Happy Year of the Snake: Temple Fair Mania

The Chinese New Year is here! Last Saturday night we inaugurated the Year of the Snake with a few happy fire crackers, and the next day we did the traditional Chinese thing: Go to a temple fair. 

 

Temple fairs are big fairs, with food, games, and performances, that take place at a lot of temples and other locations across town. The first few pictures here are from the Daguanyuan temple fair in southwest Beijing.

 

Lots of games...

 

...and snacks. The boys are eating delicious tomatoes (Simon) or mixed fruit (Thomas) on a stick, dipped in caramel sauce. Yum!

 

One particularly lovely sight at all the temple fairs are the children, bundled up in about five million jackets (give or take a few) and usually with animal hats! 

 

Party rockin' in the house!

 
We bought some of these delicious peanut bars and sesame crackers. They are really just gigantic slates of sugar with peanuts thrown into them. Delish, though I don't know if they'll appear on any kind of diet any time soon.

 

Above the lake was a tightrope performance. Never seen a guy bike across a lake on a rope in the blistering cold. :-).

 
Guards on duty.

 
Paparazzi are everywhere... Our blond boys are always invited into lots of pictures.

 
Spring came early this year...  No, the flowers everywhere are actually all fake! It looks lovely though :-)

  
In between temple fairs we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. I just thought I had to show you the sign at the ladies' bathroom: "Don't step onto the WC please". Please no! This is of course because people who are used to squatting might be inclined to take that same technique to a toilet seat half a meter from the ground. This might actually be a balancing act better than the tightrope walking at the fair!

 
We continue our entertainment at a second temple fair. This one is at the Dongyue temple, a daoist temple in northeast Beijing.

 
We buy and put up these red good-luck charms. (To buy the little tablets: 10 RMB, to have endless prosperity: priceless.)

 
More lovely decorations and wrapped children.

 
Simon and Thomas try their hand at some games and other activities. On the right behind them you see a whole wall of those red good-luck charms that people have put up.

 
We watched some great performances. This kid was doing things we had also seen big performers at the famous Shanghai Circus World do!

 

The temple itself was very interesting too. There were many small rooms (such as the one in the photo on the right) that showed particular aspects of Taoist believes in great detail. Mr. Frog had something to do with the gods from the water world. I prayed he would not show up in my bathroom anytime soon. 

 
On the way out, Simon climbs the Mt. Everest and we see this older man contemplate the traffic.
  
We're done with temple fairs for the day and head home. I just had to take a picture of the empty roads! Because everyone goes home for Chinese New Year, Beijing gets pretty deserted with only the true locals (and some lost Dutch Americans) hanging around. It's a great time for getting around!

In het Nederlands: Zondagochtend is hier het Chinese nieuwjaar, het jaar van de slang, begonnen. We mogen nog 15 dagen lang vuurwerk afsteken, dus daar hadden we niet zo'n haast mee. Wel gingen we meteen op zondag naar twee leuke "temple fairs". Een temple fair is een soort kermis bij een tempel, met spelletjes, eten en voorstellingen. Dat is gezellig en als het goed is brengt het ook een hoop geluk!

Panda World

On our recent vacation in Chengdu (see also the story about Leshan Buddha) we visited the Chengdu panda reserve. We had registered as "volunteers" for the day, so when we arrived a friendly member of the education staff took us to the panda area.

The panda's were amazing on all accounts. They are cute and adorable and kind of weird looking in their black and white outfits. Apparently though, they are not too bright. And from what I learned from the zoo keepers it seems a wonder they they are surviving at all...

Of course, as we all know, their habitat--the wild bamboo forests--are rapidly disappearing and that is their biggest problem. But their physiology is also not helping the survival of the species. Because of their bamboo diet, they apparently don't have a lot of energy to do anything at all. So they just eat and sleep, eat and sleep... with very little energy left to have sex perhaps a few times per year. This means that in a year, there are just not that many opportunities to create descendants. And even if a panda becomes pregnant and a panda cub is born, the cub's chances of survival are small.

But we quickly forgot about all these depressing details when we fed and played with the pandas. They seemed fun-loving animals and definitely enjoyed the apples we give them on a stick.

We fed them apples...

