Coming back from traveling in the signature seminar was surreal, in part because it felt as though the atmosphere of the city had changed while we were gone. I remember entering my room our first night back in Beijing, feeling the relief of finally being situated into the dorms again, but we had about two more weeks before classes started and there was nothing going on in the city. It literally felt like walking into a ghost town. Our two-week break fell on the Chinese New Year's, a time when all Chinese people go home to their families, so no one was in the city and most businesses, including restaurants, were shut down for the holidays. Technically speaking, it is the largest migration of people in the world in such a short period of time, which is interesting to see happening in person but it really sucks when you have to find food for yourself and everything, including the campus facilities, are closed. What's more, my birthday fell on Chinese New Year's Eve, so it felt like it got kind of overshadowed by all of the festivities. We were lucky to have found a pizza place still open that day. They claimed to have sold the largest pizza in Beijing, but it wasn’t long after that I found another restaurant claiming the same thing. Still, the size of this pizza was shocking. It was 32 inches long and needed at least 10 people to finish it. We joked we’d be the ones to have them deliver this monstrous pizza to our dorms on our final day together, just to watch them figure out how they could accomplish this. In Beijing, most food deliveries are done by moped.
Later that night we went to La Bamba, a favorite local bar if I haven’t mentioned that already, but unfortunately the pizza from earlier in the day had me so stuffed I couldn’t even drink. I got a call from my family wishing me a happy birthday while I was there and they had me going out into the streets to talk with people in Chinese. Back inside, they were playing live on television The Gala, a special program that plays every year in China around this time. It features acts and musical performances that were planned and being prepared for at least 6 months in advance, and it continues to be played for days as families are spending time together. I remember last year when the Chinese language faculty at SU were welcoming students to come in and celebrate the New Year's with them, they too were playing this show on TV. One thing I’ve learned about it here is that it acts as a way for Chinese people to feel connected to each other regardless of where they are in the world, but part of the issue with it is that its propaganda messages still come off pretty strong, and in more recent years, it has been off-putting to many Chinese people for this reason. I remember watching one part of it that highlighted the relationship between a son and his father, and both of them, as they were singing, were crying and holding on to each other close for hyper-dramatic effect (think about old Confucian values on family and hierarchal relationships, where the son must respect his father). Another woman tried mixing a form of rock music with traditional Chinese folk music and there was a performance of small girls dancing as soldiers in one skit. I saw that and could only think about how back in late 2015, the city would display for months the Chinese military parade on the subway trains’ television sets. It's not to say that people don't enjoy the performances, but it is very obviously meant to encourage nationalistic feelings and it can seem a little suffocating when it's being played during a festive time. Additionally, the government likes to give itself a pat on the back and convey the message through its own state-run media that The Gala is a huge a success.
That same week, the people who remained behind in Beijing were celebrating the Chinese New Year's at local temple fairs. Typically there are a few scattered in the city that run throughout the week, but it seemed I had a bit of bad luck trying to find one that was still open. The first day I searched with some other SU students, we arrived too late by just a few minutes, and as for the rest of the temple fairs I went to by myself, special circumstances kept coming up. I spent one day trying to attend a couple of them, going all the way across the city only to have one unknown to even the locals and the other unexpectedly closed down for the day. It wasn’t so terrible though; the park I wound up at was really nice and the weather was pleasant for a walk. I held someone’s pet squirrel that was being walked on a leash and took a photo with it, then I watched as some people were skating on ice in modified chairs. Somewhere along the way as I was searching for a temple fair to go to, I came upon the China Century Monument (Zhonghua Shiji Tan 中华世纪坛 ). Because of the New Year's celebration, parts of the monument were still closed down. However, visitors still had access to the Holy Fire Square and the paths that were inscribed with centuries of Chinese history, each year marked with an important event.
