Dante’s Infirmity

Dante’s Infirmity
Boten, Laos
December 25th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“I just don’t see the point in tearing apart a perfectly good car.”
Tony P


I HAVE never woken up with a man on Christmas morning and, other than hoping to catch out Santa, I never expected to.
We could only afford four beds at the hotel, and the Mighty Tony P and I drew the short straws. But at least it was a room with clean sheets and a hot shower, not the crab-infested plywood whorehouse.
And Tony is a gentle lover.
Christmas Eve back home is spent down the pub with scores of old friends I haven’t seen for a year.
I spent this Christmas Eve with a gerbily Mexican-Italian-American watching a Japanese slapstick in Chinese in Laos.
I’ll be home for Christmas.
I’d told that to a lot of people, and although I knew months ago that I wouldn’t, it still felt strange. I felt like Dorothy.

Christmas lunch was fried noodles with squid and coffee. There were a few closed shops in Boten, maybe they knew something of this Christian holiday, but otherwise no signs of festive cheer. And though we’d been living in the village for four days, and everyone had noticed us, no one wished us season’s greetings.
I'm not sure what the locals think of the strange white people with their funny cars.
Someone must have been celebrating something because I watched a man cooking a giant hamster with a flamethrower. He was just out on the street with some gloves, a jet of flames and this enormous rodent.
What you up to?
“Just flamethrowering this here hamster.”
Okay.
Round back they had a crazy looking owl and three medium sized bears in cages. They were a few feet tall, with thick dark hair and powerful arms. I asked two of the boys where the bears came from and they gestured towards the surrounding forest. They told me they got them when they were very small, and when they were very big they would eat the paws and heart.
One of the boys was playing slaps with a bear through the cage, trying to palm the back of its paw before getting clawed.

We spent the afternoon successfully repairing Dante, and unsuccessfully working on Ziggy. Everything was tried, every piece taken apart and rebuilt, every component tested. But it wouldn’t start. The starter would whir and whir, and then, when you think the engine is going to catch, a loud ominous clunk, and nothing. It was the same sound as back in Beijing, and four days of tinkering had not fixed it.
By late afternoon OJ was plying Ziggy’s engine apart with a chisel. I think at that point we knew it was the end.
Christmas Day 2007, one-hundred-and-fifty-six days since we set off from Zwickau, Germany, twenty-three-thousand kilometres down the road, in our nineteenth country, we were going to have to dump a Trabant.

The decision to ditch a car was pretty much made for us- one engine didn’t work. But which Trabbi to get rid of? We had two working engines that could go in any of the cars.
The victim would be cannibalised for parts, butchered for spares, and it would take a lot of work, so really it didn’t matter which car went- it didn’t have to be Ziggy.

We decided the time was right to sit around with a beer, discuss it and vote.
But there wasn’t much agreement or discussion, more argument and contradiction. People became sentimental about their Trabbis and didn’t want to see them dumped. They admitted it, Carlos wanted to keep Fez because he loved it, Lovey wanted to keep Ziggy because he loved it, Tony wanted to keep Dante because he loved it.
Only OJ and I remained impartial. I honestly had no problem with losing Fez. I’ve spent a lot of time in the little car, but it is a pile of rubbish. It’s probably had more problems than any other car and runs terribly.
This is not the time for sentiment, I said, lets make a decision which gives us the best possible chance to get to Cambodia.
Everyone agreed. Then continued to let their sentiment cloud their judgement.

We thought about the car’s pluses and minuses:

Fez
Cons: no passenger seat, front right bearing and transaxle dodgy, passenger door doesn’t lock and swings open, brakes dodgy, rear control arm welded, history of problems, exhaust welded to the floor (extra noisy), headlights dim, speakers broken.
Pros: It’s looks good (subjective…), currently works so we could just drive away. In theory three people could squeeze in.

Ziggy
Cons: It’s in pieces all over the floor, broken front leaf spring, rear control arm welded, only Lovey can open the door, parking (hand) brake broken. Shocks are too big on the back (damaging rear tyres).
Pros: The only car that locks, hasn’t had too many problems, seats four people.

Dante
Cons: A giant hole has been cut into the roof (wet, cold, insecure). Passenger window missing, driver window stuck open. Passenger door broken (sealed shut). Trunk door broken (sealed shut). Can only seat two people.
Pros: Currently works so we could just drive away. Big trunk.

It was too tough to call. Not being particularly in on the mechanical side of things, which I felt should be the only consideration, I had no idea how to vote.
But this is how it went:
Tony wanted to ditch Ziggy, it was in pieces. He also loves Dante.
Carlos voted Dante, because there is no roof so it is terminally insecure. And he loves Fez.
Lovey voted Dante for the same reason (and he loves Ziggy), and so did OJ.
So when it came to my turn the decision was already made, Dante by three votes, with the main reason being the giant hole in the roof, which the Americans had cut out just the day before.
I abstained, I really had no idea.

Tony was pissed. That’s an American pissed, which I have learned means angry, not a British pissed, which means drunk. But soon he spanned the linguistic differences by downing a mini bottle of rice wine.
Then he was really pissed.
“I'm not annoyed at anyone for the decision, I just think it was the wrong one. I don’t see the point in tearing apart a perfectly good car, when we could just take the drum and the transaxle from Ziggy and go before it gets dark.”
But the car is insecure.
“So is Fez, the passenger door doesn’t close.”
Personally I didn’t really care about the time it would take to rebuild Ziggy and strip Dante. It would be better to get the job done properly than to rush it. We’re here now, I said, we should just get the job done as best we can.
But Tony was right. It took ages, it got dark, the job got harder and we’d scattered out tools across a mechanic’s forecourt. It was midnight by the time we’d finished testing Dante’s engine in Ziggy, switching the leaf springs over, harvesting the best tyres from Dante, taking the drum, transaxle, speakers, stereo.
When we’d finished gutting Dante it really was a sad sight. Sitting on bricks, shocks hanging loose, roof gaping open. We left it there, by a garage, and told the owner we were going to Vientiane to get parts.
The Americans talked about returning to pick it up once we’ve finished the trek. They want to ship it to the States.
But I think we may have seen it for the last time.

We set off in convoy, if you can call two cars a convoy. Really we were just following each other.
“How far do you think we’re gonna get?” I asked Carlos, who was driving.
“I don’t care, I just want to make it out of this town.”
The battery was dead, but we were on a hill so we roll started down, back towards the Laos border.
The engine kicked in, the loud, raucous vibrations, the exhaust filling the cabin. Carlos clicked it into gear and slipped the clutch. And we went…nowhere.
He turned to me: “There’s no gears.”
We looked at each other in silence. He had that flicker of a grin he grows arounf the corners of his mouth when he knows somethings gone horribly wrong. He shifted the stick around, but nothing.
“Clutch?”
I stepped out the car and looked around. We were still in Boten.
“So on that attempt we actually managed to go backwards?” I said. We’d roll started towards China, not Cambodia.
“Nice work. So we’ve lost one car and scored –50m today.”
We set up the tent for our fourth night in Boten.

