Temple of Heaven Park & Fun with Kites

When I was in my second or third week of the big Beijing trip, I covered one of the tours to the Temple of Heaven. Now, while the temple itself was pretty cool, and something to see, my favorite part of that day was the fantastic park that surrounded.

It was basically a daytime social center for the city of Beijing. A place where apartment dwellers could feel like they have their own backyards. All these local people would gather to entertain themselves with all sorts of outdoor activities. Some examples...

The women doing a fun rhythmic, ribbon dancing thing to music that they played on a portable stereo and speaker.

In one area, a bunch of folks were dancing to traditional Chinese music. It was a funny mix of young & old and good dancers & bad dancers.

And there was a bunch of teenagers that were obsessively playing this hackysack-like game in group circles. The difference was that the actual hacky sack had these feathers sticking out to make it fly pretty high in the air. I even joined in and played for a little while.

FYI : Hacky sacking with the feathered hacky sack is harder than it looks!

Of course, I totally bought one of these feathery hacky sack things.

The Day of the Kite

My favorite part of the park by far, was all these people flying kites. It looked like so much fun! I was talking about for weeks wanting to go out there and try. I was bugging my coworkers and my new friends to go with me, but to no avail. Finally, in the 6th week of the trip, I decided to buck it up, buy a kite, and fly it by myself.

Well basically, hilarity ensued.

Problem #1: When you buy a kite in China, it comes unesembled, and you have to put it together.

Solution: This nice kitestand worker put mine together for me.....because I was clueless.

The finished product.....

Me & my new kite, ready to brave the winds in the park.

Problem #2: I don't remember how to fly a kite. The last time I did it, I think I was 7.

Solution: Stand in the field of the park holding your kite in your hand and looking very confused. Eventually someone will come help you. Like this old man....

He tried (in Chinese) to explain to me how to fly the kite. We got nowhere. Then, he even helped me launch it by throwing the kite up in the wind while I ran with the string spool. Again, we got nowhere. He eventually just smiled, nodded his head, and walked away.

I tried for awhile on my own.

Problem #3: Flying a kite is a two person job. One to run with the spool, and one to hold & throw the kite.

Solution: Run around with the spool in hand, letting the kite drag 25 ft. behind you, in hopes that someone else will feel sorry for you and try to help.

Enter these 2 ladies....

They examined my kite for awhile, and tried, again in Chinese, to tell me what I was doing wrong. Well, it seemed the two of them had very different opinions on kite flying, and they ended up getting in a bickering agrument as to how to help me. It was very entertaining watching them yell in Chinese and hand jesture to me and eachother.

They soon gave up also, and I was left to have a go on my own.

And, unfortunately, after almost 2 hours of attempting to fly my new Chinese kite, this is about the best flying attempt I had, and look where it ended up...

Oh well. Still a very enjoyable afternoon.