Temple of Heaven

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We had gone to Temple of Heaven earlier that day.  You can wiki it if you’re interested, but basically the emperor moved in and wanted a crazy awesome place to worship or whatever so he made this incredibly and elaborate temple.  The tiles on the ceiling are blue to connect it with heaven (usually they’re yellow for the earth) (we couldn’t go inside anyway) (it’s only wood and has no nails which is kinda cool) (but we couldn’t tell, we just heard).

 

The park around the Temple was nice though.  Old people just go there all the time to have fun – seriously, even if it weren’t for tourists they would be there.  Some practice singing and we saw a bunch of them.  There was a row of maybe a dozen or so playing Chinese Chess two at a time.  Some were playing a game kind of like hacky-sack except for with a big feathery thing instead.  I asked Benny what the name of the game was and he said, in his deep almost-Russian voice, “It’s called:  Kicking de Shuttlecock.”  Someone else was there and we smiled at the grandeur in his voice.  He told me the Chinese name but I’ve forgotten it.  I think it was two syllables.  We played with some of the older people in the park.  I was alright at it, but couldn’t do the tricky kicks like they could.  One of them realized I was okay and went back and forth with me a lot and tried to help me do it right, but I never really got it.  They were really really good and agile for people their age.  I mean, they may have easily been 80 years old and they were still rocking this thing.  And there were tons of them in the park.  My group played with one who was very tall and bald and another shorter one who looked a bit younger and had black hair still.  Both were wearing blue.

 

At one point I was walking in the front of the group following Benny.  I think he could sense I wasn’t really enjoying the place, and he grabbed me by the arm and said in his deep almost-Russian voice, “So what’s up.”  He said what’s up but I knew he was really asking if I was having a good time or not and what he could do to make it better.  I wasn’t really ready for it though.  It was very assertive of him.  He had a lot of confidence to do it, which was cool.  But I just told him I was doing fine and just trying to soak it all in, which was a load of crap, but what the hell else was I going to say?  I couldn’t tell him I didn’t really want to do so much sight-seeing or that I wished I could learn Mandarin in the next three minutes.  Oh well.