I've been living the anticipation of my Chinese adventure for several months now, so it's rather surreal to think it's over. My story started months ago when my colleague Paul asked if I would co-chaperone a group of students from our high school on a trip to China through EF Tours. I hum-hawed around about it, considering the price and other events going on this summer, but I think in the back of my mind I knew I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass by. Paul and I rallied for student interest, held meetings with interested students and their parents, and began making plans. By December, three students had signed up to join us -- two gals and a guy, all of whom took Paul's class as freshmen and mine this past school year as sophomores. It was a smaller group than we'd hoped for, but now I'm glad we had only five of us, with fewer heads to count when we reconvened, fewer teacher glances to shoot (really, I didn't have to shoot a single one because these students are truly amazing).
Together, the five of us flew from Detroit at 9:45 Thursday night, and through our 14 hour flight into a time zone 13 hours ahead of ours, we arrived in Beijing at 11:00 Friday night. Our tour director, Yoko, picked us up, along with a another section of our tour who are Hawaiian, and helped us settle in at our
hotel.
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| My favorite part of our bathroom -- trade between the US and China is clearly not one-way. |
On June 1, our first visit was the Summer Palace. We learned all about the Dragon Lady, who was empress in every sense but the title, and her contributions to this beautiful place as well as her missteps in governing the country.
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| The Long Corridor |
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| The Marble Boat |
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| Our Dragon Boat |
We also saw the Marble boat, meant to symbolize the strength of China but the result of a financial decision that lead to China's defeat in war. We even took a Taiji lesson. The teacher was adamant that we should all be able to squat as low and kick as high as she could, and she was rather hilarious as she tried to convince us of it as well. Over and over, she would guide us through a movement, leave us in a certain pose, and then walk around tapping people's behinds while sternly saying, "SIT!" indicating we should bend more at the knees. Our time there ended with a Dragon Boat ride on the lake, which was breathtaking. As we left, vendors swarmed around us with all types of gadgets, gismos, and souvenirs for sale. They walked right up to us, put their goods within an inch of our faces, offered cheap and then cheaper prices, and walked with us until they decided we were not going to be profitable. Some were more diligent than others -- one man was selling little hats, and he placed one on one of my students. She quickly took it off and tossed it to him, quite flabbergasted by the whole ordeal.
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| My favorite view at the Summer Palace -- from our Dragon Boat |
Our next stop was the
Pearl Market, which is government-owned and can, therefore, guarantee the pearls they sell are all real. Nearly all of the stores that were officially on the tour were government-owned and sold guaranteed authentic goods. One woman there gave us a demonstration on how freshwater pearls are harvested, and we each received a tiny pearl that we watched her remove from the oyster. Her favorite transition phrase was, "Now, my dear friends, am I being understood? Good, then, let's see..." I'll admit I had a wonderful time making purchases there. It was also our first encounter with Chinese shopping associates -- shopping on your own is, I believe, unheard of there. One associate would follow each person of group as they moved around the store, pointing out excellent sales and persuading you to buy as much as possible. My first associate insisted we were "exactly the same" because we should wear the same type of pearls and were clearly the same age.
Lunch was at a Muslim restaurant, and I began my immersion education with chop sticks. Most meals were served on a lazy susan so that dishes were shared with the entire group, and every lunch and dinner offered rice. Tea was also offered at every meal, which made me a happy traveler. Because the water is not fit to drink if it hasn't been boiled, here they provided a pitcher of room-temperature Sprite, which was common for most lunches and dinners as well.
We spent the afternoon at the Temple of Heaven Park, where we saw countless trees that range in age from 100-500 and 500+ years old. Many people were enjoying the park like we would Washington or Nichols Park, reading while sitting on a bench, playing games with their children, completely used to the idea that they surrounded a beautiful, ancient temple that foreigners were flocking to see. I do not witness that on my walks in the park. As we made our way to the temple, we were able to wait a bit to listen to a professional orchestra musician play the erhu, or Chinese violin.
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| Musician |
The Temple itself, situated in the center of the park, was built for the Emperor to worship the god of heaven, different from the god of the earth, and all the wooden structures were made with pillars and without nails. We could see inside the buildings at designated doorways, but we could not enter them. Here I encountered another cultural difference -- personal space and waiting in line. My Midwestern manners kept me from seeing inside for a while before I realized I needed to simply be more aggressive in moving through the group standing around the door. When I later shared this realization with one of my students, he grinned a little, lifted an eyebrow, and said, "
You weren't aggressive enough?" Having taken my eighth hour class this past school year, he was well aware that I am capable of being aggressive when necessary, but I explained to him that I am only able to call up that ability when I have a responsibility to uphold. He maintained his surprise at the situation.
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| Peaking through the stone |
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| These dragon heads serve as gutters |
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| A close-up of the engravings that covered the area where the Emperor was carried down the stairs |
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| Panoramic view from the Temple |
For dinner that night, we took a rickshaw ride through the hutongs of
Beijing to eat with a local family in their home. The rickshaw was simply a bicycle with a carriage on the back, and the red cloth coverings were held on with large black binder clips. The hutongs are the
tiny streets and alleyways that make up the ancient part of the city; somehow people drive cars in these spaces, but most of the time the street was only a little wider than our carriage. People of the neighborhood were out, sitting near their doorways or standing in the streets, and didn't seem at all surprised by 10 rickshaws carrying 20 Americans passing by. Their reactions paired with the "Lordy, lordy, look who's forty!" posters that hung on the back of all of our ricksaws makes me think Westerners riding through is a common sight. The most memorable part of the ride was passing the public bath houses; family homes do not have bathrooms, so public ones, with both toilets and showers, are situated every 80 meters or so. As we rode by, the smell was beyond words. This idea gave community bathrooms to a whole new meaning, and I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.
The homes there are hundreds of years old, and five generations of our
host family have lived in their home. We ate in their living room, which
made me wonder what they'd done with their normal furniture. The wife
cooked, and the husband told us about their family, through our tour and
city guides' translations, while we ate. He teaches kung fu at a local
sports complex, and he studied kung fu as a child with Jet Lee. His
oldest son now teaches kung fu in Huston, TX. Our meal was delicious -- tomatoes with sugar, rice, sugar snap peas with tofu in sauce, duck and carrots, vegetable balls, chicken with sauce, noodles, bean sprouts in a vinegar dressing, green beans, and dumplings.
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| Our Host Family's Home |
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| Left to Right: our host, playing the family's erhu; Yoko, our tour director; Iris, our city guide |
More posts to come...but don't worry, not all posts will tell of only one day. Our days in Beijing were filled with many sites and events each day, and that pace slowed down just a bit as we moved to Xian and Shanghai. Once out of Beijing, I should be able to include more days in a single post.
For dinner that night, we took a rickshaw ride through the hutongs of
Beijing to eat with a local family in their home. The rickshaw was simply a bicycle with a carriage on the back, and the red cloth coverings were held on with large black binder clips. The hutongs are the
tiny streets and alleyways that make up the ancient part of the city; somehow people drive cars in these spaces, but most of the time the street was only a little wider than our carriage. People of the neighborhood were out, sitting near their doorways or standing in the streets, and didn't seem at all surprised by 10 rickshaws carrying 20 Americans passing by. Their reactions paired with the "Lordy, lordy, look who's forty!" posters that hung on the back of all of our ricksaws makes me think Westerners riding through is a common sight. The most memorable part of the ride was passing the public bath houses; family homes do not have bathrooms, so public ones, with both toilets and showers, are situated every 80 meters or so. As we rode by, the smell was beyond words. This idea gave community bathrooms to a whole new meaning, and I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.
