Forbidden City Read online

  I went to the hotel dining room and had some toast, then I cruised the hotel shops for postcards. I got some with pictures of the wall or Forbidden City on them, plus a map of Beijing, and a copy of Beijing, Old and New. I was forming a plan of what I wanted to do for the next week or so to kill time.

  I went and sat in the lobby coffee shop and wrote a card to Mom — Dad said I should write to her once in a while — and watched the tourists strolling by or browsing at the long glass display cases across the lobby where they sold everything from lacquer ware to stuffed pandas.

  I opened the map, pleased to find that the streets were named in Pin-yin, the alphabetic system the Chinese use to teach kids how to pronounce the characters in the national language, Mandarin. Because the names of the streets and sites were written in this way, I could read them and follow the street signs, which were written in Pin-yin as well as normal Chinese characters.

  I love maps. I think I got hooked on them from my interest in military history and restaging battles. I like to just sit and read them sometimes, sort of getting a picture of a city’s layout in my head and imagining what strategies I’d use if I were invading or defending it. Toronto, for example, is easy. All the streets are laid out on a north-south/east-west grid, except for spots like the Don Valley or the Humber River where the course of the rivers sometimes leads to streets whose direction varies from the pattern. Beijing was the same, I saw right away. The map showed the Forbidden City pretty well in the centre with Bei Hai, a long lake, to the west of it. The map showed where the old city walls once stood. The walls and most of the gates have been torn down.

  The plan I mentioned that was forming in my mind was this: I’d see if Dad would let me buy a bike so I could get around on my own. Then, with my map and copy of Beijing, Old and New I could tool around the city and see what I wanted. Dad and Eddie seemed to be getting busier every day, and even if they weren’t I doubted Dad would want to go exploring with me. There’s no way I was going to sit around in the hotel all the time.

  I sat back and looked at the tourists some more. Then my eye caught something moving high in the corner where the wall met the ceiling. A video camera. I could tell from the angle that it wasn’t pointed at the display cases. It was watching people in the lobby.

  It made me uncomfortable to think that in some little room in the hotel someone was eye-balling us all. It really bugged me. Alex, you’re getting paranoid, I said to myself. After all, I had seen them in stores in Toronto. Still, I felt exposed, examined. I guessed the feeling was just fallout from what Eddie had told me about Lao Xu. Then I remembered something Eddie had said that night that sort of went by me at the time. He said that someone is probably reporting to someone about Lao Xu. Maybe Lao Xu feels just as bad about the situation as I do.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Dad was saying in that tone of voice parents use when they do know and the answer is going to be no.

  “Come on, Dad, I’ll be all right. I’m not a baby, you know.”

  “But what if you get lost?”

  “How can I get lost? I’ve got a map.”

  “I can help, Ted.”

  Until then, Lao Xu had kept out of the discussion — that’s what Dad calls an argument.

  “I can write something on a card for Shan Da. If he gets lost, he can show it to a taxi driver or a bus driver, or anyone. Everyone knows where Beijing Hotel is.”

  “Great,” I chimed in. “And I’ll tell you what, Dad. I’ll buy a compass, too.”

  Eddie looked up from his rapid-fire typing and blew out a cloud of foul-smelling smoke. “He can even take one of the two-way radios. Most of the time they just lie around here, unused.”

  I didn’t really want Eddie’s help, but there was no way I was going to turn it down. “Well, how about it, Dad?”

  “All right, Alex. If you promise one thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Be careful.”

  “No, I know you’ll be careful. I want you to put everything you see on video.”

  I should have known.

  After lunch Lao Xu and I set out to buy a used bike.

  Nin hao? Nin shen ti zen me yang?

  Hah! I can talk Chinese! Or at least a week’s lessons worth of Chinese, which doesn’t sound like much, but the way Teacher Huang puts it to us, we are learning a lot. I can already do a little shopping and ask direction and buy tickets and talk about how delighted I am to be in China and witness the Four Modernizations and great progress of the Motherland, blah, blah, blah.

