Bye Bye Beijing

(Ola)

We woke up with some mixed feelings today. It’s our last day in Beijing, which means our last day of traveling. The traveling portion of this exchange has been amazing and although we’d like to continue, we’re also very tired and are looking forward to settling down. After getting used to constantly traveling, we’ll now have to get used to living with host families we’ve never met before and attending Hangzhou High School.

Before leaving Beijing, we tried to pack as much as possible into our day. First, we went to the Temple of Heaven. Regarded as one of the most amazing architectural creations, the Temple of Heaven consists of a bunch of old buildings with very ornate decoration. However, the most astounding thing about the Temple of Heaven is the amount of exuberant elders who exercise in the surrounding parks and gardens. They gather in groups to play intense games of hackysack or badminton, practice yoga and dance. We had seen such occurrences before, but never in such a numerous quantity. All the participants looked so happy and it was very cool to see them freely enjoying themselves outdoors with friends. Personally, I think it’d be great to see such things in Boston Commons.

Afterwards, we went to the Rainbow Market. Housed in one building, the rainbow Market has 4 levels and you begin from the top down. On the 4th floor is Fanghua Pearls. This huge store sells pearls in every color imaginable for unimaginably low prices. Looking at the price, one might question the legitimacy of these pearls. They are real and are so affordable due to the largeness of the pearl market in Asia. I bought a strand and Ms. Li bought so many that I lost count. We then went down a floor to where people were selling “real” (not) jade and other prized possessions. On the second floor, there was an array of bags, shoes, and tech paraphernalia. Compared to the quality we had seen on West Street in Yangshuo, all the stuff looked very cheap. Everywhere we turned the desperate vendors would yell “What do you want girl?!?.” After hearing it repeated thousands of times, we came to the realization that not only do we not know what we want to buy, we also just don’t know what we want in life. Young, flummoxed, and vulnerable, Abby and I started speaking Spanish to trick the vendors. As we chanted senseless things that included random words interspersed with Shakira lyrics, the vendors backed off.

We had to say goodbye to Arlen after lunch and it was quite a sad affair. At this point, I was tired and losing it. If you know me, you won’t be surprised to hear that I shed a few tears. Then, we headed to an antiques market. Feeling feichang fatigued, Abby, Nik and I could not even participate because we were about to fall over on the sidewalk and fry in the hot sun like a plate of sizzling beef with onions. Thankfully, Ms. Li was victorious. Since she had sent a bunch of her purchases with Arlen back to the US, she clearly needed to replenish her stock and purchase two pen and ink paintings to fill her suitcase right back up.

Culminating our trip, we sojourned to the train station. Our third and last overnight train, this was also the longest duration. For fifteen hours, we would be squished in a compartment. To our delight, when we hopped aboard, we saw that the train was mostly empty. After settling into a top bunk and praying I would not fall off, we were treated to some extremely irritating tunes floating out of a speaker. The music was nice, but after what seemed like an hour of it blaring from above our heads, we were going insane. Once it stopped, we all fell soundly asleep.