This morning we went to the Confucian Temple which was cool. It was actually I think the most tourist friendly historical site I’ve seen in China. The plaques next to buildings were in both Chinese and perfect English and
the entire temple was completely deserted. It smelled a little bit funny because the moat had recently been drained and there was a bunch of rotting plant material, but overall it was great. It’s interesting how much emphasis the Chinese place on their writing system. Where as in the west at this kind of place I feel like there would be art (statues, paintings, etc.) instead there are huge stone columns covered in Chinese characters.
We ate lunch and went to the Science museum. Almost everyone went into geek overdrive and disappeared to look at the exhibits that are most closely related to their majors. Lacking a major personally I needed to sprint from exhibit to exhibit. The museum itself is huge. Luckily I couldn’t understand the majority of the plaques which spead things up considerably. We also watch an Omnimax Movie. It started with hula dancers and Crosby, Stills and Nash. At first this seemed an odd juxtaposition. Then the screen said “narrated by Liam Neeson” at the exact moment it started jabbering away in Chinese. It was great.
Also for those of you who are interested on Friday those of us who did not go to Beijing participated in some international student sports competition. We apparently did well. John apparently brought his huge American flag and waved it around on his shower curtain pole. John and Divya were the winning team for piggy back races. We placed in every event we competed in and… yeah, well, I ate a scorpion.
This morning we went to the Confucian Temple which was cool. It was actually I think the most tourist friendly historical site I’ve seen in China. The plaques next to buildings were in both Chinese and perfect English and 
the entire temple was completely deserted. It smelled a little bit funny because the moat had recently been drained and there was a bunch of rotting plant material, but overall it was great. It’s interesting how much emphasis the Chinese place on their writing system. Where as in the west at this kind of place I feel like there would be art (statues, paintings, etc.) instead there are huge stone columns covered in Chinese characters.
We ate lunch and went to the Science museum. Almost everyone went into geek overdrive and disappeared to look at the exhibits that are most closely related to their majors. Lacking a major personally I needed to sprint from exhibit to exhibit. The museum itself is huge. Luckily I couldn’t understand the majority of the plaques which spead things up considerably. We also watch an Omnimax Movie. It started with hula dancers and Crosby, Stills and Nash. At first this seemed an odd juxtaposition. Then the screen said “narrated by Liam Neeson” at the exact moment it started jabbering away in Chinese. It was great.
Also for those of you who are interested on Friday those of us who did not go to Beijing participated in some international student sports competition. We apparently did well. John apparently brought his huge American flag and waved it around on his shower curtain pole. John and Divya were the winning team for piggy back races. We placed in every event we competed in and… yeah, well, I ate a scorpion.
No comments:
Post a Comment