Let the Games Begin

In the spirit of the upcoming Olympic Games, our writer crafts 10 events of his own to explore the yin and yang of Beijing

In case you haven’t heard, the Olympic Games are coming to Beijing. The quadrennial sports spectacular, taking place this year August 8–24, will mark the culmination of years of incredible perseverance, endurance, and hard work. Not to downplay the Herculean efforts of the nearly 10,500 elite athletes from 205 nations who will vie for medals in 302 events in 28 sports, but in this case we’re talking about Beijing’s extraordinary labors in preparing to host the Olympics.

Awarded the 2008 games by the International Olympic Committee in 2001, the capital of the People’s Republic of China was already in the midst of phenomenal growth, sprinting to achieve economic superpower status in world-record time. Since then, the pace has only sped up. Twenty brand-new Olympic venues have been constructed, 11 existing facilities have been renovated, and that’s on top of the round-the-clock construction of skyscrapers, high-rise apartment buildings, retail megaplexes, hotels, highways, subway lines, and other infrastructure. To residents and visitors alike, the gargantuan scale of almost everything in Beijing, old and new, is mind-boggling.

The Forbidden City

Really, really big tells part of the story of my pre-Olympics journey to Beijing. I started with my own big plans: As a tribute to the first Olympic Games in China, I would endeavor to complete a personal decathlon, with 10 representative events geared to the Olympic visitor who fantasizes about being an Olympic-caliber athlete. But as I began to map out my events, a more realistic and luxurious decathlon came together. I would follow the traditional Chinese principles of yin and yang, whereby opposing elements comprise a harmonious whole, and combine five physical activities with five not-so-physical ones. I’d still have my tribute to the Olympics, but I’d also be able to walk when I was done. And in the end, I’d leave with a better appreciation for Beijing, not only as a magnificent showcase for the greatest athletic show on Earth, but also as an ancient metropolis hurtling into the 21st century.

As our direct flight from Newark Liberty to Beijing neared its destination, I slid the window shade up and gasped at the sight below. Rising northeast of the sprawling capital, the Yanshan Mountains provide a dramatic border for Beijing. Still brown in their late-winter hibernation, the barren hills revealed steep, compact waves of undulating peaks and valleys that seemed eager for the green that spring would soon bring. From the window, I could also make out the iconic Great Wall of China — site of one of the events in my upcoming personal decathlon.

Events 1 and 2
Sightseeing, Overseeing

Before my Great Wall excursion I warmed up with an urban outing. The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and several other must-sees are within walking distance of the Beijing Ritz-Carlton, where I was staying. Given the architectural grandeur and historical significance of the Forbidden City, still the center point around which everything revolves, there are few better places to start a visit to Beijing. For almost five centuries, generations of China’s emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties lived with their families and minions in the Forbidden City, a vast compound of palatial buildings spanning nearly 180 acres, surrounded by thick, towering red walls.

The Temple of Heaven

As I walked through the grand arched doorway of the Meridian Gate, I stepped into an enormous courtyard and got my first view of the fabled bastion’s oversized dimensions. It’s been almost a century since China’s last emperor, Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, reigned from here, but much of the Forbidden City remains remarkably well preserved. Constructed between 1406 and 1420, primarily of exotic woods and marble, the surviving buildings — 980 of them in total — have withstood fires, plundering, and nature’s elements.

For all its power to summon the spirit of China’s imperial era, the Forbidden City also carries a bold reminder of how that era was replaced by communist regimes beginning in 1912. At one of the two southern entrances hangs a huge color portrait of Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1945–76.

Interestingly, Mao peers directly across spacious Changan Avenue at Tiananmen Square, the world’s largest open-air plaza, whose origins date back to the early 1400s. Occupying just over 100 acres — equivalent to about 84 football fields — the renowned gathering place is surrounded by giant structures hailing China’s modern era. The centerpiece is the Monument to the People’s Heroes, a soaring 125-foot-high granite obelisk memorializing fallen revolutionaries. Just behind it is the stately mausoleum containing the preserved remains of Mao, who died in September 1976.