Lying in Fez, where I had made a bed, I heard that infuriating sound of a mosquito, buzzing about in the dark, looking for a target. I don’t remember the last time I heard a mosquito. South East Asia, we’re here. Five of us, with two cars. But we’re here.
“Happy Christmas,” I shouted towards the tent, and squashed the midge.

Laos number: +856 (0)20 284 1195

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Big Trouble in Little China

Big Trouble in Little China
Boten, Laos
December 24th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“Come to Cambodia he said. We’ll have a good time he said. We’ll be home for Christmas he said.”
A favourite ditty of The Mighty Tony Perez.
WHO’S bored of Christmas already?
Those jingles, that shopping, the decorations. Ever wish to be completely away from it all? Somewhere they think Christmas is a hair product.
Well I think we found it.
Boten on the Laos-China border. A one road strip trapped in a terrible struggle for identity. You see, we’re in Laos. We crossed the border, the little barrier that divides Laos from China is visible from all over the village.
But somehow China has crept over that fragile demarcation, cultural seepage or cultural creepage, I don’t know, but the locals don’t seem to realise where they are. It’s Little China here: All the clocks are set to China time, all the signs are in Chinese, all the prices are in RMB, the Chinese currency.
In fact, we’re having a tough time trying to use our Laos Kip. When I hand it over, the locals stare uncomprehendingly as if I just passed them, well, a foreign note.
“It’s Kip. It’s Laos money.” I say.
A shake of the head. “Renminbi,” they reply.
We are able to exchange, but we are getting royally screwed every time, and we’re running out of cash.
And Christmas. What Christmas?
There isn’t a shred of tinsel in sight, not a whiff of mistletoe or a tinkle of jingle bells. I don’t think they’ve heard of Slade. No Santa hats, roast chestnuts, crackers, stilton or port, and the surrounding forest is spared the shame of being chopped down and dressed up like a kitsch, pantomime drag queen.
A nearby tree bends a branch over and squints a knot at my screen.
“They do what?”
“That’s right my evergreen friend, if you’d had the misfortune to be born anywhere in the Anglo-Saxon world you’d have been hacked down, sprinkled with ribbon and glitter, and topped by a winged bimbo with a wand.”
“Frightening. Have your Western trees no dignity?”

On Christmas Eve 2007 this isn’t where I expected to wake up.
In a tiny room with plywood walls in a house of ill repute. The cheapest joint in town and thankfully, unlike yesterday, I wasn’t woken by the moans of the single member of staff doing her job. Someone had a happy ending.
We’ve had some progress with the cars. Fez and Dante work. But Ziggy doesn’t, and more worryingly, we’re unable to diagnose the problem. It’s never taken this long to solve a Trabbi riddle before.
So it’s day three on a patch of dust by the side of the road. There is some life here: it’s a free trade zone, so there’s a big new casino just up the road with a $50/night hotel. There are a few little boutiques with some trendy Chinese fashion, all well out of our price range. There’s also the best internet café I have seen in South East Asia, although I haven’t been here for seven years.
There must be 50 PCs, all pretty new, a good connection and gangs of boys and girls- the boys playing World of Warcraft and Counterstrike, the girls on a dancing game and social networking sites. Unlike the West, computers are too expensive for most people, but internet is cheap- 35p an hour. So the interwang, as it is called here, is the place to be. Whenever I walk in the girls just crack up. Occasionally it prickles to have a few dozen teenagers giggling at me, but mostly I just take a deep breath.

Dante now has a skylight stretching over the driver and passenger seats. Which is interesting. Because Dante is now terminally insecure, we have taken the passenger window and put it in Fez to replace the one Carlos broke. But now the passenger door has stopped locking, so you just tug it to pull it open. Not especially secure.
The American’s have tried pretty much everything on Ziggy, with no success. So they have gone to a mechanics up the road to try again, and see if the guys there have any ideas.
If we don’t get it working then we have to ditch it.
“It’s annoying if we have to dump a car just because we don’t know what’s wrong with it,” Lovey told me.
“I agree, it could be something really simple.”
Ziggy has always been the strongest car- it would be a shame to leave it here, when it could be fixed.
I don’t feel like we’re in a rush anymore. We’re not going to make Vang Vien for Christmas, nor Sihanoukville for New Year. So why hurry? I'm resigned to this thing not being over ‘till 2008, why bother rushing through the last few weeks of the trip at a frantic pace, getting stressed out and not enjoying it?
We’ve made South East Asia, it’s warm, it’s cheap, I'm happy to settle into a more gentle rhythm, and if that means we sit here for the whole of Christmas trying to get Ziggy going, then so be it.
I’d only be whinging about Christmas at home anyway. Those jingles, that shopping, the decorations. Ever wish to be completely away from it all?
Try Boten, Laos.

UPDATE 9PM: Ziggy still doesn’t work. The Yanks spent the day taking the car apart and rebuilding the engine, to no avail. No one knows what the problem is, but rather than dump it and move on, the Americans want to try a couple more things tomorrow. If that doesn’t work we either dump it here, or send it ahead to Luang Prabang by truck, and dump it there. That way there would be a chance we could come back for it at a later date. Who knows when?
Dante is broken too. Carlos and Lovey needed a tow back after a 20km trip to the petrol station. But Tony thinks he knows what the problem is.
Another job for Christmas Day.
Fez starts, but we haven’t tried taking it more than a few hundred metres- who knows how far it will run?
So we’re staying here in Boten tonight.
As a group we have $100 left. There’s no ATM here- we waved a credit card at the manager of the hotel/casino and he looked very confused.
They don’t take Visa.
We’re dirty and smelly, having spent the days deep in engine grease and the last two nights alternating between a brothel and a tent. So we want a hot shower and fresh sheets as our Christmas present. We found a hotel that’ll do it, but it’s about $35- a fair chunk of our money. We’re going for it, just so we don’t wake up on Christmas Day in a whorehouse.
But that only leaves us $65 to try and get to Luang Prabang, where there is an ATM.
Hopefully we can fix Ziggy and Dante tomorrow, and get there without breaking down.
That does seem pretty hopeful. Otherwise we’ll try sending Ziggy down by truck, and hope the driver will accept cash on arrival.
There’s a chance we’ll be stuck somewhere in northern Laos with cars that don’t work and no money. This seems just as likely as getting to Luang Prabang.
A teenage girl just walked past wearing a flashing Santa hat. The only hint of Christmas cheer here on the China border.

