Adventures during an evening in Beijing
From Diary from China – Tuesday,
August 9, 2005
I
won’t bore you with details of our trip to
At
Acrobatic
show
In
a lively alley where there were some vendors, Stephan finally found the buns
he’s been looking for – sweet, filled with things like green vegetables of some
kind, and we had a nice before-dinner snack.
I was impressed with how clean the woman served it, in spite of being in
a dirty alley – she didn’t touch the fresh baked goods, but got them with tongs
or picked them up with the bag she served them in.
We
passed a place where the sidewalk widened out and had what looked like
children’s play equipment – metal bars in various shapes. But then I realized it was exercise
equipment! One was a kind of a whimsical
bicycle where a woman was pedaling, one was a kind of a stepmaster for two –
there was a man stepping very slowly on it and a woman churning away [below
left], and when they were done the man got back into the wheelchair that sat
next to the contraption and the woman pushed him. One had 4 metal seats suspended from about 10
feet off the ground and facing each other, each leaning against a bar about
waist high. I couldn’t figure out what
it was for, and finally realized you sit in the seat facing the bar, put your
feet up on the bar and push yourself away and let it fall back – it felt great!
[below right]
We
found about a dozen women on the sidewalk kicking around something that looked
like a giant shuttlecock – it was about a foot tall, with feathers coming out
of the base, and they’d drop-kick it to one of the other women. They let Stephan and me join in, I couldn’t
get it higher than my knee but Stephan got it flying pretty well.
[Below] When we passed them again after our adventure at the shopping mall, they were dancing in unison to some peppy music, I guess for exercise.
[Inside
the mall,] we couldn’t get past the first few vendors without checking
Stephan’s heavy backpack and my bottle of water, so I waited with those while
he dashed around to see what was there.
I was getting tired, and leaned against a counter and
got my fan out. Across the aisle, a couple who was selling
ice cream and hot dogs motioned for me to come and get a stool that they handed
over the counter! This is just another
example of how wonderful these people are.
I wonder if Americans would be as helpful and considerate as most of the
Chinese people I’ve met. After Stephan
came back, I had him interpret while I thanked them [photo to the left] and
said how much it meant to me, since I was tired and not feeling well. She said that this is common courtesy – she
helped me and said I would do the same for her or others, it will come around. Stephan thinks they are Buddhists, as this
is a theme his Buddhist friends had shared.
After
our adventure we had a nice dinner, then decided to take a bus and subway back
to the hotel. The bus was awesome [photo
to the right] – it had two halves, connected with a round base in the floor
that pivoted when the bus turned a corner.
There were 4 seats on the round base and we happened to sit on them, and
it was like a Disney ride! The front of
the bus would turn but we kept going straight and then we were turned to face
the front again, and as the two halves of the bus bounced and swayed
separately, the seats would do their own thing, dipping forward and back.
Traveling
in the rain (photo taken from a cab earlier in the day).
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