We cleaned up their bamboo. (If the panda's don't finish their bamboo, it's taken out of their cages and replaced with fresh bamboo. They are picky eaters and will only eat the fresh stuff. Every day, loads and loads of fresh bamboo from the mountain areas around Chengdu are wheeled into the panda reserve.)

We read a book with panda. 

We felt his fur. 

In het Nederlands: Tijdens onze vakantie in Chengdu, in de provincie Sichuan, een aantal weken geleden, gingen we ook op bezoek bij de panda's. Wat een mooie dieren. Maar het is geen wonder dat ze met uitsterven bedreigd worden. Niet alleen gaat hun habitat (ze eten alleen bamboe) eraan, maar ze hebben gewoon bijzonder weinig sex (dat kost te veel energy en dat kan je je dan op basis van die bamboe niet vaak veroorloven) en als er al een kleintje komt heeft die ook bijzonder weinig overlevingskansen. Maar de panda's die wij zagen maakten het goed, zoals je op de foto's ziet. 

Red Hot and Beautiful

Earlier this week I was in large department shore, and I just want to show you what the New Years section looks like:



There are red products everywhere! In just another week, on Saturday February 9, the Chinese calendar will turn a leaf and we'll be in the Year of the Snake. Wearing red will bring good luck.

 
Red bras and red fish.

 
Some more fish and little red envelopes used to hand out hongbao's (literally, red bags) with money as a good luck gift for friends.

 
Candy world.

 
Should I be wearing this?

In my backyard, winter has set in again. My little red lanterns bring in just a little bit of color!

In het Nederlands: Het Chinese nieuwe jaar begint volgende week zaterdag. Dat betekent veel vuurwerk en veel rode spullen: zakjes, BH's, kaarten, lampionnetjes, noem maar op. Alles is feestelijk rood want dat brengt geluk!

[H2O]3

On a recent pollution day, I went on a field trip with Simon's class to the National Aquatics Center, better known as the "Water Cube." In 2008 the cube was the site of the Olympic swimming competition in Beijing.

I had seen the Cube already a million times from the outside, but had never gone in.

Turns out, it is a pretty awesome structure. The outside of the building contains no less than 3100 "pillows," which are those irregular, puffy things that are morphed together to form the cube.

The pillows are made of a plastic called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, which apparently even at 0.2 mm of thickness (1/125th of an inch, for you Americans) is sturdy enough to not break and keep in  heat. Apparently you can drive a car over these plastic pillows (sadly we did not get to try) without them breaking.  The ETFE also lets in more light and heat than regular glass, which reduces energy consumption. I might consider cladding my own home in ETFE pillows!

A cube of ETFE pillows.

Obviously the pillows or bubbles represent water.

Technically, the building is not a cube, but a "rectangular box" (a cuboid), but I think only Wikipedia dares to point out the difference.

Where the swimmers went next.


The Olympic Pool. Site of 65 new Olympic swimming records and 25 world swimming records.



The diving area. I considered a plunge.


Simon (in red jacket) and his class mates listening to a presentation about the pool.


The roof. I checked, and no bubbles are the same.


Checking the strength of the pillows. Sadly we did not bring our car to drive over it.


The cube when it was under construction.

Today the Aquatics Center has an indoor wave pool with some pretty cool equipment.

I get dizzy looking at it :-)

The viewing terrace to view the Olympic records of the recreational swimmers.


The beach master himself.

The Beijing National Stadium, or Bird's Nest, is just across the street. The Water Cube and Birds Nest together reflect ancient Chinese architecture, with the circular Nest representing heaven and the square Cube representing earth.

In het Nederlands: Vorige week was ik met Simon's class op bezoek bij het Olympisch zwembad, de "Water Cube." Het gebouw heeft een mooie architectuur. De bubbels die je ziet zijn allemaal plastic kussentjes, bijeengehouden in een stalen frame. De Water Cube staat dichtbij het andere beroemde Olympische stadion, de "Bird's Nest." 

Leshan Buddha

China is home to a couple giant Buddha's. And when I say giant, I mean giant. I guess to be sure that the Buddha will look kindly upon your mortal soul, you better build (or carve) him big enough to be spotted from space. There are for example some huge Buddha carvings in Datong (near Beijing (hint hint), Luoyang, and in Leshan.