Operating on only a few hours’ sleep over the past two days, I was feeling a bit lifeless myself, but the Temple of Heaven beckoned. A manageable walk south of Tiananmen, the complex of buildings and parkland was the site of annual harvest ceremonies during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Each year at the winter solstice, the emperor and his attendants would proceed to the temple from the Forbidden City to participate in solemn rites of prayer and sacrifice, beseeching the heavens for bountiful growing seasons. (Ironically, farmers and other commoners weren’t invited.) The ceremony marking the winter solstice was believed to affect not just the spring harvest, but all of China’s fortunes during the new year. The three-tiered main temple, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, which was completed in 1420, glistens once again thanks to a pre-Olympics makeover and now stands as a marvelous monument to the city’s regal past.

Oriental Plaza

After retreating to my hotel room for a needed recharge, I embarked on a more relaxing journey into Beijing’s bygone days at the Summer Palace, 40 minutes northwest of the Forbidden City. Yet another enormous setting, the now-public park — highlighted by classical Qing-style temples, pavilions, gardens, and bridges — was once the exurban getaway for the imperial set. The palace, then called the Garden of Clear Ripples, dates back to 1750, but plundering by foreign troops left much of it destroyed by 1860; in 1888, Empress Dowager Cixi had it rebuilt as a park and it was renamed the Summer Palace. A former concubine of Emperor Xianfeng, Cixi became China’s de facto leader upon Xianfeng’s death in 1861 because their son — the sole male heir — was only 5 years old. Historians differ on whether Cixi was a despot or a stern, motivated woman but note that she regularly retreated from the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace to lavish in the environs she orchestrated. To get an idea of what that must have been like, I climbed to the top of Longevity Hill and soaked up some sun as I looked out on immense Kunming Lake and the placid views all around.

Events 3 and 4
Great Wall, Super Markets

I would need the energy I’d saved the next morning when Huiji, the director of Beijing Hikes, fetched me for our “wild” Great Wall trek. The original, and long-gone, Great Wall dated back to 453 BC. The wall that’s familiar today — a marvel that snakes intermittently across central China for about 4,500 miles — was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).

The China Club, which is situated in a hutong in Beijing

A testament to China’s engineering ingenuity and its isolationist past, and built as a defensive barrier against invaders from the north, the Great Wall can be accessed from Beijing via several locations, with varying degrees of difficulty. We chose a high degree and ventured 45 miles northeast to Huairou County and the Jiankou section of the Wall.

Unlike the most well known and heavily trafficked access point, Ba Da Ling, there are no tourist buses or concession stands at Jiankou. The driver dropped us off in a farming hamlet at the base of a steep mountainside. A rugged half-hour climb up a rocky dirt trail through brushwood brought us to an arched portal at the base of the Wall. From this spot, the famous barricade appears to stretch endlessly in each direction, hugging ridges that overlook a breathtaking panorama of both jagged and contoured peaks and deep valleys, some revealing centuries-old terracing built by farmers.

Ba Da Ling and other sections of the Great Wall have been restored, but at Jiankou it remains in its unreconstructed state. We ascended along an overgrown passageway in between the two sides of the brick-and-mortar fortification. Parts have crumbled since the days when legions of soldiers stationed in guard towers patrolled against marauding Mongols and Manchus, but much of the edifice is remarkably intact.

The Great Wall at Jiankou

Throughout the strenuous hike, Huiji proved to be not only a stalwart young guide, but also a font of intriguing tidbits of Wall history and lore who ably fielded my many questions. Where did all those bricks come from? They were baked in wood-fired kilns in the villages below, then hauled up on the backs of millions of laborers. What are those small, chevron-shaped openings on the wall’s sides? That’s where they fired arrows from. Notice they’re angled downward so soldiers could spy invaders coming up the steep slopes. Did invaders ever get through? Yes, the Manchus breached the wall in 1644, overthrowing the imperials in Beijing, and establishing the Qing Dynasty. Four hours later, tired and full of facts, I followed Huiji down a less precipitous trail — and realized I hadn’t seen another human being the entire time.

Spinning some yang onto that yin, back in the city I set out on a perfunctory shopping expedition. I’m in no danger of losing my amateur status when it comes to that pastime, yet the reputations of Wangfujing Street — an eclectic gaggle of stores big and small, domestic and international — and Silk Alley — the notorious market for ersatz apparel, pirated CDs and DVDs, and other sundry merchandise — were more than even a reluctant consumer like me could resist.