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A Sad Humiliation on Entering Laos

A Sad Humiliation on Entering Laos
Laos
December 23rd, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“I love Gabor. He didn’t send us what we asked for. But he did send us what we need.”
Tony, on the package of parts we received from Hungary.

A MORE ignominious entrance to a country would be difficult to imagine.
Our three Trabbis, pride of our lives, towed across the border in convoy by a single tuk tuk.
Shameful.
One little motorbike tugging along all our cars and worldly possessions.
Passers-by pointed and laughed, officials stared, motorists gawped and swerved. Trabant Trek hits Laos.

We’d hoped to cross from China on Wednesday (December 19th), but the cars took a few extra days to reach the border. So we relaxed in a town about 50km away, Meng La.
We needed a few hundred quid to pay the shipping company, and, although Carlos had sorted out the European money, none of the ATMs in town would accept the American’s cards. They had to take a four-hour bus ride to the nearest city to withdraw the cash.
OJ broke a pen in protest.

That afternoon I went to check out a basketball court I had seen the following evening. There were a couple of guys playing and a load of seven or eight-year-old girls in school uniform. It was about 4pm so I guessed they were on their way back from school, and I joined in. I was getting a lot of funny looks, which I expected, being a pasty, sweaty white man, but after ten minutes a woman came out.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Well, I'm on my way to Laos.”
“But what are you doing here?”
“Just passing through, I’ve driven here from Germany actually, we’re trying to get to Cambodia.”
“No, no. What are you doing here? This is a school. This is a PE lesson.”
I’d inadvertently wandered into a playground and started shooting hoops during a class. Oops. The lady was the school’s English teacher who had been summoned to sort me out.
I wonder what would have happened if a pot-bellied Chinaman had turned up at an English girls school and joined a basketball lesson.
He would probably be arrested.
But they were okay about it and I ended up playing a proper, hour long game of full court with the PE teachers, complete with scoreboard, ref’, floodlights and refreshment table. Exhausting.

The next day (Friday) the Americans returned from their ATM mission and Edmund, our guide, text to say the last car was at the border.
We headed down to Mo Hoa but they couldn’t get Fez off the truck before the crossing closed, so we were stuck another day.
We paid Edmund, our guide, who has been pretty awesome throughout our stay in China, sorting out all the paperwork, officialdom and shipping.
We are so late that the poor chap wont make it home (a five day bus and train journey) to be with his family for Christmas. He’s a devout Christian, and we all feel terrible about it.
Carlos found out about his distinctly un-Chinese name though. Apparently he’d once worked at a hotel, and the manager told him he could pick his uniform. Each one had a name stitched on and he chose one with Edmund.
I think all people deserve a similar opportunity at birth- take the parents out of the equation.

Saturday, December 22nd, we finally made it out. More than three weeks after the expiry of the Trabbi’s customs papers, just a day before the end of our own visas, six weeks behind the original schedule, and three weeks behind the revised Bishkek timetable.
Three days till Christmas.
And none of the cars work.
We’ve crossed mountains and deserts in these little cars. We’ve come so far, more than 20,000km through 19 countries, and the cars are badly damaged. But much is superficial or cosmetic- the doors don’t close properly, none of them lock, and when they do you can’t open them. The paintwork is a horrible mess, and there are various battle scars from collisions. Yesterday Carlos smashed Fez’s passenger window, which is ok, because before that it wouldn’t open- fine in freezing Siberia, but a problem in sunny Laos. None of the cars have seatbelts- all of them have been removed to use as tow cables at some point. Ziggy can only indicate left, and doesn’t have brake lights. Fez doesn’t even have a passenger seat.
All these things we can, and have, been dealing with. The cars are rubbish, we know that, they’ve been lived in for five months, they’re trashed.
But what’s going on under the bonnet, I have less idea about. None of them work, that’s clear enough, and we are relying on the parts that Gabor, our Hungarian mechanic sent, being able to sort the problem.

In a rare moment of group co-ordination, Lovey, who had gone to Bangkok to collect the parts, managed to meet us at the Laos border with the package. Our tuk tuk had dropped us off just before the crossing, but luckily it was downhill into Laos, so we released the handbrakes and freewheeled into the country, stopping outside a restaurant to compare notes.
What an arrival.

I was up for having the cars towed all the way south to Vang Vien, a traveller’s town where we hoped to spend Christmas. That way we could relax for a few days, fix the cars and enjoy the festivities with some other Westerners. I was very afraid that we might get the cars going and begin the drive, only to break down in the middle of nowhere and spend Christmas by the side of the road.
But the others were confident we could fix the cars here, so, on the side of the road, 100m from the border with China, we removed all three engines, and began rebuilding them. It turned out we hadn’t requested the correct parts for the job. But luckily Gabor had sent us them.
TP: “I love Gabor. He didn’t send us what we asked for. But he did send us what we need.”
Everyone got burned in the blistering heat, but loved it after the cold of the last few months.
By nightfall we had Fez and Ziggy back together, but all the cars had flat batteries. We tried to push start them, to no effect. I managed to find someone with leads to give us a jump start, but Fez only ran for a few minutes, making a terrible racket and sounding distinctly unwell, before the engine just died.
Tired and getting ratty, we turned in at what may have been a house of ill repute.

So this morning we plan to get the cars going and begin the drive south. Luang Prabang is about 300km away, Vang Vien another hundred. The chance of making it to Vang Vien for Christmas seems pretty slim from here- we don’t even know what the problem is with Fez or Ziggy. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.
Luang Prabang is a possibility, but it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and pretty dull.
But it’d be better then the side of the road.

UPDATE, 3.30PM: This morning I found a garage to charge all the batteries. We are doing them in shifts. Just brought the first one back and stuck it in Fez. The little car works. We asked Tony to try it first and he raced away. He then kindly asked Lovey to have a drive of our baby Trabbi. Neither Carlos or I have been allowed a go yet, but I'm sure it’ll be smashing.
I'm resting my sunburn in a shady restaurant, and watching the Americans removing the roof from Dante. I can’t see exactly what’s going on, but when I returned from the mechanics they were drinking Beer Laos and excitedly told me they are going to make Dante into a convertible. Now they are on the roof with various tools.
It doesn’t rain in Laos does it?

