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Tuesday 2005-09-20 - Beijing, China
Morning Activities
Many Chinese get up early in the morning and go outside for some gentle exercise. One favorite place in Beijing is the Tiantan Park with the Temple of Heaven, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. Although the main temple is closed at the moment and in scaffolding for restoration, we get up early to go to the park for some people-watching. It proves to be quite an experience, well worth getting up early for.
The huge park itself is an oasis in the big city, with many trees and a chorus of chirping cicadas almost masking the music of the singing birds. Although the park itself, laid out in a formal geometrical style, and the buildings within it are quite interesting, it’s the people that really take our interest. People do all kinds of exercises such as Tai Chi (often with a teacher) but also other types of exercise, all gentle, such as a kind of dance with fans, or marching in figures with pompoms and fans as if it’ a band of cheerleaders — except most in the group are actually middle aged… We also see a group being taught western style dancing. Most of these activities are accompanied by music coming from loudspeakers placed at regular intervals but some (such as the cheerleader group) have live music.
Then there are all kinds of ball games, like badminton, or kicking around a kind of feather ball (people kick it at each other and it should stay in the air as long as possible, apparently). There’s also a ball game with a soft ball ans a round racket with which the ball is caught and thrown back (not hit) all in one fluid movement. Other people do stretching exercises, or walk backwards a long way, using a marble strip in the pavement as a guide.
Harmony is important for the Chinese, and one way or another all this is about harmony; exercise can become a kind of meditation, but we see other forms as well: some people are practicing calligraphy writing with big brushes and water on the pavement; I also note a man flying a kite, accompanied by soft music. His mind is clearly far away, too, and he doesn’t notice us watching. Even a choir is using the park for their practice sessions, accompanied by an accordionist.
Pleasure boat
Our bus picks us up at the North entrance of the park to take us to the Imperial Summer Palace on the outskirts of Beijing. After lunch in one of the restaurants near the entrance we go in (30Ұ). We (that’s Carla, Gwendoline and I) walk in the direction of the huge man-made lake that takes up some there-quarters of the the huge grounds where the emperors and their families came to escape the summer heat of Beijing. Although the weather is still gray and hazy today the air certainly is fresher here than in the city: it must have been pleasant here for the Imperial family as well, although the water in the lake is a murky green.
The huge complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998, especially because it is a unique and intact example of the Chinese art of gardening and landscaping, so different from European or Japanese gardens. Walking along the lake front, we notice along, elegant bridge leading to an island and decide to go there. The bridge, with seventeen arches, is quite beautiful, and we walk across it to the island. On the island is the Temple of the Dragon King, where the imperial family used to pray for rain. Across the lake I see other interesting bridges (I’m a bridge nut!), but they’re too far away for now, certainly too far to walk. Instead, we catch a “Pleasure Boat” (6Ұ), nicely decorated and with a pagoda-like roof, which takes us slowly across the lake to a landing near the palace, where another interesting sight awaits us: a beautifully carved marble boat lies at the landing, as if ready to cast off.
There’s no time to view buildings today, and we’re happy to walk outside in the fresh air anyway. After a drink at a small cafe near the landing, we walk along the waterfront back to the entrance. We’ve only scratched the surface here: we agree we’d need to come back for a whole day to really experience it, rent a boat to row or paddle around the lake, and visit the buildings; in spite of that we’ve had an interesting and pleasant afternoon.