  About a week ago I found out there’s a school for foreign diplomats’ kids near Ri Tan Park, which is a block or so north of the Friendship Store — You Yi Shang Dian, in Chinese — and I asked Dad if I could go and learn a little Chinese. I was getting sick and tired of feeling like I was deaf, dumb, and blind all the time, never knowing what was going on around me. And I knew the only way out of that feeling was to learn some of the language.

  Dad agreed and said we’d have to find a school. We were in the office at the time, and Lao Xu said he thought he could help, and a couple of days later, most of which he seemed to spend shouting into the phone — “Wei? Wei?” — he had found me a place. Eddie was amazed.

  “I know diplomats who can’t get into that school!” he said.

  Lao Xu just smiled and said a former classmate of his was director of the school.

  “Ah,” Eddie said, “Guan xi. That means “connections”, Alex.” Then he said to my dad, “It’s a hard language to learn. I hope you’re not wasting your money, Ted.”

  I gave Eddie a dirty look but he didn’t notice.

  “Don’t worry about Alex. Once he decides to do something, get out of his way.”

  Eddie took his pipe out of his mouth and laughed. “I wonder where he got that from.”

  I get up at seven every morning, shower and dress and eat, hop on my Phoenix and bike along Chang An. There’s usually a good stiff breeze, and because the city is so flat, I can sail. I unbutton my jacket and hold the bottom straight out from my body with one hand, making a sail, then just sit there and get pushed along by the wind. I got the idea from people I saw doing it.

  By the way, speaking of my jacket, I don’t get stared at as much when I ride along now. I got sick and tired of that, too, so one day I marched along Wang Fu Jing Street near the hotel to the big department store. I bought one of those light coats that Westerners call Mao coats, a blue hat with the red star above the peak, and a pair of those corny mirror sunglasses that a lot of young guys here think are cool. I’m glad no one back home can see me. But I’m disguised enough, with my blond hair and blue eyes covered, that I get by without the stares.

  Chinese is really different from English or French. The hardest part is the tones. You can say a sound four different ways, using the tones. I can’t explain it in writing, but take the sound ma. First tone means Mom, second means hemp or flax, third means horse, and fourth means curse or swear! As if that’s not enough, if you put ma without a tone on the end of the sentence, it changes the sentence from a statement to a question! There’s more. Chinese verbs have no tense. Adding le to the end of a sentence changes it all into the past tense. I don’t know what you do about the future. In Chinese there’s no “he” or “she”. Both are ta.

  As if that isn’t enough, we learn Chinese by writing the words in Pin-yin. Except some letters are pronounced differently from English. X is Hss, so Lao Xu sounds like Hssoo. Q is a hard ch sound, Zh is like our J, and Z is a sound English doesn’t really have!

  Enough of that. I go to school in the mornings, then head down to the Friendship Store to get a pop and a snack. In the afternoons I pack up my gear in my backpack and go out for a reconnaissance trip. I take some food, a couple of Cokes, a million battery packs, the 8mm camcorder, videotapes, my audio recorder — which I haven’t used yet, but you never know — my Walkman and some rock ‘n’ roll tapes, and my vhf two-way radio. It’s a little thing, about the size of a pack of cigarettes or pager, with a range of f
ive or six miles in the city and five times that in the country. It has a power-saving feature when it’s on receive mode so I can leave it on while I’m out and be sure the battery won’t wear down. Dad can call me anytime he wants. We use channel one.

  What I did, I bought one of those bamboo baby seats a lot of people have on their bikes. It fits on the rat-trap carrier behind the seat over the rear fender. I tie the camcorder to the carrier so it points out behind me, put it on autofocus, and lock it on. I have a little box with a hole in it that covers the camcorder but allows the lens to protrude a little. When I get to a part of the city I think is interesting, or that I think Dad might find interesting, I just get off the bike, lock the camera on, remount and ride slowly along.

