Acrobats, and temples

Acrobats

Last night a bunch of us went to Beijing acrobats performance. It was unbelievable. There was trippy music, a laser show and a bunch of Chinese people bending themselves in half, riding bikes with 12 people on them, and doing a lot of other really crazy balancing, bending, and jumping stunts. The acrobats are trained from a very early age and during parts of the show some of the younger acrobats were brought out. At one point this girl who must have been about 8 came out and started doing free standing flips over and over again. It was a very cool show.

Sanlituan

Afterwards a bunch of us grabbed some 饺子 (jiaozi) for dinner. From there we went out to some bars in Sanlituan, an ex-pat area that has a lot of night life spots. I played some pool, chatted with some Brits, and had a few drinks. I had my first Tiger beer, a beer brewed in Singapore that's pretty popular in Asia. Despite the fact that food has been extremely cheap, the cost of drinking here is pretty similar to that in the US.

Buddha in the morning

This morning I went with a few people to check out the 八大处 (BaDaQu) temples. Its a complex of a bunch of buddhist temples and natural scenes located in a mountainous area of Beijing. The temples were really colorful and detailed. There was incense being burned everywhere and there was some really cool architecture but it wasn't exactly the most serene environment. It was pretty crowded and kind of touristy. People were selling little things everywhere and there were carnival game booths set up along the trails as well as an inflatable moonwalk castle and some carousels. I can definitely appreciate the architecture and the importance of the temples but I hope the next temples I see have little less of a commercial vibe.

春天 －Chuntian - Chinese New Year

After I got back from the temples I took a long nap and memorized 80 new characters for my quiz tomorrow. There have been more students coming back to campus at Bei Wai (Beijing Foreing Studies University - the school that my program is located in) as the Chinese new year is coming to an end. Fireworks are HUGE in China (they invented them) and ever since we arrived in Beijing there have been fireworks going off at all hours of the day in the spirit of the New Year. There aren't really any laws about fireworks or anything so kids and adults will buy loads of cherry bombs and firecrackers and set them off all over the place. It sounds like the country is at war. From what I've heard people are really optimistic about this year since it is 牛年 (niunian - year of the bull). The bull is supposed to be a very promising strong symbol of a prosperous new year...I hope they're optimism proves true.

Tomorrow will be a long day since I have language classes and two area studies classes (8AM - 5:45 PM). I need some sleep.