she published in a book last year. Older migrant workers moved to the cities to improve the lives of their children and other relatives, not themselves, she found. Most have limited or no savings, and few have climbed the economic ladder. They hoped their children would, but most ended up as migrant workers, too.
Most migrant workers’ earnings were spent on their children’s marriages, homes and education, Qiu said in her talk. “Basically, they did not begin working for themselves and planning for their own late years until the age of 55.”
Duan, at 68, has no plans to quit.
“As long as I can work every day, it’s enough to survive,” he said, standing next to a set of community rubbish bins, color-coded for recycling. “I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family — just filling my stomach each day is enough for me.”
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Associated Press researcher Wanqing Chen contributed to this story.