Hello and welcome to Beijing !!!!

CCTV Building, Beijing - also know as the
underpants building
We return, once again to China. This time to Beijing, capital and most northern city we have visited. We are here because I (Barbara) am teaching Dance/Movement Therapy courses for interested students here. The sponsoring program is called Inspirees, and in recent years I have taught courses in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai on three occasions. I feel extremely honored to be able to be here and learn more about these wonderful students and have time to explore and experience a culture that is so different, in many ways than my own.   Bruce has also been able to join me on this and several other visits, so he will hopefully chime in as well. But here goes!

Beijing!! In some ways this city felt to be quite formidable before we arrived. My pre-impressions: huge, polluted, the central heart of a top-down government and perhaps, of all the cities I have taught in, the one with the least interactions with the west. It is also the city with many of the most well known tourist sites.  I wondered how it would be wandering around with my barely 3 words of spoken Mandarin. Would we be relegated to visiting (and re-visiting) the Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and other well knows attractions?  How would we survive the pollution? Would we be able to explore neighborhoods off the traditional tourist map?  I wasn't worried about safety (the wonderful thing about an all seeing government is that crime can be fairly absent, at least in my observation), but was wondering how much could we wander and explore. Plus, we are getting older.. I mean, how much longer can we travel like we did when we were 50?? Keep reading to find out first impressions.

To start, it was a challenging flight this time. Fairly bumpy and our seats were toward the back of the plane, so I was not a happy camper when we arrived. But we were met by wonderful Penny (one of the local staff persons) who whisked us to a lovely apartment in the southeast corner of the city, just east of downtown Beijing. We arrived and fell into bed to an exhausted sleep.

Bruce in the small but lovely garden in the center of the
apartment complex
The apartment (for faculty and other non-local staff to use) is quite lovely. Spacious with large windows from which we can see the Central Business District on one side and an elementary school on the other. It is a fairly well to do neighborhood.. lots of young professionals along with grandparents watching hoards of little ones.  The complex itself surrounds a small but peaceful garden with rocks, and water, that is filled at all hours of the day with sounds of stillness broken often but children's laughter and voices.  What is interesting is that nearby (just north of us, is an older "hutong," with dead ends, twisty streets and small, rougher looking buildings. This juxtaposition seems typical for Beijing- older poorer neightborhoods, often filled with older, grittier people and shops right next to large affluent high-rises- with younger, more stylish folks bustling around, usually on their cell phones.

Chauyang Park, Sunday afternoon- Children
climbing and playing in the trees 
Beijing itself is both appealing and strange. (OK, realize that we have only been here about 3 days- so these are first impressions.)  For a start it is HUGE! like New York on steroids, about 24 million people.  Geographically, the land is fairly flat and with not much to limit the city's size, so it is wide instead of tall. In our wanderings I noticed less English and fewer non-Asians in general, except in the more touristy areas.  Getting around is fairly easy with the excellent subway system, though sometimes time-consuming, and many of the subways seem a bit older and don't have some of the fancy slickness of the ones in Shanghai. There seems to be less visible economic gaps between extremely rich and extremely poor and most of the younger people seem to be solidly middle class, educated and surgically attached to their cell phones. I don't know what it costs to live in Beijing but several of the young adults we have talked to live hours outside of the city due the price of living closer. In general, even thought the traffic is crazy, the city seems to be a bit more laid back and confidently Chinese. It feels comfortable to be here and be exploring. Now if only I could figure out how to read menus and ask directions.... to be continued.


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