Lost in China

When I was down, I spent my Thursday cloudy afternoon by walking around the downtown. Walking to the city park, to the back area of the  downtown and spotted that the KFC will do the Grand Opening in Saturday.

Suprised. I was wondering what’s going on at the park at that hour then found out that some old people spent their time doing a game. Is it a ‘put put golf’…? Dunoo the name of this game, but seems those people really enjoyed it. Yeah, sure. Also I recognized some people playing cards and ‘gasing’(?) and some doing the calligraphy using stick and water. I think they wrote poem or something, interesting.

A couple doing the dance excersice at the center of the park and for sure you’ll find young people doing ’something’ at the back. Gosh, it’s hard to get the picture of that ‘hot moment’ hihihi…

In the morning, you’ll find old people doing dancing using flags and fans. And also some are interesting doing excercise using sword, fake one. Children this time playing with their rollerblade, and I think they have a coach. Yup, they have a coach.

Man, I was in the middle of no where.

I’m too lazy to post these stories. You can search all the history of these sites on the internet, free and you’ll find a lot more information. Or maybe Fitrix can help me to tell these stories…?

We visited Forbidden City long time ago, just about a week after me and Suryadi arrived in China. It’s in Labor Day holidays, a week holiday for the Chinese people. So you can imagine how’s the crowd at that time, people came from all around the China and it’s summer already. We walked for a half day and yet there’s still some places that we’re not visited. It’s a huge complex. If you’re really interesting with the history, maybe you’ll need more than one day. The first two gates are free. Starting the third gate you have to pay 60 RMB, then you’ll free to walk inside. The first gate is the special one, once you climb it (with 15 RMB), you’ll face the Tian’anmen Square to the south. As you know, Tian’anmen is the historical place for China reformation. I won’t tell this story, in fact I think no body in China want to tell this story. Dunno. So, back to the Forbidden City. You’ll find the audio tour guide, but I think it won’t help much. You’ll still need a tour guide to walk with you, not just an audio guide.

Almost forget. The China President’ office is located next to the Forbidden City, to the west part. And the Tian’anmen Square is located just across the Forbidden City.

I’m starting to hate visiting tourist spots in summer. It was crowded and hot. First was the Forbidden City, then Great Wall Badaling and now the Summer Palace. Gosh, we’re walking for about 2,500 acres (around 1 hectare) in Summer Palace in a halfday hot sunny day, together with a bunch of people around the world.

Anyway, we met again with our tour guide from the HQ. A little bit late entering the site due to the traffic jam in Beijing, but we’re survived at the end of the tour. One spot we missed is an Imperial Garden. Maybe it’s still under renovation due to the Summer Olympic in 2008. We found the Marble boat, but we didn’t take the tour boat to across the lake. Strange excuse from our tour guide, dunno. The rest, we just walk along the side lake, climb the palace, watching performances, see the historical things and then visit the island at the center of the lake. You can find the whole historical stories from the internet, I’m too lazy to tell you the history.

Every TV show in China has a Chinese subtitle, no matter the shows are in English or in Chinese. Interesting one (for Chinese people, not for me), they usually use dubber to translate the English conversation (except in CCTV 9 as the English channel).

IMO, I will let the conversation still in English and put the Chinese subtitle at the bottom of the screen, so it’ll never disturb the sound of conversation itself. But, hey…lookslike every English conversation was dubbed and…it’s suck (for me). I can not understand what people said because it’s disturbed by the dubber. IMO it’s a silly way to translate, but maybe this is the China way and I have to get used to it.

Actually not just English conversation that was dubbed, but also every western movie. It’s dubbed to Chinese and (still…!!!) has a Chinese subtitle. Poor me. Can you imagine Michael Schumacher or Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones speak Chinese…??? Sometime I enjoying watching TV with Chinese language, but sometimes I just want to throw the ashtray to it.

Well, maybe this is the way how the China Government try to push the un-employment rate. They try to make many jobs for the people. And maybe this is the start point for China to be more open to the world. We’ll see.