The overwhelming sense of relief in the Indian Embassy in Beijing is palpable. Having been blacklisted by Official Beijing in the wake of the bilateral acrimony following India's nuclear tests last year, Indian diplomats are now grateful that the process of ``normalisation'' has been put back on track with the visit of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. All through last year, though, it was like a terrible nightmare which everyone fervently wished would quickly end. Beijing turned into a ``war zone'', the diplomats said, no officials spoke to them, nobody received their calls; it was almost as if they'd been erased out of sight, out of mind. But the Indians didn't give up. Ambassador Vijay Nambiar found some loophole in some forgotten bilateral agreement and persuaded the Chinese in February to hold official talks for the first time since Pokharan. Things started to get successively better, leading to the current visit by Singh.Yankee influence
Beijing's `Forbidden City', where its emperorslived -- from the Yuan to the Ming dynasties -- is one of the world's architectural wonders and where the shooting for the film, The Last Emperor, was done. Gate after Heavenly Gate (Tian An Men, popular worldwide for the square in front of it, is the second in a series of four) was supposed to lead one to the presence of the Emperor, all of them built in a straight line. Then there are the three palaces, one of which, called the Bao He Dian, was built in 1420 AD and is also known as the Hall of Practising Moral Culture.
Violating the straight line of the Gates beyond Tian An Men is Chairman Mao's mausoleum (closed to the public for renovation for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution). But it's an indication of how far things have come in Communist China when you notice that the signboards proclaiming the Gates and Palaces are sponsored by... American Express.
10,000 thoughts
This is the story of the other palace, Zhong Nan Hai, where the senior leadership of theCommunist Party lives. Both sides of this complex on Zhang'an avenue (Eternal Peace), Beijing, throb with the beat of cranes building one tall building after another. Outside the Party's residential quarters the slogan, however, remains alive in huge gold letters emblazoned on a bright red: Ten Thousand Years to the Great Chinese Communist Party! Ten Thousand Years to the Invincible Mao Zedong Thought!
Cab rules
What a city! Former nuclear underground shelters built for protection against a Soviet nuclear attack have been turned into shopping malls. Spotlessly clean metro stations, not a slip of paper or a cigarette butt in sight. Red, white and green taxi cabs (with differential fare rates, according to the vehicle), which, unusually, have glass partitions between the driver and the passenger sitting in front. People in Delhi would immediately assume that the partition is for the protection of the passenger. In Beijing, its intended to be the other way around. Not that there is much fear ofcrime anyway. Nevertheless, cabbies are instructed to give receipts to all passengers, from place of pick up to end of destination.
The blessed official
This is the city where Chairman Mao once smiled at Brajesh Mishra (yes, our Principal Secretary). The apocryphal story goes that when Mishra was charge d'affaires here, Mao summoned him to an audience on the May 1 Labour Day reception. Some say Mao actually smiled at the man, others point out that the Chairman was already so ill that what came to be interpreted as a smile was probably a muscle twitch.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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