| Bates Noah Sunday, August 3
Arrival
I arrived in Beijing at 8:30 pm to a very hot and sticky climate. I passed through customs without any problems, all though my heart was racing not because I had contraband, you just never know what can happen in a country you know so little about and do not speak the language at all. Here I met Renee, finally after so many phone conversations. I also met Tiffany, Zoe, Yvi, and Lily. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. Not knowing anyone before hand and applying without any personal interviews one has to reach this point of contact before it stops feeling like a dream.
Most of the signs read English at the airport. This is also true along the roads and expressways. The Mandarin characters have also been written out so that if you know the phonetic code you can read it like English rather than deciphering the characters.
Along the expressway many trees have been planted. Above the trees rose countless high rise towers some with flashy and bright electronic billboards of the kind times square is famous for. Between the holes in the trees down on the street I could make out groups of people gathered about playing cards or dice to pass the time in the hot evening.
The hotel is located in the university district of Beijing. TsingHua, Peking, and Beijing universities are all located in this area. I was relieved to finally arrive after some 27 hours of traveling I didn’t really know which end was up. Here I met most of the other SSP students. They were planning on going to get a beer and I decided to go with them to get a feel for the neighborhood around the hotel.
This is when I had my first experience crossing the street in Beijing. It was a good warm up because it was not so busy that Saturday, but it was still traumatizing. You have to watch for bikes, busses, small trucks, cars, buggies, rickshaws, and other miscellaneous. We ended up at a Mc Donald’s were you can actually get a beer. Only things was we could only get one cold one. So we went back tothe Hotel to see if we could get a beer there. Only thing available was warm beer but it was good after a long flight. Here we met David, who gave us some insight into Beijing and some of the issues regarding water.
By now it was time to turn in. I feel comfortable with the people I just met and am looking forward to a wonderful experience working with them. Unfortunately the first night Vishal and I didn’t realize we had the window open and the air conditioner didn’t work so well so it wasn’t the best sleep and we thought we’d have to get it fixed but neither he nor I could speak Mandarin. Luckily we figured out to close the window.
Touring
We hit the road at 8:30, headed for the forbidden city. Today I met Ching Dong and Steven Engblom two of the organizers of the SSP in Beijing. Beijing is Ching Dong’s home town, he has a warm and inviting presence and very knowledgable about Beijing’s history. Steven has a very fresh and invigorating air about him. He was vry excited to meet the students and get us oriented.
The streets of Beijing are so vibrant. The bike lanes are filled up with a number of different pedal powered devices. Two wheel, three wheel, rickshaws, bikes pulling carts. There isn’t a strict separation between bikes and traffic because buses and other personal vehicles use the wide bike lanes to access other streets and businesses. So in some locations it can be very confusing and when you enter these areas you participate in a very elaborate dance so as not to get run over or collide with anyone or anything. The Chinese love to use the horn and do so with vigor. So the streets can be very loud at times.
Today was very hot and the plazas at the entrance to the forbidden city are large heat sinks with thousands of tourists milling about. We met our tour guide a young Chinese lady that was dressed in blue jeans and seemed really hip. After speaking to her briefly I found out she knew about Aspen, Colorado and was blown away by the advertisements she had seen in magazines. She said it seemed so like a fairy land. I Told her it pretty much is and that Coloradoans don’t even go there to often. She had graduated with a degree ion accounting but was working in tourism because she thought it was more exciting, which I have to agree with.
The walls of the Forbidden City are over 12 meters high the entrance space dwarfs a person. The thresholds are truly amazing. Wide enough to fit a bus through they are as long as a bus to. At each gate position the floor is raised and you must step up and over. On the doors are knobs that everyone rubs for luck so the knobs lower down are worn smooth from touch. The first threshold opens up into a vast court. The middle is paved in enormous stones, this is the path of the emperor. Most People choose to walk along this path and cross the middle bridge over the water that cuts this plaza in half. The feeling was impressive to think how sacred this space once was and now any common person can walk the path that only emperors could is very uplifting to the soul. The detail in the stone carving along the bridge depicted dragons and birds.
I can go on and on about this place so I’ll just focus on what really stood out. The movement from one end of the city to the other was linear along and axis. In the middle of Each grand Plaza there is an impressive temple with stairs ways on both sides. Some stones used for the temple platform are as big as a car. The far end of the plazas terminates at a threshold that opens into another plaza with temple. The temples themselves are constructed of some of the rarest trees from south China. Each column is made from one trunk standing 80 meters tall and over three foot in diameter. They stand on a very humble minimalist base that is so simple in nature it is absolutely the coolest thing about the place.
The next place we visited was the Summer Palace or "Yiheyuan" (Garden of Nurtured Harmony). Originally we were going to the temple of heaven but there was a ceremony taking place that evening for the unveiling of the 2008 olympic logo. Exciting times around Beijing! The summer palace is incredible. This was a place for the emperor and the family to relax and stay cool in the hot summers. Upon entering you arrive in a courtyard with a small temple in the center. On the other side is a breath taking sweeping view of Kunming lake which lies at the foot of Wan Shou (longevity) hill and upon this hill is the temple complex which is host to the most marvelous icon, the Tower of Buddhist Incense which was shining in the late afternoon sun. Once I saw this I was cast under a spell I became enraptured and dazed. Everything around me was beautiful. The lily pads in the lake, the distant mountains terracing into oblivion with a centinal pagada piercing the sky, the boats dreamily moving across the water of the lake, the lush green forest covering the hill making the temple complex appear to float. I really felt at peace and absolutely in awe. Never have I experienced anything like this in all my life living in theU.S.
We walked through a series of low courtyard houses. There are small gardens in each of the courtyards. the largest garden stone in any Chinese garden is located in one of these courtyards. The Chinese would pull these stones out of a specific lake, I believe it was shozo and the stones themselves are called shozo stones, they prized the shapes and number of holes a stone had.
The courtyards eventually ended at a long corridor. Some 728 meters long all 273 sections are decorated with more than 8,000 hand paintings. On the south side is a lake front plaza, on the north there is a long garden containing lily ponds and bridges with moon gates leading to secret spaces up in the hill. The long corridor was reconstructed after the British and French allied forces burned it down in 1860. All of the students got a cold drink and lounged on the railings halfway down this corridor. It was fabulous what a place to be hangin out shooting the breeze!
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