Although Beijing has attracted the most prestigious international retailers to its growing selection of ultramodern malls and five-star hotels, scouring these emporiums can be far more entertaining. Watching locals and tourists haggle with Silk Alley merchants over faux designer handbags makes similar episodes in New York’s Lower East Side look downright tame. A portion of Wangfujing is shut off to traffic, easing navigation, while at night another section is lined with food kiosks serving foods both familiar and exotic. Scorpion on a stick, anyone?

Events 5 and 6
Wheels and Meals

Delving into another traditional facet of Beijing that’s feeling the effects of burgeoning consumerism, for my next event I hired a guide for a bike tour of a landmark hutong north of the Forbidden City. Hutongs are clustered neighborhoods where the common citizens lived during the dynastic era. Packed with single-story houses and shops, and intersected by narrow, rutty streets and skinny alleys, the hutongs that have survived the relentless attack of the construction crane are still residential areas, and now draw growing numbers of curiosity-seekers, mostly on foot or in rickshaws. By bike we were able to cover more ground at a variable pace.

The patchwork of houses, typically interlocked around a common courtyard, ranges from ramshackle to fully renovated. My guide, Jackie, of the Beijing Hutong Tourist Agency, explained the significance of different elements in the designs of doorways, which identify the social status, occupation, or some other piece of information about the owner. Many hutongs have lately seen real estate prices soar, creating Beijing’s version of gentrification, and the evidence is visible in the hip bars, clubs, and restaurants that have sprung up alongside the remnants of old Beijing.

Bikers navigate a narrow hutong

Older residents seem to roll with the modern times. We pedaled down a dirt path to visit an elderly couple that has lived for more than 50 years in a compressed nine-room house built more than two centuries ago. Retrofitted from coal to electric heat and wired for cable TV and Internet service, the space now is also home to the couple’s two married sons, their wives, and two granddaughters.

To see a historic landmark that’s survived modernity, we biked to the Drum Tower and climbed up its 69 steep steps. The Drum Tower and its adjacent twin, the Bell Tower, were completed in 1272 and served as the center of timekeeping during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.

Whatever calories I burned on a full afternoon spent biking the hutong were replenished that night when I returned — sans the two-wheeler — to check out the area’s funky night scene. With Beijing’s meteoric economic rise has come an influx of international cuisine. Besides upscale restaurants scattered throughout the city’s hotels, malls, and residential enclaves, chic and affordable ethnic eateries are flourishing in the hutongs and other refurbished neighborhoods. I rendezvoused with an American expat couple, friends of a stateside friend, who took me to a favorite Italian eatery, Luce. Afterward, on the way to a little French-style wine bar, La Baie des Anges, which stages live music, they pointed out an acclaimed Malaysian restaurant called Café Sambal. Knowing what event awaited me the next day, however, I refrained from too much revelry.

Events 7 and 8
Bike, Hike, Spa, Ahh

That turned out to be a good choice, because Event 7 proved to be grueling. This time on a serious road bike (kindly supplied by Trek Bicycles through the U.S. company’s Beijing honcho, Todd McKean), I teamed up with Tom Lanhove — a Belgian expat who operates a fledgling bike-touring business, China Velo Adventures — for a 45-mile ride in the craggy mountains northwest of Beijing.

We began with a steady climb up a newly paved, switchbacking canyon road that featured far more elevation than the country roads I’m used to scaling in Connecticut. A switch to flatter pavement offered only a brief respite before we linked on to a long, uphill portion of the course the Olympic cyclists will compete on in August. The route starts near the Forbidden City, heads north through Beijing, and ultimately joins the Ba Da Ling Expressway, with the Great Wall in the background, before climaxing at Juyongguan Pass. It will challenge the best of the best. My less demanding ride was challenge enough for me: fighting leg cramps, I achieved my own golden moment when I reached the summit.

Besides being spurred on by Lanhove, an avid lifelong cyclist, a major inducement throughout that four-hour, butt-kicking bikeathon was a reservation I had that night for a 90-minute spa treatment at the Ritz-Carlton. Adjoining a tranquil lap pool and state-of-the-art health club, the spa encompasses a labyrinth of softly lit rooms — echoing with soothing music and scented with lovely aromas — where relaxation is inevitable, particularly if your muscles are being worked by the talented masseuses. It made me almost eager to take on my final two decathlon events. Foolish fiftysomething me.

