Lazy Sunday

Hey, this was really a lazy day. I did... hmmm... nearly nothing. Sleeping in, relaxing, talking to my boyfriend on skype, learning a little bit of Chinese, listening to music.

So today I want to tell you about my Beijing everyday life. My apartment in Beijing is in an international condominium with a small garden including a children's playground and an indoor swimming pool although the pool unfortunately has no nice meditterean atmosphere. My apartment has two rooms, bath room and kitchen, fully equipped - or more than fully equipeed as I can dispose of two Chinse DVD players, but because instruction and buttons on the DVD are in Chinese only, I was happy that I managed one of them and didn't try the second one yet.

Drinking water from the tub is not advisable in Beijing so I also own a water dispenser (German: Wasserspender) with hot and cold water. People here in Beijing drink a lot of hot water (no, not tea, but plain hot water), I first had to get used to it and now even like drinking "开水/kaishui".
At work there are also water dispensers all over the offices and my most common daily drink is really kaishui there as well.

Work hours are more reglemented than in Germany. Everybody has to be in office from 8:30 am to 5:15 pm in our joint venture. Many companies have company busses that collect employees before work and bring them home after work, but ours doesn't. For me it was a matter of getting used to starting work "so late" because in Germany I had nearly always started the workday at 7:30 am and it also was a matter of getting used to fixed, non-flexible working times. Of course employees and especially bosses work overtime, but if a normal employee has to work overtime, he will have to formally apply for overtime beforehand.

For lunch we often go to Chinese restaurants or some foodstand at the local market - some with more basic hygience, some with high hygience, but all serve yummie food of some kind. On the weekends for dinner I like to go to Vegetarian restaurants because I can eat everything there without bothering about the ingredients. "Pure Lotus" is a Vegetarian restaurant owned by monks with an excellent dining atmosphere, but for Beijing relatively high prices. Another favorite veggie restaurant is "Lily Vegetarian" which has a friendly family style atmosphere and also offers the most astonishing vegetable dishes and meat / fish imitations made from beancurd / doufu / tofu. China has many Vegetarian restaurants because one interpretation of buddhism doesn't allow monks to eat animals, garlic or onions.

Meeting Beijing underground world

Today Agnes and me went in search for Beijing underground world. Not the world of gangsters, people bribing, dealing drugs or killing, but the underground tunnels and air raid shelters of Beijing. In fact, Beijing underneath is like an "emmentaler" cheese. In the underground tunnels you can walk to nearly all of Beijing (Mao mausoleum, summer palace, even until Tianjin or Badaling Great Wall).

Mao let them be built between 1969 and 1970 because he had just broken up with Russia (or Russia broken up with him) and feared attacks. The tunnels and shelters were designed to fit more than 300,000 people inside and offered extensive facilities such as hospitals, weapon arsenals, libraries and even a mushroom cultivation farm (because many Chinese love to eat mushrooms of all kinds). In the tunnel there still are many Mao posters and advertisements to invite people to join the Chinese army.

Having escaped the underworld, we also strolled through Dashalan and Liulichang, two old Beijing shopping streets. Dashalan was rather unpleasant - many muddy puddles (it had rained yesterday) and a lot of construction works going on in the former hutong area. Some nice curiosity shops were to be found in both streets. A Chinese music instrument shop, a Chinese medicine pharmacy (offering the most weird things as medicine at incrediblly high prices), antiques shops with Buddhas and Mahjong games as well as Chinese seal shops. I could not resist it... I now am the proud owner of a Chinese seal supposedly with an abbreviation of my name on it (but, hey you never know with those seldom Chinese signs...) and carved in the form of a rooster (my Chinese astrologic sign). If you want to see a similar seal and read some background information try the following link (in German language):

http://markusundtinka.de/seiten/themen/siegel/chineseseals.html

Wishing you a nice Sunday.

Fujian county and Xiamen -Easter trip

Easter holiday

Xiamen and Fujian county are in Southern China - on the Chinese mainland just opposite Taiwan island. We (being Claudia and me) spent four days there over the Easter weekend.

