Pictures

 

Bryce's first meal in China: Noodles with fried egg on top is a common meal. I don't like fried egg at the best of times, I opted for corn chowder. My tea cost more than the soup! 70 yuan, or $11.60!

 The Pearl Market

The Acrobats show

                      

                                                                   Chinese Acrobats

Day Two Beijing Adventures

Day Two Beijing Adventures

You would think that after not sleeping all night that we would fall into a sound sleep, but it was not to be! The beds here are quite hard, the room was hot, and our jet lagged bodies just wouldn’t accept that it was nighttime. We both were up every hour checking to see if it was time to get up and eventually gave up at 5:00 am. We brought granola with us, which gives us the chance to have a nice slow start reading the guidebooks and planning our day. Once it was a reasonable time, we headed to the Old Pearl Market for an exciting day of shopping. The subway is right at the front door of our hotel, and is quite easy to figure out, so for only 2 yuan each (32cents), we were on our way. The subways are just jammed with people, everyone has to breathe in to be sure that no body parts get stuck in the doors! One of the things that we love about striking out on our own is the interesting people that we always meet. We were wedged in close to a young couple from New Brunswick who are here for a year studying Mandarin. The journey allowed us to engage in a great conversation about their experience; they have been here since the summer and thoroughly love it. How I admire young people who go out to embrace the fullness that life has to offer.

We arrived at the Pearl Market, and thanks to our friends from home,  Tina and George, we had great instructions for where to shop. We found some great bargains on such things as clothes, Uggs, watches and purses. It was pretty interesting to be led down alleyways to find some of the stores in “the bunker” where some of the more extensive stock was to be found. This took us past a back alley hole in the wall restaurant as well as some of the people’s humble homes. We had to aware of the constant beep beep of motorcycle or scooter horns as they wanted to get by us. These would often be loaded with one or two passengers as well as the driver.

At the end of the day we were so loaded down with bags that we thought it would be best to take a cab. We discovered that the cabs don’t hail like they do in New York, so we had to walk a few blocks from the bunker back to the front of the Pearl Market where all the cabs sit and wait for customers. Once there, a cabbie was only too happy to load all our bags into his trunk, and then to proceed to tell us that it would be cheaper for us to go for a flat fee rather than on the meter because it was rush hour. Hmmm, only 150 yuan ($30)…….no! no! no! We argued for a few minutes, then just grabbed our bags and started walking away. Another cabbie with a big smile said; “meter, no problem.” It only cost 24 yuan on the meter, Bryce was so happy he gave him a 16 yuan tip.

After supper, we went to the Chinese Acrobats, truly a show not to be missed. Incredible feats of jumping, flipping and contorting their bodies into pretzels. Can you imagine 15 people on a bicycle? They must have to do a lot of practicing to get these stunts down! Unfortunately we couldn’t take any pictures, as it would have thrown the acrobats off. Here’s something else I learned in looking for a pictures; if you go online, you can get the tickets half price! We knew this when we were in New York, but never even thought of checking this out in China….another lesson learned!

The skies opened just before we set out, and it was tough walking through the deluge. The drainage is not that good, and there were several spots where we thought that we were going to need our masks and snorkels. Thankfully, we had invested in a few good jackets at the market, so we were warm and dry except for our feet. The city planners here have some great underground tunnels that they use to cross the main highways, so we were at least dry for that part of the 10 minute walk to see the show.

We woke up this morning to snow; our hope is to visit the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square, so we may have to go back to the market to invest in a few more warm clothes before we head out.

F.Y.I. It is 16 hours ahead of your time here, so as I write this, it is 9:00 am Sunday morning and 6:00 pm Saturday night where you are. No wonder we’re jet lagged!

Day One in Beijing: Things Not to Do When Travelling!

Day One in Beijing: Things Not to Do When Travelling!

“Okay, this is why people take tours!” When we got off the airplane slightly disoriented and very confused, wandering around a strange airport, we had a momentary epiphany that maybe a tour would have been a wise move. We managed to navigate the airport thanks to the signs also being in English and found our luggage. How grateful I am that we speak the language that always seems to be included in the written directions! We had the forethought to print out the name of our Hotel in Chinese, so hopefully the cab driver would be able to figure out where we wanted to go.

As we followed the signs to the taxis, a lovely young Chinese woman came up to us and started making small talk. Sure enough, she wanted to give us a ride into the city for only $60. My spidey sense was active, and I grabbed Bryce’s arm and abruptly told her that we would take a taxi. Immediately a young man came up to us and started in with the same line. “Humph, “ I thought, “we are way smarter than we look!” We found the lady at the taxi counter and asked her how much for a taxi ride into the city. She said that it was all metered. There was a designated waiting area, and shortly we came to the front of the line. The men standing there said that they would take us in a van because we had so much luggage. Here’s the part where we should have been paying better attention. They showed us a price list, and because we were more than a little dazed from the whole experience, we did not figure out that the 700 chinese yuan is $112 Canadian! Sigh……Note to self: always use the metered taxis!

