Beijing was great, especially as Sarah the China Fairy met us there for a wonderful week of travel. It wasn't long into our trip that we realised that perhaps we had wandered into Westeros instead of Beijing.*
If you haven't seen or read the Song of Ice and Fire (AKA Game of Thrones), this post will make no sense to you. In which case, you probably have better things to do. One strong recommendation would be to immediately stop what you are doing (ie. reading this) and go and read the books NOW...there's only 5 of them, get to it.
We spent our week exploring...
The Summer Palace (King's Landing)
Where we learned about the Empress Cixi and her nasty, manipulative and probably murderous rise to power. Empress Cixi (which we imagine sounds a lot like Cersei) ruled as "regent" over a large period of the Qing dynasty. She forced her son to marry against his will, declared war in the early 1900's on everyone around (including some pretty significant world powers at the time: the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the US). She was probably involved in the deaths of many political opponents, was resistant to reforms and lived an indulgent life in the Summer Palace and, towards the end of her rule lived in a time of mass unrest that ultimately ended in the collapse of the Qing dynasty, not long after her death. Probably a significant warning at the current time for a certain Cersei Lanniser of King's Landing.
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| The view from the Summer Palace/Red Keep |
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| Summer Palace |
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| How the rich live in both kingdoms |
Hutongs (Fleas Bottom)
Exploring the Hutongs of Beijing was not dissimilar to Arya's early exploration of the alleyways of Flea Bottom in King's Landing, where she chased cats to work on her reflexes. The weaving streets, the touting shopkeepers and the constant throng of people here and about, it was easy to draw the comparison.
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| Sarah to the Hutong Cat Cafe as Arya to the alleyways of Flea Bottom |
The Great Wall of China (The Wall)
The Great Wall...well this is an easy one isn't it? I mean, there's a huge wall in the north of Westeros. There's a huge wall in the north of China. Both were built to keep out a terrifying enemy. Frozen zombies in one case, marauding Mongolians in the other. And further, remember that Daenarys is told of a prophecy, involving a three-headed dragon.
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| THE WALL |
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| The three-headed dragon! |
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| Castle Black after the battle with the Wildlings! |
The Forbidden City (Meereen)
The Forbidden City's sister would be Meereen, a stretch we'll admit...but its intimidating structures and lack of any kind of colour will have to do.
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| Formidable |
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A hot climate paired with lots of concrete!
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The journey
On our voyage we were constantly met by intimidating protectors in the form of dragons, lions, stags (and probably wolves, although to be perfectly honest, we couldn't find a single one to back this theory up). These animals all represent the strongest families of Westeros, and and there are plenty of other animal sentinels used in China that could relate to other smaller houses.
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| Targaryans standing guard |
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| Baratheon on the watch |
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| Lannisters all dressed up |
Then we ventured over the border into some grassy lands.
Meeting the Mongolians (Dothraki)
Mongolians is where the next surprising association is, although you have to use a bit of your imagination. Remember the Dothraki? The people who live and die by their horses, a nomadic people, constantly moving to new pastures and do not trust the sea (modern Mongolians don't even have access to one). They survive on horse meat and fermented mare's milk. This is textbook Mongolia! Except for the fact that the Dothraki are no where near the Wall in Westeros, the relationship between Dothraki and Mongolians is pretty strong.
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| A nomad with his horse |
Westeros, er...I mean Beijing, was impressive and not just for the huge scale of everything in it. It is an incredible place to find yourself for a week.
*Later we found out we were certainly not the first to draw such comparisons between Westeros and Beijing.
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