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China's Century

China’s Century
China
December 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.
In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”Confucius

DID you know that China is where it’s at?
For the next century this is the best seat in the house. Sorry Old Europe with your entrenched socialism, stifling history and petty prejudice. Bollocks to America and the military industrial. Russia? You’re so 1900s.
This is China’s Century.
In the last 20 years the country has transformed from communist to consumerist. From Mao tunic to Prada miniskirt. From global pariah to global power.
And the next 20?
Watch the country rocket to world leader. See our rulers scream in terror as the juggernaut overtakes, listen to the scare stories, the rhetoric, the flood of cheap goods, the outsourcing, the military build up, oooh the pain of the West as it loses its crown.
This is China’s century and we’re all in it.

China gets such a rough ride in the press. It is seen as a threat, an economic threat, a political threat- evil communists, repressive regime, no freedom of speech, it’s a one party system. The US must be twice as good; it has a two party system.
In my three weeks here I have only visited cities: Xilinhaote, Beijing, Xi’an and Kunming. I have no idea about the countryside, I have little idea of the political situation. But from what I have seen at street level, whoever is in charge has gripped modernity by the wallet.
The cities are exploding, booming, bursting at the seams with development. You can taste the progress in the air: it’s the smell of car exhausts, coffee, and perfume. It’s touch screen mobile phones and wireless internet, skyscrapers and shopping malls, dancing cranes hovering around new buildings that grow a storey a second, every second, day and night. Armani vies with Apple for attention; do I want a rain mac or an Apple Mac? David Beckham, Kate Moss and their fragile ilk pout down from the billboards to help me decide.

I don’t know how many people can afford this stuff. How many have been left out by the new China. When a slap up meal costs a dollar, how many people can spend $30 on a shirt?
Those who can- the new commercial class of the new China- are well-dressed city-dwellers, funky, fashionable, mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, little leather handbags, big leather wallets.

The web is big. All the guesthouses we stayed in had free wifi, as did plenty of restaurants, cafes and bars. It is censored- no BBC and even my own blogspot site is banned. But you can easily get around it with a proxy server (www.anonymouse.org).
And with the explosion in web use has come a surge in free speech and criticism, which in many ways has helped facilitate the new China.
The government still runs the Great Firewall of China, a wonder of the modern world, and even Google has kowtowed, censoring its own search engine.
But in an increasingly net savvy society, how long can this last?
And with freedom of speech comes criticism of the government, and political change.
China doesn’t do change quickly. It doesn’t share the West’s obsession with youth (Michael Howard too old to lead the Tories at 66), and its rulers are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Political change is slower and more deliberate.
But it is happening.
Be prepared. This is where it’s at.
This is China’s Century.

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The Cusp of South East Asia

The Cusp of South East Asia
Kunming to the Laos border
December 14th- 21st, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”Confucius

KUNMING was beautiful, I felt very much at home.
Busy, warm, vibrant, large university population, very much a modern city, but with a distinctly Chinese twist- huge government buildings that could have come from the New York skyline, except they had subtly curved roofs, a little nod to a pagoda.
Walking back from watching the United-Liverpool game, at 2am on a Sunday night, the streets were still busy.
A little oasis of stalls around a street lamp, filled with fruits and foods I didn’t recognise. Dozens of people sitting out in the night, eating and chatting.
A patrol of policemen passed, about half a dozen all swinging long clubs as they sauntered by. The back two cops were arm-in-arm, laughing.

The cars were meant to arrive here and be shipped out to the border on Friday (December 14th). But the delivery company must have been infected by Trabbi Time, as the last car, Fez, didn’t arrive ‘till Wednesday and didn’t get shipped ‘till Thursday (December 20th)- another week long delay.
Carlos and I went down to the shipping company to pay them and check on the cars.
Ziggy was surrounded by a swarm of men. They had the windows down, the doors open. They were rifling the inside playing with walkie talkies, three men had the boot open and were going through the stuff inside, waving our 8mm camera about.
We approached by stealth and I shouted a loud English greeting in an attempt to scare them. But they just looked up, shameless, and waved our stuff at us.
I gave them a tour of the engine, to much laughter.

We got a night bus south to a town nearer the border to wait for the cars. There were three rows of double beds on the bus, which was nice, except Carlos, TP and I were in a five-person bed at the back, sandwiched between two Chinamen.
A sweaty and frustrating night. Sleeping with five men was everything I’d imagined it to be.


It is a shame not to have driven the length of China. It would have been some road trip alone, and a real missed opportunity, especially considering how much we paid to do it. Instead all our efforts were limited to the dull northern desert. It would have been interesting to watch that dry, dirty, grey landscape develop into the humid, lush, greenery that we’ve seen in the south.

Looking outside the window on our long journey south (65 hours of trains and buses) I had seen the usual ebb and flow of city to countryside. Rural wooden shacks and chocolate cake hills drifting to suburbs, mixing old thatched homes with light industrial, low-rise factories, then the neck craning city centres, thirty and forty story apartment blocks and offices, filthy decrepit estates near shining new glass and metal skyscrapers. The image would rebound as we left the centre, returned through the fading development and arrived back at hillsides carved into terraces, sweeping like grand colonial staircases down to sun-kissed green fields and heavy streams topped with a head of floating mist.

It is sad we couldn’t drive, but driving Trabbis is a two edged sword.
On the one hand, you never know when you are going to stop (i.e. breakdown). So the little cars take you to places you would never have normally visited, places that don’t make the guidebook, that aren’t even on the map, that few westerners have visited.
This is awesome: no guesthouses, no internet, not even any restaurants- you have to rely on the hospitality of locals, and they always come through.
On the other hand, you never know when you are going to stop. So the little cars take you to places you would never have normally visited, places that you don’t want to visit.
So you end up staying five days on the Turkmen-Uzbek border, instead of getting to know Ashgabat. You live a week in tiny Tajik villages, instead of exploring the Pamirs.
Here in China we spent a week in Xilinhaote, it’s a big city but not worth a visit, we could have used the time doing anything- Three Gorges Dam? Shanghai?
So we have seen China in a completely different manner to all the other countries we have visited. We have been on the tourist trial. Refreshing in some ways, but still, a missed opportunity.

Hopefully tomorrow, Friday December 21st, Fez will arrive and we will cross into Laos.
Of course, none of the cars work. We will be pushing all three of them across the border. Truly stumbling out of China. I don’t know how much no-man’s-land there is. On the Tajik-Kyrgyz crossing there was 22km of mountainous tracks between the countries.
Let’s hope China and Laos enjoy a closer relationship.
Either way, we will be limping in, struggling over the last few miles to the home straight, South East Asia.
I can already smell it in the food, see it in the foliage and feel it I the air- sticky and humid.
Six weeks late, but we’re nearly there.

