Being in Beijing
Door: Jill Peters
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Jill
30 September 2013 | China, Peking
Keeping up a blog while being in such a great town as Beijng takes a lot of effort. It is an amazing city with lots of places to see and great people. That’s why I’m only typing this entry on the flight back to Amsterdam. It will be a long one, since I haven’t kept up since last Saturday, so almost a whole week.
Saturday: Confucius’ birthday
I arranged with people from the Longquan Monastery that I would be picked up at our hotel at 7.15 in the morning. André van der Braak and I were waiting in front of the hotel and when I called my contact, Doris, it turned out she had been standing a few meters away from us. There were five people in the car and one of them had also come to the Netherlands last June. Upon arriving at the monastery the first thing I saw was a great sign near our parking spot. The monastery is in a national park and to protect the environment there they have signs that read ‘no naked flames’.
We immediately went to a teaching of Venerable Wuguang, who told us that it was the Birthday of Confucius. Venerable Wuguang taught us a teaching of Confucius about the origin of humans. He said that humans were first gods with superpowers and they flew to all the corners of the earth. These gods however became greedy and they lost their glow and their superpowers, becoming human. Because they couldn’t fly anymore, they had to stay put and that’s why humans populate all different parts of the world. I was there with Maggie, Linda and Pavel. Maggie translated the lecture for me and also for Pavel, a Czech who wanted to become a volunteer at the monastery.
During lunchtime nobody speaks, because it is a time for contemplation. The serving of the food and indicating to the those serving how much food you would like to get all goes in silence by use of sign language. As a rule you have to eat everything that you get, to the last rice grain. After lunch Maggie and I went to pick some chestnuts at the organic farm that the monastery runs. They don’t use any chemicals, but they do have a special way to protect their harvest. In the middle of the farm they have a small patch were there’s just some weed and it’s called ‘hotel for our insect-friends’. Whenever they see a bug eating a plant they gently pick it up and carry it to the hotel. Picking the chestnuts was a lot of fun.
In the afternoon they showed an American movie that was called ‘Peaceful Warrior’. It was about a young gymnast who was very competitive and wanted to place himself for the Olympic games. He met an older guy who taught him as a master that he was not living in the moment. He made him both a better person and a better gymnast. A funny part was when they were both out on the streets late at night and they got robbed. When the robbers walked away with their wallet, the older man called out to the robbers to say they were forgetting something, namely their watches. And after that he offered them also their jackets, shoes and their other clothing and the two of them walked home in nothing but their socks and their underwear. After this there was a group discussion about the meaning of the movie.
After dinner I got invited to go with venerable Wuguang and follow his program. We also had a conversation about the teachings of that morning and the movie. He told me had never seen the movie before, but he liked it. What I found especially interesting to experience was a class for new instructors of teaching groups. He helped them with practical questions such as what I should do when there is someone in my group that is practicing and learning about Buddhism longer than me. His answer was that they should be confident, because they probably had studied Buddhism also in their previous life and so they could add this to their experience. I have great admiration for venerable Wuguang, because he not only has a great knowledge of Buddhism and can teach the Dharma to people himself, but can also give good practical teaching advice to others.
I slept in a dormitory just outside the temple grounds and we went to bed at 21.30 because we had to get up at 4 am the next morning for the morning chants.
Sunday: Wo ai Long Quan Si (I love Longquan temple)
We got up at 4 AM for the morning chants. All of this was in Chinese, so I didn’t understand the words, but by this time I was already able to recognize some the melodies. After this I was one of the volunteers for serving breakfast. At first I was very afraid to spill the food, but It turned out to be easier then I thought. It is actually a lot of fun to do, because people are very thankful and you get to see everybody that is present because you’re going round the tables.
We didn’t go to any teachings on Sunday, but stayed mostly in the office. I asked Linda and Maggie to teach me some Chinese sentences and words. I asked them to teach me something I was going to need in Beijing and they taught me (I don’t think the spelling is correct, but this is how It is pronounced)‘ wo bu jou, xiexie’. It means something like ‘I don’t need that, thank you’. It turned out to indeed be a golden phrase for my time in Beijing. All the illegal taxis, rickshaws and sellers immediately stopped asking if I needed their services when I said that. We also went to the temple shop and I went to see the Tibetan flags that are all hanging in one space between the trees. I went back at around 4 o’clock. It was an hours drive to the city, where I got dropped off at the subway station. I took the subway station to my hostel, but it was really hard to find. I knew the hostel had to be close, but my luggage was very heavy and nobody I asked knew where it was, so I got into a rickshaw. This was quite an experience and we had to double back a few times because the streets were blocked with cars. He dropped me of at the hostel, which I never would have found on my own, and I was very happy to finally have arrived. My hostel was called Hutongren and it means close to the Hutongs. It was a very nice little hostel that was not too small or too busy. It had the perfect size to communicate with everyone. That evening I only walked around a little bit in the vicinity of the hostels. It is a popular area with a lot of bars, food stands and little (souvenir)shops. I also had some traditional Chinese tea with the two girls that worked in the hostel and Erick, who was one of my roommates. The hostel was tea-themed, and every room had a different tea sort for a name.
