A WEEK IN HUTONGS

Beijing'sTiananmen Square.  

As soon as we crossed the Chinese border, we knew that we were in a country with tremendous population. Every little bit of land, and all the way to the rail ways was taken up by some sort of crops growing everywhere. China met us with sunny skies, warm breeze and hundreds of Chinese coming and going at the main train station square. Arriving to Beijing from Ulan Bator was like making a leap of a couple of decades. Beijing, in contrast with Ulan-Bator, is a very modern, developed and organized city which offers all of the modern comforts without losing its historic flavor. It is enormous and it seems that there is no end to this concrete jungle, however, we did not feel this, even though we stayed in one of the central districts of the Chinese capital. Our Chinese home ended up being a hutong apartment of a Portuguese-Canadian.

Being Chinese.

Chris met us at the Jishuitan station. We did not have the exact address and Chris insisted on us calling him when we were at the station. Of course, we did not have a phone and this was our first country where neither of us spoke a word of the local language. Taking turns we stopped a number of pedestrians pointing at their cell phones. Finally one young girl responded in English offering to borrow her iphone (everyone has an iphone and a professional photo camera on them at all times in Beijing). Three minutes later a guy in shades and a black leather jacket greeted us with a sudden “que pasa?!”. We were taken a back for a second but recovered immediately remembering that the guy was half Portuguese. He didn’t really speak Spanish, but he liked to try. We followed him into a narrow alley, then another one, and another one slowly realizing why Chris insisted on meeting us without giving us the exact address. There was no way in the world that we would have found our way in a maze of those hutons.

Old time hutongs.

A huton is a historical district where people live in traditional houses which had sprouted chaotically in no organized manner, and which keep on expanding forming labyrinth-like shantytown with no central sewage system. Why would I care about sewage? Well, I really don’t unless it complicates my life in a very direct way. Chris’s hutong, just like any other hutong, does not have private bathrooms, which means that every time your body is ready to discard its byproducts you get to go to one of the community outhouse and share this special private time with about 4-9 neighbors happily chatting about the latest rumors, smoking, or playing games on their iphones. Oh no! There are no individual stalls or any sort of devisors between the actual toilets, so you just make your bottom comfortable in a squat position right next to your new Chinese friends.

Besides the minor bathroom time inconvenience Chris’s place was just perfect for our needs. It was right in the center of all of the main attractions of the city and only 3 minutes away from a metro stop.

Inside the Forbidden City.

Since Beijing was a huge city and our only stop in China we decided to spend at least a week there to visit its sights and try to feel through what it is like to live in this gigantic Chinese metropolis. During the day we went about town discovering its treasures like (The Temple of Heaven, the Olympic Village, the Forbidden City and such) and at night, when Chris was back from his lessons (he is an educator of some sort), we all went out for a taste of Beijing in one of its many restaurants. Sometimes they were actual restaurants where we drank obligatory rice wine shots (Chris strongly believes it the disinfecting qualities of alcohol) and ate elaborate dishes with weird tastes. Other times they were just street stalls which magically produced tables and chairs and fed us its kebobs made of unknown substances. Food was always very interesting, however not always agreeable with my stomach. Whether it was the abundance of oil which is used for preparation of practically everything, or the strange herbs that I have never tasted before, but more than once I had bathroom (hutong style, of course!) consequences after those wonderful dinners.

Beijing Night Market.

One time Chris also took us to a local food market and showed us how negotiating is done in Mandarin. After 5 years in Beijing Chris spoke Chinese Mandarin pretty much like a local and knew all ins and outs of the city and its Beijing urban culture. As it turned out, it was pretty important to have someone local, or at least Chinese-speaking to guide us around and bargain down the prices. The locals are quite opportunistic and will rip you off if you are not paying attention or not familiar with their prices. The cabs are absolutely ridiculous. First they do everything possible to not understand where you want to go even if your destination is 10 blocks away and you are pointing at the exact address on a map written in Mandarin, then they refuse to use the meter, and when you finally manage to negotiate the right price and the cab begins moving you realize that the driver is somehow unfamiliar with the area and insists on taking you to your destination taking a detour of at least 30 minutes. 

A rare clear sky sunset in  Beijing.

Luckily, we only had to use a taxi 2 times, one when we were off to the train station on our way to Hong Kong, and the other when we went to meet with Diego, my friend’s cousin.  I have never met Diego, and did not even know that my friend Manuel de Rivera had a cousin who not only lived in Beijing, but also worked there as a reporter for one of the Spanish TV channels. As it goes with the Spaniards, after a quick introduction over the phone we were invited to a dinner and a party with a flamenco singer performance at one of the bars frequented by Beijing expats. Diego turned out to be very charming and welcoming somehow making me feel as if I were at some bar in Madrid, surrounded by Spaniards drinking wine, smoking cigarettes and chattering over the crying sounds of flamenco. Diego told us that there were expats in Beijing of all sorts and that no matter what people did they found a way to make a good living there. The city seemed booming with everything, from commerce to fashion, and from international work to construction industry.

