In your heart, not the temple.

In the morning I always think it is raining when I my hearing first comes into focus. Drip drop patter patter patter. Heavy drops intermittently plunk to the metal roofs surrounding the school. It isn’t rain, though. It is the sound of a thousand air conditioning window units shedding condensation. My Aunt knocks on my door at 6am and I am confused. Where am I? Why does my body ache? What is wrong with my eyes?

Oh, yeah…

Oh, yeah! Beijing!
Puff puff, spray spray, drop drop. That’s better. A deep breath and a colossal stretch later, I emerge. Breakfast at 6:30. The teaching day starts at 7:30 and mine ends at 9:45. After my lessons, I rush down the hall and work until lunch, which starts at 12:20. I upload, edit, Skype, reply and edit again.
This is my only “me” time, and I depend on it. While I am tremendously grateful for every hit on this blog, my motives are almost completely selfish. I need to do this. This… thing… is how I center myself. It is how I understand my experience, the place where I cement what I have learned in the past 24 hours. I am learning about Chinese culture, sure, but every minute I am here I learn more about myself than I’ve learned in my lifetime. It Is not that I am learning about myself so much as I am (excuse the cliche [and my inability to paste an e with an accent over it]) finding her.

This afternoon we decided to follow a walk mapped out in a guide book (Lonely Planet. I highly recommend it for everything. The guidebook is Kathy’s, but I have their Mandarin phrasebook and it is very useful.). The adventure started at Lama Temple. Steve and I walked off to look at hats outside the gate and when we came back, Freddie told me I owe her 20 Yuan for the guide she just hired. I have to admit, I was highly skeptical of being guided through a temple, but it was a really good decision. This woman was awesome. For an hour she explained the significance of every piece of this most holy place.
Nearly begging us to leave any negative or troubled thoughts outside the temple, she reiterated over and over:
“Buddha is not in the temple, Buddha lives in your heart.”

(Buddhists venerate the Enlightened One with incense and prayers)

(Flags fly outside one of the many shrines)

(Hand mandala)

(Spin with the right hand, only! Peace in my mind, my heart and my body.)

(Once again, the architecture is severely intricate)

(This picture makes me dizzy)

Steve and I bought incense and paid our compliments to such a beautiful place representing such a mystifying, brilliant notion.

I could not take pictures inside the shrines, and I understand. The statues inside were some of the most breathtaking man made wonders I’ve ever encountered personally or through photography. I had to take home some record of an 18 meter statue of Buddha carved from a single tree, so I broke down and bought a book about the temple. It was 40 Yuan, which breaks down to under 6USD. I’m in. It’s a nice book with many pictures.
We spent much more time at the Lama Temple than we had originally planned, so we did not finish the walk. The next “stop” was not a stop at all. Our group wandered through the “Hutongs” of Beijing. Hutongs are very old alley ways where people live in very old courtyard style houses. They are in danger of destruction because they take up too much space for how many people the house. In a city with 15 million people, the government is perhaps thinking more of efficacy than history.

From Wikipedia

“The word hutong comes from the Mongolian hottog meaning “water well.” During the growth of towns and cities, wells dug by villagers formed the centres of new communities.

In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.

In old China, streets and lanes were defined by width. Hutongs were lanes no wider than 9 metres. Many are smaller; Beijing hutongs range in width from 10 metres down to only 40 centimetres.

Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. More recently, some hutongs have been designated as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history.”

(The alley toward most homes are so adorned)

(Caught!)

(A group of men enveloped in their game)

(The last thing I expected to find, but I am excited to see it. Hoorah for behavioral health services!)

We caught cabs and were home in time for dinner without incident. Steve and I decided to try the park dance again, but quickly changed our plans. Knowing we can always get home via taxi, we started walking.

(People dancing in unison under a pedestrian overpass. I know it is low quality, but I thought it was interesting.)

(Reflections)

(Where are we going? As it happens, nowhere)

(Steve makes a friend.)

Every lighted sign we thought there might be a place to sit down and get some pijiu. Most of them were salons, which seem to be open later than anything else. People getting their hair cut, colored and styled at 10pm. We found a pool hall but decided to keep walking.

So we never found a bar or even a club or the like. After a long walk we got in a cab and went home and to sweet, badly needed sleep.

Please see the post below as it is also new today. I had some technical issues yesterday but I am up and running again.

Well wishes, all.