Daoism, Vomit, and Goats. Oh my?

This weekend began as all weekends do here in China, with a nice long morning of Chinese tests. Much like the exam from two weeks ago, our teacher, feeling quite generous, decided to throw some extra stuff on the exam. What do I mean by extra? Well, extra in this sense would be information that we have never reviewed or been told about. Anyway, after being thoroughly discouraged by the written portion of my exam, I trudged through and ended up doing fairly well on the oral portion of the exam. With my week of work behind me, the weekend began. After a nice lunch, it was time for my first fieldtrip of the weekend, a trip to a Taoist temple in Beijing. After only about a half hour ride, we arrived at the temple and were set loose to explore. Unlike the Buddhist temple that I visited last week, this temple was fairly deserted and was all spiffed up for the Chinese Independence holiday. Since the weather was incredibly nice (meaning no haze), I decided to set off on my own to explore the temple. It was a really relaxing experience. I’ve gotten really used to constantly having tons of people surrounding me at all times, and it was def nice to be alone, especially in a temple on a beautiful day. The temple itself was very similar to all of the other temples that I had already been to, but the shrines themselves were fairly different. Each shrine, within each of the various buildings, had a single statue of a god or several (up to 60 I believe) statues of gods which could be prayed to for various reasons. As I wondered around, I never really saw anyone praying, until the end of the fieldtrip. I wondered into one of the shrines, which contained the “god of long life,” who was piously being prayed to by a young man. I think Muh prayed to the god of wealth too, but I don't know if that actually counts. Anyway, the fieldtrip was very relaxing and the temple was gorgeous. I think this was my favorite temple (short of the Forbidden City of course), but that opinion could be based on the holiday decorations and the incredible weather.

My Friday night ended with a tasty dinner and some beer at the dorm. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of having a little bajiu (China’s response to cheap vodka; It has a nice cheese after taste), before heading out on the city. It was a poor decision. I called my evening early and took a cab ride back with Dan to catch some sleep before my next fieldtrip.

This morning began nice and early at 8am. Thankfully, my roommate went home for the holidays, so I wasn’t awakened 30 minutes early. Still quite asleep, I stumbled down to the bus and found a seat with a window. I popped on my iPod and tried to catch some more sleep. To add injury to insult, I was awakened to find that I was somewhat motion sick, something that hasn’t happened for about five years. Thankfully (sarcastic), we then entered the hill slalom section of our climb into the village. With the bus swaying and my stomach moving closer and closer to my mouth, I mumbled to Muh “Tell them to stop the bus….” After mass chaos arose from the prospect of my vomit spewing across the bus, I was handed several plastic bags just in time to spew in a controlled manner. Needless to say, I was excited to be on firm ground when we arrived at the base of the village. Still not feeling 100% our tour guides informed us that we had a 20 minute hike ahead of us to the top of the village. The weather was amazing, the air was pollution free, and the scenery was breathtaking, so I quickly recovered from my morning. At the top, we were split into groups of six and assigned a guide who would bring us to a home of one of the local families. My group headed to the home of an older woman (Tai Tai, similar to Mrs. in the US) who had a daughter and a granddaughter living with her. The Tai Tai offered us some fresh pears, which the village is apparently known for. I did actually eat mine (my parents and Sarah would be proud), though it tasted like paper to be honest. Then we had the privilege of watching the Tai Tai hand make jiaozi (dumplings) and many many other dishes. We were even allowed to help make some jiaozi, which sounded amazing to me. I miss cooking. When our table was filled with literally 15 dishes, we began to chow down. Needless to say, our group came no where near eating all of the tasty food. Our meal was not free though, our next task was to go with the Tai Tai to work in her field. Thankfully, our Tai Tai’s field was growing a cycle crop of the bean variety, so we simply had to rip the plants out of the earth. I was impressed; our group quickly cleared the entire field. The must love tourist there. We paid and then did manual labor.

The rest of our day was spent visiting with other groups and watching the various farm animals, which consisted of two angry geese, several angry dogs, a few stray donkeys, several packs of very vocal sheep, and a pin of imprisoned goats. When we finally loaded back on to the bus, I was more than happy to catch up on my sleep. Once again, my day of excitement ended with an incredibly long bus ride through the traffic of Beijing. At one point, we stopped dead in traffic for about 15 minutes. Everyone began getting out of their cars and talking with each other. Sadly, our tour guides wouldn't let us out, but we still managed to yell at nearby persons from the bus. I think we were all getting a little loopy. Anywho, head over and check out all the new pictures, there are a lot of them.