The past few weekends have been some of the most exciting of the entire semester, full of trips to the zoo, mountain hikes, ancient parks, and more! Our first trip out of many was a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I wanted to see some pandas, since I was in China after all, and our TBC friend Andy made it happen. We took the subway to the zoo, and immediately made our way to the panda enclosure. They had their own park within the zoo and their own entrance too. The line for the pandas was way longer than the line to get into the zoo itself, but once we made it to the exhibit, I was shocked at how many people were crowded around the pandas. People were filming, livestreaming and shouting at them, yet they didn’t seem to care at all. Andy had told me before we left that the pandas are pretty lazy bears, and this was definitely true. While they were very cute and fun to see, they definitely did not move much, but that’s what pandas do. We saw four or five different pandas, and there was a super long line to see the special panda that has become famous on TikTok.
The rest of the zoo had way more animals than I expected. There were elephants, lemurs, monkeys, and some of the craziest prehistoric-looking birds I have ever seen. After this we got some of the best Sichuan food I’ve had yet, and I decided that the Sichuan Province has the best food in China. There were plates of chicken covered in chili peppers, big bowls of fish with that signature Sichuan pepper spice, and a big pot of spicy broth with every part of the pig in it, lung, intestine, blood, and more, which was probably my favorite of them all. The unique numbing spice from the Sichuan pepper is not something you normally find in America, and it has become my favorite over the course of the fall.
Later that night Jen, some of our TBC friends, and I went on a hike at Guixiaoshi, a small mountain to the west of Beijing. When I say night, I mean we left our building at 4:30 in the morning to catch the sunrise. We climbed up the many stairs on the mountainside in complete darkness, and when we got to the top, light was just beginning to make its way up to the mountain. Going up we could see some of the Beijing city lights, but on the mountain top, there was too much fog to see anything. It felt like you were just in the clouds. Still, seeing the area light up around 6:45 in the morning was a very cool experience. We took a scenic walk back down the other side of the mountain. By then the wind had pushed some of the clouds away, so we were able to see the beautiful fall colors on the mountainside. We returned to campus, quickly ate some McDonalds for breakfast and then crashed right back to sleep.
The next weekend was full of more surprises. We began in the morning, visiting the Temple of Heaven. I did not know what to expect, but I learned it was an ancient campus where the emperor used to visit and pray to the gods for a bountiful harvest. The scenery was very pristine, and the temple were unlike any others I have seen so far. It was shorter, stouter, rounder, and much bluer than those in Xiahe or at the summer palace. The structure reminded me of a bamboo steamer, or the dish they serve Peking duck in at Hua’s Restaurant.
After this we visited the pearl market just east of the Temple of Heaven. This is a massive 5-story building full of all types of shops. The basement has many small restaurant stands, and the first and second levels have stands selling clothes, luggage toys, and other goods. The top three levels all have too many pearl and jade shops to count. It was unlike any market in America, as everyone was bartering for lower prices and shop owners were shouting to get visitors’ attention. There were so many pearls and jade pieces it was hard to believe, as you don’t see many of those in America.
After this came the biggest surprise of the weekend, and maybe the whole semester: the acrobatics show. Andy had told me he had never been, and he was excited to see it. This made me very curious as to what the show would be like, but nothing could have prepared me for what the acrobats did. They began with some dancing, but quickly they brought out a large, tall circular platform with four female acrobats and one male acrobat on top. They began climbing on top of each other, balancing on each other’s heads, and getting into configurations words cannot describe. Then a man, who was selling popcorn in the crowd earlier, came onto stage with two chairs, and he stacked them on top of each other and did a handstand on top of them. But after this they kept bring out more and more chairs that he kept stacking them until he was quite literally in the ceiling, standing on his head above the crowd. There were five female acrobats that all balanced themselves on a pole by their teeth with their body wrapped around their heads, and there was a group of three women, two of which held stacks of bowls in their feet while balancing on the third woman’s head. A group of 10-15 cyclist all did matching tricks while doing circles on their bikes, only to then all get on one bike, forming a human pyramid as they bike in circles around the stage.
However, the finale was the most amazing part. The back curtains lifted to reveal a giant perforated metal sphere with a ramp going into it. A man with a bright LED costume rode out onto the stage on a motorbike, got the crowd to cheer for him, and then drove into the sphere. He drove circles around and around the inside of the sphere, left to right and up and down. I thought that was as crazy as it was going to get, but then another man rode out on a bike and joined him in the sphere. They were coordinated as they did laps around the entire inside of the sphere, but never once hit each other. I thought this would be the end, but this happened not once, not twice, but three more times. By the end there were 5 men on motorcycles spinning around and around the sphere at crazy fast speeds. The whole event was amazing and truly impossible to put into words. It left me mesmerized for hours after and made me appreciate all the crazy things that happen in Beijing.
By Fall 2024 Student Thomas Helm
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