Monday: Karaoke
On Monday I went to meet with two students of Renmin University. I had met Ya Weipeng earlier, the day of the expert meeting, and Miao Zhihui was the assistant of André van der Braak this year when he taught a summer course in Beijing. First at 9 AM, Ya Weipeng showed me around the campus. What I found really curious was how neatly all the bikes were parked. You saw them only in the assigned area, parked regularly with the same distance between them and above all, all the front wheels and handlebars were pointing the same way. In the Netherlands you only see them standing like this in a bicycle shop, and even there they are parked closer together.
After I took the tour, we went to attend a class from professor Weishan. It was a Sanskrit class and they were translating a sutra. He even was so nice to give half the class in English especially for me and he also got me an English version of the textbook they were using.
After the class we went to meet with Miao and had lunch in a restaurant on campus, we had fish and it was really good. I got to know them pretty well during the lunch and we exchanged experiences of student life in the Netherlands and in China. The biggest difference is that the students in China normally live in dorm rooms with 4 or 6 people. They study in the empty classrooms of the university, because you don’t have the space and the quiet to study in your own room. And then when a class starts, they just leave and find another one that is not in use at that time. I actually asked myself why it isn’t common use at VU University to use empty classrooms for this, because the study areas are always really full.
In the afternoon we went to a karaoke bar. This was a lot of fun. The Chinese almost only knew Chinese songs and of course I only knew English ones. Maybe there were five songs that we both knew. I enjoyed myself with singing golden oldies like the spice girls. Adele is supposedly very popular in Asia so we were all singing one of her songs very loudly. After the karaoke Miao and I went to the hutongs for some traditional Beijing food. First we had ‘lao Beijing swan nei’, which means ‘old Beijing yoghurt’. It is like drinking yoghurt and it tastes really good. We also got some stinky tofu on the streets, the smell is awful but it actually tastes quite nice. It is made from leftover pieces of old tofu and you can smell it in all the streets that have food stands. In a restaurant we ate bread with donkey meat on it, and I must say I really liked the taste of that. And we had jelly noodles and cucumber and I had some egg soup. It was great to get to know some tradition local food. After dinner I was really tired so we both went our own ways. This day was really a lot of fun!
(an update on the remaining days will follow tomorrow)
Saturday: Confucius’ birthday
I arranged with people from the Longquan Monastery that I would be picked up at our hotel at 7.15 in the morning. André van der Braak and I were waiting in front of the hotel and when I called my contact, Doris, it turned out she had been standing a few meters away from us. There were five people in the car and one of them had also come to the Netherlands last June. Upon arriving at the monastery the first thing I saw was a great sign near our parking spot. The monastery is in a national park and to protect the environment there they have signs that read ‘no naked flames’.
We immediately went to a teaching of Venerable Wuguang, who told us that it was the Birthday of Confucius. Venerable Wuguang taught us a teaching of Confucius about the origin of humans. He said that humans were first gods with superpowers and they flew to all the corners of the earth. These gods however became greedy and they lost their glow and their superpowers, becoming human. Because they couldn’t fly anymore, they had to stay put and that’s why humans populate all different parts of the world. I was there with Maggie, Linda and Pavel. Maggie translated the lecture for me and also for Pavel, a Czech who wanted to become a volunteer at the monastery.
During lunchtime nobody speaks, because it is a time for contemplation. The serving of the food and indicating to the those serving how much food you would like to get all goes in silence by use of sign language. As a rule you have to eat everything that you get, to the last rice grain. After lunch Maggie and I went to pick some chestnuts at the organic farm that the monastery runs. They don’t use any chemicals, but they do have a special way to protect their harvest. In the middle of the farm they have a small patch were there’s just some weed and it’s called ‘hotel for our insect-friends’. Whenever they see a bug eating a plant they gently pick it up and carry it to the hotel. Picking the chestnuts was a lot of fun.
In the afternoon they showed an American movie that was called ‘Peaceful Warrior’. It was about a young gymnast who was very competitive and wanted to place himself for the Olympic games. He met an older guy who taught him as a master that he was not living in the moment. He made him both a better person and a better gymnast. A funny part was when they were both out on the streets late at night and they got robbed. When the robbers walked away with their wallet, the older man called out to the robbers to say they were forgetting something, namely their watches. And after that he offered them also their jackets, shoes and their other clothing and the two of them walked home in nothing but their socks and their underwear. After this there was a group discussion about the meaning of the movie.
