Good-bye Beijing

Tuesday, June 22 Zaoshang hao! Good morning. For those of you who have asked, using hotmail, I can write one letter to myself and blind carbon it to any number of friends on a list I prepared before I left. If anyone doesn't want to get these messages, just let me know. Sunday's entry was cut short by the fact that the Internet connection broke and I couldn't save the letter properly, so I had to re-write it and the business office was closing. It costs $US 6 for a half an hour of Internet time which is just about enough to read messages and write the journal entry. Since I didn't bring a computer, it is much easier for me to write this way than to write by hand, and since I am writing it anyway, I thought I would share it. Yesterday we began with visits to a Lama temple and a Confucian temple. Scores of Chinese were pouring in as the gates opened at 9:00 am, lighting incense sticks, and praying openly, etc. They seemed to have no problem with our very touristy presence in their place of worship and many were quite friendly. We have yet to meet a large group of Americans. Germans are clearly in evidence, and fewer Japanese than I might have expected. The Confucian temple was interesting, in part because of the presence of a high school art class from a local school, each student painting watercolors. There was no teacher in evidence, but as we walked around the students were friendly while not stopping work for a minute. Two boys were there photographing each other in cap and gown having just graduated from technical college. They start jobs as engineers on July 1 and were naturally in a very good mood. Inside the temple are large marble slabs that one might think were tombstones, but in fact contain the names of all those who passed the civil service exams in a certain part of the Ming period. This was also the first place we noticed birds chirping, but to be fair, we haven't been to Beihai park. I don't notice many birds chirping on 42nd Street either. Our next stop was the Summer Palace, a reminder of the heartless work of westerners, who burned it during the Opium War -- it was the British and the French that time, so we Americans are not the only ones with black marks... It was rebuilt by the empress Cixi and offers a beautiful lake with boat rides and other entertainments. I asked our guide, who has a four-year-old son, why, when families went on outings like this they wouldn't invite another child, so that their only child would have someone to play with. You constantly see one child and two parents at these sites. He said that he and his wife work all week, so on a weekend or vacation day they would not want to part with their child while he went off with another family. It is surely strange in a culture where so much is dependent on family relationships that the second generation of only children not only have no siblings, but no cousins. Our guide had told us we were going to a hotel for lunch and we rebelled (with the help of our leader) saying we were tired of sanitized hotel conditions and foods that was catered to western tastes. So he obliged us (he is a real dear) and we went to a restaurant that was not really local, serving lots of tour groups, but at least some of them were Chinese tour groups. In the afternoon we went to the high school at Beijing Normal University -- e.g.. Teacher's College. The school was founded in 1900 and is the most elite in China. Half of the students there get into Beida, the best college. It would be the equivalent of having half the class get into Ivy League schools. We went to a class of eighth graders prepping for admission from the junior high to the senior high. They were delighted to see us at 3:00 in the afternoon, and have a break from their lessons. I was hoping we would be broken into groups and actually permitted to watch a class, but were escorted en masse into the room. I have some marvelous videotape of the students laughing and cheering us, and it will be fun to show it to Poly students, who probably have the impression that Chinese students, especially the brightest ones, are always working so hard. We then went to a high school English class and had a similar experience. One student told us who her favorite poet was, and when one of us said she shared the point of view, the student offered to give her a book of poetry. Among the various gifts I had brought was a book of poems by Robert Frost, so I gave her that, and it was a wonderful "bridging" moment. The teacher ended our visit by saying how much he hoped there would be peace and friendship among our people. No one in the class spoke about Kosovo, but they did ask about our women's soccer league and none of us knew very much about it. Last night we went to a tourist production of Beijing Opera. It was at a big hotel in a huge auditorium, with subtitles flashed on the side walls. It was also short -- two selections from operas, totaling about an hour. Despite its limitations the actors were fabulous, and for those of us with little background, it was a good introduction. More tomorrow.