“Temple of Heaven”

Saturday was one of our last chances to tour around Beijing so we decided to get up early and visit the Temple of Heaven, which we have wanted to see. The Temple of Heaven is a large sacred area south of Tiananmen where the Emperor used to make sacrifices and pray for a good harvest. The temple is very large but not unlike many of the other temples we have seen. What makes it unique is that the middle-aged Beijingers use the large park that surrounds the temple complex for recreation. They just sit around in the park enjoying nature or engage in a number of activities. We saw people enjoying choral singing, various styles of dance, various martial arts, tai chi and other forms of exercise, badminton and other similar kinds of racket sports. The park opens at 6:00 AM so the action starts early. We were there at 8:00 and home by noon – good thing too because it was very hot most days are in the 30’s now and this Sunday it is supposed to hit 38 – that’s 100 for you Fahrenheit people!

Walls and Neighbours

Three weeks to go! As we get close to the end of the term and going home, I feel I should make some profound observations on the whole China experience. I am not capable of anything too profound, but I do have some thoughts!

One things that stands out for me is that the Chinese must be the world’s greatest wall builders! The Great Wall was not just an historical aberration. The Chinese really do excel at building walls. For instance, the Great Wall is not just a single wall; rather it is a whole series of walls built all over northern China over hundreds of years. But the Chinese don’t just build walls around their country, they also build walls around everything of whatever value. They like to build brick walls or cement walls and you’ll often see spikes, broken glass or barbed wire on top of the wall. Every little country house has a wall around it. The city homes in the hutongs are called courtyard houses and they all have walls around them. Apartment building have walls around them. I have seen walls around vacant lots! And inside the wall, you likely to find another wall!

Of course, if you have walls, you must have gates; so China has some pretty impressive gates. In fact, the gates are often more impressive than anything inside. You often go through a spectacular gate to find … well, not much of anything inside! Side streets will have big colourful gates leading to little neighbourhood streets. Stores and hotels often have big inflatable gates that are put in place to celebrate openings or different promotions.

Another thing that goes along with walls is guards. Our school has guards standing post at each of two gates and also at the door to the school and our apartment building. The bank next door has guards armed with billy clubs, riot guns and body armour. Between the two buildings, there is another guard for the parking lot. Of course, all the embassies near here have guards standing to attention - try doing that when the temperature is in the 30’s! The guards at our school seem to be about 15 or 16; surely they are older but they certainly seem young. I often wonder what would happen if the guards weren’t there. Would we really be overwhelmed by poor migrants climbing over the walls to loot our apartments?

We also see security cameras everywhere; our school has an electronic surveillance system throughout and in the halls of our apartment building. Some of the cameras are even hooked up to the net – check it out at: http://www.cisb.com.cn/page/zly_cam/index.htm
We are told that the security cameras in other places are often not hooked up to anything. In fact, one teacher lost a bag of hockey equipment (yes there is hockey in Beijing) and sat through hours of digital video trying to find out what happened to it. He said the quality of thev ideo was so poor that it was hard to identify anyone. It turned out that the teacher left his bag in he hall and the ‘ayi’ or cleaner opened it, took a sniff and thought it must be garbage and threw it out! Not a bad guess when you think of what used hockey equipment smells like!

So I wonder about all the walls and security and whether it is really necessary. But it does make you feel a little safer and we have lost almost nothing. I haven’t had any school equipment stolen and I have left my camera and laptop around the school without any problem. So maybe good walls do make good neighbours.

“One More Mountain to Climb…Student Field Trips

We have an enthusiastic, young teacher on our wing who has been responsible for organizing many of the student activities at our school. Norma does the student council and thus many of the socials (we’d call them dances except nobody dances). So Norma felt that she should organize a field trip for the students as seems to be common in most of the international schools. The result was a three-day trip to a ‘ranch’ north of Beijing near Simitai where we first went to the Great Wall. The first was for the Grade 9’s & 10’s and 2 weeks later, the same trip for the 7’s & 8’s.

I felt I should go with the 9‘s & 10’s and so I signed up. The actual trip was fun, but quite strenuous – basically we hiked several hours each day with the second day being a scramble up a mountain to a remote guard post on the Wall and the third day being a climb up the Simitai Great Wall. The accommodations were pretty basic – a youth hostel/hotel. We did have separate rooms – doubles for the students – and private bathrooms. The bathrooms were another story; Chinese plumbing is pretty haphazard at best. These featured open showers next to the flush – no shower cabinet! The toilet seats seemed to be made of styrofoam and collapsed into the flush when you sat down. Still – at least you could do this in private. The kids of course had great fun; they had a campfire and a singsong – hard to think of songs we all knew – we sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”! I came home exhausted but still strong enough to taxi off for an urgently needed foot massage. That was all the rest I got because Saturday it was up early to supervise a sports trip and Sunday of course was golf.

Anyway, I was quite happy not to be going on the second trip until the word got around how strenuous it was. Our staff is ‘experienced’ and so two supervisors dropped out of the second trip and I was persuaded to be a replacement. So I decided to take it easier on the second trip and opted out of the mountain climbing, but when we got to Simitai (which is also a mountain), the power was out and the cable cars were not operating. So it was walk or stay home. One of the young teachers challenged the students to a race to the top. Never able to resist a challenge, I joined in and made it to the wall second! There were still 10 towers to climb on the wall, but after a while I stopped racing and ‘let’ several students pass me. It was a hot day (mid-30’s) and the perspiration was just pouring off us. About 20 of us made it all the way to the top. We went up and down in about 3 hours including an exhilarating zip line ride down the last half. I can now claim 5 visits to the Wall!

The funniest thing that happened on this trip was a prank I played on the girls. There is a ‘valley girl’ element in the group and it is quite fashionable here for women to go to the spa. So I signed about 15 girls up on the first day to go to the ‘wonderful spa’ in our hotel for manicure, pedicure and oil massages. Of course, at our rustic hotel there were no such services and when I marched then all out to the rusty fountain in the courtyard of our hotel, they refused to believe that this was the spa. I couldn’t stop laughing and they were so mad at me! Now all I have to do is say, “Spa” and they get fussed all over again.

Six lost days at the end of the term put most of my technology classes in a shambles, but it was worth it for the school spirit (and will probably look good in the ads). I will get the classes finished somehow. I’ve also been helping out with the school yearbook – mostly contributing pictures I took this year – and also working on a year end video and slideshow. So I expect we will be busy right up to the end of the school year. The next big milestone is the huge Canada Day party here at the school. The whole Canadian community in Beijing will be here. It will be a real showcase for the school and they have been prettying up the place non-stop. There has been a lot of money spent on the ground especially.