August 20, 2008

First stop was Tiannamen Square. Visited Forbidden City. Kept thinking of Bertulucci’s film “The First Emperor”, particularly at the end of the tour when leaving the northern gate, which is where the boy emperor ran (maybe biked) after his mother who was leaving him for the last time. Joked with Reeves about there always being one inner temple to be seen, i.e. the last one of the emperor himself was the inner inner inner ….. temple. Next stop was the Lama Temple which had the largest indoor Buddha, coincidentally made from one tree. The most striking thing about Beijing is the amount of buildings constructed, as well as the new buildings already gone up. A fellow tourist said that 25% of the cranes in the world are currently in China. The tremendous need for energy was exemplified by the crawling traffic along the ring roads (there are now six). The tour guide said that only 40% of the normal traffic was allowed on the roads during the Olympics. Cannot imagine what it must be like during normal times. 80% of China’s energy comes from coal, which goes a long way toward explaining the bad pollution in the country. Even so, the air in Beijing was not as bad as I thought it would be.