Beijing Part III

After Jane, Dan, Evelyn and I returned from the park on Wednesday, we ate lunch and headed out to the mall. Originally, we had planned on going to a children's amusement park, because Jane had read online that it was fun and cheap. However, when she checked with someone at the hostel, she found out that the price to the park had increased 1000%, and that admission no longer included tickets for rides. We didn't think that was worth it, so we went shopping. Not that we entirely hung the kids out to dry, the mall had a very large indoor playground, so we took them there for a while. Here is a shot of one wing of the mall. It was 8 stories tall, and it had every single store you could ever think of; in addition to being 8 stories high, the mall was 4 blocks long. Below is a picture of the shoes outside the Nike store.

I thought the shoes were pretty cool. One of the first things that I noticed when we got to China was that the 1980s were very much in fashion here, as the above shoes seem to illustrate. All of my male students wear tight black denim jeans, with ankles that are very tight. It reminded me of tight-rolling your jeans. Also, if you see people with ties, they are very narrow, and often squared off at the bottom of the tie. Many of my students also have long hair (the guys), and you can tell that they spend a ton of time working on it to make it look like they were trying out for a part in a John Landis '80s flick. There seem to be more hair salons on the streets than restaurants, and there are plenty of people with colored streaks in their hair.

One day Jane and I were talking about trying to think of something to sell in China to make money, given the fact that the '80s were in. I could only think of one thing, which were things called slap-bracelets. They were pieces of straight plastic that you would slap on your wrist, causing them to curl up like a bracelet. Not thinking that was our million-dollar idea, we quickly dismissed it. Two days later, we walked by a store, and what were they selling right out front? Slap-bracelets.

At the mall, we first took the kids to the play area. It was a great deal, getting two hours of play for less than $10. The kids loved it so much that we were able to leave them all there with Jiu Jie so that Jane and I could go shopping for some essentials. The indoor play area of the mall was really neat. It was about the size of a basketball court, with three levels of bouncy balls, trampolines, slides, tubes and swings. They had cannons which shot out nurf balls, which were Dan's favorite. Etain and Evelyn were fans of the swings. Here is Etain doing her swinging.

Here is Dan with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee (the Transformers), who were having a very large display in one of the areas of the mall. There were tons of children's toys, and the prices were astronomically high. It was amazing that some toy that would be made in China and sold in the U.S. for $10 would be sold here for $20. We didn't get it, other than to think that maybe the stores were really trying to take advantage of the newly created disposable income that people here supposedly have.

After shopping, we grabbed some street food and headed home. We had planned on having Jiu Jie babysit the kids so that Jane and I could go to the Beijing Opera, which is a certain style of opera that is performed here. We got to the lobby and our ride came to pick us up. We sat with the guide in a taxi, which was not going anywhere fast because of the Beijing traffic. In fact, nothing on the street was moving fast at all. After a few minutes and only moving a block or so, the guy said we should get out and walk. We got out with him and walked briskly for about 20 blocks, but he finally said that there was no way we were going to make it on time unless we took a taxi (by the time we walked 20 blocks, the traffic died down, but every single taxi was occupied). We said that it was no big deal if he could arrange to get us our money back. To our surprise, he said that he had the money in his pocket, which he handed over with no hassle. We thanked him for his trouble, and we just headed off to have a few drinks and maybe grab some dinner.

Here is a picture of a bus in Beijing, packed as full as possible. Imagine being in the middle of this bus, when it is moving at a pace of about 1 block per 5 minutes...

Here is a sight you probably wouldn't see in America. Jane is standing outside a public restroom, with the attendant using a portable wok to cook food to sell. It actually smelled pretty good (the food, that is), but we did not partake.

Instead of a sit down dinner, Jane and I decided to head to Tienanmen Square. The Square was crowded, but it was very neat. Here is a picture of me, standing in Tienanmen Square, with the entrance to the Forbidden City in the background.

Here is a picture of Jane, taken in the same spot as the picture above, just rotated 90 degrees. She is standing in front of the People's Monument, which is a testament to the martyr's who lost lives in Chinese social and political history. It was cool. Also in Tienanmen Square are the Great Hall of the People (China's house of representative equivalent), the Museum of Chinese History, and the Mausoleum of Mao Tse Tung. Jane has seen Mao's embalmed body, and the line to see him likely lasted 2-3 hours, so we did not go. Supposedly the neatest part of it is that there are blocks and blocks of flowers that people bring to honor him.

After seeing these things, Jane and I walked around for a bit, did some shopping at some small stores and headed home for the night.

The next morning, when we woke up, we decided to go to the Temple of Heaven before getting back on the train. We took a bus to the Temple of Heaven Park, getting there at about 9:30 a.m. When we walked in the gate, there again was soft music playing over speakers. There were many different paths to take, with many attractions to see. Because it did not seem too crowded, we told Jiu Jie that she could go see whatever she would like, and that we would meet her at the actual temple at noon, before we had to head back to the hostel to get our luggage for the 4 p.m. train departure.

Once we walked a little farther, there seemed to be some sort of attraction going on at a small building. It turns out that there was a wedding going on, and outside they had drummers and dancers who made one of the long Chinese dragons. Though we got there right as it was ending, Dan and Evelyn were able to get their picture taken with the dragon-dog.

We got to the center of the park and realized it was a lot more crowded than we had thought, and that 2 hours was not much time to see the many things that the park had to offer. This, mostly, was because we could not walk very far without being asked if our photo could be taken, with the large group that would form thereafter.