The trip was not planned to be an Easter trip (also given the fact that Chinese do not celebrate Easter), but I just still had two leave days from last year which I hadn't used before and my company's rules say I have to use them until the end of March. If that's not a good reason to be on the road again :-)!

Xiamen is a 2.5 hour trip from Beijing by plane and it takes much longer by train, that's why we obviously chose to go by plane.

When we arrived at Beijing airport, a surprise awaited us. Due to the fact that earlier in the week some Chinese seperationalists had tried to flyjack a plane, security measures had been increased significantly. Instead of the usual ten minutes needed to go through security check, it took us over an hour. But luckily we had arrived at the airport early, so we made it on time for departure

Hakka /tulou

From the airport our private driver drove us to tulou villages. The road was getting ever narrower and ever bumpier- we first passed Xiamen industrial area (wood production etc), then banana palm trees (I've never seen that many banana palm trees in one place before in my life), hills, a mountain river, rice paddy fields. The landscape was impressive!

After 3.5 hours we arrived in Hongkeng, where the Chinese minority /nationality of the Hakka / Tulou live. The village was a real farmers village and had some unique atmosphere to it:

farmers working on the rice paddies cultivating rice, hens and roosters walking around freely, old inhabitants sitting under the old village tree playing games, school children walking home from their afternoon class, a woman praying with red candlesticks to a tree -live is simple there, but for a visitor coming from a big city like Beijing with poluted air it's a nice experience.

The Hakka are known for their 'tu lou', their Earthern buildings which have the following characteristics:

- three to six floors high

- round or square

- built from earth, sand and wood (to stabilise the building)

- with an inner courtyard

- on the lower floors there is only one big door and no windows. This is because in this remote mountainary area there used to live many thieves and robbers who used to attack the farmers. In order to protect themselves they build those big earthern buildings with only one entrance on the lower floors.

Tulous are usually inhabited by more than hundred people, each one of the inhabitants having a small room only, the kitchen being in the inner courtyard and the shared toilets with basic shower facility outside the tulou.
Overnight we staid in one of the tulous, very basic accomodation, but our hosts were most accomodating. Apart from us mainly Chinese visitors staid in the hostel. As evening program a firework and campfire were organised. When the Chinese started to dance a group dance around the campfire (tip left, tip right, jump forward, backward, then thrice forward), I joined! What a fun!

More tulous

After a good night's sleep we visited even more tulous of different kinds. A waterbuffalo greeted on us walking around in the beautiful scenery and many old tulou people whispered "hen gao" "zhen gao" (very tall!) when they saw me because people in Fuijan province tend to be shorter than in Beijing and also because there were not many other foreign visitors.

On the way back to Xiamen the driver obviously wanted to achieve a new world record for the fastest driving, but luckily he managed his metier...

Xiamen

In Xiamen we staid in Xiamen International Youth Hostel in the university district. Many young people around there!

Xiamen was visited by foreigners early in its history. Portuguese, British, French and Dutch - they all tried to establish Xiamen as their trade port early in Xiamen history. Not all of them succeeded. Due to its colonial history Xiamen offers an interesting mixture of Western and Chinese elements.

Gu Lang Yu is a small island with mediterrean houses, small alleys and charm. It is said to have the highest piano density of China. We went there by ferry, but by mistake we didn't get on the direct ferry, but on a ferry first shipping around the whole island before reaching the destiny. Sometimes mistakes have nice consequences: Thus we were able to gain an overview over the island first.

On the island we strolled around the little alleys with 'dried things shops' (yes, thing is the most appropriate word as they offered anything dried from dried fruits, fried seahorses to something I don't even know what is was. Yes, they eat allthe dried things...), we climed the highest mountain of the island (93 m high :-), went by cable car to the second hightes hill (at least over sea level), walked along the beach and tested the water temperature (original plan:with our hands only, but one of us tested it with shoes and socks as well by accident:-).

Back in the old town of Xiamen we found an Esprit shop which changed our sightseeing trip into a sightseeing & shopping trip.

