Xian - the old walled city

We really came here just to see the Terracotta Soldiers but the city has a lot more to offer .

Main entrance to the old walled city.

There is a good description here Xian Wall

One of the few gate ways 

Rectangular and 14km around,  we hired tandem bikes and bumped our way around in about one and half hours including many photo stops. The paving is not all as good as is shown here.

I found it in many ways more structurally impressive than the Great Wall.

There are issues with the wall as seen here - it is filled with rammed earth .

Part of the moat which is 6m deep - has been restored in recent years 

Housing inside the wall

The view through the main entrance, away and to the left in this picture is the very interesting Moslem market see my piece on food. 

Ming Tombs - Close to Beijing

This is a collection of tombs from the Ming Dynasty - not many are open and the one that was I found pretty underwhelming when compared to other constructions we saw in China .

Very good Wikipedia article here Ming_tombs

On the other hand that long approach lane was spectacular .

These figures are in matching pairs - not repeated and they are big as can be seen below

The Temple of Heaven - Beijing

Essentially a temple where the Emperors would hang out and pray for good crops - there is some very interesting representative symmetry (circles and squares) and acoustics.

Check out the Wikipedia article Temple_of_Heaven

Middle row of stones reserved for the top guy 

The Summer Palace (my favourite) - Beijing

The Summer Palace (top left below) is in Beijing some distance from the Forbidden City (near the letter B bottom right) . There is a very good article here Summer_Palace.

When we were there is was close to freezing towards the end of the day,  so cold the lake was frozen around the edge but more importantly it wasn't very busy - I'll take the cold over the crowds any day.

 Below the amazingly long and ornately painted covered walkways, known as the  Long_Corridor - length 728m.

These really appealed to me for their aesthetic and geometry. To the right is the lake to the left palace buildings 

  Below just some of the decorated interior. 

Below looking in the general direction of the centre of Beijing.

The Forbidden City - Beijing

China for many thousands of years not unlike Europe was a feudal economy with the rise and fall of the strongest, most strategic, most cunning and ruthless.  Pretty much like today but less disguised.

As such they had a well established class system where the top dog was always the "Emperor " with special treatment for family friends and trusted ones. As in Europe this group built themselves palaces of huge scale by drawing on the enormous workforce available to them. While many invading forces including their own internal enemies, the British, the Japanese and the French etc etc have done their best to level many of these the Chinese have rebuilt most. Huge undertakings in their own right.

The Forbidden City has got to be the mightiest of those left standing - placed now right in the centre of Beijing it being a walled, moated "home" for the Emperor and his many, many wives and children.
This palace is very well documented here in the Wikipedia Forbidden_City.

Pretty much a must for visitors - but avoid weekends, the peak holiday period and any public holiday if you want a sane visit. We were there in December, it was about 2 degrees and perfect as you will see in the pictures.

Below just one of the massive courtyards 

Where people live ...

Some how in my mind with a 1.4b population I imagined China to be one large urban area of varying  density. I was therefore somewhat unprepared for the reality.

This is Hong Kong - A vast landscape of high rise, as I expected,  as viewed from Mt Victoria

Hong Kong 

However even in Hong Kong as you go out through the suburbs the towers get lower and more 1950's utilitarian concrete looking.  These are the "state" houses - the British concept of of Govt owned housing - not a model found on mainland China .

Terminology :

• In China its "house" regardless of size or location
• In Canada a decent sized living space in a high rise might be called a "Condo"
• In NZ anything in a high rise is an "apartment" and anything that is not in a high-rise is a "house" apart from small one of two level "flats"  eg a "granny flat". 

In China a house seems to be anything from a 35msq (or less) concrete box  to a 150sqm (or more) modern privately constructed apartment in a gated community. 

The modern face of privately constructed gated apartment blocks.

This is the current style of building and the thing that staggered me is the scale - on one site I counted 36 of these towers under construction simultaneously  - huge cities seem to be under construction in a green fields approach and often in stark contrast to adjacent construction.

An interesting point of contrast in Hong Kong is that a 20 minute boat ride takes you to Lamma Island which is home to a truly massive power station but also to some very rise housing and a feeling of space that be very familiar to Kiwis. A very funky place to visit and note - no cars here only bikes.

The reality is that the Chinese build "up" not "out" and thus a city like Zhongshan (below) with the population of Auckland occupies about 10th the foot print.

Rurally, and that was the shock for me, there are just absolutely vast areas with really low population densities - despite its population China is of course a huge country, very similar in size to Canada and the USA and almost 40x the size of NZ.

This is the view from the fast train and I noticed what looked like a lot of "rural" renewal - what the picture is in more remote parts I don't know.

Older  1950's constructions, these in Jiangmen - at that time home to a thriving sugar cane processing factory. But note in 2014 the very modern vehicles outside!!

And just when I thought I'd seen it all - little north America outside Beijing - on the way to Xian 

In short a land of extreme contrast.