I totally forgot to write yesterday; therefore, this post comes to you in 10 parts.
Part 1: Ping Pong
Friday consisted of my oral exam in Chinese, then we watched Disney's Mulan in Chinese with Chinese subtitles. After lunch and a short break to relax in the afternoon, I met with the group at 4:00 to play ping pong. The ping pong group ended up being me, Matt, Victoria, Jess, and Gu Laoshi. Jess' brother is a serious ping pong player, and Gu Laoshi (unexpectedly yet unsurprisingly) is a really awesome ping pong player. The volleys between Jess and Dr. Gu were competition grade and really amazing to watch.
I was terrible at ping pong, but after yesterday's session, I can no longer identify that way. I got into a really great rhythm and Gu Laoshi gave me some really great pointers. I played against Matt, Jess, and Dr. Gu, and I'd say that final volley with Dr. Gu was the best I have ever played in my life.
The gym at Bei Da is where the 2008 Olympic ping pong matches were played, and we were playing on the Olympic tables, which was amazing in and of itself. The tables are set up in a basement room with posters of the Chinese ping pong players on the walls. The floor is red marley, just like all competition ping pong floors. It was very hot in that room, and I don't think I have ever sweated so much playing a table game. It was really fun, though.
After playing, I freshened up, got dinner with friends, went for ice cream, and went to bed.
Part 2: Beijing Weather
The weather in Beijing has been strange lately. Last Saturday was the worst rain in six decades. The final count was that over 70 people died as a result of the rain. Beijing has bad drainage, so flooding is frequent and rapid. Last night, coming home from ice cream, I got caught in some serious rain and my shoes are still wet because I had no choice but to step in puddles because of the flooding.
The heat in Beijing is very different from where I've lived in the US. At home, summer heat is very burning from the blazing sun beating down on you constantly. Here, you can't really see the sun, but it's very hot and humid. The heat wraps around you like a blanket, so at first you feel fine, but then all of a sudden you realize you've been sweating. People get slick and sticky here very easily.
As I was walking outside in the aftermath of yesterday's rain, I noticed that the snails had come out onto the sidewalk. There were a lot of snails, living and dead, and I didn't realize that they were here until I saw them this morning.
Part 3: Subways
I know Beijing underground better than I know the city itself. The subway system is fantastic, and I know it really well because I use it so much. To buy a ticket, you go to a machine, press 1, pay 2 yuan, and then swipe the card and get on the train. It's very easy, especially for a non-Chinese speaker. I like knowing the stops and what's near them because it gives me some sense of direction and a certain command of my surroundings. I think it surprises my fellow travelers when I just know where things are, though. It surprises me, too, but I like it.
Part 4: Vocabulary
I'm reallizing that when I come home there are certain things I will continue to say in Chinese. "Xie xie," "duibuqi," and "tai____le" are definitely coming home with me. I'll probably use some of the adjectives I've learned, and use Chinese as code with friends. It's kind of cool to realize how much I've learned and I hope that I retain more than the basics.
Part 5: Nature
Despite being in one of the world's biggest cities, I have found that the majority of my 1200 pictures are of nature. A characteristic feature of Beijing is that in the middle of a bustling urban setting, there will be a park or some sort of place to enjoy nature that makes you feel entirely separate from that busy man-made world. Besides being pretty, the things I have photographed have been a little surprising and out of place, and I really like that about this city.
Part 6: History
Today it really hit me that everything here is just way older than the United States itself. Like, I leaned against a 500 year old pillar at the Temple of Heaven; things just aren't that old at home, and it's really amazing to experience them here.
Part 7: The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan Gongyuan 天坛公园)
Today's excursion took us to the Temple of Heaven. It was where the emperors would go for 20 days of fasting, abstinence, and prayer for a good harvest. The complex is enormous, it is directly off the main road in the south-center of the city in the Xuanwumen District, and is more park than temple. The main building, the famous round one, is where the emperor would pray for a good harvest. The building is beautiful and we took a group photo there.
There is a lot of symbolism at Tiantan. Round and blue represent heaven, and square and green represent earth. The fusion of the two and the characters for "respect heaven" really demonstrate the way the Chinese think about nature, that man and nature, earth and heaven, need to live in balance with one another because taking advantage leads to destruction.
In the park, there were tons of people doing various recreational activities: music, dance, cards, mahjjong. Seeing them made me feel like I was doing something very genuine because those people go to the park just to hang out in their regular lives. They weren't tourists (though there were plenty of those as well), and I really love seeing real people do normal things.