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The Train to Spring

The Train to Spring
Kunming, China
December 13th-17th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“I’ve been clean for two weeks now.”
Tony P, team mechanic, on the joys of travelling without Trabants.

THE thing about long train journeys is the smell.
As is the way with odour, it builds up around you, slow, subtle and unnoticed, like carbon monoxide poisoning, senile dementia and Jack Johnson.
But you step off the train to fight over a satsuma with a bunch of passengers suffering cabin fever, return to your cot, and then it hits you.
Piss, eggs, wine, fart, sweat, rice, coke, beer, perfume, shit, bleach, noodles, effluent, chicken, hair, feet, feet, feet, feet and more feet- a heady brew of satanic spices concocted in a cauldron previously used as a dustpan when Beelzebub swept out hell’s charnel house.
Overpowering, stomach-turning revoltingness on a chemical weapon scale- expect pre-emptive action by a US-led multinational force acting under the auspices of the UN with a brief to destroy WMD and anyone affected.
There were no windows. I imagine we couldn’t be trusted to regulate our own temperature to aroma ratio, and the only draft came when someone opened the toilet door, wafting a port-a-loo breeze of acrid disinfectant and sewage through our carriage.
We didn’t have a cabin, just three stories of bunk beds arranged along an open and busy corridor. Every half hour a man with a trolley would dash through shouting in Chinese, but disappear before we could see what he was wheeling.
Thirty-five hours in these conditions was always likely to be testy.

There were a few other inconveniences.
The freak show fame attached to being Westerners in the east: aren’t we funny, aren’t we strange, come and have a look. Fair’s fair- we’re only here because they’re funny and strange and we wanted a look.
But we don’t watch them crapping.
The Chinese have a penchant for the art of throat clearing. Never have I seen a nation attack the issue of phlegm with such vehemence. True connoisseurs of the clearance- huge, racketing, barking, choking hocks that are enough to make innocent bystanders gag and dogs howl at the moon. I sometimes expect cranium chunks or nasal cavity to come roaring out with the gob: oh look, that’s his frontal lobe, that was a good spit.
And it isn’t just the men, communism is non-discriminatory, a truly equal form of suppression, so woman too can hurl vile slime balls down as they adjust their make-up. Nor is the practice restricted to the outdoors, our train was something of a haven for spitters, the beat to our journey the rhythmic expulsion of snot.
What could make this paradise of sight and smell complete?
Throw in the tantruming youngster. A perfect wake up call for day two on the Nifkin Express. She must have been nine or ten, not the screaming baby who knows no other way to express her wants, but a young girl with command of language taking out a vehement yet unknown grievance on a train full of folk who were not her tormentors.
Little brat. Hours of it, lung-bursting, head in hands shrieks- not even crying, just wailing. And her guardian, in what I imagine was an attempt to discipline the little bitch, sat stony, silent and impassive.
Just give her what she wants, I thought, we shouldn’t all have to be involved in this terrible lesson. But on it went, ‘till she seemed to forget what she was screaming about.
Time decided to relax and spread out, the only punctuation to its mindless passing the decision to have a pot of instant noodles. A little treat for having coped with another six hours, and a rare chance to do something gratifying and rewarding.
I got hot water. I made noodles.
The red wine we brought as our valium went too quickly and the night was restless, sleep hindered by the jagged progress of our driver, who had a sixth sense for passengers nodding off and gleefully hit the breaks to put a stop to such weakness. Isn’t sleep deprivation a form of torture? Can I call the Red Cross? No? So it’s true what they say: China is a country piled high with repressive jobsworths bent on punishment and suppression.
I hope that sentence never comes back to haunt me.

In the morning everyone was ratty, but the mood lifted when we pealed back the curtains.
Outside all was green and yellow.
True, vibrant, healthy, vegetable green dowsed in a wash of eastern yellow from a heavenly body long lost to us, but now reintroduced.
The Sun.
Rolling fields bathed in sunshine.
We cast our collective minds back for the last time we’d seen such simple glory. Tajikistan? Mountains. Turkmenistan? Desert.
We placed it in Azerbaijan, the long drive to Baku, August 25th. Nearly four months ago.
I greedily absorbed the view, and tried to snatch a look at what the farmers where wearing as they flew past my little screen. Is it sandal weather? Shorts?

Kunming means the City of Eternal Spring, and we stepped off the train into a beautiful spring day.
T-shirt weather.
It seems strange to hark on about the weather. I am English, and in a country with such an unpredictable climate commenting on the clouds is an understandable national pastime.
But for us it’s more than that.
Back in Bishkek we had to make the choice between going south to Bangkok (quick, warm, easy) or heading north through Siberia (long, cold, difficult).
We plumped for north and the six and a half weeks it has taken us to escape sub zero temperatures have been the most testing yet.
Even in west Tajikistan, where we broke down relentlessly, it felt like a bit of a holiday because you could always relax in the sun.
But when you have to slide under the car at night time in two feet of snow it really doesn’t feel like a vacation. When two of the cars need to be push started every time, and it is so cold that even touching the back windows with gloved hands freezes your fingers so they hurt.
Seven weeks of wearing thermal underwear, three pairs of socks, huge jackets, scarves, gloves, layer after layer giving me a Jo Brand physique. Having to take everything off when you get in somewhere, and putting literally everything on in the evening to spend another night in a Tupperware box with no heating and doors that don’t close so that the outside is very much inside.
Our lowest ebb must have been in the Gobi when we (Carlos) burned out Fez’s clutch plate. All our water was frozen so we had to make a fire out of dried camel shit and fence posts that we sawed down from along the railway line. The coldest experience of my life.
It has been a real test of endurance.
And now its over.
We made it. We did the northern route. We beat the Kazakh steppe, the Siberian winter, the Gobi Fucking Desert, and now we’re safe. Whatever happens, the threat of exposure and frostbite is over.

Our hostel has a terrace, no, a SUN terrace. From it I can see palm trees.
South East Asia here we come.



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The Great Mosque of Xi'an

The Great Mosque of Xi'an
Xi’an, China
December 12th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

FOR a while in Xi’an it felt like I’d been transported back to Central Asia.
We’d stumbled into the Muslim Quarter, a strange and ancient place that owes its existence to the Silk Road, the famous trade route between China, the Middle East and Europe. The road, which was actually more of a network of different and often competing paths, was a conduit for all sorts of luxuries like firs, dyes, gems, spices, and of course silk. Xi’an was the first big Chinese city western merchants would get to, and plenty of Arab traders decided to settle here to make their fortune.

