North Korea - Peek Behind Curtains

There was one thing I decided that wanted to do while staying in Beijing: Find a way to travel North-Korea, and I did so this is a brief story of what I saw and experienced. Before starting to describe it, if using just one word I would say “mind-blowing” for describing the trip, and that is why it is impossible to explain the experience completely by words and if you would just pay attention for pictures the society looks an ideal place to live. I mean a country with completely free education system, 0 % unemployment and criminal rate, costs of living and basic groceries covered by the state – doesn’t sound that bad society at all, right? But as you might guess, there are two sides in every story…

I was part of the tour group that were mainly Chinese except Dries (Belgian) and Natalie (Slovakian) who were both studying near Shanghai and with them I had an awesome time! Journey to North-Korea started from the Dandong, Chinese border city where we crossed Chinese-Korean Friendship Bridge straight to the N-Korean customs. We were sitting two hours in a train while military officials collected our passport and tourist cards (special thing required from Westerners), wrote up all hi-tech devices we were carrying with us (mobile phones, laptops, cameras, tablets) in order to make sure that what you bring in, you also bring out and checked through our luggage if there is something politically incorrect material. We didn't have anything but there was a group of three Germans in a train who had South-Korean guidebook with them – never saw that book again. But so the journey continued through the countryside and mobile phone signals disappeared. It was like travelling back on time, views from train very mostly quite flat farmland where work is mostly done manually or with the help of water buffalo / ox. There was few tractors in fields, but they were not even close to modern days, more in common transport was a wooden wagon pulled by ox.

We were staying in Yanggakdo Internationa Hotel – international indeed as seems like that all tourist groups will be accommodated there. Again, a well decorated hotel with three restaurants, few coffee places, casino and some shops does sound like a place that there is no need to leave from there.

Everything is perfectly planned so even if you would like to its impossible to leave from there by yourself or encounter something improper. First of all the location is on island in the river that flows through Pyongyang – good way to avoid tourists encountering with random locals. In hotel there is a legend about its fifth floor, its missing on elevator. Some says its propaganda room some say something else, but who really knows. First evening we were going for a dinner Dries took a picture of the floor buttons on elevator where number five was missing. 10 minutes later our tour guide asked Dries on the side asked him about elevator and delete the picture taken from the floor buttons, so there is definitely something. One evening I was sitting in Dries and Natalies room (floor 33) a bit later so as I was on the way my room (room 16) I found out that none of 8 elevators were working – nice evening exercise by running down the staircase. So obviously they monitor tourists at the hotel and during late evening when everyone has gone up to floors, elevators are locked in order to avoid anyone or anything sneak in or out. So everything was perfectly planned, and not only in hotel but during whole trip as there were always a bus driving us from door to door.

There were three main places we visited on our tour: Mt. Myohang, DMZ and around Pyongyang. At Mt. Myohang there were an international exhibition hall where were collected all gifts give to their leaders from other countries. It was the kind of museum that don't see every day. Entrance to the house which looks small outside but actually museum covers 6 floors and 100 rooms of gifts – Its just continuous miles long underground marble tunnels and rooms dug under the mountain full various range of gift items or suddenly there was one room where our group was ordered to stand on few lines before entering room, in the room there was reallife scale vax statue of “the president”, so we lined up in front of that and all bounded for the statue in order to honour him and show respect. Gift times could were just small simple ones like a basketball or crystal classes… Or some huge ones like a train or an aeroplane. And I still can’t understand how on earth it has been possible to get those in there especially when the train was in -1 floor and aeroplane that was clearly too wide that it would have fit into the room it was as one piece or in general how those objects have even transported there mountainous area?

DMZ, Demilitarized Zone – The place where two nations’ South- and North-Korea stand just few meters apart divided by demarcation line.  We were in the room where the agreement to stop Korean War was written in 1953. It was interesting to hear how North-Korea wants to see Korea as one nations but it blames US hospitality to intruded South-Korea during ending of second world ward and also starting for the Korean war. And as long as US got troops in S-Korea, finding to unification of Korea can be extremely difficult task. On the picture white buildings belong to US and blue ones for N-Korea, and the concrete line on the ground between them is the demarcation line so buildings are located on both nations soil in order to create as neutral place as possible to solve possible conflicts or have just high-level governmental negotiations etc.