Also in the park, we saw the fasting hall where I learned that the hobbit holes are called moon gates, the music department, the echo wall, and the place where the emperors would talk to heaven. The music part was really interesting. The exhibits had instruments we could touch and information about the philosophy and formation of the Chinese music style. I really liked it, and I know that my mom would have loved that part, too.
The echo wall was pretty neat, but I didn't try the echo. There were a lot of tourists there at that time, and I was quite tired, so I didn't have the energy to compete with them. I saw what I wanted to see, and it was really cool. There were people doing rhythmic gymnastics with ribbon dancers nearby, and there was one young girl who was really good. We all watched for a while because it was awesome.
The place where the emperors would talk to heaven was at the third level of a dais that had nine steps between each of three levels. We all got to stand on the spot and have our picture taken. It was the only orderly line I have seen in China, and even Gu Laoshi made a comment about that.
I got to talk to Gu Laoshi a lot today, and that was pretty neat. He's really into history, so he knows the stories of each place very well, and he doesn't tire of seeing them. He took us to a spot in Tiantan where the Japanese tested bio-weapons when the occupied Beijing during the Second World War. In that place, he told us about what happened there, but he also mentioned that he grew up in that area of the city and his high school class had to clean up Tiantan. He is such an interesting person, and I'm glad to get to talk to him.
Part 8: Pearl Market
After the Temple of Heaven, we went across the street to the Pearl Market. I went into shopping with a list of my ideas for souvenirs that I wanted to buy for friends and family. I completed my list very successfully!! I am actually pretty excited about the things I'm bringing back, and I did a good job of bargaining. For myself, I got two scarves, a silk printed wall scroll with pandas on it, and a head lamp for when I work in the theater.
I don't have any particularly entertaining bargaining stories, but I did get the prices I was aiming for. I think the funniest thing that happened was when one of the salesladies called Professor Carmichael my "Chinese friend" (zhongguo pengyou 中国朋友). She is very much not Chinese, and she couldn't stop laughing after she said that. I carried out most of my transactions in Chinese, and a lot of the time I just made my contemplating a price face when I didn't understand the rapid-fire sentences being thrown my way.
I had a lot of fun today and I really enjoy speaking in Mandarin when I am forced to because it makes me realize how much I actually do know and I can be successful in using it.
Part 9: Peking Opera
After the Pearl Market, I got into a taxi with Andrea, Caleb, and Gu Laoshi to go to the Hugang Huigan Theater for dinner and Peking Opera. We were the first group to leave, so we waited for everyone else in the Opera House's restaurant. Gu Laoshi took care of dinner for us, and we had a number of tasty dishes. I loved the eggplant dish, the shrimp, green beans, both tofus, and the mala tomato, egg, and noodle soup. It was very good, especially because my lunch was rather lacking and I was hungry after a long day.
The opera itself was really awesome!! We saw a singing story and an acrobatic story, which are the two categories of Peking Opera. The theater space was really interesting. It was a procenium set up with musicians stage left. The stage was bare and the lighting instruments were all white light for visibility (really big Fresnels). The first story was about a girl and a boy who want to get married. The boy drops a jade bracelet outside her door so she will find it, and then the girl talks to the matchmaker and they are able to get married. The second story was a battle between air and water faeries.
The most striking thing about Peking Opera is the stylized movement. Steps, hand gestures, head tilts, and posture are all very unnatural in a performative way. I really liked how visual it was, because although I understood some of the lines, the physicality told the story much better. The acrobatics portion was spectacular. The lead woman did amazing tricks with these spears that the armies battled with, twirling, tossing, and juggling them with both her hands and her feet. I would love to see that again.
The music behind Peking Opera is rather dissonant. There is a lot of drumming leading up to a big beat when the actor snaps his/her head to look at the audience. The instruments are traditional Chinese instruments, and some sound good while others are irritating. The actors' voices are affected and the language is hard to understand, even for native speakers. The subtitles were inconsistant.
I really loved the performance and it inspired me to want to do more research on this performance style.
Part 10: Why Today is Awesome
Today is awesome because it didn't rain, and thus we got to have an amazing excursion!!
(My theory is that it didn't rain beacuse (a) it rained hard last night and (b) I carried both my umbrella and a spare pair of shoes all day, so if I hadn't it would have rained because I would have been caught unprepared.)
No comments:
Post a Comment