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Today I went out with some girls from work. I met Kitty and her friend (I don't remember her name because it wasn't an English name) this morning at the subway station and we took a taxi to HoHai park. I had been to HoHai park the first week I was here, but during that visit we just walked straight through to familiarize ourselves with the area. So this time we walked through the whole park. We even took a rickashaw, definitely a cultural must. We spent most of our time at Prince Gong's Palace, which consisted of various pagodas and gardens. The intricate paintings on all the buildings are beautiful and all the myths were hard to comprehend.
From what I got of the tour given by my friends, whose English is broken, the palace was formerly occupied by a minister named Heshen in the late 1700s. He was a greedy man who took the people's money and so everything in the palace had to do with becoming lucky and having a lot of wealth. One of the ponds was in the shape of a bat, which is supposedly a sign of good luck. There are also bats painted all over the buildings. There was a big stone statue of a mother holding a baby, that was supposed to bring the fortune of having a son. Also, the character "fu" which means happiness was featured in this cave built out of rocks stacked on top of each other and supposedly glued together with a porridge and egg mixture. The "fu" character is carved into a stone tablet and is now behind glass, but it is a big ritual for everyone to run their hands across the character multiple times for good luck. This cave was said to be guarded by the two dragons on top, which were stones that vaguely looked like dragons. As my friends were telling me about all these superstitions, I tried to politely find out whether they really believed it. They told me that only the old people do, neither of them, nor their friends would ever believe in such things.
Then we went to a show that was supposedly put on by the Beijing Opera, but there wasn't any singing. Instead it was more of a variety show. The first scene was two dancers in traditional costume. The second act was a man and young girl who performed acrobatic tricks. The third act was a man that sounded like a bird, in the sense that he would do different whistles and act like he was calling birds and setting them free. The final act was a boy spinning a huge ceramic pot on his head while making quick moves on the stage. It was all very bizarre.
After the palace, we met up with another girl from work, Rachel, and her boyfriend for lunch. Then we did some shopping. I am so glad that I went with them, because Rachel was a pro at bargaining. She would have quite long dialogs with the shopkeepers and their voices kept raising all the while.
The new food of the day that Rachel had me try was translated to me as "smelly bean curd", in other words it was tofu that had been left in the box for a while and now had a black outside and white inside. I wasn't overly impressed, but glad I tried it. Fortunately she didn't have me try the silk worms at the same vendor, I just don't have a stomach for seeing larvae wiggling around one moment then fried and ready to be eaten the next.
To answer Gayla's question, I am just learning how to speak some basic Chinese. I really don't care to bother with the characters at this point. While I could navigate around town on my own better if I new how to read Mandarin, if I just know the key words to tell the taxi where to take me, I am cool with that.
P.S. I did take pictures today, but I seem to be experiencing technical difficulty with getting the pictures downloaded. Unfortunately my personal computer techy is not here to help me out. But hopefully the problem, whatever it may be, will solve itself and I can get them posted at a later date.
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Carla
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Sounds like you're really having fun! Not sure about the smelly bean curd stuff.....sounds scrumptious! Although I think I'd have to chose that over the worms anyday! Glad Kitty took you shopping, but didn't you change her name to Cathy? do they actually use the English names they're "given" or is it just a fun thing? I like Gayla's idea of you bringing her back a Chinese name! That can be your assignment for all of us! :-) The Hand On just ended this morning. 208 hours or something like that! Glad Harry didn't try to last that long! Keep the blogs going! They're very interesting!