Beijing- Greg Laslo
What can I say about Beijing that would do it justice? It is a city one-third the size of Taiwan with half its population. It is one of the oldest remaining cities in the world, at the center of a reemerging China. Beijing contains the Forbidden City, constructed in the 15th Century, standing before Tiananmen Square, one of the largest open spaces in the world, constructed in the last half-century. We stood by trees seven hundred years old, blanketed by the smog of 21st Century industry.
As far as my personal experiences go, only Rome comes close to what I saw in China; in its scale, its deep history, its rich culture, its sheer awesome complexity and size. Even being a student of history, I find it difficult to grasp the fact of human beings, just like myself, living thousands of years ago, building this culture and later this city. No matter where or when they come from, they sometimes seem so alien, so different from ourselves. But they were also so similar to us, and thought in ways that can still ring true to us. In Beijing, I experienced a few moments where I held both of these concepts in my mind at once.
In the Forbidden City, with its nine layers of gates and courtyards, I caught a glimpse of this duality. All of it was devoted to the lifestyle and ritual of a single man. We do not now embark on such projects as the Forbidden City in the name of one person. But as I stood at each of the terraces, I could see the beauty of it all being in its correct configuration, all in its rightful place according to Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist cosmology, and I could see how it made perfect sense to its architects.
Later, as I walked along the paths of the Temple of Heaven to the Circular Mound Altar, where Emperor Yongle himself perhaps walked, I felt the same connection to the past again. When I stood in the center of the terrace, the top of what would have been the highest point of the city, and spoke in a quiet, hoarse, crackling voice and heard my words come roaring back at me through the Temple’s acoustics, I understood the strength of the rituals and sacrifices performed there. If, in its faint echoes, this culture arouses these feelings in me, how awesome, how tremendous and deeply moving must it have been to those who lived when it flourished? What can I say to a modern audience that would do it justice?