Pyongyang to be honest seemed like a nice city, especially what I liked in it after living in Beijing that there are not many cars, actually all the cars in North-Korea are owner either by the state or companies. People move around mainly using only public transports or cycling – clean and environmental. We were allowed to take a metro ride between to stations – and oh my I just say, I thought that Moscow metro has been probably the most beautiful one I’ve seen until I saw these two stations. Marble, lights, mural paintings / mosaics, patriarchal music on the background in escalators from 100meter depth back to the top of the ground. There are my activities to do in the city for people living in there, so it really seems like that those North-Korean who are allowed to live in Pyongyang (decision often made by state) are very lucky ones compared to those who live in countryside. 

One day it was arranged a show of local school children for us, that was such a theatre. Those small kids were just perfect performing with all the make-up, keeping same smile on their faces all the time and not doing even a single mistake – They almost reminded like marionettes in my opinion. 

Then on our last evening we could visit in amusement park, what a highlight of the trip. We were four people who went there, “guarded” by two tour guides because “it's a quite busy place so it’s we might get easily lost” and a staff member from the park who made sure that we always skipped the queue in order to minimize risk that we might take contact with local people. 

Of course in Pyongyang (and elsewhere) there were many other places/things we saw but if I would tell everything, I would be still writing a while before finishing this blog.

The thing that made the trip important was not only things you see but the way you build up relationship with your tour guide during that tour because it really depends on your tour guide what kind of holistic picture you will got from the country. Also the role of tour guide is interesting and their work is also strictly followed by the some officials because obviously they are the only people in North-Korea who can continuously be in touch with tourists’ longer period of time. Our tour guide seemed first really shy and quiet but after all she turned out be a really nice person. She told us lot of things about normal North-Korean people daily lives and we also could ask almost whatever we wanted from her, although she was really clever on avoiding answering certain questions if it was too incorrect. And it is amazing when we paid attention on the way she talked and explained on things, the unquestioned respect toward their leaders, especially Kim Il-sung “the president” and how he has influenced building a nation from the scratch.

She was also generally interested about our lives and was curious to see some of our pictures we had on our phones from home countries, families etc… But she only wanted to see them while we were sitting on a bus driving a longer distance, so are tour guides allowed to do that or not? Or she asked what news we have heard about North-Korea, did she ask that because of her curiosity as she clearly have a much better understanding about world out there than average North-Korean or is she told to so in order to gain information what kind of picture Western media spreads about North-Korea? I mean these are the kind of things that come to our mind during our trip so there was no way to know for 100 % what is real and what is not or is something part of big plan and theatre… Or could it really be just a normal curiosity and intend to make as close friendship as she could during times we spent with our tour guide, because it is most likely that we are never going to see or hear from her again because as soon as we crossed the border back to China, everything happened (people we met, places we saw…) in North Korea are anymore just remaining in memories.

Highlights of Sichuan -- Opera, Pandas & The Giant Buddha

On one evening was the time of experiencing some culture, I went to see Sichuan Opera which is famous of face changing. To be honest, at first I was a little bit afraid that it would be purely “singing” in Chinese so I asked about the opera at the hostel before booking it. In China there are two famous operas which are Beijing Opera and Sichuan Opera, Beijing one is more based on singing and Sichuan is more like a show – after receiving this answer from a hostel I encouraged myself to book it and it definitely was worth it! Opera was structured on several episodes everyone including a little bit different kind of arts: Traditional music and singing, shadow theatre, acrobatics, marionette, fire spitting and face changing… Everything just amazing, especially face changing made me just to stare straight and try to realize that how on earth they can change their masks in matter of seconds, or actually even faster than that… (on a video pay attention for the guy in the middle)

Then Saturday and third day was another highlight of my Chengdu tour, waking up early in the morning because tour guide was picking me up. First destination was the panda breeding and research centre in downtown of Chengdu. Giant pandas were almost distinct and even now there are less than thousand Giant Pandas in the world and this was one of the rare places where it is actually to see those Pandas. And yes, who could not love those lovely black’n’white creatures which simply look so cute when they are playing with each other, “chilling out”, or enjoying a delicious (?) bamboo.