It wasn’t until the end of the week that I finally made it to the Ditan Temple Fair (Ditan Miaohui 地坛庙会 ), the one I originally tried to go to the first day with the others but had missed by just minutes. To me it seemed so much like the local state fair we have in New York every year, or maybe it was just wishful thinking, since this was the first time I had ever missed it. Walking in, you could immediately see Year of the Monkey decorations lined up along the streets and hanging off of the trees. There were also a few children dressed up like the famous Chinese figure Sun Wukong 孙悟空, or the Monkey King, wearing masks imitating his face and carrying around his magical bo staff. There were numerous people gathered up to play carnival games, booths selling merchandise and a variety of foods, and shows and musical performances playing at different hours of the day. Earlier on, there was a woman singing traditional Tibetan songs, and right before I left, I was lucky enough to pass by a dragon dance performance just as it was starting. The crowd was really excited when the performers carried the dragon around off stage for people to take photos. People were almost shoving each other out of the way for it, but really the only way to get in there was to be a little aggressive. When I finally got next to the dragon, I hadn’t realized I blocked someone else’s photo, and then furthermore, as I struggled to take a selfie with the dragon’s huge head beside me, I accidentally asked the person who was already trying to take his photo to take mine instead. As the temple fairs were beginning to finish up by the end of the week, one of my classmates whose family was in China invited us all to go eat dinner at her grandmother's house and to learn how to make dumplings. It was really an incredible experience because we were given the opportunity to see how families in China typically spend time together on the New Year's and how they value being together on this important holiday. Not to mention, it was really nice of her to have us there when we were pretty much out on our own for that entire week.
The following week, right before classes started, we had a few optional field trips to go to some of the places I had already visited the previous semester, such as the Forbidden City and Summer Palace. It was fun seeing how the atmosphere of these places changed with the seasons. On the day we visited the Summer Palace the first time, it was sunny and bright out, the dragon boats were out on the lake, and people were flying their kites out over the bridge. It was very lively and everyone was enjoying the weather. But in the winter, there was not as many tourists visiting and the lake was frozen over, so the dragon boats were not being used, and the cold and windy weather made it so everyone just wanted to move along quick outside and not bother to take as many photos. The Forbidden City on the other hand was better the second time around, as there was no pollution in the air and the sky was bright blue. The haze made the city look as though you were walking through a ghostly environment, but the blue sky made the buildings pop out with their bright yellow colors. Going to the temple in Jingshan Park, right by the exit of the Forbidden City, is definitely worth the visit as well when the skies are clear. From the top of the hill, you can get a glimpse of the whole city and how its colors stand out from the modern city around it.
Later in the month, I visited Tiantan Gongyuan 天坛公园, or the Temple of Heaven Park, with other SU students on a school trip again. As it turns out, there are actually four temples of this kind in each direction of Beijing, each representing an important element (the Heaven, Earth, Moon, and Sun). It wouldn’t be up until this point that I finally realized I was practicing kung fu at one of these important temple parks the whole time I had been in Beijing. We were again lucky to have blue skies the day we went to the Temple of Heaven. The layout didn’t appear too remarkably different from what I had seen in the Forbidden City with its architecture styles and imagery engraved in stone, but its center altar reaching out up into the sky was really fascinating to look at on such a beautiful day. Shortly after walking in though, there was a Chinese tourist who started screaming at us to pose together as a group so that she could take photos of us. She was stuck behind a fence and luckily couldn’t follow us in, but in this instance it felt as though we were being treated like zoo animals in a cage because of her fanatical behavior. Once we left, we walked through a corridor where old folk were playing traditional Chinese music and playing chess amongst each other. One man was practicing writing calligraphy on the sidewalk with a brush the size of a small broom and a bucket of water that he kept at his side. On a hot day, the water calligraphy quickly evaporates away into the sky, so this sort of activity is enjoyed purely out of the art of it. Later in the month, I saw another man, a police officer, who invited me to try writing something in Chinese on the sidewalk with his calligraphy brush. It was on this day that I was simply out on a walk by myself to pass away the time before I had to go to my kung fu class and I thought it was funny how bored this officer must have been that he would go out of his way to bring such a set up to his work.
