A Busy Day in Beijing

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Sleeping last night was challenging due to the twelve hour time change. Although I was tired at 12 midnight in China, my body somehow knew that is was actually 12 noon in Connecticut. I got a few hours of sleep but got awake frequently. It was easy to get up by 6:00 AM and check email. Breakfast in the hotel was fantastic…there was almost everything you could imagine…omelets, bread pudding, fruit, bacon, coffee, etc. We left the hotel at 8:00 AM. It was again hazy and cool. For the Chinese it was a clear day. For us it was gray and smoggy. We went to the national department of education for an overview about China’s educational system. Once there we gathered in a huge conference room for a PowerPoint presentation by Jing Wei, Director of U.S. Programs. Ms. Wei’s Powerpoint and presentation was all in English. She spoke for 90 minutes and answered any questions we had for another 30 minutes. During the entire presentation we were constantly supplied with hot tea. We took a group photo and then headed for lunch. After lunch, very similar to the previous night’s dinner, we headed to Peking University for a tour and a lecture from a professor on Confucius philosophy and the political consequences. On the way we drove past the new stadiums built for the 2008 Olympics. Thousands of workers were busy, trying to complete the work before 8.8.08 at 8:00PM, when the Olympic Games begin. (Eight is a lucky number in China, but our guide told us that the temperature in August often goes as high as 100 degrees. So the athletes will need some luck with the weather in August!). We got to Peking University and walked the campus, home to 9,000 students, for one hour. It was a beautiful campus in Beijing built around a lake. Most striking were the hundreds and hundreds of older-looking bicycles parked in front of dormitories. There were up to seven students who lived in a room and there were no showers in the dormitories. Students got three shower “passes” a week to be taken in a special, separate bathhouse. The lecture on Confucius’ philosophy and impact on the China’s society was extremely interesting and somewhat complicated. We left the university around 4:30PM and went to one more tourist destination…the Summer Palace. This palace was a huge, huge, huge estate around a huge lake. The buildings and architecture were amazing. We took many photos, but the photos just cannot capture the size of the place. It was actively used about 200 years ago…so in a relative way it was not too old and was in very, very good shape. We left the summer palace about 6:30 PM and most of us slept on the bus as we went to a restaurant that specialized in Chinese duck. We got back to our hotel about 9:00PM…finishing a busy day in Beijing.