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| | | | | Calm
Spirit/Ying Yu Jade China Trip 2006 Tiananmen
Square, Dazhalan
Tong Ren Tang Pharmacy,
Zhang Yi Yuan Tea | | | | | | | | |
| We
went to a new park by Tiananmen Square, very beautiful, many people enjoying the
early evening when the rain finally stopped. The rockery and landscaping is very
traditional Chinese. At 7 AM and PM in Tiananmen Square there is a flat raising
ceremony and the Square is packed with people, mostly Chinese people. It's also
packed with police and police vans because these are prime times for demonstrations
or other incidents. Before 7 PM a large formation of police came into the Square
and pushed all of us back behind lines so there would be no interference with
the ceremony. It was a reminder that for all China's modern and free lifestyle,
it's still a police run dictatorship. We could hear people whispering "liu
si" or 6-4, thinking the same thing we were about the student protest and
massacre in 1989. We were very uncomfortable and left to go to a more pleasant
place, the Dazhalan Jie shopping street. | | | | | |
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| There
are three famous businesses in China: The Duck Restaurant, the Tong Ren Tang Chinese
Pharmacy, and the Zhang Yi Yuan Tea Shop, which are on Dazhalan. We bought gua
sha oil in the pharmacy and looked at the medicine
pillows. I bought a medicine pillow last year, but the style wasn't practical
for my Calm Spirit medicine
pillows and I redesigned them. And I was very surprised to see that the medicine
pillows they sold were designed the same way.
The tea shop has returned to
the more traditional way of women employees weighing the tea and packing in in
pink and white paper packages. Last year there were men also working there and
it was packaged in sealed foil pouches, so I was happy to see the traditional
way again. We drank some prepared tea, enjoyed the fragrance of all the bulk teas,
then went to Beijing's oldest traditional cloth shoe shop. | | | | |
|  | | | | |
| | |  | | | |
| | .
I still couldn't get the kind of smooth tai chi shoes in our sizes but tried on
a few pairs and even Tom tried on a pair. Cloth shoes are comfortable, and still
a traditional shoe and are worn as part of many employee uniforms, both formal
and casual. | | |
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| It
was nice to finally be able to see some of Beijing when it was not raining and
cold. As it turned out the weather had been beautiful before we arrived and then
improved and was nice after we left. |
| | | | | | Return
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