It is an interesting walk, although most of the people look Chinese, I could see the odd Arabian among the stalls. People wore little Arabic touches: men wearing fez, women with headdresses.
Little birds sang from cages that lined the main road, like street lamps. A girl with clubbed feet crawled around after us, clattering along a paint tin with a few bills in. Every now and again we would stop long enough for her to catch up and she’d start banging her tin. She could only have been 11 or 12. She wore gloves on her hands like shoes as she dragged her lame, bare feet behind.
A man sang traditional songs at the top of his nasal voice as he sliced up a great rice cake, a huge yellow thing the size of a bedside table. He skewered thick, moist pieces and barbecued them.
Next to him whole carcasses hung from butchers hooks, dripping puddles of blood into congealing pools.
We stopped for something to eat and the menu was straight out of Central Asia, shashlik, manti, naan bread, even pismaniye, which is a sort of candy floss like sweet we had in Izmit in Turkey almost four months ago and haven’t seen since.

Buried among the narrow alleys is The Great Mosque of Xi’an, the largest in China,
We’ve seen some very impressive mosques on this trip- none more so that the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. But the Great Mosque of Xian really looks nothing like a mosque, not as I know it anyway.
The mosques we’ve seen normally have great domes, often a cloistered brick courtyard surrounded by minarets. But this was more like a large garden separated into sections by ornate Chinese gateways, pavilions and pagodas, the same sort of layout as a Chinese temple.
In the buildings were intricate carved furniture, glazed vases, wooden shutters and paper screens.
And it was full of contradictions:
There were Chinese symbols like dragons and turtles everywhere- but in Islam depicting a living creature is banned so you don’t expect to find these images in mosques.
There were quotes from the Koran up, but they are in Chinese, and, translating the Koran is considered blasphemy so is banned.

It was strange, fascinating and beautiful. Such a tranquil atmosphere- the Chinese use small trees and bushes cleverly to create an impression of privacy in open spaces. The air felt light and calm, a little oasis in this noisy city. If it wasn’t for the sign at the door I wouldn’t have guessed it was a mosque. Only the large prayer hall at the very end, closed to infidels, gave a solid clue.
I was surprised to see that work on the place started in 742AD, only 150 years after Mohammed was born, yet here, thousands of miles away, is this magnificent structure.
Testament to the power of Islam as a faith, and the power of the Silk Road as a highway for ideas.

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Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors
Xi’an, China
December 11th and 12th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

THE city of Xi’an exists in a cloud.
At least it did when I was there, a thick fog obscuring the sky and the tops of buildings. Smog or moisture or maybe both, our two days were spent walking in a damp, 100m wide bubble so it was impossible to grasp the scale of the place.
We passed a McDonalds and smart looking Starbucks to get to our hostel- the more time I spend in these Chinese cities, the less different they appear from their Western counterparts. It could have been one of those strange, misty London mornings where the city’s grey stone sits camouflaged and disorienting in the opaque. Only Chinese faces stared back at me, could still be home, but then, from the gloom, like a Polaroid developing, emerges a pagoda or temple unlike much outside Soho or the tower at Kew Gardens.

By the end of my week in Beijing I had grown too familiar, too comfortable in my little niche, to notice the city.
I woke up every day in the same place, in the same part of town. Began eating at the same joint, choosing my favourite thing off the menu, drinking the same beer and generally feeling comfortable. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt- I loved Beijing- but the excitement of the first few days dwindled into apathy, and the ink stopped flowing as the bizarre became the usual.
First impressions are best. When you don’t yet understand your surroundings and wander intrigued by the little differences. After five months of moving these changes are so quickly assimilated that Beijing’s early romance and novelty were too quickly taken for granted
So I was pleased to get out and try something new.
We grabbed the overnight train, Beijing to Xian, 12 hours. The air con went off in the night and for the first time in months I remembered what it is like to be too hot to sleep. The stiflingly close atmosphere on my top bunk (thee bunks high), freaking me out, and when we arrived I caught up on some sleep for an hour while OJ researched the city.

The Eighth Wonder of the World? According to some, the Terracotta Warriors here in Xi’an warrant a place with the Pyramids, the Oracle, and the rest on that controversial list.
We went to find out.

On another hot day in 1974, among bone-dry fields on the outskirts of Xi’an, and beneath the rolling stare of the legendary Lishan Mountain, a group of local farmers, suffering from the annual draught, began digging a well.
Hours into their work, and about ten feet down, Yang Xi Man struck something solid. Initially thinking it was a rock, he called for help, but when he and his friends dug further they found it wasn’t stone, but clay.
Clay that had been fired.
Working at the object more carefully now, in the darkness of the pit, the men slowly uncovered a round fragment, and dusting it off revealed the clay head of a warrior, staring back at them from a tangle of bamboo matting.
The men had unwittingly stumbled upon a chamber in the burial grounds of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the infamous 3rd Century BC Chinese ruler. In fantasy style they had made one of the great finds of the 20th Century, uncovering a vault that had remained undisturbed and unknown for two millennia.

Emperor Qin has a mixed legacy. He is probably most famous for being the first man to unite the competing Chinese dynasties, quite a feat. He also began work on the first Great Wall, but possibly more importantly, he was responsible for standardising Chinese script, codifying his new nation’s code of laws, and regulating weights and measures for trading. All these changes, completed in the 15 years of his reign, served as the foundations for the next 2,000 years of Chinese development.
So far so good, but there were bad sides. He sparked the first Chinese peasant revolts by raising tax to 30%- the sheer cheek of it. Those peasants didn’t know how good they had it, 30%? We’d be singing in the streets with that kind of let off now.
He had a large mausoleum built which, according to legend has pearls imbedded in the ceiling to represents stars, and rivers of liquid mercury flowing around it, though no one has yet opened the 76m high mound. It is this grave that the Terracotta Warriors guard, standing about a mile to the west, and to ensure its secrecy Qin ordered the 700,000 labourers and artisans who worked on the tomb to be killed and buried with him.
At the time China had about 20 million souls, so roughly three or four per cent of them got the chop, and an even bigger percentage of skilled workers, were put to death.
Frightening.
He had a reputation for wanton cruelty, gouging out the eyes of courtiers who disagreed with him, summary executions, proclaiming himself a deity, questing for eternal life- typical emperor vices. What is it with these chaps? Everywhere we go we hear tales of the extreme cruelty of rulers. Maybe the kind ones get forgotten by history?
Oh yes and then there was Emperor Jin He Do, he liked chess and soft fabrics.
Doesn’t really work does it? History has no time for constants, it craves uproar and chaos so the story of mankind sounds like a constant affliction of despair: nasty brutish and short. Actually things were very nice during the 4th Century thank you very much, just not too much to write about.

