Day Two

I awoke the next morning to find a rather different city than the one I had sleepwalked through the night before. Parts of it did indeed still resemble my home city in America -- probably the same parts that every other city in the world shares with Nashville. But the characteristic differences in Beijing were far easier to perceive in the light.

It started with some features of the hotel itself. The oddly placed Western suburban appearance to the room was slightly jostling but more or less easy to adjust to. An open arena, with the exception of the fenced-in basketball and tennis courts, resembled a small park and children's gymnasium setting -- though what it basically comprised was a strip of strikingly green grass and some trees, erratically spotted with what were actually brightly colored adults' manual athletic devices. All this was encompassed by a straight, looming wall whose full-length printed illustrated depicted the outside of a traditional leisure house surrounded, to the entiretly of the left side, by a blue-green quiet marsh, complete with a crowd off lilypad heads. Fading red, pink and white chrysanthemums stood in waist-high patches along portions of the concrete walk, which eventually came to an open patio marked on one side by a red and rust-brown covering for a row of opposing benches. Just in front of that stood a vertically poised stone of a short man's height, embedded in a white concrete founding. The open patio area was aligned by tiling, set off by dark borders, and let me to guess that it was an area for independent taichi practicers. A nostalgic but small grove of bamboo grew to the right of the benches, right at the base of the photographed leisure house and next to a stylish gazebo that matched the bench covering, including even a ridiculously small and insignificant waterfall.

Beyond the wall, I could see the tracks to one of the nicer trains I thought I would see; just beyond the tracks, another strip of park whose color of green and off-color chrysanthemums resembled the first. Just beyond that, separated only by a lime-green fencing and forcing a stark contrast with the city that grew all around it sat a block of old houses, connected at lenght by their brick and concrete walling, their roofs revealing the true color and traditional form the bench covering and gazebo had been intended to imitate.

>>><<<

do things without appearing to do things
act spontaneously within the limits of the moment
touch the kingdom with a gentle hand
embrace peace and cultivate stillness
shape your intention and let it overflow
allow good things to happen without meddling
allow your bodymind to order itself

-- Tao Te Ching, Ch. 57