On the last day we found out how difficult it is to find proper breakfast on a Monday morning at 9:30 am in the university district. Maybe just to early for usual university students! A stroll around the sea alameda, enjoying the sun (I'm even slightly red today), visiting Nanputuo Si (a temple with a vegetarian restaurants for the monks and guests like us), eating ice cream ( 0,20 EUR each!!!)- and then it was already time to go to the airport to fly back to Beijing.

Easter and 'in the cold again'

I hope you have spent happy Easter! In Xiamen we had a little Easter egg search thanks to Claudia. Apart from a chocolate egg, I now have 'eggy' as my new companion :-).

Heating season in Beijing which is established by law lasted until the 15th March. There is a Beijing saying that just after heating season has ended, it's getting colder again. I can definitely confirm that! Brrrrrhhhh!

Riding horses, new toufa style and shopping pearls

Riding horses

For Saturday, my Chinese colleague-friend and her family had invited me to go horse riding with them. As I'm a little bit scared of horses and haven't been on one since very young age, I just promised to watch their daughter (Julia) ride on the horse and enjoy the nature.

But watching their daughter ride on the bike (looked quite professional already), I felt I should just try it as well.

So that's what I did. I got a bigger horse named "Ping Ping" (one meaning of the Chinese word "ping" is bottle, but probably it's another pronunciation and meaning of "ping"or would you wanna call a horse "bottle bottle"?) and a teacher.

It's not easy getting on a big horse and of course horses don't keep quiet when you try to seat yourself in the saddle, but I somehow managed. The lesson itself was unspectacular - I was being taught basics - the correct feet position etc. - except once when the horse didn't want to listen to the teacher anymore, just ran off and I had to try hard to stay on the horse and not fall down.

After this lesson I knew that riding horses can be considered as sport as you really have to use your muscles!

Pot hot, hot pot...

For dinner I met Barbara (the Malaysian friend), her boyfriend and some friend of theirs for hotpot. Hotpot is some soup pot where you insert whatever you want to eat (mushrooms, frozen tofu, green vegetables). We were quite an international group: 1 Malaysian, 1 English, 1 Austrian, 1 Australian, 1 Scottish, 1 Chinese and 1 German! The Chinese lady was quite a personality: Because she didn't like the food, she complained very loud and very angry - I was quite astonished about her straightforward way. I also got to know the sad news about Tibet from Barbara's boyfriend. I really hope there's gonna be a peaceful solution!

Shopping pearl necklaces

Today I went shopping with Claudia. We went to Hongqiao market which has a fame for both real and fake pearls. After the shopassistent of one of the marketstalls had scratched with her scissors on the pearl and the pearl was still ok and without scratches, we were convinced that this were not plastic pearls. However, we still bargained hard and I think we got the necklaces for good prices. We also bought fans with Chinese style paintings on them before we set off to walk around in Tiantan park in the nice weather.

I wish you all a relaxed new week!

Visiting Kongze

Shopping hours

Good thing about Chinese Sundays is that shops are not closed on Sunday (They don't have the German Ladenschlussgesetz :-)). So supermarkets, pharmacies, malls and markets are open as on every day and you can go shopping. Maybe it's not exactly a good thing for the people who have to work on Sunday, but then Chinese culture is not built on Christian belief (most Chinese are atheists or buddhists).

Our new friend Kongze?
Kongze is the Chinese name for Confucius, a Chinese philosopher. He was no god, but many Chinese hold high esteem for him that's why there is a temple in Beijing for Kongze.
Kongze invented a kind of state system, the Confucian state system. The main principle of Confucianism is that human beings should live according to an exact hierarchy system - Women should obey men, younger people should obey older people, inhabitants should obey the king, but those in power also have to make sure they have achieved the necessary educational level. I'm happy that I don't have to live in Confucian China.

In the Kongze temple area there were a lot of old and weirdly grown trees. Legend says that one old tree once punished a corrupt minister. When the minister passed below the tree the tree lost a big branch on him. It seems that the trees there can distinguish between right and wrong! Agnes and me were deeply impressed.

After the visit to the Kongze Tempel we strolled around in the surrounding hutongs which are currently being refurbished.

Fragrant Hills and Azure Clouds

Sports in Beijing - Hot Yoga and climbing up the Fragrant Hill Peak

I still do hot yoga quite often because I like it. This Friday afternoon I once again went with my Chinese boss and a nice Chinese colleague.

