Su back to Beijing,2007-2008

The inside of the “underground Forbidden City” 

by Fang Su

It is 9 meters from the ground at its deepest point while the average depth is 5-6 meters, the safety level that was believed enough to prevent nuclear radiation. There are mainly 4 kinds of rooms inside the hotel, 30 yuan for a single room and 20 yuan per person for a double room, besides, rooms that can hold 4 or 8 or more are also available, with a much cheaper price from 5 to 10 yuan. 

Damp, moldy, even spooky, far from what its name suggests, it is never an exaggeration to the whole place a “mouse burrow.” Dim light, just like the gaze of a sly mouse, keeps being sent from those bulbs sticking on the wall in every 10 meters. However, visitors still need to hold a torch when they for the first time go there due to sudden darkness. Some rooms are parallel, connected by devious internal channels, the others are pell-mell so that people could easily get lost without a good sense of direction. 

No ventilation, no electric signals, no flow of information. The rooms and the fading number written on each door somehow give a taste of a prison. The furniture inside couldn’t be easier: only a few wooden beds, iron bunks for 8-people room, and a small clothes closet. Sheets and blankets are only supplied when people move in.  

Careful observers could discover the traits left by previous guests on the wall. Those big pencil paintings almost take up the whole wall with images such as dragons, phoenix in enormous cloud, cranes and young girls. The painter shows us his, must be a he, exquisite technique and ambition as well as boredom. 

Visitors would find the bathroom as the biggest problem in the hotel because even the simplest sanitary condition is far beyond consideration. Tens of rooms share one bathroom, a filthy and nasty one with human excrement spilled out of the tank., giving out a smell of decaying, just like the meat gone sour. Things will be worse if the bathroom is undergoing a leaking problem because you need to not only worry about the sewage on the ground but also above your head. Obviously, it is such a wonderland for flies and bugs since they are the only guests that will never be forbidden in this “Forbidden City.” 

to be continued...

Finding the city

written by Fang Su

On the ground, it is the busiest and most prosperous street, so called the Champs Elysées in Beijing, the “Wangfujin” (Prince Mansion’s Street). Towing big shopping malls filled of people stand along the avenue, with enormous neon lights sparkling tirelessly outside 24/7, even at the first glance, we know that it is the place for the Chinese well-off to enjoy life.

In contrast to the hustle and bustle of Wangfujin, if you walk inside one of the annex streets hundreds of meters away and make several turns, after entering a deep narrow street for 10 meters, you will find the gate leading to anther world, which is 9 meters underground, occupying almost the whole area as big as the up ground street with its spider-net-like branching system. That, is the “underground Forbidden City.”