Traffic in Beijing rush hour is an experience not to be missed; it was a 45 minute ride from the airport, with people weaving in and out; apparently turn signals are redundant, and it is customary to get as close as you can to the car in front of you before changing lanes. Then there’s the bicycle riders, motorcylists and pedestrians who just seem to walk/ride out in front of traffic assuming that the cars will stop for them. It is all a cacophony of movement, and we miraculously made it to our hotel without incident. When we checked in, we asked what it should cost for a ride to the airport and they said that it was usually $20 American. ARGGHHHH!

So, why didn’t we take the tour? Well, we are crazy, independent thinkers who find that half the fun is figuring out our own way around a new place. Reading the guidebook and discussing what we want to do for the day is our way of having fun. We are also not very patient with groups, and know that it would just drive us crazy to have to wait for Fred and Martha as they bumble along through the sites….or maybe, wait, now that we are seniors, we might be Fred and Martha!

Anyway, for your enjoyment, I have copied my brother’s email to me, who is unfortunately still a working stiff. He is a year younger than me, so hopefully his turn for retirement will come soon. Thinking of all of you back home.

Arlene and Bryce:

 I am very sorry to hear that you are going to have to do some more traveling. It seems so unfortunate when I think of how sad you must be when you think of the rest of us LUCKY ONES that get up every morning and trundle off to work. The guilt that you must feel knowing that while we continue to contribute part of our wages into things like CPP and OLD AGE SECURITY so unfortunate souls like yourselves have to travel to boring places like China. Well let me tell you that I will be thinking about you a lot while you are gone and be consoled that while I feel very sorry for you I will continue my contributions so that you can continue to do this terrible thing called TRAVELING.

HAVE FUN AND BE SAFE - WE LOVE YOU VERY VERY MUCH -

BROTHER - IAN –

Love, Bryce and Arlene

Beijing Bound

The communist government in China blocks many websites such as Facebook and blogs. Thanks to Bailee Clayton, who has taken my emails and posted the following entries for me.

Beijing Bound

As a child growing up in the 1950’s, China seemed to be only a land of faraway fantasy. In those days, only the rich and famous got to travel to such exotic lands. Never did I dream that times would change to enable an average person like me to travel around the world to embark on such an exciting adventure!

 It is 5282 miles flying from Vancouver to Beijing, taking 10 ½ hours. We left at 2:30 in the afternoon, and will arrive tomorrow around 4:00, losing more than half a day. I took advantage of the time to read up on Beijing history.

Beijing has been under the rule of several dynasties, with Emperors ruling the people. The great wall was built to keep out roaming gangs, but it failed to achieve this goal. Under the rule of Kublai Khan, son of Genghis Khan, Dadu, the Great Capital was built. Kublia Khan made Dadu his home base from which to advance to take control of all of China. Dadu was eventually renamed Beijing.

In 1949, Chinese Civil war broke out in response to the corrupt feudal system of Imperial rule, and communism came to rule in China. Growing up in the 1950s, I remember hearing about China being under the rule of Chairman Mao, and thinking about how strange it all sounded. Education under communism meant that children were expected to subject their thoughts to the Party for criticism. Those thoughts were scrutinized to determine whether they were good or bad, and children were taught to report on one another. Had such and such a child behaved in a way that represented the collective, was he or she a good revolutionary? “These sessions were presented as a way to help us make progress. But we were so young. Mostly, we wanted to be accepted or we were afraid of being rejected. If our schoolmates criticized us, we felt ashamed, and we no longer dared look at them; we lost our friends. The more time passed, the more we dreaded being seen as bad revolutionaries. And progressively, like all children, we were ready to do whatever was necessary to be loved and admired.” This quote comes from a fascinating book that I read on the plane called The Secret Piano: From Mao’s Labor Camps to Bach’s Goldberg Variations by Zu Xiao-Mei. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to better understand this time in Chinese history.

In light of our understanding of attachment in which the child attaches to those responsible for him or her at first the sensory level, then through sameness, then belonging and loyalty, this makes so much sense, as the child intuitively knows that his or her very survival depends on his ability to fit in.

Yet, are our children any different today? Do they not surrender to the pressure of culture and society to act, walk and talk in a certain way in order to be accepted? While we live in a free country and have the opportunity for our children to grow up with their own thoughts and ideas, we still lose far too many of our children to the pressure to conform to their cultural ideas of how to behave. Our role as parents, teachers and caregivers is to foster a strong sense of attachment so that the child has the inner confidence to recognize and withstand this pressure and grow into his or her own person. Having just finished another round of teaching two of Gordon Neufeld’s video courses, Vital Connection and Helping Children Grow Up, I hope to view the people in China through the attachment lens. I have some big questions given the very different cultural experience of the Chinese people compared to that in North America. The communist government limits many families to one child. What impact has that and the communist way of life impacted the social, emotional and intellectual growth of the individual?

In 1989, there was a student demonstration in Beijing, as thousands of people gathered in Tiananmen Square seeking to protest the rule of the People’s Republic. 2000 people were killed in the backlash as the military closed in to shut the protest down.

Today, Beijing boasts close to 17 million people. This is approximately half of the population of Canada living in one city! It is hard to imagine this many people living in one area, but soon enough I expect to be able to tell you all about it!