Exploring Beijing

I can’t believe that I’ve been on this continent for almost 2 months!  Everyday I fall more and more in love with China, it truly has a special place in my heart.
Before classes started, my group of Alliance students visited The Temple of Heaven.  It was a beautiful sight to see.

The picture on the right is the actual ‘Temple of Heaven’.  This park was only used by the emperors to pray to their Gods.  There were so many beautiful temples in the park.

Tiananmen Square was closed to the public for about 2 weeks, because it was the 70th anniversary of defeating Japan and becoming an independent country.  It was great to see the decorations still up after the parade.

It was so great to see such an iconic place of history.  I didn’t have the opportunity to go into The Forbidden City (inside/behind the red building), but plan to later this month.  Tiananmen is so massive, I was surprised to only see 1 small statue to commemorate the “incident” that happened with college students in 1989.  That event seemed non-existent, which was the Chinese Government’s goal.

On the Eastern side of Tiananmen is the communism museum.  The picture on the left is the group of students I’m studying here with, and all of our Chinese flags.  Side note: every person in the group makes fun of me for the way I say “flag”… and many other words too 🙂 I guess I’ll always be a Wisconsinite!

After Tiananmen, we all walked to a shopping district to spend the evening at.  It was great to practice my bargaining skills and to speak Chinese with more locals.  My best purchase of the day was a Chinese flute; it was originally 600元 and I bargained it all the way down to 240元!  The bean sprout hair clips are very popular anywhere you go in China; mostly women and little girls wear them.  There are flowers, four-leaf-clovers, mushrooms, even a Chinese flag!

This market was well-known for having a variety of food… most of which was very unique!  There were life scorpions, fried scorpions and snake.  My roommate, Sarah, was brave enough to try a bite of starfish.  It was really hard for her to bite off and chew, and she said it just tasted like the spices that were on it.  I was thankful to have the excuse of being a vegetarian that evening, I can’t imagine eating such unique foods!

I was extremely blessed to have my Mom and Grammy here for a few days.  They had done a tour of Japan and China, ending in Beijing.  It was amazing to spend two evenings with them, I hadn’t seen family in over a month!  I miss everyone back home, and it was great to be able to hug my mom!

My group of students also visited the Lama Temple, a Tibetan Buddhist Temple.  It was breathtakingly beautiful.

It was an honor to observe monks practicing their religion.  In many of the temples pictures are not allowed, but I will always remember the emotion I felt when I witnessed 100+ monks chanting a prayer together.

After visiting The Lama Temple, we went to a Confucian Temple down the road.  The park was used as a school for the royal family and intellectuals.

One of my academic classes that is taught in English is titled: The Sounds of Beijing and the Location of Music. We went to Beijing Design Week, which is a time for local artists and students to showcase their work to people from all around the world.  It was great to walk around an old part of Beijing that is trying to be preserved.

I am meeting so many new Chinese friends!  Because I am obviously a foreigner, many Chinese students approach me, so it’s very easy to make Chinese friends!  Siyu is a freshman from the countryside and is majoring in Spanish.  We have dinner together every week and chat in Chinese.  The Chinese students here are so kind and outgoing, it’s great to get a lot of practice with speaking, and I also enjoy helping my new friends with their English 🙂

Sarah and I took our language partners to the Beijing Zoo.  Language partners are assigned to each of the Alliance students. We are required to meet for 3 hours per week and only speak Chinese.  My language partner usually helps check my Chinese essays and homework, and we chat about current topics.  Navigating to the zoo and seeing the animals was another great way to practice my Chinese with our language partners.

I loved seeing my favorite animal there – pandas!

That’s an overview of my last 3 weeks in Beijing.  I will try to post more often, my classes just require a lot of time!

Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Qinghai for a week to do a field study trip.  I will take many pictures and share the experience with you!

Thanks  for reading!