Temple Day

Tuesday June 8, 2010

I am having a hard time keeping track of what day is what. Yesterday we visited Yong He Gong which is an amazingly beautiful Buddhist temple. We could small the incense burning from the subway stop. The incense vendors were all the way up and down the street on both sides. Most of the people there were Chinese with a few Germans on a tour bus and I think I heard Italian spoken by another group, but for the most part everyone was there “professionally”. The idea as near as I could tell was you buy a lot of incense, usually a box of 20 or so, or in some cases a jumbo box of 100 maybe (maybe if you had not been for a while or were behind somehow), There were a series of buildings each containing 3 figures and you light 3 incense sticks, bow 3 times in front of the outside of the building, throw those sticks into a metal tub with everyone else's sticks, then go inside and do the same with un-lit sticks. You then lay the unlit sticks in front of the figures and go on the the next building and repeat. The monks occasionally empty the unburned ones outside into the metal tubs and as you can imagine, there is a pretty big fire going there after the worshipers pick up. That's what you smell from the subway stop. The buildings are old, the statues are old, there are gigantic old bells everywhere and wind chimes tinkle from the roofs of the buildings. We sat and relaxed and caught-up for a while as it is a very peaceful place. The big deal is that they have the largest Buddha on earth, 60 feet tall. You walk in and all you see are legs. It is inside and it is actually hard to see because you have to look straight up at it. And it is carved out of a single sandalwood tree. No idea how the monks keep it dusted.

We got hit up to have our picture taken with a Chinese guy, Jake says this is very common and he gets asked that a lot. It's like the hello thing. They are all very nice so it is fine.

We went back to the hostel and Jake took a little nap as he did not sleep much the night before (or the 3 nights before that with exams) and he was getting a little disoriented with directions (pleasantly so). Then he took me to a vegetarian buffet for dinner which was amazing (and as Jake pointed out, sanitary). We walked up and down the streets and picked up a couple beers ($0.45 for 600ml), found our way back to the bus (it took a while), back on the subway and back to the hostel.

The buses and subway have LCD screens on them and there is news, information, and these weird little cartoons which I couldn't figure out. Jake says they are cartoons with little moral lessons like don't pass gas at dinner and don't hog the popcorn at the movies (the 2 playing today). Those are the only 2 I saw but I assume there are loftier ones as well. Good tips for everyone there.

Another strange thing, which I bet most travel logs don't tell you, but this one being very open is going to (you can skip to the next paragraph now if you would like), has to do with toilet paper. I see signs to not put toilet paper in the toilet, and my next question, and I am sure yours as well would be, where do you put the toilet paper once you have , you know, used it. Well it turns out that you are supposed to put it in the trash, which I verified in the restaurant last night (cut down on the dessert a bit for me). This is true I guess all over Beijing, maybe China. You also need to bring your own paper with you, except at places western people go (and I do mean go). I may report back on this one.

Another cartoon made reference to the problem of letting little kids pee on the street. I did not see any of that, but I did see some little guys with crotchless pants on so I think they are working on it. [Jacob's note: the crotchless pants are ubiquitous here, and the kids do a lot more than pee on the street. I once went online to further research this topic, and there were a bunch of tourists and expats that were debating the "crotchless pants system" (not their term). They seemed to be under the impression that children only donned the crotchless pants after a certain age where they could sufficiently control their bowel movements, thus greatly reducing the change of accidents. While this does seem to be the case sometimes, I still think that babies wear such kind of pants, as evidenced by an interesting scene I saw at a restaurant once. The restaurant is a pretty cheap place, the sort that often has a lot of people hanging around inside, drinking, smoking, and eating greasy food (pretty normal in China, and not as sketchy as in the US). The waitress that was serving me had brought her baby to the restaurant and, right after she brought my food to me, her baby (which she was carrying at the time) began to pee on the floor. She laughed a bit, gently scolded her baby for getting her jeans wet, and then quickly hurried the peeing youngster outside. The puddle was pretty close to where I was sitting, and remained neglected for about half an hour, before someone noticed it and wiped it up with some paper towels. For better or worse, I can't imagine something like that happening in the US...]

My iPhone so far is completely useless except for listening to music. I wasn't expecting much, but I was hoping for GPS. I need to test it with wi-fi to see what happens there. Of course no wi-fi no maps so what use is GPS? I'll report back.

Cell phones are everywhere. Everybody has them and uses them. Bike repair guys appear to be surfing the web or checking e-mail when they don't have a bike to work on. Speaking of bike repair, from what I am seeing and what Jake is telling me, a bike repair shop is usually a guy with a movable tool cart. I did see some bike dealers (electric) that had bikes torn apart outside their shop on the street so I assume there are both. These bikes get a tough workout, and it shows. The chains are all rusty and it looks like they live their lives outside, judging by the corrosion. But they are used daily, that is for sure. At the big grocery store we saw bike for sale for about $30.00, so they are inexpensive. The grocery store (big one) also has electric bikes for $200 to $400 or so.

So that's about it. Tomorrow we have to figure out what we are doing.