Day 4:

The art of Taichi is supposed to work on making your body an mind harmonious as you transfer energy throughout your body. As well as learning this, I also learned just how to use different muscles and just how uncoordinated I really am. We had the opportunity to take a (beginner!) Taichi lesson today in the Temple of Heaven Park. Beneath the shade with the Temple of Heaven in the backdrop all of us learned how to fluidly move our bodied and become balanced. At the very start out instructor showed us the exact routine we would follow at full speed and we all cracked up laughing, convinced our bodies would not be able to do the steps and out memory would not remember them anyway. And while our instructor did not speak perfect English, he taught by doing and showing and by the end each one of us was able to do what we had once thought impossible. One would think that in order to take a class you would need to be told with words what to do. But learning comes in many different ways, and we have a lot to learn from people who may act of speak in a way we don’t necessarily understand.

From there we walked around the Temple of Heaven, which was used in order to pray for the harvest in China. This is the first piece of ancient architecture that used blue in it’s color scheme because blue in the Chinese culture is meant to represent the heavens. I even had my first experience with bartering in the shopping area near the Temple of Heaven. In most places in China, the price they say is not necessarily the price they are willing to take so bartering is a common practice. Most times they are just interested in making a sale and will give you a good price is you talk them down. I am not necessarily good at bartering, considering I do not know the language, but I did feel a good bit of accomplishment upon making my purchase at a price I was happy with.

From there we went to Jingshan Park, which after many, many steps, we reached a temple on top of a large hill from which you could see a whole panoramic view of Beijing. Every location we had been visiting was all there, sprawled out before us. As our time in Beijing was coming to a close, and we would soon be making our way to another Chinese city, it was nice to review the journey thus far among the clouds. Our time in China has been moving so incredibly fast, so it was nice to sit back and reflect on while having an incredible view of all the places we were able to visit thus far. The Chinese culture is remarkably fast paced and chaotic at times, but they certainly have a way of showing and expressing beauty in unique ways that make you take a second look.

After that, we had the evening to ourselves, which is a rare occurrence given our busy itinerary. A group of us ended up going to dinner with one our professors, at a local place around the hotel. While the fancy, big group dinners had been nice, it was fun relaxing and getting to know a smaller group in a more intimate setting. I especially enjoyed the time with Professor Day being that I was not in class with him everyday like the other students. It’s a strange concept not meeting your professor until the class is practically over, but in general the online course worked much better than anticipated. After a good dinner we separated from Professor Day and went shopping near by. It is not the easiest without knowing their procedures or the language, but it’s amazing how good at problem solving one gets when it becomes necessity. There are ways to communicate that are universal, whether it be gestures, or numbers people will try their best to understand you and piece it together. So far, the people in China have been very patient with us and try to help us out in any way they can.

We make our way back to the hotel to pack our belongings and get ready to move on to the next city on the list. Beijing has been incredibly, and has surpassed any and all expectations I had prior to coming on the trip. I never expected to connect so well with the group I’m traveling with and enjoy the city as much as I did. I wish I could slow things down so that these memories would last longer, but for now I’ll settle for enjoying every second left of the trip.