京666666 (The Beginning of the Reemergence of this Blog)

What you are reading in the title of this post is what might be the luckiest license plate you could own in all of China. I actually saw a truck with this exact license plate at a gas station somewhere in Shanxi province this past week on our National Day Holiday trip and I knew right away that it had to be a person in the government. Who else would have the guanxi (connections) to get a plate with a number like that?

Alright, so due to the lack of updates and the heaps of material pilling up in my head that needs to see the light of day on this blog, I am going to post every couple days until I catch upon everything. I'll start with Fall Break, or you could say National Day Holiday Break. To start off the break, I played some pickup soccer at a nearby park near Tsinghua University which is just across the way from East Gate at PKU. My friend Althea and I biked down to the fields with our cleats and started passing a ball around with random people there. This soon evolved into a full-fledged 4v4 game which I wasn't ready for, at least at the level of play these guys were playing at. A Chinese friend of mine was telling me that I may be able to join his team after the break so I wanted to get some practice in. Communication took some time to get used to in terms of navigating the field and shouting instructions to my teammates but I remembered a lot of the terms from my last experience at Beida playing pickup soccer. The week before Althea and I went over to the soccer fields on a track-like surface and ended up playing in a chain-link fenced field with a bunch of Chinese college kids. I learned the words for "pass" and "shoot", as well as "goal" and "good shot" which came in really handy. I still remember walking out there seeing kids on the opposite end of the fields doing Tai Qi and Wu Shu (Martial Arts) and then other kids playing basketball on another part of the field. It was really interesting to see the mix of people in one place at the same time.

The next day I decided to go to the Temple of Heaven with some friends. This was the one major site in Beijing the program didn't take us to in the Summer so I really want to go see it. We ended up riding our bikes down to the Wudaokou Ditie (subway) and then riding all the way to southern Beijing and walking about 20 minutes from that stop to the Temple of Heaven. Walking down to the site, we ended up seeing beautiful flowers freshly planted alongside tall walls. Inside each section of the wall was a framed picture of some sort of cultural Chinese art piece. This seemed to me like some of the best pieces of sidewalk in all of Beijing. Only then did I realize that behind the walls were what the government was trying to hide with the flowers and framed cultural pieces, ramshackle housing and people living under very poor conditions. It was quite amazing to see such a stark contrast like that. This road to the Temple of Heaven actually continued all the way to the site. When we reached the park on the outside of the TOH, I was surprised by how massive it really is. From pictures I had seen before, I only thought it consisted of one main temple. My preconceptions were altered when I entered through the gates. After a few hundred yards of walking through a lush, green forest and walkway lined with pines, we finally reached the famous temple that the TOH is known for. At this main temple, the emperor would pray to the heavens for a good harvest and a long life among other things. There were a few interesting displaces specially created for National Day and the coming of the Olympics, which included an array of flowers made to look like the Olympic rings and a mosaic of plants shaped like a full moon above cypress trees (symbolizing a happy life and prosperity for all Chinese people). After looking through several smaller temples, we grabbed some tasty lunch (rice, a chicken and potato dish, and some tofu) and then went to the Echo Wall and the Circular Mount Altar. At the Echo Wall you can supposedly hear someone whisper from the opposite end of the circular wall but it was so renao (bustling with noise and excitement...yes that is the actual translation haha) that it was impossible to try it. The Chinese tourists there were yelling things like "NI HAO!!!" and "NI TING WO SHUO MA?!?" It was a really humorous sight given that you were supposed to whisper for it to work in theory. At the Circular Mount Altar, around which sacrifices were carried out, tourists would stand in the middle and put their arms up in the air in a triumphant pose. It was entertaining just to watch the Chinese tourists. I spotted another group taking a family shot at an alter which was used for sacrificing cows and other animals. I don't think I would want to look back at a family picture and see it was at a place used to sacrifice animals. Anyway, we spent most of the afternoon exploring the grounds and walking through the giant park. It was a great day to walk around and enjoy a rare but more common Beijing blue sky day.

Tomorrow I'll work on the epic voyage/bikeride from Peking University to Tiananmen Square on National Day and maybe even get to the Shanxi trip which our entire group went on last week. I'm also trying to post pictures from the past few weeks so hopefully those make it up on the site within the next few days. For now I'll leave you with some YouTube footage of Jay Chou, China's mega-super-pop/rock/rap star. Enjoy.