Beijing - OCDF Week 2

Visiting an Ancient Chinese Pharmacy in Beijing

With Our Teacher Wang Hui

Arriving back in Beijing at 1 PM, we returned to our apartment at the Friendship Hotel to unpack and then catch a taxi to take us to the Wangfujing Shopping Street. Wangfujing is similar to New York's 5th Avenue, Chicago's Miracle Mile, or Houston's Westheimer Galleria. It is a large shopping district located just east of the Forbidden City. Helping us to find the best shopping was Melissa. Melissa is participating in an exchange student program and we are hosting her this year in Houston. She and her family live in Beijing and we had the honor of meeting them for dinner during week 1. Melissa enjoys shopping and knows all the best places to go in Beijing. She helped us find some toys and new school backpacks for the girls and several things for ourselves.

Hannah Learns Chinese Knotting

On Monday we learned about Chinese medicine by studying some basic terms. We visited a Chinese pharmacy (above) that has been in operation for several hundred years. While there we were examined by a Chinese physician and spoke with the staff about the health benefits of different kinds of tea.

The pharmacy is in a very pretty section of Beijing just a little to the west of the Forbidden City. There were lots of shade trees and many older buildings.

Our Schedule for Week 2

Monday AM - Chinese medical concepts and terms (Basic), visit to ancient Chinese Pharmacy, meeting with a Chinese Doctor.

Monday PM - Tour the Temple of Heaven and Hong Qiao Pearl Market

Monday Evening - Chinese Acrobats

Tuesday AM - Chinese geography. Chinese knotting craft

Tuesday PM - Hutong tour, visit to elementary school, tea ceremony at Drum and Bell tower complex.

Wednesday AM - Kids learn about Chinese inventions, adults meet with a Confucius scholar, everyone visits the Chinese Science and Technology Museum.

Wednesday PM - Visit to artists village in countryside for painting and calligraphy lessons.

Thursday AM - Chinese animal names, visit to Beijing Zoo followed by visit to Purple Bamboo park. In the park, kids learn about origami (paper folding) and adults have a lesson with a Tai Qi master.

Thursday PM - Visit Summer Palace and take a boat ride on Kunming lake.

In the afternoon we visited the Temple of Heaven. This complex has been restored recently in preparation for the Olympics and it is wonderful. The paint and tile colors are brilliant - deep Chinese reds with accents of blue and gold. The temple is set in the middle of a large park that was full of activity. Impromptu singers and artists combined with exercise classes, tourists, and students into a curious group with all enjoying the magnificent setting.

After the temple, we went to the Hong Qiao Pearl Market. This is a five story building filled with jewelry vendors offering pearls, jade, gold, and watches. The shops on the top floor were the most exclusive and expensive. Descending to the ground floor, the merchandise became less expensive and the price was more subject to negotiation.

Visiting the restored

Temple of Heaven

On Tuesday, we learned about the Chinese knotting craft. Everyone did well on their project but Steve needed a lot of help! That afternoon, we took a pedicab tour of one of Beijing's older neighborhoods called a hutong. In a hutong, anywhere from three to six residences surround a central courtyard. Families living in a hutong share a greater sense of community than offered in typical apartment buildings. As Beijing has grown in population, the need for housing (modern, high-rise apartments) has claimed many of the older hutong neighborhoods. Those that remain are clustered in the area around Houhai lake northwest of the Forbidden City. Our pedicab driver took us through the area surrounding the lake and dropped us off at the Drum and Bell Tower complex.

The original Drum and Bell Towers date to the time of Kublai Khan when they marked the northern gates to the city. At 7 PM, twenty-four huge drums were struck to mark the closing of the city gates. At 7 AM, the large bell was rung to mark the start of the new day. Inside the Drum Tower is an expansive tea shop where knowledgeable staff describe the basics of the Chinese tea ceremony and offer samples of many kinds of tea.

At the Chinese Science and Technology Museum

On Wednesday, the adults met with a Confucian scholar while the kids learned about Chinese inventions and geography.

Later, everyone visited the Chinese Science and Technology Museum. This is a world-class museum that highlights China's many contributions to science. The kids loved the hands-on exhibits. Some of their favorites included robots, a pendulum swing, the pulley demonstrator (left photo), and a chicken hatchery where you could watch the baby chicks emerge from their eggs. In the museum atrium there was a gift shop that had an excellent collection of Beijing Olympics 2008 products.

After lunch, we visited an artists' colony in the countryside northeast of Beijing. While at the Artist's Village Gallery, we received a lesson in watercolor painting and in Chinese calligraphy. The watercolor painting was easy compared to the calligraphy. Drawing Chinese characters properly is difficult. We worked for over an hour on one character - and barely got it correct!

Our host, Sally Liu showed us around the gallery. While the style was a bit modern for our taste, the paintings are very well done and reflect the skill of the artists who created them.

On Thursday morning we had our last Chinese class and then visited the Beijing Zoo and Purple Bamboo Park. Both of these locations are very close to the Xi Yuan hotel we where we stayed on our first trip to Beijing in 1999.

At the zoo we saw more pandas, many small animals, and visited the famous Monkey Hill. Observing the antics of Monkey Hill's many residents, we decided that this has to be the place where the expression, "more fun than a barrel full of monkeys" originated.

Purple Bamboo Park is a very large park that contains several lakes, pavilions, and many different kinds of trees. At the park, the girls learned about origami (intricate Chinese paper-folding craft) while the adults experienced an exercise lesson in Tai Chi. The great thing about Tai Chi is that the movements are slow which makes it seem kind of easy. Its complexity, however is in the details. At times it felt like we were trying to juggle three or four balls in the air all at once. We did enjoy it and look forward to learning more.

After lunch, it was time to leave Beijing. We said a very fond farewell to our teacher Wang Hui and headed for the airport to catch our flight to Hong Kong. After a quick day in Hong Kong, we were off to visit Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

We left Beijing with many fond memories of the city and its people. Our hosts at OCDF made us feel welcome and were simply wonderful with the girls. In addition to their work with adoptive families, they run an excellent travel agency and can help anyone plan China travel.

Please check out the main OCDF website at: www.OCDF.org

Or their travel/tour website at: www.ocdf.org/ocdf/tour.htm

Click on any of the Thumbnails below to view the full size picture. Use the Right and Left arrows to scroll through the Thumbnails.

Click on the Taiwan link to continue.

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