Day 10 - Beijing - Temple of Heaven

Day 10 – Hers

A good night’s sleep and off to explore the city.  As the Great Wall and Forbidden City are part of our tour, we headed for the Temple of Heaven and markets. We strolled along residential streets, the only non-Chinese in evidence, past a table tennis club, gardens and slum areas enclosed in decorative walls, until we reached the North Gate of the complex.  The Temple of Heaven is a huge walled park with rose gardens, ancient trees and a number of ancient buildings, once reserved for the imperial court’s prayers and rituals.  Today it is clearly one of the places to be on a Saturday for fitness, music and relaxation.  There were groups of singers (not, as they would in England, expecting money – just singing for pleasure), dancers (everything from waltz and tango to line dancing), martial artists (tai chi and sword play), players (I must find out what those instruments are called), prayers, picnickers and some groups playing odd sports – one looked like football skills with a large badminton shuttlecock.

We spent a good 3 hours just walking around and people-watching before heading to the Pearl Market where Rob sharpened his haggling skills.  We then wandered down several of the main shopping streets – H&M, Burberry’s, Macdonald’s and KFC did not have the same appeal – and finally returned to the more traditional shopping area near our hotel.  We had a late lunch in a noodle bar – beef for Rob and spicy sesame paste with pea shoots for me, accompanied by green tea – and bought a few odd things to try later before heading back to the hotel.

 

Day 10 – His.

 

We are on a trip in a new city so I expected Patti to march me around without a rest or water for hour after hour and she didn’t disappoint. We walked for ages until my incessant whining brought us to a bench in the gardens of heaven. We sat and i smoked a cigarette as we watched the Chinese at play. The Chinese certainly seem to live their lives outside. We saw all kinds of things going on that if it were a park in England would cause us to cross the road to avoid but here we crossed over to see. I suspect because the Chinese are largely agricultural or not long out of an agrarian style of living they seem to be more at ease with the naturalness of the body – so we saw plenty of guys with shirts off or rolled up to expose their bellies to the wind and plenty of mothers letting their children pee in the grass as we walked by. All very curious. The striking differences aren’t restricted to the people or the buildings; the very flora seems foreign to our eyes and the Cyprus trees seem from another world with their twisting boles and trunks and the grass grows in tight defined clumps.

Typical of many tourist destinations, tuk tuk drivers endlessly hassle you as you walk along but it seems a good humoured “no” works well. Outside the temple of heaven was a mistranslation of a Chinese sign into English that exhorted tourists to remember the impression they were causing on others. The Chinese are even more concerned with what their neighbours think about them than the Americans. But as in America it extends only to the state of your garden in China it seems to include your behaviour and mental attitude. This seems to create a situation where any problem is everyone’s problem and everyone gets involved – if it’s from helping people who are lost – we saw one old guy at a bus stop being helped by the rest of the people (which was about 20 people aged from 15 to 50) to get the right bus and change to another guy complaining at a restaurant in which at least half the restaurant joined in.  All very admirable – but a bit too social for me. As Patti has said, there are not that many European faces around us and we cause some interest. The children actually gawp at us open mouthed as we pass and we have bothered to learn the Chinese for hi, how are you. As we need to say it often to the more curious stares we get. Though the people are remarkably good natured and really like to say hi and practice their English if they have any. In return we are learning a little Chinese and practicing it when we can. One guy was really surprised when he mumbled something as he walked passed him and i said – in Chinese ‘you’re welcome’. He stopped, turned round, smiled and chattered to me in Chinese – obviously surprised and pleased we had bothered to learn as much as that. All good fun. Now – we have eaten and are chilling a little in the room as we are due to meet our tour group in a little bit and i think they are going to want to go out to dinner – I suspect Patti and I will not want to be bothered as we are still trying to get over our mega jet lag.