jiayan

Today, my Hanyu class went to Beijing Botanical Garden. Only 8 students – including me – and the professor went but I think overall we had a lot of fun. We met up at the South East Gate at 8:30 AM and left for the bus stop around 9 AM. After an hour bus ride we arrived at Beijing Botanical Garden. The Botanical Garden is located in the suburbs of Beijing and has a very serene atmosphere. The Botanical Garden is huge and even though we spent about 6 hours in there, we only visited a few places. But the best part is that the admission fee is only 2.50RMB for students – a very inexpensive way to have fun and explore more of Beijing!

We first went to the Memorial of Cao Xueqin, who is famous for writing Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦-hong lou meng) – one of China’s four classic novels. Some people who visited this memorial would write how they feel about the exhibit and those words were also displayed in an exhibit. There were also two kittens that the 服务员 were playing with and it turns out that they were giving away those two kittens – probably because there are too many cats in the garden).

Next we walked through the Cherry Valley trial. The Cherry Valley is located near the Shou’an Mountain, providing good scenic views. Seven Temples were built near around the Cherry Valley but only three remains today, which are Guanghui Nunnery, Yuantong Temple, and Puji Temple. As we walked through the Cherry Valley, we saw the Yuanbao rock, Origin of Spring, and December 9th Pavilion.

The last site we went to was the Penjing Garden. According to our professor, it used to be free admission to see this garden but now the admission fee is 2RMB. This garden displayed bonsai trees of many forms and age. There was one tree that was over 1300 years old and had several wires “holding” up the branches. Some trees had two branches that would intertwine or leaves that had both red, green, and yellow leaf colors. If we had came a week or two earlier, the sights probably would’ve been a lot prettier because of the changing leaves color. Most of the leaves had already fallen off by the time we visited.

After the Penjing Garden, we agreed to call it a day. Outside of the Penjing Garden were four middle-aged women dancing, which was a nice entertainment to watch. It was clear one of them was the teacher and the other three were learning from her. The teacher was a really good dancer too! Stephanie took a video and I’ll try to upload that if I figure out how to do that. We took the bus back to Beida after that and ate a restaurant outside the West Gate. I didn’t take any pictures with my camera since the focus does not seem to be working, but once I get pictures from my classmates, I will upload them.

提到童年对我的影响，我认为最重要的是，给了我独立的个性。我六岁从中国去了美国。到了美国，我父母一直很努力工作。他们两个都在同一尖的服装工厂打工。为了我和我两个姐姐的将来，他们没有时间照顾我们。从小都是保姆还有别的亲戚照顾我们。所以我们的性格很独立。有时候我觉得很奇怪，平时没有父母管理的孩子很淘气。但是我和我的姐姐还很听父母的话。我跟我姐姐谈过，我们觉得缘故是我们看到父母为了我们这样辛苦地打工。工厂工作很繁重，赚钱很难而且工资又低。他们常很晚回家，周末也不休息，我们也很懂事。 不经常见父母，我和我姐姐的关系很亲，尤其我和我双胞胎姐姐。小的时侯我们什么都是一起做的。我是个执拗人，跟她吵架的时候，她都会让我赢得每次争执。如果我有什么困难她都会支持我或是帮我解决。

虽然我往往不看见父母，但是他们对我的学习很有兴趣，总是比较我和我姐姐的成绩。我记得我很讨厌这个压力，但是我也要感谢他们。没有他们给我压力，我应该不会这么认真学习。有一次，六年级，我在写作竞赛获得优胜，得到了一张奖状和25美金的奖励。我父母工作太忙，不可以陪我去。一个图书馆员代替我父母参加颁奖仪式。坐车回家的时侯，她跟我说：“你父母一定是很骄傲你的成就，他们会认为你长大了，这晚上他们一定会让你洗碗。”听到她的话，我觉得很有趣。从小我和我姐姐已经承担很多家务，洗衣服，洗碗，做饭，拖地，什么的。对我来说，洗碗已经是家常便饭。

后来，我父母 仍然不是很看重我的成就。在我初中毕业的时候，因为我成绩优秀，获得了初中毕业致辞的荣誉。很少孩子可以得到这样的荣誉，通常他们的父母会很愿意地去参加他们的毕业仪式。但是我父母说：“只是初中毕业，不是太重要。我们等到你高中毕业才参加你的仪式。”听以他们的话，我终于醒悟我不是为了获得他们的称赞才学习，唯独是为了自己的学术发展。

我不懊悔我的童年。缘故是我知道中国父母习惯严厉的爱，不经常展示他们的感觉。我明百我父母是无意让我们难过。好在我有我的姐姐，觉得父母太严的时候可以依赖他们安慰。而且，这样长大，我变成一个很坚韧，很强壮的人。我不会逃避困难也不会听信别人说我可以做什么或者不可一做什么。结果是我现在可以新颜我自己的能力，对问题给出我集资的解答。

The topic of this essay is how my childhood influence me.

