Bike Tour, Museum, Kung Fu, and Acrobats

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After two days of nonstop stair climbing and touring we were pretty pooped and decided to take it easy on our third day. We still got up pretty early for a free service offered by our hostel: a bike tour of the city. It had been so long since I had ridden a bike that I literally could not remember the last time. Perhaps testing my pedaling skills in a city-setting like Beijing wasn’t the brightest idea, but I survived. It turns out that riding a bike is, well, like riding a bike. Our guide was an enthusiastic young man who enjoyed riding through red lights while his terrified followers tried to keep up. He swerved in and out of traffic, between buses, and through busy thoroughfares. I’m pretty sure he was just the spunky little brother of a hostel employee who was bored and needed something to do. We stopped at a park to rest and take in the general splendor. It’s a good thing, too, because it was a good five minutes before the circulation returned to my hands after white-knuckling my way through traffic.

Just before arriving at the park I executed my one and only crash. We were pedaling down a side street in a hutong district when I spotted an interesting shop. I was squinting at the hours of operation posted in the window rather than watching where I was going and rode right into another shop’s metal sign. With an extra loud BANG I achieved the greatest amount of embarrassment while incurring very little damage. The park, like so many in China, had an array of exercise equipment and dozens of people were making use of them. I stood in awe as an elderly gentleman did what I can only describe as a full gymnastic routine on the uneven bars. It makes me wonder if we put exercise equipment in our parks in the States if people would hang their clothes on them like they do with their unused machines in their own homes.

Our tour ended with a stop at the backside of the Forbidden City. We took a nap for most of the afternoon before heading out for a Kung Fu show. I was really looking forward to seeing some genuine Kung Fu and therefore was sorely disappointed by the show which included some ballet, interpretive dance, poorly choreographed fights, ridiculous music, and horribly lip-synced songs. There was very little Kung fu to speak of.

The next day we checked the weather and saw that the forecast was calling for rain. We had two days left and we knew we wanted to see at least one museum and the Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square. We settled on seeing a museum and saving the outdoor stuff for the following day when the weather would be clear. We chose the Beijing Museum and got directions from the front desk. The Beijing Museum was really neat. There were several floors and each was dedicated to a different era or aspect of the city. And each floor had its own gift shop pertaining to the objects on display. These I didn’t mind. I have a not so secret love of museum gift shops.

After the museum we wandered around for a bit and did some shopping before returning to the hostel to get ready for the acrobat show we had booked for that evening. Unfortunately for us, traffic was a nightmare and we missed the first fifteen minutes of the show. It’s really too bad too because it was by far the best show of the three we saw. It was all the joy of a really good circus show without any of the ‘making animals do humiliating things’ guilt I usually feel because all of the performers were human (and therefore capable of willingly doing humiliating things for my entertainment).

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Photos

bike tour 1
People exercise in the park

bike tour 2
A woman does tai chi in the park

bike tour 3
Our bike tour group along with our spazzy guide

at the museum
As expected, sons are holy in China