An Airport Is Still Around Me

Our Last Day in China: Day 3 of Beijing

 

August 6, 2015

By Sarah Ann

 

Today, we hired a tour guide. After my mom dragged us three kids (Taylor was sick) around Beijing by herself on Tuesday, she said she was too “fried” to do that again. Our tour guide met us at our apartment and we rode the subway to the Lama Temple. The reason it’s called the Lama Temple is not because there are llamas in it. It’s because in Tibetan Buddhism the leaders are lamas and this is a Tibetan Buddhist temple – the largest one outside of Tibet, in fact.

We saw a lot of Buddhas there including the Buddha that is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest wooden Buddha in the world. It was so big that they had to build the temple around the Buddha. It is 27 meters tall.

The largest wooden Buddha in the world

Next we went to a Confucius temple. Confucianism isn’t a religions – it’s a way of living. One of the things Confucius taught was to honor your parents.

A family picture in front of Confusious with a random little Chinese girl whose mother insisted she join us so she could take a picture too

As he was showing us around, our guide had a lot to say about Chinese politics and about Mao. He said he thought Mao was the devil although he knew many people thought Mao was a great man who just made some mistakes. Many of the cultural and historical sites in China were damaged or destroyed under the orders of Mao during the Cultural Revolution. He said Mao was greedy and mostly cared about keeping his power – not like George Washington who was a great man and wanted to serve his country. Since 2006 he won’t read or listen to Chinese media because it’s all controlled by the government – and it’s all just fake. He bought the (illegal) software that allows him to access blocked internet sites and that’s where he gets all his news now. He says China is not free. He talked about the protests at Tiananmen Square that happened years ago. He said at first the government wouldn’t admit they happened but he read about it and saw the pictures from international reporters. He said that most people in China think they should be friends with Russia but he thinks this is bad. He thinks China should be friends more with the US. He also said that he believes – and hopes – that in his lifetime China will get rid of communism and finally be free.

After eating lunch at a little Chinese restaurant, we walked through some hutongs – the traditional Chinese neighborhoods. The neighborhoods had narrow streets and traditional buildings. Our guide taught us a little about the houses. They each had a threshold – something you had to step over to get into the house. It was because they thought evil spirits were low to the ground and couldn’t step over the threshold and so it would keep them out. We got cotton candy at a little street shop. After that, we got some souvenirs. There was a lady playing some music outside a music shop and my dad told me to dance to it so I Irish danced in the street. As I was dancing, a summer camp of kids came and started watching me. When I finished, they asked Rachel, my mom, and me to do their dance with them for a video. They sang and danced to a famous Chinese little kid song about apples and we followed along.

Here we’re singing with a Chinese summer camp in the hutong

We went home and packed our bags to go to the airport. Our flight was going to leave at 1 a.m. on Friday, but we were going to land on Thursday evening. Amazing.

I’m really going to miss China. Don’t stop reading yet though. We don’t get home until August 17 and we are still going to visit Hawaii as well as Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, and Redwoods National Parks.