August 2009
Every day since our arrival, someone, a hotel employee, has brought an apple, banana, and peach to our room. Thursday’s breakfast was fruit. Xuesong picked us up solo because Aihua had meetings. We took a long ride to the Tanzhe Temple. None of us had ever been there before. On the way there were about a dozen people trying to sell incense. When we got there, I could see why. To us, this temple was like a museum, but there were many people there to pray and burn incense at all the temple shrines throughout the property. Xuesong said back in the day people would go there to pray for rain.
Each room was dedicated to one god or theme. Unfortunately, pictures of the interior were forbidden, but they were beautiful. Many of them had either one huge statue of Buddha or other Hindu gods, or they had hundreds of little ones. One room that was particularly memorable was about Hell. On the walls were intricate paintings of humans getting tortured, cut up, or squashed for the bad things they did in their lives. The paintings were very graphic.
Throughout the temple grounds, certain trees were highlighted for their age, beauty, or because they were rare. Two trees in particular grew side by side as if they were sharing one space, which was rare. They said that they were wishing trees and if you touch both trees together and make a wish it will come true. I totally touched both, but I’m not going to tell you what my wish was!
When it came to the incense, I have never seen such a variety. I am used to the skinny little stick incense, but here some were two feet long and in bushels with about a three inch diameter. Worshipers were burning chunks at a time and they were pretty smoky, at times, but never too odorous. My favorite kind was a giant spiral cone that hangs and burns from the bottom to the top. Each one had writing on it, which I can speculate was a wish or prayer.
The temple continued up the hill which meant a lot of stair climbing. After we climbed to the Tiger Cave, a cave with a ceramic tiger in it, we spent some time in an area where one could buy a fish or a turtle and place it in a deep well. Xuesong bought a round of tea and had his fortune told. We were there for quite a long, but the fortuneteller had good news to say, so it was worth it.
It was here that I saw a strange sight. A toddler with a Mohawk. This is not something I have ever seen in China. Also, he was wearing something that has come to fascinate me in my travels in China. Many of the boys wear pants that have a waist all the way around, but the crotch through the butt region is missing. This leaves all of this part of the small child exposed. I have figured out that these pants are worn quite frequently to avoid the cost of diapers. When the baby pees shouldn’t be a problem, but I can’t help but wonder what someone does when a baby starts pooping. I have never seen poop on the floor of any kind in Beijing, so do people clean it up or anticipate it happening and have a plan? Also, I noticed that only boys had these pants on, but after thinking that it might be a pride thing in showing off that one has a boy, I soon realized that girls could have the same level of freedom with a dress. You can see a little peak of the tush of said Mohawk toddler below.
We climbed down the temple stairs and ate at a place right outside the temple grounds. What was cool about this place, was it was completely vegetarian (probably even vegan, dad surmised) but many of the food items were shaped like what they were trying to imitate. We had “seafood” shaped like squid-like things, “hot dogs” on sticks, and two “fish”. Below is a picture of the “fish” after YK and I ate their heads.
We hopped in the car and I fell asleep as I do every time I am in a car lately. I thought we were going back to the hotel, but instead, we went to another temple. The Jietai Temple did not have nearly as many visitors or incense burners. It had its own charm, but was nowhere near as impressive as the Tanzhe Temple. We walked the grounds and again trees were highlighted. Two of my favorite parts were two giant pagodas. The one that is covered much of the pagoda in the background is significant, but I do not remember why. Notice the benches on the floor, that’s how massive these pagodas were.
As we continued climbing the stairs of this temple, we found an odd feature. A tennis court. We laughed about how the monks meditated after a hard day on the court.
Xuesong dropped us off on the earlier side so we could shower and take it easy. We first went to a supermarket around the corner to pick up some supplies. We ran into a tall Caucasian man who noticed Dad’s shirt and said, “Did you actually go to Boston College?” When my Dad said “why actually yes” the man asked him “Do you know where I can find shoes here this size? Is there a New Balance store in China?” It was an odd transition, and we weren’t able to help the large-footed, socially-awkward man.
We showered and rested back at the hotel room. Noticing we were out of toilet paper, YK called to the front desk and asked for some. She was then asked, “What size, big or small?” Finally the person understood that what YK was asking for did not come in sizes, and we were brought two new rolls.
Before the trip, I bought a number of dresses to wear in the warm weather. I was unable to wear one dress in particular because it was scraping the floor long and I feared for it when it was raining so frequently. I finally wore the dress this night with my flip flops. As we were waiting for Aihua and Xuesong to pick us up, it started pouring. I joked that our visiting the rain temple earlier in the day must have caused the rain.
Aihua and Xuesong were actually at the No. 9 Café next door getting a little snack before dinner. Dinner was supposed to be at an Italian restaurant that YK had been to many times. She said the food and atmosphere were great, but it was in a weird little neighborhood. When we got to the restaurant, the whole building was gone.
Plan B was at a place called The Noodle Loft, which YK had been to before. One of the major benefits of traveling with a large group is that we have a wide variety of dishes from which to choose. Since YK was last at The Noodle Loft solo, she did not have the luxury and yearned to have a true sampling of the noodles. To the left of the entry doorway one could see many men making noodles with big chef hats. One was cutting noodles into strips with scissors. Another was shaving off chunks from a roll or dough. Two others were working together to make hand-rolled green noodles.
We had quite the spread. Some highlights were chicken in apricot sauce with pineapple and oranges, a tofu pyramid with dill and parley, mutton with onions, and brown, warm Chinese whiskey with fruit. When we couldn’t eat anymore, we noticed that we hadn’t gotten the green noodle. It turned out that it was called “one chopstick noodle” because it was a bowlful of one giant long noodle and you need the one chopstick to chop it. This noodle came with a brown sauce called jajangmyon that is not only Eigyoo’s favorite dish, but he was a judge in a jajangmyon contest. Thinking of Eigyoo and though we only had a little room in our bellies, we ate what we could, and for dessert, we ate sweet potatoes with hot caramelized sugar. The dish is so hot that you must dunk the sugary potato into the water to solidify the sugar and keep it from burning your mouth.
That night, as we were getting ready for bed and throughout the evening, the rain, which had stopped during dinner, came back in the way of thunderstorms. The view from the 17th floor of the lightning as it brightened the whole sky was beautiful.
Small Wide World 
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