At the Temple of Heaven.

Beijing was bustling and hustling no matter where we went. It also seemed to be flooded with tourist groups, especially Chinese ones. Mid fall is the “golden time to visit Beijing”, as we have discovered later, and many Chinese take their short vacation during that perfect time of year to visit the nation’s capital. Apparently, they don’t like to travel individually, and together in an organized group it also tends to be cheaper. As their vacations are short, the tours are usually short as well, but they are as condensed with activities as can possibly be. A typical tour of Beijing would be one or two days with visits to the Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven, some parks, the Olympic village the Great Wall and, of course, a dinner of the famous Beijing duck. In size, the Chinese groups could only compare with Russian speaking groups. I was very surprised to hear as much Russian in Beijing as I did. It appeared that Beijing was one of the new hot destinations for vacationing Russians, whom I could identify anywhere, whether I heard them speaking Russian or not. No group was without a typical middle age woman of about 100 kg, wearing a see through shirt, large sun glasses with sparkles and an awful haircut. There was always a man in his 40s with very pale skin beige color shorts, back socks and sandals, tugging behind himself an identical copy of a son. And, of course, no tour could go without a group of 3-4 bolding men in their 30s-40s with beer bellies, cigarettes in their mouths and terrible smell of sweat floating behind them like an invisible cape of people repellent. We spent a week visiting all of these places and it still felt rushed,  especially because I were constantly forced o fight for space with the never ending tour groups.

The Spectacular Bird's Nest.

One afternoon, returning from another museum we found ourselves in a beautifully groomed park which was full of people. There were some obvious tourists, but the majority were locals who were intensely involved in activities. It seemed that that park was a meeting place for people to practice their hobbies and socialize. There was a terrace for card players and Chinese chess lovers, there was an “exercise station” with different cardio machines (with free access), there were open spaces full of older people practicing Chinese gymnastics (very weird looking set of activities when you swing of arms and hit yourself on different parts of your body), there were others who stood in circles and played hacky-sac with a mysterious device which had feathers and flied like a badminton shuttlecock  (which they were ridiculously good at).  

A woman in a Bejing hutong.

All of this business was very different and terribly exciting, but the most impressive of all activities was opera singing. I know, it is weird to be polishing your arias of Aida in a public park, but that is what they do in Beijing. First, we thought that we did, in fact, stumble upon a group of professional opera singers practicing their singing in the park just for the hell of it, but then we realized that there were many of those groups, each with an accordion player, and some competing with each other (let’s sing our loudest to outsing those around that bench right next us). It was amazing how good some of those singers were, and they were just amateurs, who came to the park to hand out and sing. In fact, if you knew the songs and were willing to sing, you could spend a day doing progressive singing floating from one group to another. We found the group whose singing we liked the most and spent almost two hours sitting on the grass, enjoying their musical vibrations. 

The Great Wall at Badaling.

Another popular activity which we absolutely could not skip in Beijing was hiking around the Great Wall. From the pictures I have seen of the Great Wall I have always pictured it very serene, mysterious and empty. This, naturally, was not what we saw in reality. It was overflowing with tourist groups (the Chinese ones insisting on taking a photos with us every 2 steps), the entrance was almost barricaded with endless shops and kiosks selling horrendous memorabilia, and it was terribly hot under a blazing October sun. In other words, it was a “Historical Disney World”. Nonetheless, we were determined not to get disappointed by any of that. When you go to the Great Wall, you are actually allowed only to a certain closed off part of it which you can march through back and forth all day if you want to. We discovered that one complete walk through, with its gigantic stares taking you up and down and up and down the wavy pattern of the Wall, was enough to tire you out. It is a mystery to me why they built that Wall almost zigzagging and not just straight across the mountains. To me, the straight wall would have been just as good of a protection against the Mongols, who were constantly trying to get that northern chunk of China for themselves. The Mongols eventually got the Chinese anyways, and the Wall just stayed there as an amazing 3000 kilometer monument of human obsession with territorialism.

These are the best street snack!

After the Great Wall and all of the other attractions that we have seen in Beijing we needed some time to digest it, as well as prepare our nest move. We spent the last couple of days buying tickets, packing and reading about our next destination - Hong Kong. An overnight train took us from the Northern Capital (which is the lateral translation of Beijing) to the city of Shenzhen, a border city and another huge Chinese industrial metropolis.

