Trip to Beihai and Jingshan Park

My classmates and I went to Beihai and Jingshan Park last Friday. These parks are directly behind the Forbidden City and were where the Emperor could hang out and do some boating and walking around. By the way, the Forbidden City was the residence of the emperors during the last two dynasties, the Ming and Qing Periods. The Forbidden City housed the Emperor, 3000 of his wives or concubines and eunuchs. Supposedly several of these women never actually met the emperor and died virgins. The last emperor of the Ming period hung himself in Jingshan Park before another army broke into the city, establishing the Qing Dynasty and a new line of emperors. There is a stone in the park marking the spot. There is a large hill in Jingshan Park. There are differing stories on how that hill was created. One story goes that it was created from all the trash coming out of the Forbidden City.

Internet access in our building has been out of service for about 5 days. It is a reminder of how the Internet has become a part of my life. Not being able to get or send e-mail, not to mention read the news about what's happening in the world can start to become uncomfortable. I can find an Internet Café if this state of affairs continues.

The weather has become colder and colder. Especially in the morning, then it warms up by the mid-afternoon. This is typical of continental weather that I learned about last year in my Physical Geography class. The ground absorbs and releases heat faster than water. So, Beijing, which is further inland, absorbs heat quickly during the day and warms up, but at night easily gives up its warmth and cools down quickly, much like Phoenix. Thus, the day and night temperature difference is wider than places that are surrounded by water, such as Hawaii.

I have a water bottle. There is a hot water machine on every floor of the dorm. The water that comes out is always boiling hot. You have to let it cool down before you can drink it. I put some dried tea leaves in the bottle and pour in the hot water to make tea. Besides wearing lots of clothes and keeping warm, green tea seems to be good for my throat and help fend off getting a cold. I hear a lot of students coughing and I want to avoid getting a cold as much as possible. I also try to have a bowl of noodles regularly. I think a hot bowl of noodles is like chicken soup, it warms up your body and is easy on the digestion. Another means of trying to stay healthy.

I did see a sight that creeped me out yesterday. A giant rack of meat hanging from the inside of a small van. The van was outside of a cafeteria I eat at occasionally. The meat was exposed to the sun, uncovered. The van was not any kind of ice-truck designed for the transportation of meat or any other frozen goods, but rather had carpeting on the floor and looked like any regular van, with a spare tire and other tools thrown in the back. But there it was, a giant rack of meat, like what you might see at meat packing factory, all red and white. The van's back door was open and it was just exposed to the elements. And I had just walked out of that cafeteria with three "Roubao", or steamed meat muffins. However, as you can imagine, those meat muffins didn't go down as tastefully as they had in the past.

I am listening to the Chinese pop music station right now. In the last song, the singer kept saying something about Tic Tac Toe. Chinese pop sounds just like American pop music except the lyrics are in Chinese with occasional foreign words thrown in. Some sound like rip-offs of American songs, but I am not a music industry expert like my uncle James!

Did I mention before that I spent some hours at the foreign language bookstore over the last vacation? I couldn't afford to buy some of the books I wanted, so I just sat in the store and read a few. One book I really liked was called Thinking Strategically. I learned the first rule of strategic thinking, when the moves of the players are sequential, is to 1)Look Ahead and 2)Reason Back. That may seem difficult, but its just like the game of Chess or Checkers. You first think about your next move, how the opponent might respond, and then your next move, their response, your next move and so on. That sounds simple enough. However, sometimes a game such as Chess can have many potential moves. With so many potential moves available it's difficult for your mind to calculate all of them far ahead. So you next use your experience and judgments about what will be in your favor, what position will be potentially most advantageous to you in the future of the game, and finally make your moves now accordingly.

Now I can try to apply that idea to my life. Map out the potential moves I can make in the future. I can't map out all of them to infinity, but go out as far as I can. Then look at which ones look the most advantageous and favorable based on my experience and judgment. Finally make a decision about what to do for the future.