First off: A quick fun fact I forgot to include in the last post.... When I was showing pictures of cars and people all going across the road at the same time... please don't think the Chinese have some magical powers where this actually works and everyone is fine. There are about one thousand car accidents in Beijing every day. There are also over 5,000,000 privately owned cars in Beijing. Traffic is a serious problem for them. Anyways... on to Wednesday...
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We were all exhausted from an intense first day in Beijing. Today we were planned to take rickshaws through the old part of Beijing, which is more then 100 years old. This part of town consists of many tight alley ways and one-story buildings. This is why we had to take rickshaws – most cars, never mind buses, can not fit through these tight alleys. But this area of Beijing comes at a heavy price... one square meter of land is several thousands of dollars. Most people own land here because of their heritage... their parents owned it, their parents before them owned it... and so on. Before we arrived in the old city though, I was entertained to see a Hooters in Beijing! Whoohoo!
Once you get near the old city, you can find several rickshaws laying around with guys just waiting to be paid to give you a ride around the place. With two-seater rickshaws, and 40 of us, we ordered 20 rickshaws. The men seemed very happy for the business.
We went right into the old city, with indeed tight alleys such as this:
After a 15 or so minute ride we arrived at this mans house. He lived with his wife, son, and mother-in-law. We all sat in his courtyard as Michael translated his words. After giving us a brief introduction and welcome to his house, it was opened up to any questions we had for him. What was it like to live here? How long had he lived here? What's it like to live with a mother-in-law? Etc. Like most people that lived in this area, he owns this house through family heritage. This home has been in his family for many, many years.
Curious about all the pigeons he had in his courtyard, one of us asked what their purpose was. "Pigeon racing" he replied plainly. Apparently pigeon racing is a common sport in China.
After we had all asked our share of questions, we were allowed to freely roam his house to see what it looked like. Apart from pigeon racing, his source of income came from paintings and calligraphy (drawing Chinese symbols... also considered an art.) This is some of his work:
After exploring every nook of his three or four room house we hopped back into our rickshaws to get out of the old city. Before leaving, I found this alley that was even too small for a rickshaw:
To those of you who like exploring the internet in your freetime, you have probably stumbled across sites that show funny translations of Chinese signs. Well, they were not kidding. Interesting translations are found all over the place. Take for example this one I found when we were going to lunch (sorry for the blurry quality):
If you can't read it, it says "Fire Fighter Jury Exciter Lamp".
After lunch we headed over to the Beijing conservatory for a rehearsal before our performance that night. It was a cute, very acoustic theater that seated probably around 150.
They had a nice sign welcoming us
The performance that night went amazingly well. We all very quickly learned that Asian people LOVE Americans. At the end of the performance they all wanted to get their picture with us. The girls jumped up and down, and the guys shook my hand with a big grin on their face. They made me feel like we just gave the performance of a lifetime. And we sort of did.... when is the next time I am going to be able to sing a solo piece in Beijing?
It gave me something to think about as I drifted happily to sleep that night.
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