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.