What’s My 798?

The last day in Beijing is an alternative to temples and monuments as we head to the Railway Museum and the 798 Art District. It is a half hour taxi ride out of town and our driver has to keep asking for directions. The museum is in a massive hangar, but the thirty or forty trains are in a disgraceful state of dusty, rusty disrepair. They were once impressive, many from the 40’s and 50’s, wearing many coats of the blackest enamel paint and capped off with a golden face of Mao Tse Tung. One of them is Zhou En Lai’s state carriage containing a board room, chaise long and bathroom. Some of them are open for the children to clamber on, which they duly do. Unfortunately, there is very little information on any of the trains; I was sure we’d find a retired Trans-Siberian model, but who knows if there is one here?

A short distance from the museum is the funky, boho 798 Art District. It is set in an old industrial park that still spews out steam and odd smells, the galleries are all in old factories, complete with Maoist slogans still covering the walls. We find one of the many excellent restaurants and cafes and have a late lunch of very untraditional paninis. Like everything else in Beijing, the place is vast, and we get hopelessly lost down all the industrial alleyways. The art ranges from the painfully pretentious to plain wonderful. Much of it is surprisingly political in quite an overt way. The children especially enjoy the giant outdoor sculptures of dinosaurs, fat men and caged monsters. Today is a really hot day though, and we admit defeat in the afternoon sun, heading back to the cool courtyards of the Sihe Hotel.