a few thoughts from me
I’m headed fir the airport now. It’s a shame. Today is the first day I can see the mountains from my father’s apartment. The sky is blue and clear. You wouldn’t know of the air quality issues that everyone complains about here.
I stopped by one of the shops in the airport to spend some of my last Chinese yuan. The cashier’s family name was Mao. Her family is from Beijing. I’m sure I’ll never know if there is a relationship, but if legends are to be believed, we are somewhere in the past.
After my last meal here in China. Went to a Chinese fast food place, and had a bowl of rice, pork and water chestnuts. Not too bad for 30 yuan.
Well, no lucky upgrades to business class this time, but I managed economy plus and a front row seat so I have better leg room and no one will lean back into my lap.
I’m standing now leaning on the divider wall In front of my seat. At least the overhead is tapered so I can stand up straight here. I have feeling I may be taking advantge of this head room later.
See you on the other end.
Zaijian Beijing!
Monday my father and I toured the Forbidden City. Americans are fond of saying “Everything is big in Texas”. I think those Texans should visit China. Guiyang is a small city here, only 4 million residents. The Forbidden City isn’t really a city…it’s the Imperial Palace. So really it was home to the Imperial family and their servants.
And just outside the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square. I visited it earlier in the week with a few of the people in our delegation, but we were not allowed to walk on the square itself. This time we were able to walk out on the square. Until you set foot in that space you do not get a true sense of its size. They say you can fit a million people on Tiananmen Square. So, include the road the flanks 3 sides of the square and the entire population of the State of Maine could have a meeting. Or New Hampshire and Vermont could gather on the square. It is truly astounding how large a space Tiananmen Square represents. The Firbidden City is even larger. Of course it has numerous buildings (800 I think I heard one guide say) and many open squares where people gathered over the centuries.
We walked the central spine but didn’t bother attempting to explore the rest of it. Like Disney World it is more than you can see in a day or probably a week.
The Emporer our family is said to be descended from was from a time that pre-dates the Forbidden City. So I’m guessing our DNA doesn’t share any traces of anyone who actually lived in the Forbidden City. Although my Auntie Diana’s nephew got to be the Emporer in the movie “The Last Emporer”. If you remember the film, he played the Emporer when he was young and had a cricket as a pet.
I guess that’s as close as we’re going to get for now.
Upon return to Beijing, my Father and his friend Christine met me at the airport. We dropped off my bags at his apartment and then headed over to the Confucius Temple and Imperial College. Had lunch first at a nearby vegetarian restaurant before we walked around the temple.
Confucius Temple
In the temple they have collected giant stone tablets that bear the names of those who had achieved a high level of academic/government status through study and examinations. Most are unfortunately weathered and eroded so that the names are hard to read.
Somewhere among the dozens of tablets one of our ancestor’s name should appear. We did find two Maos on one of the tablets surprisingly, but the province was not a match for the person my dad knows should be listed. I took photos of their names on the tablets. Perhaps one day we will be able to pull all the names together and understand the relationships between them.
One Mao who achieved rank in the court
When I say tablet, I mean a stone that is over ten feet tall, 3 feet wide and 8 inches thick. The writing on each varied, but most characters were no more and 0.5″ on a side. Each tablet probably holds over 1000 names each.
The temple and college had a nice modern exhibit that explained the history of the Chinese civil service examination system that is the basis for much of the Chinese educational system today. Created by the emporor to encourage study and intellectual development as well as to reduce corruption and reward merit in government, people studied for civil service exams to achieve rank and position.
After our visit to the temple we went grocery shopping. We went to a giant store named “Carrefour”, a French owed store. I guess you could call this place a Chinese Walmart but this would be understating the size of this place. Upstairs you could find all sorts of things, electronics, home products, etc. Downstairs was the grocery.
There were literally thousands of people in this store. Much of it was what you might expect of a grocery store with a few differences in style. For example. In the fruit and produce section you bag up what you want, then take it to a weighing station where someone from the store weighs it and adds a label with the cost and a bar code so it can be scanned at checkout. The meat section also had a similar approach. There were prepacked cuts of meat, but there was also a section where butchers were actively carving up whole sides of beef or pig and dropping the cuts into bins. People would take the meat from the bin to be weighed and barcoded. As you would expect, the seafood section had a lot of fish you never see in the US. And like lobsters, many are in tanks alive. Guaranteed fresh!
I remember stories in the 80s about Soviets who visit a US grocery because American wanted to show off the great prosperous nation compared to visions of long lines for food in the USSR. The story ends with the Soviet saying how sad it was that Americans could not afford to buy the food since the shelves were fully stocked. Misunderstandings from both sides. Well, the shelves are full, and people are buying.
I visited the famous Silk Market yesterday. We tried to find it before we left for Guiyang but I can tell you that the map we were given was totally wrong. The Market is actually in the opposite direction from what we thought.
Anyway, the place is filled with small vendors selling everything from clothing to electronics to jewelry to trinkets.
I found one vendor selling camera and music players including an impressive rack case filled with iPods. Well, they claimed to be iPods on the packaging but there were some configurations that were never before seen by me, and it was obvious that they didn’t have the manufacturing qualityof an iPod.
I pointed out the flaws to my Dad who challenged the salesperson. She was very open and acknowledged that almost everything in the case were just .mp4 players and not really Apple iPods.
I’ve got to believe that some people would be fooled because the packaging was nearly right and if you are not familiar with hthe real deal you could be fooled.
I didn’t ask for pricing since we were more discussing the fact that they were not real.
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