Notes From The Shadow of the Drum Tower
August 19, 2008
Gerry Shih is currently in Beijing, China, documenting his experience at the Olympics for AsianWeek.
BEIJING — Against the gray swaths of low-rise hutongs in old, central Beijing, the drum and bell towers appear striking. The structures in their current locations have existed since the reign of the mighty Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty (1402-1424), a giant in Chinese history who moved the empire’s capital from Nanjing back north to Beijing.
Beijing was previously the political center of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. It was Kublai Khan who first built the drum tower, “the Tower of Orderly Administration,” in 1272 at the heart of his capital. When Yongle arrived roughly 150 years later, the drum tower was relocated slightly and the bell tower, 100 meters away, was built. The two structures stood to the north of the Forbidden City, another ambitious project envisioned by Yongle. For 500 years, until the Nationalist government ousted the last Emperor Pu Yi from the Forbidden City in 1924, the towers told time and dictated the lives of Beijing’s citizens and government officials. Today, boulevards packed with cars and tourists veer off course to go around the imposing towers.
Saturday the 16th was exactly one week after a grisly murder-suicide on the drum tower that took the lives of Todd Bachman, the 62-year-old father-in-law of the U.S. men’s indoor volleyball coach, and the assailant, 47-year-old Tang Yongmin, a laid-off factory worker from Zhejiang province. Tang also seriously injured Bachman’s wife and their Chinese tour guide with a knife before jumping 40 meters to his death. The area was cordoned off briefly before reopening. Few local residents at the time were aware of the incident, which occurred hours after the Olympic opening ceremony and drew international attention. Now one week later, locals say the word has spread, but the atmosphere here is relaxed. There are as many foreigners as ever and barely a hint of what had happened.
In the shadow of the drum tower, a chicken liver restaurant was packed, and its queue spilled out into the street. Despite this area being one of Beijing’s tourist magnets, few diners waiting in line appeared foreign or at least non-Asian. They were down the street in the plaza between the two towers, where a neighborhood calisthenics routine was in session.
*****Keeping up with Olympics:*****
2008 Beijing Olympics Meet Your Asian American Olympians!
****************************
Exercise for an older generation of Chinese might mean walks in the neighborhood park and tai-chi next to the lake. The more sprightly might play ping-pong on stone tables or badminton. Sometimes there might be group dancing for older women. Clusters of men will be huddled over Chinese chessboards. Two men on opposing sides of the chessboard’s “river” duel, shifting around their chariot, cannon or horse with cigarette in hand while the peanut gallery of hovering friends provides biting commentary. And then there are the rows of people doing calisthenics, a mostly standard set of exercises to get the blood going and keep the limbs limber. The park is the nexus of traditional community life in China.
The empty plaza between the two towers here, sometimes packed with tour buses, has spontaneously become one of these parks that can flourish without grass or water. Boys play soccer on the bell tower end. A blond woman plays badminton with a younger Chinese girl in the middle. A local heads the calisthenics group on the drum tower end — she’s someone from the neighborhood recreation group. Anyone can jump in and participate, and the many foreign tourists, who at first stop and observe, usually do eventually. They swing their arms, they swivel their necks, they flex their calves. Sandwiched between the two towers, it’s a scenic setting for exercise.
In the communist era, economically speaking, the dan wei was the unit that every worker’s professional and social life revolved around. Dan wei’s often took breaks from work to have these group sessions. Calisthenics is now taught in the schools but rarely done by the younger generation, who will opt for more exciting activities like soccer, basketball or tennis.
Now as globalization quickens and a middle class emerges with a bit more money, gyms and personal trainers are booming. So are yoga and Pilates classes. Will rows of yoga and Pilates mats one day cover the drum tower square? It’s certainly possible.
Comments
One Response to “Notes From The Shadow of the Drum Tower”
Got something to say?
Folks:
Above, both pswing and Gerry Shih do themselves, AsianWeek, and “us” proud.
Shih’s piece is like a refreshing spring shower of facts, historic and contemporary, and observations, unlike the bulk of the strident and chauvinistic reports overflowing and abounding, and inciting reactions that really do NOT matter.
What DOES matter? Or SHOULD?
Well, may this old quidnunc suggest at least three bits of bytes online today?
1: And the most important:
That sterling blue-collar citizen from the auto-parts precincts, one jolly Irisher yclept Michael Moore. He www’d an “open letter” to Caroline Kennedy, begging her to “pull a Cheney” and allow herself to be draggooned as Obama’s running mate. After first gasp, whythell not? She’s infinitely more “qualified” in every respect than Cheney was in 2000, or remains today, for that matter. Consider the dithers that would put the happy campers under the GOP tent. It should daunt even our own awarthur and presidential commentator, no, not you Christian.
2: Simon Jenkins, whodat?, author of a piece today on the London Guardian, who gives the lie to the lying reportage on that other “Georgia.” Said worthy “warns,” mind you, the deserts that may accrue to continuing sabre=rattlings in Europe as well as the Beltway.
3: And, folks, darnit all and damnit to hell, raht-cheer on our very own website, our own Phil Tajitsu-Nash lays it on the line about substantive AND significant APArticipations in next week’s Denver doings.
And all you tribal dividers-and-losers, shut the hell up that Phil cites the Hawai’an Japanese cocntingents upfront. It’s history, man. And it matters not if it’s a Honda or a Matsui, or a Phiippines martyr, or a world-class artist/designer like Maya Lin.
What matters is that we begin to realize that our individual “clout” can only matter when we join clouts rather than splinter into “warring” “tribes.”
The world has long passed tribal recognitions. Besides, who needs them?
Today, as the posited “theme” of these beleaguered Olympics proclaim, is and should be “unity” and “harmony” of the entire HUMAN RACE.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Guys, stop sweating the likes of “Asian” candidates or even Asian-hating types like Erbes and Christian and those too chicken to affix their own names. So long, of course, that those verisimiltudes do not begin to brandish knives and guns and begin to maim and kill and destroy. In which case, UP THEIRS.