Hutong, Summer Palace, Tea Street

大家好!  

Last week I went to my first hutong, the Summer Palace, and Maliandao (tea street). Maliandao is a famous tea street that has tea shops up and down the street. There is also a tea warehouse. A friend of mine and I went to Maliandao. Originally, we were just going to wander around, but we instantly got sucked into one of the tea shops. The sales lady was very nice. We started talking to her about buying tea first in English but then we switched over to Chinese. It was nice to get to speak Chinese outside of the classroom. I didn’t know what to expect when it comes to buying tea and I’ve never had tea before. The lady wanted us to try some. We sat down and then had a tea ceremony with her. She picked out some tea for us to try and then we sat and talked for nearly an hour with her. She kept pouring more cups of tea for us. Half way through I wondered if we were going to have to pay for this tea, but we didn’t have to. We ended up buying tea from her and she didn’t even rip us off. It was a good experience.  

After going to Maliandao, we went to a hutong (胡同). A hutong is a narrow street or alley in China. Hutongs were established in the Yuan Dynasty. In the 20th century, many hutongs were being destroyed in Beijing to make room for new roads. However, recently there has been a push to preserve them. The hutong we went to is called Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷). This one is a popular tourist attraction. I tried a potato tower while there. It was a stack of potato chips on a stick that had mayonnaise on it. It was actually pretty good. It’s cool to see traditional buildings in the center of Beijing. I definitely want to go to another hutong soon.  

Finally, I went to the Summer Palace (颐和园). The Summer Palace was the imperial garden during the Qing Dynasty. It is full of palaces, lakes, and gardens. There is a huge lake called Kunming Lake that is absolutely beautiful. I went with my Chinese friend Yihui who was my tour guide. She was an excellent tour guide that told me some of the history of the Summer Palace. A lot of it was destroyed by the French and British but was renovated. The Summer Palace is huge, but the main attractions are Kunming Lake and the Longevity hall. I definitely think that the Summer Palace is better than the Forbidden City. It’s more beautiful. The Forbidden City has a lot of the same looking buildings that are different but they all look the same while the Summer Palace has got halls, but it also has gardens where you can relax and the beautiful lake. I think that’s what makes the Summer Palace stand out to me.  

再见 

马乐 

Xi’an 西安

Xi’an （西安） 

大家好!  

Currently, I have left Beijing and am on my study trip for the semester. This semester, I am making my way to Yunnan Province. During the study trip, we have to do research on something that can either 1. pertain to Yunnan Province or 2. be on one of the ethnic minorities in China. My research project is going to be on the Naxi People in China. They are an ethnic group that live in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province and the Southwestern part of Sichuan Province. I will be researching the Naxi people’s religion, Dongba, and how it is related to Tibetan Buddhism. However, this post isn’t about the Naxi people or Dongba. It is about the first city that we’ve visited on the study trip, Xi’an (西安） 

西安 was the old capital of China during the early dynasties (Western Zhou, Qin, Western Han, Sui, and Tang). It is one of the oldest cities in China. Today, it is the capital city of Shaanxi Province. The name 西安 itself means “Western Palace.” The city used to be called 長安 which means “Perpetual Peace.” 

On the first day in 西安 we went to a food street near our hotel. There were stalls upon stalls of restaurants and people trying to get you to go into one. The place that we went to had very good food. I got to try something new that I hadn’t had while in Beijing. I got biang biang 面 (the character for biang is too complicated to write) and 泡馍 which is meat and bread soup. Both were delicious and definitely would like to eat again. After dinner, we walked around the street. There are shops where you can buy souvenirs. You may have to bargain though. I have yet to go to a place to bargain and the places that I have been to that require bargaining, I haven’t bought anything, so I didn’t need to bargain.  

The second day in 西安 we visited the Terracotta soldiers （宾马俑） The soldiers were built by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. These soldiers were discovered in 1974 by a local farmer. We actually got to meet one of the local farmers who found them. He was just 18 years old when he discovered them. The soldiers include warriors, chariots, and horses. Each soldier is unique. Even today, they are still excavating the tombs and reconstructing Terracotta soldiers. The tomb of the emperor remains unexcavated because it is potentially boobytrapped. Our tour guide told us that the emperor has his coffin laying on a river of mercury and anyone who goes in there would die from poison. Our tour guide also said that the Terracotta soldiers are the “Eighth wonder of the World.”  We also visited the 西安 city wall. The wall is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved city walls in China. It was built under the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang who was the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The wall was a military defense system. Today, it divides the old and the modern in 西安。 

The third day we went to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔). The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is a Buddhist pagoda that was built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty. The pagoda was later rebuilt by Empress Wu Zetian in 704. It was meant to hold sutras and figurines of the Buddha that were from India. At the entrance of the Pagoda, there were a bunch of older ladies dancing. We stopped to watch them for a while. Apparently, older people gather in the mornings and on the weekend and will do dancing exercises. They were pretty good.  After the Wild Goose Pagoda, we went to the Great Mosque of Xi’an (西安大请真寺). The previous day we had a lecture on Islam in China. This is the largest mosque in China. The majority of this mosque was built during the Ming Dynasty. It was very interesting learning about Islam in China. Our professor was even Muslim, and there were generations and generations of Muslims in his family. Chinese Islam and Middle Eastern Islam are very similar but Chinese Islam is not as strict. We finished off our visit to 西安 with a group dinner and then headed to Chengdu 成都。See you there! 

再见！ 

马乐 

798艺术区

大家好!  

Two weeks ago, I went to the 798 Art Zone in Beijing. The Art Zone is a large, art district that used to be a military factory. We spent a couple hours there, but you should definitely spend more time there because there are so many exhibits. We saw one that was Year of the Ox themed. It was really cool because it highlighted events that happened in the Year of the Ox for the last 100 years or so. It also had pictures of famous people born in the Year of the Ox. Another exhibit that we went to was a North Korea exhibit. It was very fascinating, and the art was very pretty. There was also a photography exhibit. The pictures were of various places in China and the world. They were all very beautiful but also very expensive. Some of the other exhibit that we didn’t have time to see were a Tibetan exhibit as well as a space exhibit that you had to pay to get into, but it looked really cool. Lastly, the exhibits often change so we went to some smaller ones that were there the last time one of my friends went and might not be there next semester. That’s one of the cool things about the Art Zone. It’s always changing, and contemporary Chinese artists are able to showcase their art. 

再见 

马乐