Events 9 and 10
Tough Swim, Great Venues

The next morning, fantasy-channeling American swimming phenom Michael Phelps, I depleted what was left in my tank doing snail-paced laps in the Ritz’s sumptuous pool. With every stroke, the penultimate event in my yin-yang decathlon tested the limits of my amateur athleticism — and made me wonder if a more conventional tourist odyssey might have sufficiently satisfied my fitness fancies.

The swimming pool in the Water Cube, where Michael Phelps will go for the gold.

Alas, my Olympic spirit was reassured and revived by my 10th and final endeavor: a tour of Olympic venues — including the colossal Water Cube, where Phelps and other medal-seeking swimmers and divers will splash down. My guide, Jeff Ruffolo, an American media specialist, said the structure’s membranous, blue-hued skin reminds him of Raquel Welch’s subcutaneous exploits in Fantastic Voyage.

Even more phantasmagorical is the supersized “Bird’s Nest” next door. So-called for the amazing latticework of steel that forms its twisty exterior, the 2.8-million-square-foot, 91,000-seat National Stadium is where the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, as well as track and field events and soccer finals, will take place. Driving from there to ogle the similarly impressive velodrome, basketball arena, beach volleyball court, tennis stadium, and other venues, we passed the media facilities, the athletes’ village, and a massive park, still under construction, that will be twice the size of New York’s Central Park when completed. Further evidence of the massive scope of the preparation for the games lies northeast of central Beijing. There, the Shunyi Rowing-Canoeing Park, built from scratch on former farmland, comprises a parallel pair of built lakes and a whitewater canoeing circuit.

The Olympic venues provide undeniable proof that size most definitely matters in Beijing. The permanent facilities will enjoy a full post-Olympics life, as world-class sites for future competitions or public recreation. Over time, they will leave behind their Olympic legacy as they blend into the old-new tableau that is rapidly coming to define modern-day Beijing.

Getting There: Continental offers daily nonstop service to Beijing from its hub in New York/Newark.

Take a Vacation

Whether you crave a visit to Beijing’s Forbidden City, a stroll down the modern streets of Shanghai, or a cruise down the Yangtze River, Continental Airlines Vacations has a package for you.

The 7-Day Beijing Getaway features the must-sees on any history buff’s trip to the capital city, including a stop by Tiananmen Square and a visit to the Imperial Palace inside the Forbidden City, where you’ll roam the interior living quarters and see the jewels and the museum. The tour also includes a visit to the Great Wall of China.

For the ultimate getaway, take in a wide expanse of the country with the 19-Day Scenic China & Yangtze River Getaway. In addition to the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, this tour includes Xi’an, home to the Museum of Qin’s lifesize terra-cotta warriors and horses. A three-night cruise down the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam in San Dou Ping includes the “Ghost City” of Fengdu with its temples and statues of devils and is followed by excursions on the Inner West Lake in Hangzhou and along the Li River in Guilin.

Call 877.738.2742 or visit covacations.com to book your trip.

— Kristina Wong

Five-Star Stays

A constellation of five-star hotels has sprung up thanks to Beijing’s economic boom. Here are three of the most notable.

The Peninsula
A $35 million renovation in 2006 upgraded almost every facet of this centrally located gem, near the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and the Wangfujing shopping district. 8 Goldfish Lane, 86.10.8516.2888; peninsula.com

Ritz-Carlton Financial Street
This glass-and-chrome high-rise follows in the Ritz tradition of stylish comfort, but with a feng shui accent. Restaurant Cepe is an ode to the city’s international cuisine, serving excellent northern Italian fare. 1 Jin Cheng Fang St. East, 86.10.6601.6666; ritzcarlton.com

Shangri-La
The recently built Valley Wing adds 142 premier rooms and new luster to one of Beijing’s first five-star hotels. Valley Wing guests enjoy complimentary food and drinks 24/7 in the exclusive lounge. 29 Zizhuyuan Road, 86.10.6841.2211; shangri-la.com — B.W.