  I tool around the streets, exploring. I’ve been through the Forbidden City — which looks mostly like a ghost town, with expansive empty courtyards — and saw the Nine Dragon Wall, out to the Summer Palace, which is an hour’s ride to the outside of the city past Beijing University, and to the Temple of Heaven Park. Those places were weird, in a way. One minute you’re in a noisy, polluted city. Then you walk through a gate and blink your eyes and suddenly four or six hundred years disappear. You see graceful, elegant buildings with glazed roofs, wooden latticework on the windows, and quite cool interiors. Gnarled ancient pines stand in peaceful courtyards. Except on Sundays, when the places are packed with people.

  The most fun I’ve had is hopping on my bike and exploring the parts of the city the tourists don’t get to or even know about. A lot of Beijing is old residential neighbourhoods where there are hu tongs — alleys — instead of streets, with walls along the alleys and gates that lead into courtyards. I read that these walled neighbourhoods were designed to be easily defended in times of war. So naturally I had to check them out.

  One day I took a walking tour of Tian An Men Square. Lao Xu told me I could pick up a lot of fairly recent Chinese history by visiting all the spots there, and Eddie added that if I got bored there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken place at the south end of the square.

  The square is mega-huge. It’s almost forty hectares, with trees lining it on the north/south sides. I wandered through the Museum of the Revolution and the Museum of Natural History. Then I walked across the sun-baked square, past the tourists and kite flyers and families and popsicle saleswomen and professional photographers, past the tall square pillar of the Monument to the People’s Heroes with the gold writing on it, to the west side where the Great Hall of the People is. The PLA soldiers stationed at the doors, with their wrinkled green uniforms and green running shoes and old bolt-action rifles, didn’t look too intimidating to me. I strolled past the Mao Ze-dong Memorial Hall and the two tall blockhouses that were once part of the city wall. They’re called “gates” in Chinese. Then I crossed Qian Men Lu — Front Gate Street which is even busier than Chang An Avenue, to the chicken place. It was too crowded.

  Lately when I get back to the hotel the first thing Eddie and Dad ask is, “Get any good footage?” After dinner I hook the camcorder up to the TV and show them what I have. Once, they liked some footage of traffic flowing past the Drum Tower in the pouring rain so much that Dad transferred it to superVHS tape to use as a lead-in to one of Eddie’s reports. He sent it back to Toronto. We don’t know yet whether it got on the news but Dad paid me anyway.

  “A newsman ought to be paid for his work,” he said. I felt pretty good about that.

  Everybody — Dad, Eddie, Lao Xu — has been busy tonight. I can hear them working in the office.

  There were rumours that a Party bigwig named Hu Yao-bang is really sick and may die any time. Also that when he does there will be a big student demonstration in Tian An Men Square. Apparently Hu had lost his position in the government a couple of years ago because he had been too lenient with student demonstrators at that time. The big boss, Deng Xiao-ping dumped him. Eddie was pretty excited, puffing away like an old steam engine, and Lao Xu looked a little bit nervous.

  Dad asked me to go out after dinner and do a recon of the square and draw a map that he can use to get around with his camera to photograph the demonstration. I told him I had already checked out the square and could do a map from memory. Here it is:

  Dad is getting his equipment ready. He’s humming away like an old lady almost in her right mind. He’s driving me nuts. The whole apartment is alive with wires snaking along the floor, leading to our battery pack rechargers — for Dad’s Betacam, the two-way radios, my camcorder, my tape recorder, and Walkman. I think we’re drawing more power than the nearest factory.

  Whatever happens, Terrible Teddy will be ready.

  This morning I got out of bed and wobbled towards the bathroom in my usual morning fog. Something wasn’t right, though. Then I realized what was different. There were no noises coming from the office.

  I padded into the room and was practically blinded by the morning sun pouring through the windows. Squinting, I went to the windows and drew the drapes. The office was messier than usual, which meant it could have won a prize from the Guinness Book of World Records and Dad’s equipment was missing. I scratched my head and wondered where everyone was.

  Still not clued in to the world enough to figure out the obvious, I had a shower and returned to the bedroom. On my desk was a note.

