What a weekend! Work kept us busy with all these fun activities. Thursday night was our karaoke/office “Idol” competition (First #1) — which I am proud to say, my roommate has made it to the final round based on his performance of Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut.”
Then Friday afternoon, we boarded a bus to Hongluo Mountain for a work retreat (First #2). We were also given 170 kuai to spend at the hotel, which bought me two games of bowling, a round (?) of archery (First #3) and a 30 minute back massage (First #4), with almost 40 kuai leftover. That doesn’t include the joy of having my coworkers’ company nor the joy of making new friends with the folks at the railway bureau in the Song and Dance Room. Now they knew how to do karaoke.
The next morning, we began ascending the mountain bright and early. There is also a Buddhist temple near the foot of the mountain and a Tian Men (Heaven’s Gate) at the very top. Rather stupidly, I was ill-prepared. I should have known Chinese mountains (First #5) are not like American mountains. There are no cutbacks and footpaths; rather, there are stairs more or less straight to the top. St. Peter wasn’t there to greet me when I made it, either.
But the real adventure was coming down the mountain. There was an “Alpine Coaster” about half-way up the mountain, and the name pretty much says it all. They strap people into these individual cars and then link the cars together to form a train. A guy in the first car works the breaks, and luckily for us, our driver’s breaks were broken. It was like a real roller coaster!
Today, Chris and I checked out the Silk Market and South Chaoyang District. We got badminton gear and played some pick-up badminton (First #6) at The Place, which was actually a really cool place to be. The Place is a shopping mall, I think, with mostly Western clothing stores; I saw a Zara, Guess, Jack n Jones, Mango and French Connection. But there are these three or four giant LCD screens covering a huge open plaza where kids and their parents were throwing these big disks. Essentially, each of these discs is made of plastic balloon stuff wrapped around a hoola hoop with a little bit of air inside. A grand staircase overlooking the plaza provided a great place for couples and friends to sit and people-watch. Also, a Juice Avenue stand had really kick-ass Hong Kong-style boba. It was a great night at The Place.
That’s another thing about China that I love: People go outside and hang out at night. Not at a bar or a friend’s house, but just outside — on the sidewalks, in the hutongs, on the outdoor plaza of some shopping mall. They’ll throw around some cheap toy, play pickup badminton or a game a chess, or just talk — in Chinese, they call it liao tian (??), or chatting the day away. It’s a sense of camaraderie and of simple pleasures that completely erases all notion of an earlier time when business and brusqueness ruled the day. It’s where you discover the heart of the Chinese.