On Sunday, we had the day to ourselves. My sister had visited Nanjing in the summer and recommended that I visit the Nanjing Massacre Museum, Confucius Temple (夫子庙), and Xuanwu Lake (玄武湖). Bryan, Taylor, Martin, Peiyi, Colin, Stephanie, and I decided to go visit Nanjing Musuem in the morning, then Residential Palace, and the Lake in the evening.

Nanjing Massacre Museum is by far one of my favorite museum. The architecture of the building is constructed so that it gives the visitors a melancholic feeling. The museum has a rectangular shape and surrounding it are statues that recreates what the Nanjing residents went through. There is a baby lying on top of his mother’s breast, unaware that his mother is already frozen to death. There is a grandfather holding his 3-month old grandson. And these statues are placed in a trench-like structure, made of black marble with a thin layer of water. There is also a giant bell in front of a wall that says 300,000 victims in several different languages.

Inside the museum, I spent a long time looking over every exhibit because the subject interests me and all the displays were portrayed really well. There were two floors, the first floor shows how Japan viewed China during the war. A lot of exhibits had Japanese weapons, texts from Chinese survivors, matrons, etc. The second floor is supposed to represent “victory.” There was also a memorial hall for the victims. According to the statistics, one Nanjing resident died every 12 seconds. Therefore, in this hall you hear time ticking and every 12 seconds there would be a water drop (to represent a tear drop) and a picture on the wall (there were many pictures of the victims) would light up. All in all, it was a very moving experience.

Afterwards, we went to the Presidential Palace (总统府) which has over 600 years of history. It used to be the Office of the President of Republic of China but is now the the China Modern History Museum. This palace used to be the Prince of Han during the Mynasty. In 1853, the Taiping peasant army took over Nanjing and set up “The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.” Hong Xiuquan claimed the palace and made it even bigger. In 1864, Xeng Guofan took down the Taiping army. In 1912, Dr. Sun Yat-sen was elected the Provincial Palace of the Republic and changed the west garden of the palace into the Presidential Palace. There were two wings in the Presidential Palace: the Executive Council of the Nationalistic Government, and the military authorities. We were able to see the rooms the way they were used before – each room was preserved to maintain its original look. There’s even a room where you can sit at one of the table as if you were of the military authority at that time. There were also several beautiful gardens, ponds, and archways that enhanced the beauty of the Palace.

Afterwards we went to 玄武湖, which is similar to Beida’s Unnamed Lake, but much nicer. You can see the eastern part of the Ming city wall and the temple on the south. Historically, troops were trained near the lake with both demonstrations and battles held here. Therefore, the lake has also been called “Kunming Lake”. You can pay a small fee to take a boat across the river but we decided not to. We just walked around and sat by the lake, enjoying the beautiful scenic shots and peaceful environment.

We headed back to our hotel to eat dinner around there before boarding the bus to the train station back home.

Hi all,

Sorry for the long hiatus but the last two weeks have been super busy for me. I have lots to update you guys on, I’ll work backward – starting with the first Beijing snowfall! As crazy as it sounds, Beijing snowed on Sunday! A big snowfall, but gorgeous! It’s still too early for Beijing to start snowing, according to my tutor and other professors at school. It’s the first time in 22 years that it snowed this early and this much. Below are some pictures.

I also went bungee jumping on Saturday – my way of celebrating Halloween. I went with Taylor, Martin, their friends Yan and Slyvia to 十渡, which took four hours to get there! We actually got off the wrong bus stop, the tour guide book Yan found the bungee jumping event in said to get off at 十渡 but we actually should’ve gotten off at 九渡. So when we got to 十渡, all we saw was a huge lake and a great mountain. We decided to hike through the mountain in order to go bungee jumping. And so we hiked for two hours, endured a whole lot of thorn bushes, and beautiful scenic views before we arrived at 九渡. We actually arrived at the perfect timing because the company was closing in two days for winter. It cost 180RMB to jump and 65RMB for the video they take of you jumping. The quaity of the cmera was not too great so we bargained down the price to 150RMB between four people. I don’t have any pictures of jumping but Sylvia does and hopefully I will get those pictures from her soon. But below are pictures from hiking/exploring.