Today we had an oral test. It didn’t go too badly I think. They had me read some characters, sentences, and then basically talk about what I did and didn’t eat in the past two days. After that I walked around the NE section of Beida again and took some pictures. Sadly, the past two days have been very smoggy so the pictures really don’t show off the area was well as they could. There’s a giant tower that used to be a water tower but now is just one of the decorative defining features of the campus.
In the afternoon we went to yonghegong, otherwise known as the biggest Dalai lamasery ever. One of the Qing emperors had it built so the Dalai Lama could have some place to live and pray when he came to pay homage…I mean, enlighten the emperor.
We took a cab to the subway and then navigated the subway to the south side of the city (Beida is located in the NorthWest). I hate subways. American subways, Chinese subways…all of them. At least in the NYC subways people stand aside so passengers can get off before they try to board. I also think that we went at a rush hour, which tends to make things a little more hectic for a first impression.
We spent a couple of hours at the lamasery looking around. The setup was fairly repetitive. Basically think four or so buildings in a rectangle and you pass through one of the horizontal sides to get into another rectangle. Stacked rectangles. In front of nearly every building was a place to burn incense (which can be bought at the row of a hundred hole-in-the-wall stores that sell literally the same thing) and kowtao (kneel and bow).
You’re supposed to burn the incense in at least a bundle of three and I would assume if you wanted to burn more, multiples of three. Reason being (I think) is that the incense is being burned for the Buddha statues inside the buildings and the standard idea is three Buddhas. One represents the past, another the present, and the last one the future (they were placed left to right and each had a different hand position-don’t know the significance, if there is any).
Inside the buildings were the Buddhas, along with other statues/carvings. Some only had one Buddha, some had three. You could offer incense and money to them. People would also put/through money at the stone lions, turtles, and fountains. By far the most impressive Buddha to me was the giant one. It was about two stories tall and made entirely out of a single sandlewood tree. It must have been a gianormous tree from the size and shape of this statue. Apparently, the tree originally grew in Nepal and they brought it to Beijing for the Dalai Lama. They put it up and then built the Temple around the statue.
If I may brag a little about Colgate…we have a program/workshop/something like that called World Leaders. Basically, there’s a committee that tries to bring in influential people once a year. My first year there it was the guy who wrote Freakanomics (I think it was mostly attended by Econ majors and minors, which means about over half the school…) and this year it was the currently Dalai Lama. That was rather awesome. The big lecture on happiness was par for the course but I was allowed to go to a smaller lecture where our religious leaders and student club leaders posed questions to him which he answered. That was much better. So I got to see where his many-times-over predecessor(s) vacationed.
After the lamasery, we tried to go to a dumpling place for dinner. We took another taxi, which was fun since we were joking with the driver and talking about dumplings. I can only assume my Chinese has improved since I got here because I could follow and reply to most of what he was saying when I paid attention. Yay!
Of course, when we got there, the restaurant was closed for renovations and we ended up walking to a noodle place. It wasn’t my favorite place to eat, though that possibly could have been since we ordered a lot of meat. Not that I’m set against eating meat. There’s this one beef dish I had a few days ago that was fabulous. Some sort of stewed dish.
For the duration of this trip I can’t call myself a vegetarian, though some would say I shouldn’t ever call myself that…however, the food is definitely worth trying, even the meat. Strangely, the thought of eating donkey (which we almost ordered tonight) isn’t nearly as nauseating as eating beef or pork (that latter of which I refuse to eat). And I have never had such good vegetables in my life. I’m going to attribute it to the MSG.
I should mention one dish that we did get that I’ll probably never ever see in the States. Boiled silk worm pupae. I even ate one. My father convinced me eat a giant shrimp head in Denver so I figured this couldn’t be too much different. It was actually pretty good, sorta like a cream-filled crunchy (not that I ate more than one and want to eat another ever again). Nick and Natalie were very set against eating one but we eventually wore them down and they had one too. Now we think nothing is too far off the radar to try at least one piece. We’re told snake and frog are very good.
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