DIAS DE HUTONG

Beijing, donde lo nuevo se junta con lo viejo

Era temprano en la mañana cuando Ulán Bator quedaba a nuestras espaldas detrás del último vagón del tren. En apenas unas horas la estepa y desierto mongol se hacían presentes y el paisaje se imponía a través de las ventanas. Serpenteando entre las ondulaciones de la estepa, que por momentos logra una altura más similar a la de una verdadera montaña, los campos completamente blancos, sufren la caída de las primeras nevadas del invierno en Mongolia. A veces pasa casi una hora sin ver más que nieve cuando a lo lejos se divisa uno o dos ger completamente aislados y con bastante nieve en el techo. Me intriga saber cómo hacen para calentarse, ya que se ven las chimeneas de las estufas, pero en la zona no hay un solo árbol en cientos de kilómetros a la redonda; solo puedo pensar en bosta de caballo o de vaca seca… Amontonados sobre el lado contrario del cual viene el viento, estos animales se refugian de la nevada pegados a las paredes de los ger. A lo lejos un Kamaz ruso anaranjado baja a paso de hombre un estrecho camino que cuelga de una montaña. Más de una vez, el tren se detiene por algunos minutos esperando el paso de algún otro que viene en dirección contraria, ya que la red consta de una sola vía para ambas direcciones.

Musica en los Templos

Cerca de las 9 de la noche llegamos por fin al cruce de fronteras, donde acontece algo que vale la pena ilustrar. Luego de formalizar aduana y migración en Mongolia y ya en territorio chino, el tren completo ingresa dividido en dos mitades a unos galpones gigantescos de más de 500mts de largo. Allí desenganchan todos los vagones, los cuales son elevados por gatos hidráulicos a más de 2mts de altura, separándolos por completo de los llamados bogies (parte inferior que consta de las ruedas, ejes, sistema de frenos, suspensión, etc.). La trocha de la red ferroviaria china es unos centímetros más angosta, por lo que en no más de 20 minutos el tren completo vuelve a estar sobre rieles; aunque esta vez, sobre rieles chinos.

Techos Chinos

Desperté temprano esa mañana. Los chinos que viajaban en nuestra cabina desayunaban una sopa de fideos, succionando y haciendo toda clase de ruidos, incluyendo eructos de los más sonoros. Intente concentrarme en el paisaje y ponerme algo de música para frenar mis ganas de escapar, de donde no podía escapar. A lo lejos, decenas de aspas metálicas enormes danzan al compas del viento cual bailarinas de ballet, convirtiendo ese aire en energía eléctrica. Sobre los fatigados campos, los chinos no dejan un mínimo espacio sin sembrar, sin importar lo difícil e intrincado del terreno que por momentos no es más que arena seca y bastante pedregosa. Ignorando como llegamos allí, nuestro tren ahora transita por las laderas de un cañadón bastante profundo y árido, con paredes de roca que van del amarillo al rojo grisáceo, abrazando sobre su vientre el fino hilo de un rio poco profundo y cristalino; atravesando decenas de túneles y cobertizos; oscuros pasajes que deposita a nuestro gusano metálico del otro lado de los cerros. Cerros que se transformaron en edificios, casas, calles, arboles que eran semáforos y pasto gris cemento. Estábamos en Beijing.

Hutong

Habíamos arreglado de antemano nuestra estadía con Chris, un canadiense que vivía en la capital china desde hace ya un lustro. Gracias a la red de metro, la cual crece casi 50km por año (el de Buenos Aires no llega a los 80km en total), nos fue fácil llegar al área de Houhai, más específicamente al puente de Jishuitan, en lo que es una de las zonas más antiguas de Beijing. Fueron las dinastías Yuang, Ming y Qing quienes construyeron estos barrios alrededor de la Ciudad Prohibida, caracterizados por sus casas pequeñas con baños comunitarios, disgregadas a lo largo de laberintos de calles pequeñas y callejones, conocidos como Hutong. La vida aquí es diferente que en otros sitios y es donde el verdadero aire de una China ancestral se respira a pleno.

Templo del Cielo

La casa de Chris era una más de estas, con solo una habitación, una sala de estar, que para los chinos seria otra habitación para varias personas, y una pequeña cocina improvisada sobre tablones, con gas en garrafas y anafes portátiles. El baño en los Hutong no existe, por lo que cada 2 o 3 cuadras dentro de los laberintos, siempre hay uno público y gratuito, aunque no siempre son de los más agradables; y esto no es por estar sucios, sino porque no tienen divisiones entre inodoro e inodoro (en realidad son estos tipo huecos en el piso), por lo que es normal estar haciendo fuerza agachado y transpirando, mientras escuchamos los ruidos, olemos los olores y contemplamos con nuestros propios ojos a tres o cuatro chinos haciendo sus necesidades a nuestro lado; algunos leyendo el diario, otros hablando por celular, fumando, o porque no jugando a la PSP.