  Alex,

  Hu Yao-bang has died. We’re going to the square to cover the student demonstration (if it happens).

  P.S. Thanks for the map.

  P.P.S. Use the two-way radio if you want to contact us.

  Dad

  The map was gone all right.

  I went down to the dining room for breakfast. The place was like one of the Ming tombs. Waiters and waitresses stood around talking, paying no attention to the half-dozen customers. I finally had to go up to one of them to order some eggs and toast. He said the dining room was “No open”, so I talked to him in Chinese. It worked. He smiled and took my order for eggs and toast. When I got them they were half-cooked and cold.

  Even though it was Saturday and school in China goes six days a week (ugh!) there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to check out the demonstration. I knew from the emptiness of the dining room that something big was happening.

  I took the elevator to the roof. I had to perform the laborious task of pushing the buttons myself because the elevator person was not there. When I got to the roof I joined some tourists who had already gathered there. From where I stood I could see the museum, the northwest corner of Tian An Men Square, and most of the Great Hall of the People. The square was crowded with people.

  When I got back to the office I looked down into Chang An Avenue. The sidewalks were packed tight, buses inched along the road, taxis crept past honking angrily. Cyclists were so tightly jammed together that many people had given up and were walking.

  I picked up the two-way.

  “Dad? This is Alex. You there? Over.”

  I could hear lots of crowd noise in the background when Eddie answered. “Alex? Eddie here. Yep, your dad and I and Lao Xu are right near the Monument to the People’s Heroes. What’s up? Over.”

  “Nothing, Eddie. Just wondered what was happening. Over.”

  “Lots, so far. The base of the monument is already piled high with flowers. The students have organized things pretty well, so that people who want to leave something on the monument in Hu’s memory line up.”

  Eddie’s voice sounded like he was doing one of his news broadcasts. Cool and distant. “So far everything is orderly. Your dad is trying to climb up the back of the monument’s base to get better angle for his pictures. Is he always this crazy? Over.”

  I laughed. “Most of the time. Over.”

  If you want to come down, walk. You’ll have trouble getting your bike through the crowds. Over.”

  “Okay, Eddie. I think I will come down for a look. Maybe I’ll see you. Over.”

  “Bring me a cold beer, will you? Over and out.”

  I loaded up my backpack with my usual electronic
goodies and took the elevator down to the lobby and left the hotel.

  Well, I did go to the square, but it was pretty boring. There were a lot of people there, but hundreds of thousands of people just means lots of people. Most of them were about university age, and many of the people near the monument and the flowers were crying. There were also a lot of cops.

  But I don’t know anything about Hu Yao-bang, and I’m not interested in politics anyway. I’m not a cynic like some kids I know. I don’t think all politicians are crooks or anything. I just think they’re boring. So I didn’t stay in the square too long.

  Tonight after dinner Lao Xu turned up. After saying hello to Dad and Eddie, he said to me, “You doing anything special now, Shan Da?”

  I put down my book. “No, not really.”

  “Want to come with me to hear some live history? Military history? It’s nearby,” he added to my dad.

  “Sure,” I answered. “Is it okay, Dad?”

  Dad nodded.

  “Bring your tape recorder, Shan Da.” Lao Xu said. “And better wear your Chinese disguise.”

  A few minutes later we were cycling through a cool evening along the west side of Tian An Men Square, which was well lit up by the streetlights. There were lots of people in the square, most of them near the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Lots of cyclists out, too.

  Once past the square we continued south along Qian Men Street, the route the emperor used to take when he went to the Temple of Heaven to pray for good harvests. There’s a big park there. I read that Mao Ze-dong used the park as an execution ground to get rid of his political enemies, but I didn’t say anything to Lao Xu about that. He likes Mao.

  Qian Men is a narrow street with lots of hu tongs leading off it. The buildings along the street are very old. We turned right onto one of the hu tongs and Lao Xu led the way as we rode slowly, dodging carts and pedestrians and mini-transports — those big three-wheeled bikes with the platform behind the driver.