This morning we climbed Fragrant Hill, or as many people in our group so fondly call it, “Fragrant Mountain.” I chose to walk at a comfortable pace and stay behind the group so I could enjoy the scenery; it seemed to me more important to enjoy the journey then simply to reach the destination. The beginning of the hour long hike was very relaxing. The winding stone path was lined with trees on both sides and in a few places they had speakers hidden in the trees with tranquil music playing. As we got farther up the hill the number of trees decreased and the number of stairs increased to something like the Great Wall stairs. I continued to pace myself and when I got to the top, I was only moderately tired. During the trek up the mountain I wondered how long it took to build all of these pathways and stairs and what the significance of this particular hill was. I came to recognize that the Chinese build a lot of things on hills despite how difficult it is to get to the top. This seems to demonstrate how important symbolism is to them because even the placement of a building is significant enough to warrant building hundreds of stair cases just to reach a small building at the top of a mountain.
After having the famous Peking Duck for lunch, Karen and Krysta and I took a taxi to the tea market in Beijing. The tea market, which is a street consisting of eight wholesale markets and countless small shops, calls itself “the world’s supplier of tea.” The vendors in the street shops were incredibly friendly, most of them offering tea samples. The first place we went in to invited us to have tea with them, though they spoke only minimal English. She showed us how to steep the tea and how to serve it. She also let us sample five or six different teas which they sell at their shop, all of which we very good. We bought a tea set from them and later came back to buy more tea. In the wholesale market we entered, the shops seemed to be more exclusive, and the people were less friendly and less willing to bargain. This seemed to be the opposite from what I had experienced before in Beijing. Usually the vendors on the street are more aggressive and the wholesale markets are cheaper. Overall our shopping trip was very successful and we managed to continue to improve our non-verbal communication skills.
Later in the evening our group met with a group of students from Tsinghua University. Each Tsinghua student spoke with one or two Pitt students. The person I talked to shared her hobbies and interests and we compared how ours were similar or different. We also discussed some of the differences in the education systems. We shared a few stilly stories as well, and just kind of talked like friends. I’m glad this was added to our itinerary, even thought it was last minute because up until this point I have only been able to have brief conversations with either Vivienne or Ruby and it was nice to have one-on-one time with another Chinese student.