Trip to China - day 4

29.06.2014

We visited Gouzijian museum – a museum of the place where future Chinese officials and scholars studied at the time of Qing dynasty. Near it, the Temple of Confucius is situated. Lots of old trees (older than 300 years) and some more glimpses into Chinese tradition. For example, we’ve learnt that the Emperors of China expressed their respect for Confucius by putting inscriptions made by their hands in the temple.

The statue of Confucius in front of the temple.

His arms are put into the position similar to symbol 人 (rén – people), this represents close relationship between learning and being (or becoming) a human. The sword he holds under his arm tells us that in ancient China teachers (and Chinese perceive him primarily as a great teacher) didn’t just work with knowledge (books etc.) but also taught martial arts (at least, that’s what our guide said about this issue).

The Capital museum in Beijing gave us an opportunity to introduce ourselves to the history of Beijing, examples of Buddhism statues, porcelain and costumes for Pekin opera.

The silk market. Haggling with sellers even though all the shops have the following sticker:

If you can’t get the price 3-5 times less than the one they tell you first, you’re definitely overpaying. They will tell you this is the price, but for you... 3-5 times less than the price "specially for you".

The day finished with a great acrobatic show at Chaoyang theatre. We had to pay for the ticket separately but it was really worth that.

Oh, one more thing. I’ve finally overcome The Great Firewall of China. Not that I really needed to access my Gmail and Facebook (interestingly, Microsoft hosted emails like Hotmail or Outlook.com aren’t blocked), but it’s always better to stay connected. VPN solves the problem, but my Lancaster University VPN account has recently expired. Therefore, I’m going to use another person’s VPN connection. Before that, I had to call home via Skype (which is also not blocked) and ask them to do whatever I needed to for me.

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