A couple of Sunday's ago my landlady Lotus, offered to take Leanna, my housemate, and I sight seeing. Leanna didn't want to go, so just Lotus and I went. It was hot so we went to a lake next to Tiananman Square called Bei Hai (North Lake). Bai Hai is nice this time of year because the lotus are in bloom. You can also go up to a temple and look out over the city which is pretty nice. As in all tourist places there is your usual tourist traps and I got caught in one.
They had all of these stamps made out of jade and you could have your name or a saying carved on the bottom. Putting you name on the stamp works well if you have a Chinese name of only two or three characters, but with a western name like Bartholomew it doesn't work so well, so I had them put the word "happiness" on it and just carve my initials on the side.
My favorite thing at the park was watching a painter do calligraphy and brush paining on the sidewalk with water. Everything was all quite serious until everyone noticed that in between the classic Chinese poem and the traditional images of Tang style women, he painted a little girl who was standing in the crowd. It was a nice surprise for everyone.
After Bei Hai we ate some local Beijing food that was made of ground meat (sheep, beef and pork) fried in long flat pockets of dough. It is sort of like a long thin samosa. It was pretty good. We walked off dinner in a park near the restaurant, that was full of walkers, runners and people doing all sorts of other exercises. The park also had several scenes made of bright fabric floating in the lake.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment