Changes In Tiananmen Square
Two of my college friends are visiting us in Beijing right now, so we’ve been making the tourist rounds. Climbing the Great Wall, exploring the Forbidden City, eating Beijing duck and haggling at the Silk Market are all on this month’s agenda.
It’s still a bit bizarre for this Jersey girl to be a guide to Beijing attractions, but I’ve been noticing subtle changes in tourist spots over the past few years. In preparation for the Olympic visitors, Beijing is getting better English signage (or perhaps I’m adjusting, since my visiting friends saw plenty of photo-worthy Chinglish), more restrooms, more rubbish bins and some attempts at lining up. There have been changes everywhere, but when we visited Tiananmen Square, I was stunned at the difference.
On my first visit to Tiananmen, in 2006, I was mobbed by sellers of paper kites, postcards, bilingual maps. It was sensory overload, but in a delightful, uniquely Beijing kind of way. Hawkers offered discount tours to the Great Wall, pulled Mao watched out of their jackets, or quietly offered my male friends special services. Families munched on dumplings or fruit as they walked around. I spoke to lots of “art students” who really really wanted to take me their exhibit.
But yesterday’s visit was much quieter. The sellers of postcards and Mao paraphernalia are all gone, from the square itself and the pedestrian access tunnels under the street (I bet transit guru David has a much better word for those!). It seemed like no one was eating, although there were a couple parked vans selling chips and drinks. No one tried to drag me to an art show… ok, i didn’t really miss that bit. A smaller, milder crowd milled around taking photos.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen guards posted at every entrance to Tiananmen, but last time they waved us through, and only stopped a few people with large bags, probably to make sure they weren’t carrying in kites and postcards and maps to hawk in the square. Yesterday, we were all stopped, and our camera bags and purses were examined by a polite guard. There was nothing invasive or unpleasant about the process, one of the guards saw my Mandarin phrasebook in my purse and put my Chinese conversational skills to the test! But it’s a huge change from the Tiananmen carnival three years ago.
A trip to the Great Wall is planned for the next blue sky day, and I’m really interested to see if the Badaling vendors have been moved on as well.
