Two Sundays ago (May 2) while in Beijing, I visited the services of the Beijing International Christian Fellowship. Due to "local regulations," only those with a foreign passport may attend the services. They rent quite a large auditorium. The first service of the morning is fairly full, but the second service is packed out.
After the first service, an older man by the name of John Mark introduced himself to me. He asked where I was from and where I had gone to school. When I told him BJU, he said, "We have a teacher in our group that graduated from BJU in 2003." I told him that I really didn't know many undergrads my last four years there, but when he said, "His name is Daniel Routh," I was shocked. I sat by Daniel in my Poetry Writing class, and we had become pretty good friends. I had heard he was in China, but I didn't realize he was near Beijing. John Mark gave me Daniel's phone number, and I later called him and set up a lunch appointment for Monday.
I didn't do a whole lot the rest of the day. It was rainy, and I wandered around some of the hutongs near my hostel and down Wangfujing Dajie, a big and horrendously expensive shopping street.
I should also mention that one of my greatest surprises in Beijing, apart from running into Daniel, was that one of my roommates in the hostel was a Christian. Michael is from Nigeria and appears to be a really strong believer. We had some great talks and rode home together from the BICF's second service.
On Monday I decided that I would check out the flag raising on Tian'anmen Square, which many of my students said was a must-see. I walked (40 minutes) down to the square, arriving at 5:50. When I came out of the pedestrian underpass, directly in front of me I could see the flag plainly flying on its pole with no crowd of eager onlookers in sight. My students had said the flag goes up at 6:00. Unfortunately, the flag goes up at dawn, which was sometime around 4:00 or 4:30. When I found that out, I decided to pass on catching the flag-raising.
Since I was in the area, I took some nice early-morning pictures around Tian'anmen. The sky was amazing with long strips of ragged clouds left over from the previous day's rain. When the sun broke through some of the lower clouds, the older buildings were stunning, all of their gold decorations blazing in the morning light.
I soon headed to Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven, which is a substantial walk from Tian'anmen Square. It took me about an hour to get there, but it was worth it. The area around the Temple is a large park, and it was full of older people practicing Tai Chi and other martial arts. I sat and watched a group of thirty or forty elderly people all doing Tai Chi in unison while in the next small plaza on either side were people practicing with swords and nunchucks. White flowers rained down in the breeze.
I toured the three major sites of the Temple grounds: the Altar of Heaven, a large circular stone used for sacrifices and prayers; the echo wall and small temple within it; and the Temple of Heaven itself, dedicated to the God of Heaven. The God of Heaven would receive the most elaborate sacrificial festivals of any god, although I don't think this is the same God that Westerners think about. Both of the temples had halls on either side to the "attendant gods," better known as the sun, moon, planets, weather phenomena, and the emperor's ancestors. The complex was impressive, but I enjoyed watching the Tai Chi more than anything else.
Between my visit to the little temple and the main temple, I watched a small group of ladies doing Tai Chi with fans. They would do the same slow movements as the regular Tai Chi-ers, but at certain points, they would snap open hand fans. After moving a bit more, they would slowly close the fans only to "shwop" them open again. While beautiful and intriguing to watch, it sometimes made me want to laugh. All I could think about was turkeys showing off to each other.
After spending a few hours at the Temple park, I headed for the train station where I was to meet Daniel. We found each other around 1:00 and went to lunch. He had to leave at three, but we covered a lot of ground in two hours. It was great to see him again.
My next stop was Beihai Park, another imperial retreat near the Forbidden City. Like the Summer Palace, Beihai is built around a large lake. The island in the center houses a large white "stupa," a pagoda in the style of Tibetan Lama Buddhism. I didn't really have enough time to spend at that park, although I did get some nice pictures of it.
For supper I headed to the McDonalds on the southeast corner of Tian'anmen Square (there's also one of the southwest corner of the square) to meet with Gary and Barbara, an older couple who teaches in Dalian, and their friend Ken. Gary, Ken and I were planning on going to the Great Wall together on Tuesday. Barbara had already seen it twice and wanted to do other things. After pretty much settling our plans, I saw them to their hotel and then went back to mine. They had arrived in Beijing via the night train from Dalian that morning and were pretty tired out. It was getting late, and since we were going to be meeting early the next morning, and I figured I'd better get to bed, too.
Posted by at May 11, 2004 7:46 AM