From Panda centre the tour continued to Leshan see the Giant Buddha, its (normally) two hours drive from Chengdu and another two hours back, but because of that stupid public holiday there was “small” traffic jams on the way so in total car ride took 6-7 hours (almost same time than a flight between Helsinki-Beijing) and the time to visit at the Giant Buddha site was only two hours… so as one can imagine, doesn't make any sense. Still the Giant Buddha is one of main sights to see when visiting Chengdu, which was worthwhile after all. The Giant Buddha is carved in a stone, the work took almost 100 years to carve it and as a result 71 meters high Giant Buddha was completed, that has nowadays a status of UNESCO world heritage.

Usually for visitors it is possible to walk down and go around Buddha but (again) because of the holiday there were so many people that the queueing would have taken at least two hours to get there… And as the time was limited, plus it was a warm summer day there was no sense to start queuing on there. There was another option to take a boat to see whole Buddha from the river, which of course did cost some extra money (around 8 euros) that I was willingly ready to pay just to avoid that queueing. 

Chengdu – The Heart of Sichuan

Sichuan, a province that is famous of its (spicy) food, opera, pandas and the giant Buddha – Now I’ve seen them all. I was travelling again by night train from Beijing to Chengdu and did notice again that distances in China are something else than distances in Finland… Train ride was about 20hrs there and 25hrs back, so basically to spend four days in Chengdu, I two more days in train. Crazy! But time went relative fast (lying on a bed, sleeping, eating, studying) and as I got to Chengdu I head up to my hostel named “Lazybones”, the best name ever!

First day I was just walking around a city and to be honest… in the city itself, there is not that many things to see, of course there are temples and parks but if they don't have any special meaning, those temples and parks looks more or less the same. But there was one famous one, Wenshu monastery – the best preserved Buddhist temple in the city which was different from others I’ve seen because monks were actually living in the same area so I could see where they were eating, sleeping etc. It might be also just my imagination, but I think Buddha statues and other relics had more kind of Indian looking influence than some other temples in the East of China where I’ve visited.

Until this trip I’ve been quite lucky on my travels but now first time on ever, my luck changed for a moment. Original plan was to go visit Mt. Qingcheng (famous Daoism mountain few hours away from city), but it never happened. I did get up in the morning to get to bus station, did manage to buy a ticket for a bus. The date was 1^st of May, which is public holiday in China (= lots of people everywhere) and the bus station was packed of people and when I was “queueing” for the bus, there were people standing no matter which direction I would look and literally there was no space to move at all. Suddenly I noticed that a pickpocket did stole my wallet and that’s it, no mountain day for me. Luckily I didn't have passport or foreign bank cards with me… The most annoying thing is that I lost my driving license, but on the other hand Im not going to drive in China anyways so even that loss is not the end of the world.

As you know, in (The Peoples Republic of…) China everything is for the people – also in Chengdu. Main city square, also cited as people’s square although official name of it is Tianfu Square. The place gives again great contrast between traditional China and modern China: Shopping street, high buildings, neon lights and of course a big statue of Mao. But only 10 minute walk from there, there is the Peoples Park. It's like a central park of Chengdu, a place where people gather together to sing, dance, to play games and of course to drink tea. 

 

People’s park have one of the most popular tea houses in Chengdu, tables made of old wood and chairs made out of bamboo. I was afraid to sat on a bamboo chair because I thought it might collapse but it didn't. While enjoying tea there came a guy offering me ear cleaning. Yes, ear cleaning – again kind of traditional thing in Chengdu so I thought why not to try. Although I was bit excited when the “doctor” put a lamp on his forehead and started to clean my ears with the tools that looked like he was going to pull of my brains through my ears. Luckily he didn’t do that, but he pulled out lot of other “stuff” from my ears and I was just thinking quietly that it has been a while when my ears was cleaned so perfectly.