People, Animals & Temples

These 2 weeks were very interesting, because I learned a lot about the people and their believes, how they treat and take care of their animals and historic buildings.

Beijing Zoo: We went to the Beijing Zoo to mainly see the Giant Pandas. The Panda's are the national animal in China, it is very big and furry with white with black. But the panda we saw was not black and white, but more grey with black. It did not take a bath for sometime. The Pandas eat bamboo for 14 hours every day and the rest of the day they play on swings and slides and they sleep. Most of the other animals in the Beijing Zoo we saw at 'their real homes' a few months ago in the Kruger National Park. There was so much difference between the Zoo animals and wild free animals. In the Zoo the animals all looked sad and were dirty, alone, not a lot of green grass/plants to eat and play in. In South Africa in the Kruger National Park there is green everywhere with rivers and trees and bushes where they are free!!!! The rhino was the animal that I wanted to take out of the Zoo the most. It was lying under the one little tree on hard ground without any grass, very skinny and dirty all alone.
Us/tourists came to look at the Giant Panda while the locals looked at the peacocks!!!??  They seemed to love that bird with its feathers all showing off. Steven and I was strange since for us it is very normal to see a peacock, because it walks sometimes through our garden and on the road near our house in Hout Bay.

Temple of Heaven: is a big complex of religious buildings. It was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for ceremonies of praying to Heaven to get good crops. There are many temples with a large park around it. The temples are all made from wood with beautiful colours with many different patterns. The blue color stands for the sky and heaven, the red color is the color of the Emperor and the yellow color is sometimes gold paint and means sun.


Summer palace : When the Emperors were hot and tired in the Summer they often went  from the Forbidden City to their Summer Palace in the north of Beijing city. Here they had a large garden with a lake. They also used it to invite kings or important people from other countries to impress them. It was a pity that many buildings were a little old and the paint was ugly and scratched. The website said it is painted every 12 years, but it looked much longer ago. Maybe because there are so many people every day. Also the entrance fee is a little strange. You pay to enter the Summer Palace, but then you must pay again and again every time you wanted to go into a temple or special part of the Palace.

Lama temple/Buddha: It was a temple  that most of the Lama Buddhists visit. Lama Buddhist is a branch of Buddhism and Buddhism is a believe or religion of many Chinese. With Buddhism you believe in Buddha and The moment- Now and not Tomorrow). To great or pray to Buddha you have to burn 3 incenses and kneel and bow tree times in front of his statue. The Llama temple had the same colours as the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. There were many statues of Buddha and gold, you could also see the Monks pray in their orange dress/coat.



Bike Riding : On a partly sunny day we went with friend's Jean Pierre, Juune and Pieter to ride a bike. Not just normal bike riding no we went on a tandem. Around lake Hou Hai with old Chinese streets and colourful shops. We had a break at a beautiful old Chinese tea house, where we drank old tea (Pu-er) as a local in special pots and cups. You have to put the hot water from the kettle in a teapot whit the tea branches, then after 1 minute you put the tea in a glass teapot from where you put the tea in the little cups. We loved the traditional way of preparing and drinking the tea. The tea tasting and drinking of old tea is the same as the wine tasting in South Africa. Some tea is special and cost more than a bottle of special wine.

Ping Pong  : Ping Pong is the national sport in China and everyone plays it. To me Ping Pong looked easy, just hitting the ball from left to right (BORING). My dad wanted us to try a lesson and after 3 times of asking I finally did take the Ping pong lesson with Steven...........WOW IT WAS DIFFICULT.  It wasn't at all what I thought. You had to hold your racket in a specific degree, move your waist from left to right and I had to bend my knees, because I was to long and the Chinese are all shorter than I am. After 2 lessons I liked it because it was tricky. Steven is very good in Ping Pong and liked it from the beginning. We  are both doing Ping Pong since 2 weeks now on Sunday and Wednesday for an hour and we get homework from our teacher.


Xie xie  Loes