Just south of Chengdu (meaning a two and a half hour drive), visiting Leshan was a perfect day-trip on our recent visit to Sichuan Province and Chengdu, and of course we went to see the famous and humongous "Leshan Buddha." 

What I loved about this place was actually the story surrounding it. The version that I was told--as we were climbing down on the right side of his body--is that a monk, Mr. Haitong, with great energy and inspiration started raising funds in 713 AD for his idea to build a Buddha, which he thought would bring calm and safety to the wild and crazy water currents of the convergence of the Ming, Dadu, and Qingyi rivers in front of it. 

Lo and behold, after many years of work and 71 meters of carvings, a benign and rock-solid Buddha appeared on the shore. And as the works had progressed, the rivers had actually calmed down because of all the rocks and sands sliding into the river from the construction. A miracle! The Buddha didn't even have to use his build-in safety features; the mere construction of him already had brought peace to the river.

What a great story. However, when I just read this other version, A Short History of the Leshan Giant Buddha, I realized that Mr. Haitong might have started the whole project knowing very well that the construction of it would slow down the river. Or as the article says, it was a "half-flood control, half-religious project." I suppose that takes a little bit away from the miracle of the Buddha, but it does show incredible foresight by the monk (not to mention an apt for marketing techniques, if you read the article) to be able to solve a flood-control problem and at the same time use it as a way of funding his desire to honor the Buddha!

The monk didn't live to see the final result, but exactly 90 years after the project was started, the statue was finished in 803 AD. In 2012 AD, a bunch of Dutch tourists came see it with their own eyes.

The three Buddha's.

For a sense of scale. The boat in the foreground is not a toy.

Captain Haddock and the Buddha.

Buddha and Goofball.

In het Nederlands: Van de zomer waren we op bezoek bij de Grote Boeddha van Leshan, in de provincie Sichuan in het mid-westen van China. Wat een monster! Samen met nog zo'n duizend andere toeristen daal je een smal trapje af, van het rechteroor van de Boeddha naar z'n teen, en dan weer omhoog. Maar mooi is het wel. Ook leuk is het dat door de constructie van de Boeddha, en dan met name door alle stenen die in het water vielen, de rivier een stuk rustiger werd en er dus minder schepen vergingen dan voorheen. Dat is nog eens een effectief beeld!

There and Back Again

Friends,

It has been a long time since my last post. I know that you have been craving news from Beijing. This time though, I think the international media already informed you of our recent happenings: air quality in Beijing has been at an all-time low the last few weeks. (Can those Olympic Games perhaps come back again?)

Having been here two years, I don't really look up from an index that is 200-300 (considered "very unhealthy" by the U.S. EPA air quality index) or even 300-400 (already in the "hazardous" zone), but when last week Saturday the index rocketed to a 682 "beyond index" score, even I had to do a double-take.

"Beyond Index" !  (This is a screenshot from my iPhone.) 

Luckily, today is already so much better. Only 435, so at least we are back on the index:

And here is a picture of what this kind of pollution looks like. The photo below is Beijing Riviera around 11:30 am today. Despite the nice Chinese New Year decorations (the year of the snake is about to start in two weeks) our neighborhood looks kind of dreary.

Even though this very informative article by the World Resources Institute explains that Beijing's air pollution isn't so much a result of the rapid increase in cars on the Beijing roads, I would like to report that I saw a very suspicious driver on the streets this week. (Child protection services: I don't know who the boy is, but I think his parents are otherwise very responsible.)

In het Nederlands: Het nieuws had Nederland ook al wel bereikt denk ik: de afgelopen weken hebben we weer een goede hoeveelheid smog mogen inademen. (Zie bijvoorbeeld dit artikel: "Beijing, lucht meer vervuild dan meetbaar". Ik kan niet genoeg zeggen dat we in een jaar toch ook wel ontzettend veel mooie dagen hebben, maar deze vuile nevel is natuurlijk geen pleziertje. Onze wijk is mooi versierd voor het Chinese Nieuwjaar dat binnenkort begint, maar door de luchtverontreiniging ziet het er allemaal toch wat troosteloos uit!