After dinner I got invited to go with venerable Wuguang and follow his program. We also had a conversation about the teachings of that morning and the movie. He told me had never seen the movie before, but he liked it. What I found especially interesting to experience was a class for new instructors of teaching groups. He helped them with practical questions such as what I should do when there is someone in my group that is practicing and learning about Buddhism longer than me. His answer was that they should be confident, because they probably had studied Buddhism also in their previous life and so they could add this to their experience. I have great admiration for venerable Wuguang, because he not only has a great knowledge of Buddhism and can teach the Dharma to people himself, but can also give good practical teaching advice to others.
I slept in a dormitory just outside the temple grounds and we went to bed at 21.30 because we had to get up at 4 am the next morning for the morning chants.
Sunday: Wo ai Long Quan Si (I love Longquan temple)
We got up at 4 AM for the morning chants. All of this was in Chinese, so I didn’t understand the words, but by this time I was already able to recognize some the melodies. After this I was one of the volunteers for serving breakfast. At first I was very afraid to spill the food, but It turned out to be easier then I thought. It is actually a lot of fun to do, because people are very thankful and you get to see everybody that is present because you’re going round the tables.
We didn’t go to any teachings on Sunday, but stayed mostly in the office. I asked Linda and Maggie to teach me some Chinese sentences and words. I asked them to teach me something I was going to need in Beijing and they taught me (I don’t think the spelling is correct, but this is how It is pronounced)‘ wo bu jou, xiexie’. It means something like ‘I don’t need that, thank you’. It turned out to indeed be a golden phrase for my time in Beijing. All the illegal taxis, rickshaws and sellers immediately stopped asking if I needed their services when I said that. We also went to the temple shop and I went to see the Tibetan flags that are all hanging in one space between the trees. I went back at around 4 o’clock. It was an hours drive to the city, where I got dropped off at the subway station. I took the subway station to my hostel, but it was really hard to find. I knew the hostel had to be close, but my luggage was very heavy and nobody I asked knew where it was, so I got into a rickshaw. This was quite an experience and we had to double back a few times because the streets were blocked with cars. He dropped me of at the hostel, which I never would have found on my own, and I was very happy to finally have arrived. My hostel was called Hutongren and it means close to the Hutongs. It was a very nice little hostel that was not too small or too busy. It had the perfect size to communicate with everyone. That evening I only walked around a little bit in the vicinity of the hostels. It is a popular area with a lot of bars, food stands and little (souvenir)shops. I also had some traditional Chinese tea with the two girls that worked in the hostel and Erick, who was one of my roommates. The hostel was tea-themed, and every room had a different tea sort for a name.
Monday: Karaoke
On Monday I went to meet with two students of Renmin University. I had met Ya Weipeng earlier, the day of the expert meeting, and Miao Zhihui was the assistant of André van der Braak this year when he taught a summer course in Beijing. First at 9 AM, Ya Weipeng showed me around the campus. What I found really curious was how neatly all the bikes were parked. You saw them only in the assigned area, parked regularly with the same distance between them and above all, all the front wheels and handlebars were pointing the same way. In the Netherlands you only see them standing like this in a bicycle shop, and even there they are parked closer together.
After I took the tour, we went to attend a class from professor Weishan. It was a Sanskrit class and they were translating a sutra. He even was so nice to give half the class in English especially for me and he also got me an English version of the textbook they were using.
After the class we went to meet with Miao and had lunch in a restaurant on campus, we had fish and it was really good. I got to know them pretty well during the lunch and we exchanged experiences of student life in the Netherlands and in China. The biggest difference is that the students in China normally live in dorm rooms with 4 or 6 people. They study in the empty classrooms of the university, because you don’t have the space and the quiet to study in your own room. And then when a class starts, they just leave and find another one that is not in use at that time. I actually asked myself why it isn’t common use at VU University to use empty classrooms for this, because the study areas are always really full.
In the afternoon we went to a karaoke bar. This was a lot of fun. The Chinese almost only knew Chinese songs and of course I only knew English ones. Maybe there were five songs that we both knew. I enjoyed myself with singing golden oldies like the spice girls. Adele is supposedly very popular in Asia so we were all singing one of her songs very loudly. After the karaoke Miao and I went to the hutongs for some traditional Beijing food. First we had ‘lao Beijing swan nei’, which means ‘old Beijing yoghurt’. It is like drinking yoghurt and it tastes really good. We also got some stinky tofu on the streets, the smell is awful but it actually tastes quite nice. It is made from leftover pieces of old tofu and you can smell it in all the streets that have food stands. In a restaurant we ate bread with donkey meat on it, and I must say I really liked the taste of that. And we had jelly noodles and cucumber and I had some egg soup. It was great to get to know some tradition local food. After dinner I was really tired so we both went our own ways. This day was really a lot of fun!
(an update on the remaining days will follow tomorrow)
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