I am writing this from Xi’an after an unbelievably long day!  We had a jam-packed day in Beijing before heading to the airport for an 8pm flight to Xi’an, which left 4 hours late due to a thunderstorms and so we arrived at our hotel a 3am and I’m up and having coffee 4 hours later.  We started our day at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing which was built at the same time as the Forbidden City and was mostly built as a place to perform rituals relating to crop health and general empire help.  Its main site is this unbelievable structure called the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, which is a wooden dome structure made without any nails at all:

But the more interesting thing about the Temple of Heaven is how the people of Beijing use the space.  There’s a nice covered promenade leading to the Hall of Prayer and grassy areas around it and it’s packed with people out relaxing.  Beijingers definitely live their lives out in the open and in public gathering places, which is surely a result of the tiny housing situations most people work with.  As we approached the Hall of Prayer, we saw these small clusters of people playing cards, dominos or Chinese chess, surrounded by people observing.  Together, they created an audible hum of activity that was awesome to walk through…Hao said these people are here every day.  Here’s a couple of shots of small groups:

We took a little break in the courtyard in front of the Hall of Prayer and had time to sit around and observe, which always turns out to be more interesting than the sites themselves for me.  One thing I notice is that the Chinese people are extremely friendly and very curious about us as Americans.  I have had my picture taken with people numerous times now and they are just thrilled to see us.  Yesterday at breakfast, this tiny little boy was completely mesmerized by Ron and I as we sat drinking our coffee and his parents literally could not get him to move on and so they gave up and just let him stand there, pondering our oddness.  At first he was afraid of us, but he gradually worked himself up to a little wave and, by the time he left, he was blowing us kisses and he totally stole my heart and his parents were laughing and smiling with us and I set off into my day thinking that I am so glad I came all this way to see the kindness and solidarity of people despite mileage and culture and politics.  And my chipper mood was only multiplied at the Temple of Heaven as I sat there resting when one member of our group, who sat resting a few feet away from me, was surrounded by some tired Chinese tourists and they somehow started out smiling at each other, and then nodding in a pleasant way and then, the Chinese, fascinated by this man’s hearing aids, starting trying to ask questions about the hearing aid and the end result, after about 5 minutes of miming back and forth, was that these Chinese tourists got our tour member to take off his hearing aid and they all spent a long time trying it on, passing it around and laughing.  Here they are:
We moved further into the Temple grounds and came across another show of cultural Chinese differences when we came to the exercise portion of the park.  I haven’t noticed any gyms at all as we tour around Beijing, but I have seen many of these places where Chinese gather together to work out.  They’re typically right near the outdoor dance areas and the one below was the largest one we’ve seen.  Look at how many people are working on there!!  They were very happy to let us watch them.  The two men below doing push-ups kept inviting us over and, finally, two of us (ME!) went on over and did push-ups with these guys, who were so freaking happy with us.  Someone is supposed to email a pic of me in action and I will post it if I get it.

By this point in the morning, watching the community pride and kind curiousity, I had fallen in love with the entire Chinese population and was thinking all sorts of preachy things about world political stability hinging on cultural exchanges such as this, instead of blind and vitriolic bigotry, but then I got ahold of my senses and settled back into my comfort zone of pessimism and futility. One thing I thought was funny was, despite the enormous hive of activity in the park – the dancing, the music, the workouts, the guy practicing with his dragon scarf dancing thing (sorry, no pic), here is the “forbidden activity” sign at the entrance to this lively and wonderful park…ahhhhh, government in action!

From the Temple, we left for our rickshaw tour of the ancient alleys of Beijing, followed by lunch in someone’s actual home, which I was very nervous about, from a food borne illness point of view.  But it was actually fine, although my lunch consisted of some (more!!!) rice and a little bit of cabbage and (another!!) Coke.  The people were very nice and prepared this ten dish meal on a hot plate with a wok on it and managed to present most of the dishes at the same time, which I often cannot accomplish with four burners, an oven and a microwave. Here’s some shots of the cooking area, us crowded into their tiny living room/kitchen/dining room and the couple themselves.  The guy was a martial arts dude of some renown because there was a picture on the wall of him with Jackie Chan. 

Here we are on our rickshaw ride:

I know…you’re already tired of my day…but think of me… I still had hours to go before my 4 hour flight delay.  We next headed to a Chinese medicine clinic, where we heard a medical history lecture from a physician and then we each got accupressure foot massages

And then, we had an hour to wander this very famous shopping street called something very long with the word WANG in it and then other letters as well, and we wandered off the street and ended up in something that I dub Market of Disgusting Food and we got to enjoy offerings such as live and wriggling scorpions on a stick, large deep fried grubs and tiny seahorse shishkabobs.

You’re all with me on the food at this point, aren’t you?  Our guide says that the Chinese will eat anything that moves around on legs and I do not think he is bragging or exaggerating; he is merely stating the facts.  It makes me suspicious at the hotel breakfast bar each morning and this morning, here in Xi’an, I had a total strike out on peanut butter and cheese, but had I wanted quail eggs or seaweed for breakfast I would have been set.  Despite my pre-trip bragging, I’ve had no fast food at all so far.  Two of the nights, we stumbled back to our hotel too tired to care about finding dinner. One of those nights, I dined on Cheez-Its and some tea.  I can’t remember what I ate the other night.   Last night, after vowing to get a Filet o Fish at the Golden Arches at the airport,  we got through the airport security (most in depth pat down I have ever been given…it was nearly a massage and not for the squeamish) and found that our only American option was the KFC, which would have been fine, but I had been in a KFC trying to find sustenance earlier in the day and had tried and failed to make sense of the menu, even though I had done a YouTube practice KFC run at home, to familiarize myself with the menu.  And so I ordered a “three cheese panini” at some coffee shop that arrived with maybe one cheese, and then some ground up stuff on it…walnuts? Olive?  Minced seahorses?  I did finally get a Snickers and it was exquisite.

That’s it from here.  Off to see the Terra Cotta soldiers today.  Forgive any typos… I am just too tired to look this monster over.

VTYFX/VFS/BA/JD/WT – can you decipher that one, oh child of mine??