Shi-Yi Holiday Week

On October 1^st, 1949, Mao Zedong stood in Tiananmen Square and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Fifty-nine years later, the Chinese celebrate this event by taking the entire week off from work. Sweet! On Saturday me and my fellow SYA students visited the Capital Museum, which was exhibiting a collection of the most important pieces from all the museums around China, brought to Beijing for the Olympics. We took the subway over to the museum and were set loose inside. All of the exhibits had some pretty cool artifacts in them, but due to the crowds in the main exhibit and the lack of English explaining what everything was and its importance, it was a bit hard to appreciate all of the amazing artifacts being displayed. Nonetheless we saw some pretty amazing pieces of art.

From the Capital Museum we squeezed our way back onto the subway which had reached capacity about five stops earlier and now was sweaty, claustrophobia inducing mass of people squished together all hoping that the person next to them will get off at the next stop so they might have a few more inches to breathe. A few stations later we all ran off the overcrowded subway and walked to the Lama Temple. The Lama Temple is described by the Lonely Planet City Guide as “Beijing’s most magnificent Buddhist temple”. The temple historically was the home for Count Yin Zhen (who later became the emperor), but was later converted into a lamasery in 1744. Today it serves as a tourist attraction and an active temple.

There was a good balance between tourists and people actually visiting the temple to pray. Incense was burned nearly everywhere inside the temple, so we bought a box and joined in (we were advised to burn our sticks three at a time, I have no idea why). The temple is set up as a series of halls, each more impressive than the last. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the halls (ok I cheated a little bit), and there were monks inside to scold you if you did but I did get a few shots and some video which I will post. In the second to last hall we watched some monks chanting before a fairly large (probably 30 feet tall) Buddha, which was quite a cool sight to see. Of course this was nothing compared to the 60 foot tall Buddha which inhabits the final hall of the temple. Check out the video to see for yourself (sorry for the sub-par cinematography, I was holding the camera up to my stomach and couldn’t see the screen).

After the Lama temple we walked a few blocks and reached the Confucius temple, which was also pretty cool but not quite as dramatic as the Lama temple. The temple was host to many dragon statues, and was filled with ancient musical instruments in the halls. There were also ancient tablets on display which apparently housed some historical significance (clearly it was lost to me). Overall it was a much more peaceful and subdued temple, but I still enjoyed it.

Sunday was the all school track meet, which is taken pretty seriously in China. There were opening ceremonies where all the classes (including SYA), marched onto the field in lines and paraded around the track. Many classes had consumes and did short performances (we settled with our school uniforms and yelling “Laoshi Hao”, a typical greeting said by a student to a teacher, in front of the judges. The event also marked the return of the tenth graders from military camp. The preceding week all of the tenth graders in the school were shipped off to military camp where apparently there are toughened up. They marched around the field in their military fatigues and were directed by the stereotypical stiff Chinese military officers around the field marching in step and yelling chants. They then preceded to do a martial art performance as part of the opening ceremony. This tradition of shipping kids off the military school for a week may come as a bit of a surprise to most westerners, but from what I could tell it was not that big a deal. Most of the kids come back looking pretty much the same and I don’t think that the experience scarred them for life or anything. The rest of the day was devoted to the track meet, which went as expected.

The only even I would like to note is jump rope, which is a sport that is taken very seriously in China. Competitive jump rope is a test of speed, reflexes, and precision. Teams compete by seeing how many people they can get through the rope in a figure eight formation in two minutes. The rope is spun and the team members run through one after another going one direction, then go through the opposite direction. It sounds simple, but good teams get upwards of 200 people through in two minutes (which means more than one person a second for those of you who are counting). SYA formed a jump rope team and competed in the event, getting 172 students through in two minutes, which earned us eighth place (out of 10 I’m pretty sure). Okay, that sounds pretty bad, but compared to the Chinese kids who had been doing this their whole lives we were proud that we didn’t come in dead last (which is apparently where most of the previous year’s teams have ended up).

The rest of the week has been fun, although less noteworthy (mostly hanging out with friends). Tuesday afternoon a bunch of SYA students and took a half an hour bus ride to HaiDian park where there were a concert going on that day. We arrived to find the line about a half mile long, so we decided to just relax in the park instead. Now in my first post I spoke about how impressed I was with Chinese parks, and this feeling has only grown stronger. I have been to parks with bumper cars, trampolines, outdoor gyms, boats, temples, and roller coasters. They are all very clean and well kept and are overall great places. Typically you pay a few Yuan to get in, but the quality of the parks is much nicer. In most parks you see people flying kites. Now like in America the kites work the same way, you have string attached to the kite and you wait for a gust of wind to take is soaring, but again, unlike in American the Chinese do it way better. On a day with practically no wind, in the middle of a city filled with sky scrapers, it is not uncommon to see a few people with kites at least a mile up in the sky (it looks like a mile to me, but they are for sure above many of the skyscrapers). They people who get them this high usually make it look incredibly easy, so we figured we would give it a try as well. Fifteen Yuan bought us your basic kite and soon we were attempting to get our kite to soar like we had seen others do it. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. After a few tries and various changes in technique the inevitable happened; the kite got stuck in a tree. After fumbling around for a bit we got it out but decided we would try it some other time (even though the 80 year old man who was sitting down near us had somehow gotten his sky high effortlessly).

On Wednesday, the actual ShiYi holiday, my host family and I visited my Nainai’s (Dad’s Mother) house. There I met my Nainai, Yeye (Dad’s Dad), and Didi (Dad’s younger brother). Nainai is short, has grayish black hair and is missing a few teeth. Yeye, basically follows the same description, but also walks in sort of a shuffle. Since my Chinese isn’t quite conversational yet and older Beijing folk then to speak in an incomprehensible slur anyways, my role in the visit was to eat everything they gave me. We sat around in the apartment and talked for a bit (I ate a banana and a roasted Chinese nut, they call them Li zi here but I don’t have a clue what they are called in English. They are really tasty). Then we went out to a restaurant for lunch. There was a wedding going on in the restaurant while we were there. Unlike in American weddings the ceremony was about fifteen minutes and they lit off some major sparklers inside from the stage. Lunch was pretty strange, but tasty enough. Dishes of note include a gummy translucent vegetable that came is long strips (maybe a type of noodle?) and a fish dish that made your mouth numb when you ate it. As with all meals, I was encouraged to eat more than humanly possible by both my host parents and my host parents parents. Eventually I had to draw the line by saying “我吃饱了”, meaning “I’m full”. That night my host father and I biked to the Olympic stadiums again. At night they are really much more impressive, with the water cube glowing neon blue and the birds nest giving off an orange radiation. Unfortunately the crowds were pretty bad because of the holiday, so getting a good picture was a bit of a struggle.

Tuesday was an almost exact repeat of Wednesday. My host parents and I biked to my Laolao’s house (Mom’s Mother), where I was also encouraged to eat a lot (this time it was Chinese fruit roll ups, which are actually really good, Cheetoes, oranges, and cheese crackers). We also went out to lunch and I ate a lot (the dishes were a little less exciting though, but maybe a bit tastier). I was forced to leave her house with a grocery bag of food that I didn’t have the stomach to eat at her house so she wanted me to bring it home.

The entire experience of meeting the grandparents was pretty interesting. Parents are very important in Confucian society and the idea of Filial Piety was one of Confucius’s core values. However unlike in other western cultures greetings are restricted to words-I didn’t see a hug or even a handshake on either visit. The trips seemed to focus around eating, talking a bit, and fixing things around the house for your parents. I got a few more pretty good shots that didn't fit into the post so check out the slideshow for everything.

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