But it's also nice just to walk around outside in the mountains or parks and climb hills combined with some sightseeing. As the whole week was quite sunny and warm we had scheduled a trip to the Fragrant Hills for today.

Today when we woke up the sun was there - but hidden behind some clouds (positive interpretation) or behind the smog (realistic interpretation). Nevertheless the bus to the Xiangshan - Fragrant Mountains - was alreay crowded like hell and on the standard hike up the hill there were "people jams". Some seemed to belong to a school and some to a company trip as they all wore the same T-shirt and had big flags with them.

On the way down we chose a quieter path - at some spot there was a small Chinese choir practicing - we just sat down for a while, listened, relaxed, enjoyed the relatively fresh air of the mountains and watched the squirrels (German: Eichhoernchen) jump around in the trees.

In the park downstairs we visited another temple - the Temple of Azure Clouds (Bi yun si). Specialties there were:

1. the hall of over 500 wooden carved old "arhat" sculptures (arhats = pupils of buddhas) covered with gold. Every arhat was different in gesture, facial expression etc. Wow!

2. a pound full of goldfishes. If you paid 80 Kuai (8 EUR) you could release a goldfish from the small aquarium at the shop next door and give it freedom in the temple pond. This seems also to bring luck to the person doing that.

Kung fu monks and old buddhas in Henan province

City of Luoyang

Well, not really that much worth visiting although it used to be Chinese capital early in Chinese history. Luoyang is mainly an industrial city producing energy (coal power plants), machines and supposedly the EURO coins (I don't know whether they produce the real or the fake ones :-)). Amazing that they are constructing a totally new city centre which is modern architecture (nothing special indeed) and which they are very proud of.

Longmen Grottoes

UNESCO World heritage again. The villagers sculptered these stone buddhas (over 100.000 from 2 cm up to 45m tall) in caves(1.352 caves) back in 494 AD already. Strolling around the river and climbing up some stairs we could visit many of the statues.

Other sights near Luoyang

Nice was the first buddhist temple in China, the Baima Si (white horse temple). Legend has it that white horses carried the first buddhist scriptures / texts from India to the place of Baima Si in 68 AD. We learned a lot about the Chinese form of buddhism there. Now I know that in Chinese buddhism they have five buddhas: the buddha of past, present and future as well as the buddha of north, centre (being the same one as the buddha of the present) and south. The buddha of present can appear in three different forms whereas the others only have one form. Sometimes it's hard to judge the difference. I was told that often even Chinese believers have to have a look on the inscription saying "This is present buddha" in order to know what kind of buddha it is.

The earthern cave dwellings are houses built inside the earth. Farmers built them like this in the past in order to save material costs: They just had to dig. The cave dwelling we visited belonged to a 100-year old grandma. Being able to chat with people like that you notice how much worth it is to learn at least some basic Chinese! The 100-year old grandma belongs to the generation of women where the following was considered as beautiful: small mouth (so-called cherry mouth), small hands (good for homework) and small feet (can't run away). I think I wouldn't have been able to find a man back then in China! The grandma had lillie-feet which means that her feet were broken when she was young in order to make them smaller. The negative consequence: Lillie-footed women couldn't walk without pain. That's why the Chinese government abolished this old custom already some time ago.

Shaolin temple

Originally an old temple which burned down in some kind of civil war and was reconstructed which is said to be the home of Chinese Martial Arts (Kung Fu).

Kung Fu has many different styles: Fighting with or without weapons, another style with a more yoga approach of fighting etc.. Kung Fu movements are taken from animal movements.

In a show at one of the many Kung Fu schools around the temple we could see amazing Kung Fu - children breaking wood and metal with only one hand and other amazing jumps and movements!

Also interesting - the pagoda forest where the Kung Fu fans can show their appraisal of the dead masters. Only one of the masters had his pagoda built before he died. It says that he suddenly died right after the pagoda was finished.

Today Shaolin monks are rich monks. The head of them could be considered as the "Shaolin CEO". A lot of tourists travel there. Luckily, we weren't there in high season so we still could enjoy the sight.