Saturday and our day to split up the group and head off to our individual school experiences. We spent the morning at the Temple of Heaven of the Forbidden City Ming and Qing Dynasties. The entire 500 acres of the Temple is considered a park and requires a fee to enter. The most amazing activities were taking place inside the Temple grounds. The retirement age of people in China is relatively young. Women can retire at 55 and the men can retire at 60. Once they retire their children help support them and the retirees need to find ways to occupy themselves during the day. They have the most wonderful solution and that is that they spend a great deal of their day together in places like the Temple grounds. There are five such places which are considered treasured locations. In these treasured location, the retirees participate in activities to keep themselves fit both body and mind!!! There were many groups of people playing foot or paddle games, dancing, singing, playing cards, dominoes, knitting, gymnastics and just about anything you could imagine. Please look at today's pictures to see examples of their activities. I had a chance to participate in many some exercise with the gentlemen and a ball and paddle game. This was the best part of my day. It did not matter that we did not speak the same language, we appreciated each other's skill or strength without words.
The Temple of Heaven was the a place of worship to heaven built by the Ming Dynasty. The Temple Halls were similar in design and ornamentation to the entire Forbidden City. Again the of the grounds and halls were very large and ceremonial. I enjoyed visiting the buildings but not nearly as much as the interaction with the Chinese people while there. A group of students wanted their picture taken with me because they thought I looked a cool American. At least that is what the translator told me. They probably just wanted to post the weird looking bald guy picture on their websites;)
I boarded a China Southern Airlines plane at 4:00pm for the city of Wuhan. Landed in Wuhan at about 6:00pm and was greeted by Mr. Li, one of his English teachers Echo and a friend of Mr. Li's who had a larger car. We put the baggage in the car and were off. We had about a 40 minute drive to Xiaogan. It began to get dark by 7:00pm which was pretty early for me. It was hard to see the countryside in the dark. I am sure we will have much more time to see the country. In the rural areas like Wuhan, very few people speak any English. Echo, the English teacher, is pretty good at English, but I see it will be hard for us to communicate the rest of the week.
The driving on the roads is totally different. We drove pretty fast the entire way and the signs and painted lines on the road had little meaning and rules were not followed as severely as in America. Even though the road situation seemed like very busy and different than what I am used to, the Chinese people just use their horns a lot and never seem to get in accidents. We stopped for dinner once we reached Xiaogan. We were greeted by Mr. Li's wife and taken upstairs in the restaurant. Mr. Li ordered for the whole table and we waited for dinner. The dinner menu was donkey meat, cabbage and peanuts, beef and chicken dumplings and fish. After dinner we went to the Xiaogan hotel where I would be staying for the week.
Things are going to get very interesting in the countryside where they don't speak English. I am sure the English teachers will do a good job of translating when they are available. More to come.
You can have the night off from questions again because I am too tired to think of any at the moment.
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