So back to the strange pit. Inside archaeologists found a huge, but mostly collapsed, subterranean cavern filled with an army of life-size warriors, finely detailed to the point of individually painted faces, all made of terracotta.
Not just a clever name.
There are spearmen, archers, swordsmen, skirmishers, cavalry and chariots, arranged in a battle formation ready to take on all comers- about 6,000 men in that pit alone.
The men form the army Emperor Qin took with him to the grave, guarding his nearby mausoleum and providing arms for him in the afterlife.
Thirty years after its discovery the pit is a major tourist attraction, covered in a grand marble and granite building, a modern reflection of the power of the state exercised beneath.
Strolling in, the scale of the pit took my breath away- the excavation is covered by a roof like an aircraft hanger- more than 200m long and over 70m wide. Underneath are 11 corridors, filled with warriors, standing four or five abreast, with the fronts and sides of the formation lined with men facing outwards to cover the rear and flanks.
The size is stupendous, and although only the front few dozen rows have so far been restored you can only guess at the completed picture when the last of the workers looked at the extent of their achievement before closing over the roof of the corridors with thick wooden beams, laying mats on the top then piling the ground with soil- the last men to glimpse the army in its full glory, more than two millennia ago.
Three more pits have been found since the first- there’s four in total, though pits three and four are only a fraction of the size of pits one and two.
Because we are generally turning out to be guided by a kind of supernatural luck and uncanny ability to be in the right place at all times, the best of these, pit two, was closed for refurbishment ahead of the Olympics next year.

In the museum you can see the detail on the figures up close- it is pretty incredible, the curves of the chain mail armour, the folds of their robes, the detail of the faces and fingernails.
Back in the day each one was painted brightly. But after the unpopular Qin died his son and successor was assassinated. Mobs descended on the site of Qin’s tomb and managed to get into the vaults housing the terracotta army, which they burned then resealed.
So the archaeologists have to contend with fire damage along with the ravages of two millennia in collapsing subterranean cavities, but you can still see some of the paint on a few figures.
Every warrior was armed, the Chinese produced around 40,000 bronze weapons for the force- spears, halberds, swords, battle axes, hooks, bows, crossbows, arrows and the Chinese weapons the Pi, Shu and Ge. It is one of the world’s earliest surviving examples of mass production of weapons, and a showcase for early metallurgy.
When the archaeologists got at them, they found some of the weapons were still sharp.
In total, experts guess there are more than 10,000 warriors, but most are still buried under the gathered muck of 2,000 years. The archaeologists have spent thirty years digging them up and painstakingly piecing the breaks back together from millions of fragments, restoring the army to its formation. An epic, mind numbing work- and they want to complete the whole thing. Probably not in my lifetime.
In Pit 3, which is tiny in comparison to Pit 1, many of the blokes are headless, strange, eerie figures- like a London Dungeon diorama of the reign of James I. The ones with noggins seem to be smiling a little, but I guess I’d be laughing too if I’d spent 2,000 years watching my mates heads drop off. In a lot of places you can see the rubble that archaeologists have to deal with, a mass of jumbled hollow pieces, like a pile of leftover Easter eggs that have spent time in the sun.

By closing time our visit descended into the usual farce of people being more keen to gawp and have their photos taken with us than the majestic sight before them. We smiled patiently.
Lucky the Trabbis weren’t here, it could have been a terrible distraction, and I wouldn’t want to invoke the ire of the proud clay warriors.

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From Six to Four

From Six to Four
Beijing, China
December 6th- 10th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Confucius

AN EVENTFUL few days has seen our sixsome temporarily reduced to four.
Lovey has flown down to Bangkok in Thailand, definitely to collect the spare parts, ostensibly to arrange press contacts, and possibly to meet women.
He flew out on Sunday (9th December) and his separation is temporary. We plan to meet up just over the Laos border next week to fix the cars and continue south.
But on Friday (7th) Zsofi left for good. Flew home to Budapest, Hungary, to a land of exams and studenting.
It seems like she’s been saying she will have to go home for months now, so it was no great palaver. We’d already said goodbye once, back when we were stuck in Xilinhaote and she went ahead to Beijing alone. We ended up meeting and spending another last few days together.
But this time we new it was final as walked her to her cab and waved her off.
It was pretty sad. I guess it will affect the Mighty Tony P the most, they have been driving Dante together for five months, so it’ll surely be strange for him. But I’ll leave that for him to explain.

Before she left I chatted with her about the trip. We talked about how hard it had been for her to come, with her friends telling her she was mad, and her family actively trying to dissuade her. She had to bunk off a semester of university and get horribly in debt to her parents. She hadn’t travelled for more than a few weeks before, and at 21, was the youngest on the trip, and one of just a couple of girls. So it was a pretty brave decision.
Her highlight was Central Asia, her lowlight was being unwell in Siberia. Her best friend was Tony, but she got on with everyone.
Yes, she’s disappointed not finish the trip, but she feels she done as much as she could- she has to go home now for exams.

When we got back to the hostel, I looked around and, for pretty much the first time, it was just the boys. Just the elite who plan to go all the way. In a way that felt good- the final team assembled for the final push.

The next day Carlos, TP, OJ and I headed to a strange temple. The Dongyue Temple.
I don’t think I really got it, but it was full of little rooms with strange mannequins in: devils, gods, men and women, people being tortured or executed in quite disturbing ways.
These rooms had names like The Department of Suppressing Schemes, The Department for Implementing 15 Types of Violent Death, The Department of Controlling Cheating, The Department of Signing Documents, The Department of Retribution and Reward, The Department of Wind Gods, The Department of Giving Birth to Insects, of Opposing Obscene Acts, of Individual Destiny, Reducing Longevity, Accumulating Justifiable Wealth.
Chinese really doesn’t translate to English very well.
There was a donation box in front of each room and I guess if you are affected by whatever the department deals with you’re meant to chuck some cash in there.
I don’t know too many people who have been affected by insect birth, and surely once affected by the 15 types of terrible death it’s a bit late to start bribing the gods. But like I said, I don’t think I got it.
I’ve whacked a few of the pictures up anyway.

On the way back we ate scorpion. As you do.

Later that night the whole of Trabant Trek was accused of being boring by an English woman called V.
“I'm getting a picture of you lot,” she announced in the lounge of our hostel picking off a snap, “this is how I will remember you- sitting on your laptops working. That’s all you do.”
The hostel had free wifi and it’s true we had hardly socialised, instead geeking out on the internet.
But being called boring after giving up our jobs to drive the world’s worst car across half the planet doesn’t strike me as dull.
“Come and play kings, put your laptops down,” she added mockingly.
Well how could we turn down such a challenge? Boring? Not up for drinking? An affront to my Englishness. I can urinate in streets and break garden furniture with the best of them.
We accept.
Kings is a messy and raucous drinking game with absolutely no skill and plenty of downing whatever’s to hand. We all got pretty wasted and loud and ended up blowing off some steam.
Carlos and I continued the merriment, heading out with a couple of Irish lads, an English chap and V herself, to party Beijing style. I hadn’t expected to find a large Nigerian community out here, relaxing with Jack and Jill. They were fun and we carried on clubbing and partying until about 11am the next morning, when Carlos retired and I headed off for the best version of a Bloody Mary Beijing can offer.
It was rubbish.

