Not Just Another Blonde in Beijing: Tiantan Park

I remember before I moved here everybody warned me about the sheer amount of people everywhere. When I first arrived I was surprised because it seemed like the busiest place was definitely the subway, but other than that it wasn't as crowded as I expected it to be. Well, today I found out where all the people are... the train station! The subway ride to the train station, then the walk from the subway station to the train station was absolutely like nothing I have ever seen before. I was at Grand Central this past Christmas and that is nothing compared to what I experienced on a non-holiday in Beijing! WOW! After we arrived inside, we stood in line for 15 minutes, said in perfect Chinese "I would like to buy two tickets to Xi'an," and then immediately was told to go to window #16. Off we went to window #16... to find that it was the bilingual window. LOL! Then, we waited another 10 minutes at this window only to use NO English whatsoever, everything was done in Chinese with no problems at all. Sometimes when Chinese comes out of our white mouths, it blows their mind so much they seriously can't figure out what is happening.

Regardless, we have successfully purchased our first train tickets in China! Next Wednesday we are taking a night train from Beijing to Xi'an, after a few days in Xi'an we will make our way to Pingyao, where we are going to stay in a completely amazing traditional Chinese siheyuan home (courtyard home), then from Pingyao we will take a train to Datong, then back to Beijing. We are really looking forward to this trip! There is so much to see around these areas.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. This past Sunday my husband and I woke up early and ventured out to Tiantan Park - 天坛公园 . If you get there early enough you can catch all sorts of interesting sights, including large groups of people dancing, people doing taiqi in the woods, hoards of people working out in the park. Its an amazing place and if you are ever in Beijing you need to wake up early and make it out to Tiantan Park, it is one of the best people-watching experiences in Beijing!

Everyone works out here, look at the mass amount of people! Doing all kinds of hard exercises.

The hubby playing Chinese-style hackey sack with a random guy! Called "jianzi." You can see it to the left of my husband - its the colorful feathers flying through the air.

Traditional Chinese dance

Hundreds of people were dancing in the park on a Sunday morning before 9:00am. I love her serious expression.

This is the place where the moms and dads meet up to hopefully find love matches for their kids!

You can see on the bench next to the guy - there are pieces of paper - on this they have information written down about their son or daughter... age, educational background, work experience, etc.

I liked his hat.

The hubby and his new best friend. Look at how the guy covered my husband's fingers with his hand. LOL! He was so sweet. They talked about old values, politics and modern China. I smiled and nodded, because its not my subject. :)

If you can pretend that this really is fog, its beautiful.

Me standing in front of the Temple of Heaven.

A Japanese art student - I know he is Japanese because he told me when I started speaking Chinese to him!

Adorable.

Walking around the park in 4 inch red stilettos - I couldn't do it!

They were dancing, having a blast. Shortly after this picture was taken my husband offered me to dance with the nice Chinese man next to me... I politely declined... LOL.