There was a dust storm this morning -- kind of like the
"dry fog" I remember from Abidjan, but with a lot of wind, but
fortunately it cleared out by mid morning.
I only remember waking up once during the night, which is good for being
jet-lagged, got up at 6. Breakfast has
many options, marked "halal" and not, so it was easy to avoid
pork. The traditional Chinese breakfast
is a kind of rice gruel, with condiments to put in -- I wasn't too impressed --
but there were all kinds of cooked veggies & noodles & rice, as well as
Western fare.
Hotel seems fine to me -- the grumpy reviews on
TripAdvisor notwithstanding. The in
hotel restaurant I went to last night wasn't great, but there's a lovely
Sichuan place a block south where I went for lunch, and had dry cooked beef so
spicy it made my toes curl. (It was
quite crowded with locals -- very efficient.
They were giving out numbers to the people waiting for tables, and
menus, and took your order even before seating you. They had a menu w/ English, and when the
waitress pointed out the dish I'd picked was spicy, I said, I like spicy -- I
still don't know how to phrase that). A
nice lady from across the table started talking English to me, and got the
waitress to bring rice and tea.
After breakfast, I walked to the subway line (after a
funny conversation with the man at the hotel's parking kiosk, where I asked
which direction it was -- I'd gotten myself turned around and was prepared to
set off the wrong direction). A man came up to me to point out that my knapsack
was unzipped.
Fortunately, the subway line I needed was a ring line --
and it didn't matter which direction I went -- the stop I needed was opposite
where I was starting. I managed to
convey the stop I needed to go to to the ticket issuer (fare was 4 RMB, so
something like $.60).
The subway cars have nice maps with lights above every
door, telling you where you are, AND intelligible announcements in Mandarin and
English, both, so no problem getting off at the right stop. Then, outside the subway, I managed to get
myself turned around again, but a nice man with fluent English saw me with my
phone setting off in the wrong direction, and straightened me out.
The Lama temple started out as a palace in the 18th
century, but was converted to a Tibetan temple a little later. Fodors said it only had a few dozen monks in
residence, but it looked like maybe 50 chanting in the main sanctuary (sitting
in rows, with reading lamps). Very
moving. Pictures forbidden.
All visitors got a box of incense sticks -- it was early
when I got there; very few Westerners and no tours yet-- and the Chinese were
offering them with real fervor, kneeling in front of each statue and touching
their head to the floor (there were kneeling pads for the purpose in front of
each statue -- there were maybe 12 separate buildings, each with its several
statues.
One massive statue was carved from a single piece of
Sandalwood, with a plaque from the Guinness book of records outside attesting
that it was the largest statue in existence from a single piece of wood.
The Confucius Temple was a little to the East of the Lama
Temple. There were these huge stone
Steles with the names of scholars who'd won the examinations., and, inside (v
dusty) there were (at each side of the sanctuary), a ceramic statues of a ram
and a sheep in bins of small bills of money -- I guess offerings that students
would do well on the exams.
In the book by Evan Osnos, there was a sad history from
the Cultural Revolution. The writer Lao
She was beaten by Red Guards (schoolgirls) there in 1966. The next day, he drowned himself in the Lake
of Great Peace, which was since filled in during an expansion of the subway
system.
There wasn't any plaque for Lao She -- just one more sad,
forgotten history.
The courtyards of the Confucius temple were filled with
cypress trees, hundreds of years old.
One was famous for having hurt a wicked courtier who had come to
sacrifice at the temple. It had an
English placard name it the Wicked Courtier Detecting cypress.
Anyway, the denizens of Beijing are taking good care of
me.
Zhenyin's parents took me, a classmate from the Peking
Univ. meteorology class of 1963, and a student of his Dad's out for
dinner--Peking Duck and THEN Mongolian hot pot, which was a lot of lamb and
veal sliced very thin, along with a plethora of veggies, to cook in a veal
broth. Z's Dad also cooked tripe, but no
one else had it (it looked v grey and gross).
Ms. Chang, the classmate, had much more fluent English
than anyone else, from having gone to Christian schools in Shanghai when
young. She started school under Japanese
occupation, then English schools, then studied Russian when China & Russia
were allies. Meteorology was important
for the Air Force, of course.
Ms. Chang and the Li's live in a very pretty compound
(lots of trees & bushes) with a canteen (so they don't have to cook), a
primary school, and a small store, and retirees get to keep their apartments
there. Ms. Chang' 84; retired 24 yrs ago
(she said her English was rusty from disuse, but it didn't seem rusty to me).
It was lovely food. We ate and ate and ate. I had to stop after a while, long before the
veggies were exhausted.
Then, they showed me the Olympic site at night (v. lovely) and Tianamen square. A very, very good day.
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