The next day we hopped on a 12-hour, overnight train south to Xi’an.

The shenanigans completely wiped out the next day, and I still felt crap on Monday. I also lost my wallet in a drunken stupor: sim card for my phone, bankcard, driving license and press cards- all Missing In Action, but that sort of night always involves collateral damage.
I’ve promised Carlos not to put up a video of him trying to re-enter the hostel around brunch time on Sunday. Messy. (If you want to see I can email it you.)
We haven’t been out like that since Bishkek, though the Americans weren’t with us.
When I staggered back to the hostel, around 1pm, clutching the remains of a Bloody Mary, wearing a troubled grin and a squint, I found Lovey all packed ready to fly out to Bangkok.
Not sure what he thought of me, but I didn’t really have too much to say for myself.

Just four of us, with no cars- down from the nine who headed out with four cars nearly five months ago. A sorry state of affairs, but if all goes to plan we will be reunited with the Trabbis later in the week, then smuggle them to the border to rendezvous with Lovey.
It should only take a couple of days.
Of course that’s the plan. It’ll probably take a week.

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Forbidden

Forbidden
Beijing, China
December 6th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

"A single act of carelessness leads to the eternal loss of beauty."
Sign in The Forbidden City

THE queue was herded from Tiananmen Square across a narrow bridge, flanked on either side by lines of military, each guard demonstratively staring everyone up and down.
Looking for bandits?
I struggled to see what threat could be posed by this sheepish group of sightseers, gawping behind cameras and holding maps upside down.

We passed under the giant portrait of Mao, through thick ochre walls, and into The Forbidden City.
What a title. So named because only the emperor and his court could enter. No commoners allowed please. Well now they queue up en masse to take a look, and not just commoners- but communist commoners, the people excluded by the very title of the place have risen up, overthrown millennia of imperial rule, cast off the feudal yoke, and now form their own chattering parade through the courtyards of power.

At the beginning of the 15th Century the Chinese capital was moved to Beijing, and work on a central complex, the Forbidden City, began in 1406. It took a million workers about 14 years to finish and was home to as many as 9,000 people at a time.
Development continued for the next 500 years while the place hosted 24 emperors, who all provided their own flourishes, whims and fancies. The result is the world’s largest palace complex- more than 800 buildings covering 74 hectares (740,000square metres), palaces, temples, audience chambers, gardens, administrative buildings, shrines, processional avenues and giant courtyards, all enclosed by imposing city walls, overlooked by giant watchtowers and ringed with a deep moat.

In 1947, when the commies got in they toyed with trashing the place- what better symbol of the end of the emperor than to smash the seat of power?
But sense prevailed, and instead they have spent a fair wad keeping the palace renovated and open to the legions of tourists.

I’d arrived alone, but stumbled into Zsofi, OJ and a Swedish girl called Robin at the ticket office. We paid our 40RMB, about $5, only to find the main attraction, The Hall of Supreme Harmony, was being renovated.
This is typical of our trip- of course they’re renovating it now, this is the low point of the low season, no one visits now, everything is cold, and grey and miserable, why would tourists come here now? Anyway the Beijing Olympics begin in nine months, they’ve got to get everything tarted up for the big event.
So what’s the lesson? Don’t travel the world in the off-season. If only we were on schedule…

Despite that disappointment, we were surrounded by grand, stunning buildings. All curved eaves and neatly painted roofs, with shining glazed tiles and marble pillars.
Beautiful, no doubt about it, stunning, historical, steeped in imagery, religion and tradition.
But by the fourth courtyard I got a little restless.
A majestic gateway opening into….another courtyard. It’s a concrete jungle in here, a prophecy of cities to come- giant paved areas, surrounded by buildings.
Maybe the architect ran out of ideas because I got a real sense of déjà vu in each new courtyard. I suspect I am too ignorant to perceive the subtle differences that mark out the various period’s architecture, and too ill-read to grasp the symbolism behind the umpteenth ceremonial gateway.
There are some nice terraces, with some impressive stonework. The Hall of Complete Harmony, nice, the Hall of Preserving Harmony, also nice. But this harmony thing is getting a little thin now.
No wonder the emperor rarely left the city, it’s a right bastard to get out. All those gates and entrances, all those steps, those long courtyards. And the paving is terrible, no good for skateboarding or playing basketball. How’s an emperor to entertain himself?
The last emperor got it right, he had bicycle lanes installed through the complex. Now that’s a thinking emperor.

There are plenty of signs up explaining what the vaguely impressive rooms were used for. My favourite was in the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the Bao He Dia.
As the sign said, Bao He means: “maintaining harmony between all things on earth to have a long period of peace and stability.”
So really it’s the Hall Of Maintaining Harmony Between All Things On Earth To Have A Long Period Of Peace And Stability.
Catchy.
One gateway opened up to show a complex of yellow tinted roofs stretching and sloping elegantly across the eyeline, in the distance a tall hill, thick with green trees is topped by a beautiful looking temple. It is an idyllic setting, a beautiful place. But I found it hard to imagine it in Imperial times, bustling with courtiers not tourists.

At the Hall of Union and Peace the favourite saying of the Emperor Kangxi was written in bold letters on a board hanging at the back.
And the words of wisdom that old Kangxi felt so important they should be memorialised in board form for millions of tourists to glimpse over centuries?
“Doing Nothing.”
These emperors. What a life.
Did I mention The Large Stone Carving?
It’s a large stone carving. The largest in the complex.
These Chinese have a knack for naming things.

At last, at the end of the procession of halls, gateway and courtyards we reached something different. The Imperial Garden, where emperors would relax, entertain and choose girls for their harem.
In spring when the flowers are blooming it must be stunning, but even in dark winter the spidery trees and knotted bows are a majestic playground fit for…well an emperor.
Chinese catalpas, pines, cypresses and wisteria dance across abstract rock formations that hide stairways, towers, chambers and temples.
It was beautiful, one of the most exciting gardens I’ve been to (exciting gardens? Sorry about that). Here I could finally imagine the imperial court: lecherous old emperors with long fading beards making grubby advances on the prettiest youths of Beijing.
Lovely.

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mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org