Our first pictures and thoughts on China. Plus the cricket fighting sport. We are enjoying China!
Yes, we did leave India a week early. Although that was a little disappointing, we are very happy to have an extra week in Beijing China. My first impressions of China have been very positive. What we have seen is a very beautiful city with great infrastructure and a population that appears to be happy. We have not seen much poverty and very little pan handling and homelessness. Our experience has been limited to Beijing which I have heard is a city that takes seriously its image to tourists. However, it is unsettling to pick up a newspaper and know that it is all censored. There is no freedom of speech and press. While reading the news, you have to keep this in mind. It is also unsettling to know that all your online conversations are monitored and many social platforms are blocked. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Gmail, Youtube and Instagram are all blocked. They do have their version of social media – WeChat and Baidu. I am sure there are others but I have not found them yet. It is a very interesting mix of Communist government with capitalist tendencies. We have both have enjoyed traveling to some of the tourist’s sites and learning their history and beliefs. Following is what we have seen so far. Beth H.
Lama Temple – Is a place of worship and training ground for young Buddhist monks and Lama’s. Construction began in 1694 and it has lasted through non-communist and communist regimes. Today it is a functioning temple and a tourist attraction.
Temple of Heaven – Original construction began in 1406. A current UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is currently a tourist site. There are 3 main buildings that were used for prayer – The Imperial Vault of Heaven, The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, and the Circular Mound Alter.
The National Museum – This museum was HUGE, modern, clean and with nice straightforward presentations. Most displays offered an English description. We walked away with great history information about the rise of China from the very early cave man days to the 20th century. What impressed me the most was the number of workers that they had. The employees were in numbers I have never seen before in any museum. The workers were actively cleaning, walking through the display rooms, standing at the bottom and tops of escalators and in each and every restroom - which there are plenty of. The security to get in was very well staffed with airport type scanners and body checks/wands. Typically, I am use to museums being underfunded and tight on staff. In the National Museum of China, it seemed the opposite. The best part of it was it was FREE to enter!
These last photos are from a walking tour we took. The guide took us to the home of a former champion cricket fighter. Not the type of cricket that you think of. The cricket fighting takes place between two insect type crickets. The man we met (forgot his name) was older and very animated and lived in a home with many types of animals. Let’s just say he seemed a little eccentric and very animated. Through interpretation he told us that cricket fighting was a pastime of emperors in the Tang Dynasty from more than 1000 years ago. Unlike cock fighting and bullfighting it rarely causes injury to the crickets. The losing cricket is the one who runs from the battle, stops chirping or is thrown from the container. They have a special bowl/dish to fight in and typically 5-6 men watch and bet on the fight. There are tournaments and prize crickets get a special burial in a special coffin. There are even special pedigrees of crickets. This visit into this man’s home was one of the best tours we have ever had. It was a true pleasure to see his pleasure and his trophy crickets and magazines from years of cricket fighting. The large green insects are grasshoppers, not to be mixed up with the brown less beautiful crickets.
