Beijing - China 1988

See all the photos in this series at Picasa.

In the summer of 1988, I traveled to China with two friends. We spent two weeks exploring Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Suzhou. China had begun to emerge from its isolation 15 years earlier. By the time the three of us arrived in 1988, we were able to travel freely without any guides.

My friends and I spent our first week in Beijing. We traveled throughout the city by bicycle, which was still the principal means of transportation in China at the time, along with buses. We only occasionally saw taxis and private cars.

One day we biked all the way to the Summer Palace, about 11 km outside the city. On another day we took a bus tour to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. Our fellow travelers on the excursion were all Chinese tourists. At that time, Chinese citizens were only just beginning to be able to tour their own country.

One of the most impressive mouments we visited in Beijing was the Temple of Heaven. In ancient times, this was where prayers were said to ask for a good harvest. The Temple of Heaven is at the southern end of the north-south axis that includes Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.

Just ten months after our visit, Tienanmen Square became the center of widespread protests throughout China. The subsequent crackdown by the government reimposed travel restrictions throughout the country. It would be several years before visitors could travel as freely as my friends and I did in 1988.