Regardless, we were able to see a few of the attractions. Here are the kids playing on the outer wall of the sacrificial center. The wall that Dan is standing on is actually the perimeter of a huge circle, in which sacrifices were held to appease the gods.

Here is Evelyn, doing some of her modeling along the wall.

Here are the kids and me outside the gate to one of the open-area temples. Once we got closer to it, the crowd became much more dense.

I wanted to go to the center of the temple, because I had read that there was a stone platform there (about 3 feet in diameter). According to the park's leaflet, whoever is standing on the stone platform is able to have a direct conversation with the gods. I thought this would be a pretty cool thing to be able to do, so Dan and I headed up there (Jane stayed back with the girls, because of the crowd and the steps). When we got to the top, there were roughly 50,000 Chinese people packed into the small circle around the stone. We nudged our way closer to the stone, only to find out there there was a ridiculously long line in order to stand on the stone for a few seconds. Knowing we didn't have that kind of time, I just told Dan to run up there real quick and jump on the stone for a second as someone else was getting off. Dan obliged, so for about half of a second, he was in direct communication with ancient Chinese gods. He has yet to reveal the details of this conversation.

After we went to the stone, Dan and Jane went to a whispering wall, which was an ancient, circular stone wall that had perfect acoustics such that a person on one side could whisper and it travels around the perimeter such that the person on the other side can hear it perfectly. This seemed neat, but given the fact that there were tens of thousands of people trying it out at the same time, it was not that effective.

We then headed towards the Temple of Heaven at the other side of the park. When Jane and I were leaving the whispering wall, we realized the major mistake that we had made: We told our 5 foot tall Chinese nanny that we would meet her at the main attraction of the park, which probably was being visited by 4 million people that day. As noon came and went, we started getting very nervous. We had thought we told her exactly where to meet (by pointing on a map), but when we got there, we realized it was not quite as simple as we thought. We started to stress out, because we really were running close to the time when we absolutely had to leave to get to our train. Also, the language barrier was a problem, we knew Jiu Jie and she knew Jane and Tom, but other than first names, that was it. Luckily, at about 12:40, Jane somehow spotted her. We headed off to the hostel soon thereafter, but we were able to shoot a few pics beforehand. Here is Dan trying to look like a runway model like Evelyn, but he instead looks more like a Price-Is-Right model, I think. In this picture is the actual Temple of Heaven.
We got back to the hostel, grabbed our bags, and found out that we had to go out immediately and get a taxi for the train station. Here are the girls on our way out.

We headed out to the curb, but every taxi that went by was taken. Further, even those taxis that passed were not moving very fast, as there was tons of traffic. I was getting very nervous that we would miss the train, because there seemed to be no sign of us going anywhere anytime soon. So, we decided to walk in the direction of the train station, based on the unscaled map that we had. It is quite difficult to push a double stroller packed to capacity, while carrying bags worth of 4 days of luggage down a narrow, stone Chinese street. When we made it to the main street, we were not allowed to cross because the street was too wide. Instead, we had to go down steps and go under the street in a subway-type alley. The stairs have ramps built into a portion of them, so I maneuvered the stroller onto the ramp to head down the stairs. I quickly realized, though, that the stairs were too steep, and the stroller was way to heavy to manage. By that time, Etain was in the front seat sleeping, and as we were heading down, she began to lean forward. Everyone thought she was going to go flying down the concrete stairs, but they could not see that she was buckled in under her blanket (Regardless, even I was scared when seeing her tilt forward). I was able to back up and take the stroller down backwards, which was still difficult because of the bags on my back and the stuff packed underneath. We made it across the street unscathed, and Etain never even woke up.

We made it to another large street, which required going up and down a large pedestrian bridge. Luckily, there were some people there who were willing to help carry the stroller up and down this time. We continued to walk in the direction of the station, and finally it came into view. In fact, the receptionist at the hostel told us that, given traffic, it would take an hour to get there by taxi. We made it in 40 minutes.

On the train ride home, we had four beds, two lower beds and two middle beds in the same bunk. The kids did not go to sleep quite as well as they did on the first train, but everyone still did pretty well. As Etain, Evelyn, Jane, Jiu Jie and I slept, Dan hung out just outside our compartment in the hallway with a kid named Frank (at least that was his English name), who spoke pretty good English. It was pretty funny to hear their conversation, as Frank was extremely polite and well mannered, talking about the United States and the president. Dan, however, only talked about Star Wars, his topic of choice.

Here are Dan and Frank as we were de-boarding the train.

Here is Dan and one of the train stewardesses that he had a crush on (she liked him too), as she spent the first two hours playing with him.

Our train back actually ended in Nanjing, which is a few towns away from Changzhou. It was the only train available. When we got to Nanjing, the kids and I hung out while Jane and Jiu Jie went to find train tickets to Changzhou. We were all pretty tired, and I was hoping that we would not have to spend a night or an entire day in Nanjing. To my surprise, Jane and Jiu Jie came running back soon after, saying that we had to run to a train that was leaving in ten minutes. We made it to the train, which was a speed train, and it only was a 50 minute ride to our home town. We made it back to our apartment at about 9:30 a.m., and pretty much relaxed the rest of the holiday.

I am writing this on Thursday night. We work through Saturday this week. Next week, however, there are tests that take place on Monday and Tuesday. (I spent the last couple nights preparing chemistry exams). After that, on Wednesday and Thursday, the school is having sports days, in which the entire school competes in athletic competitions (like a mini-Olympics). We are then off for three days, which we plan to use for a short trip to Shanghai, which is only about 1.5 hours away by speed train.

As always, I will keep you posted. Thanks for reading; we have had over 1000 views of this simple website so far...