Ciudad Prohibida

Durante esos días Chris nos condujo por las calles de Beijing para conocer no tanto lo turístico, ni los lugares bonitos para tomar fotografías, sino nos introdujo en el verdadero día a día chino. Nos saco a comer Hot Pot y varios otros platos por restaurantes locales; fuimos de compras al mercado del barrio; nos paseo en moto por los laberintos de los Hutong y hasta incluso nos dio una clase de cómo beberlo y porque es tan importante el té en la vida de los chinos. Se dice que el cuerpo humano posee un fuego interior que si está muy elevado, contraemos enfermedades. Es por eso que la infusión de diferentes tipos de té, bajan ese fuego interno, previniendo padecimientos de distinta índole. Pero no todos los te disminuyen el fuego, incluso algunos lo elevan, permitiendo un nivel justo que nos permita estar saludables. Es increíble como el sabor va poniéndose cada vez más fuerte, para llegar al punto más alto a la 3er o 4ta taza, para luego comenzar a disminuir, apagándose lentamente.

Ciudad Prohibida

Otra de las cosas que Chris nos explicaba, es la locura de los golpes en las plazas. Grupos de gente, en su mayoría ancianos, se ponen a disposición de uno de ellos quien es el que lidera. Al grito de algunas palabras se van golpeando a ellos mismos en diferentes partes del cuerpo y con la mano en distintas posiciones. Claro que los golpes no son tan fuertes, pero esto lo hacen para despertar células dormidas y mantener siempre la totalidad del cuerpo alerta y activo. Pero los parques no solo están repletos de golpes, sino que también es común encontrar acordeonistas tocando, mientras gente al pasar se detiene a cantar una especie de ópera, junto al músico que más le gusta; y un dato… todos cantan excelentemente bien.

Gran Muralla

Ya por nuestra cuenta y sin la ayuda del experto recorrimos todo lo turístico y que no se puede perder de Beijing, aunque para nosotros fue mucho más la experiencia en los Hutong que el turismo en sí. Recorrimos la Ciudad Prohibida, construida a principios del S.XVI por la dinastía Ming, entre sus calles imperiales donde tanto la arquitectura como la historia de China se hacen presentes. El Templo del Cielo, en la zona sur de la ciudad, data de la misma época y es donde los propios emperadores pedían por una buena cosecha en primavera y luego agradecían por sus frutos en otoño. La plaza de Tian’anmen, una de las más grandes del mundo, y el Night Market, fueron otras de las zonas que recorrimos en esos días.

La Gran Muralla en Badalin

“Soldado que huye sirve para otra guerra”, dice el dicho, y posiblemente en eso pensaron los chinos ante la posibilidad de enfrentarse al magnífico e impresionante poderío de conquista de los mongoles. No huyeron, pero crearon una muralla de más de 8.800km de largo para frenar los avances de los súbditos de Chingis Khan y así evitar la casi segura derrota en una batalla frente a frente: La Gran Muralla China. La visitamos en la zona de Badalin, quizás la más turística pero no por eso la menos apreciable. Temprano en la mañana pudimos recorrer parte bastante tranquilos, y así poder admirar la magnificencia de dicha obra. Serpenteando entre montañas, pasando siempre por los puntos más elevados y con inclinaciones de hasta 80 grados, la muralla es increíble. La seguimos con la vista hasta perderla por detrás de un cerro, confundiéndose con el brillo del sol del atardecer. Esta muralla que durante la dinastía Ming era custodiada por un millón de guerreros, tiene también la fama de ser uno de los cementerios que más gente alberga en el mundo, ya que durante su construcción se calcula que murieron más de 10 millones de trabajadores.

Nido de Pajaros

Hablando de algo más actual, pero no por eso menos atractivo, también visitamos el complejo de los Juegos Olímpicos, incluyendo el Nido de Pájaros y el Cubo de Hielo. El predio gigantesco consta de 4 estaciones de metro en su interior, con parques enormes, pistas de patinaje, canchas de tenis, estadios para todo tipo de deportes y hasta un lago para las competencias de canotaje. Si el Nido de Pájaros impresionaba por televisión, verlo de cerca confunde aun más. No tanto por su tamaño, ya que al estar en un predio tan grande, el estadio se minimiza un poco, pero si por la estructura, la cual no se llega a entender cómo puede soportar todo y a la vez ser de una originalidad y belleza incomparable.

Gran Muralla

Así pasaron nuestros días en la capital china; algo que no estaba en nuestros planes en lo absoluto, pero que nos dejo sensaciones inolvidables. Para eso no nos queda más que agradecer a Chris, sin quien hubiese sido imposible recorrer los rincones ocultos de semejante metrópoli y conocer algo de la verdadera cultura china. Pero Beijing es solo un plato de un gran restaurante repleto de variedad, al cual habrá que volver para degustar de un menú más completo y variado, llegando porque no al deseado Tíbet, el cual quedara en el tintero… pero solo por esta vez…