My China Diary by Mrs Lawson

Tuesday 12 July

I’ve arrived in China after a long and exhausting journey. I was so delighted to see our friend, Steven who greeted me at Beijing airport with his parents, Ma Xiao Hong and Wang Shaohua. Steven is the nephew of our wonderful Chinese Teacher, Ma Xiao Fang (Maggie). He visited Scotland with his family a few months ago and became a temporary member of Primary Four at Braehead Primary School, teaching them Chinese while improving his English and even helping them to present their Assembly for Chinese New Year.

Steven and his parents drove me through the busy traffic to Beijing Language and Culture University, where our two week course in Mandarin is taking place. After a restless first night caused by jet lag, extreme heat and dodgy air conditioning, I’ve settled in well and met some very nice people – both Scottish and Chinese.

Today’s trip to the Summer Palace was very special. The air above Beijing cleared after some heavy rain and we could see blue skies and fluffy white clouds, which is a rare thing in this normally polluted city. The beautiful buildings and gardens looked wonderful in the sunshine and our guide told us some amazing stories of how the Emperor built this incredible complex of buildings to celebrate the 60th birthday of his mother, the Dowager Empress, Cixi. What a birthday present!

Our Chinese lessons are well underway. I’m not only improving my own language skills but picking up a few tips for teaching Mandarin to Primary 4 and 5 back at Braehead next term.

July and August in Beijing are hot and muggy even in the evening! These children are keeping cool by dancing in the fountains.

Saturday 16 July Well, I’ve been in Beijing for a week now and we’ve packed so much in, it feels like a month. We visited Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City on a scorching hot day, hopping from shadow to shadow to avoid being burned by the sun. The Imperial Palace looked stunning in the sunshine and the complex was packed with tourists from China and around the world.

Our Chinese lessons have continued at a fast pace and we’re having lots of opportunities to use our language skills with real Chinese people in shops, restaurants, markets and in and around the University Buildings.

We rode around the old Beijing hutongs in rickshaws, visiting a family home and the famous Drum Tower where the sound of drums announce the time of day.

Today we took a two hour bus journey to Tianjin, the port city that serves Beijing. The city is an amazing mix of architectural styles, which we viewed from the deck of the boat that we sailed down the Hai He (Sea River). I’m pretty sure I spotted buildings resembling the Empire State Building, the London Eye, the Eiffel Tower and even Glasgow’s Squinty Bridge. We finished the day with a visit to an Acrobatics Performance at Chaoyang Theatre, where we saw a visiting troupe from Sichuan perform amazing acrobatical feats using ladders, bicycles, spinning plates and even motorbikes.

Monday 18 July Yesterday, I got the chance to go off on my own for the day and I took the opportunity to explore some of the places I knew well when I lived here from 2006 till 2008. I found many of the markets, hotels and streets still there, but I discovered that there had also been many changes in Beijing during the last eight years. The old markets had been spruced up and were now more like shopping malls and lots of new, shiny buildings had been constructed in any available gaps in the city. It was also much, much hotter than I remembered.

Today, we visited the Great Wall at Badaling. Years ago, I recall being absolutely amazed to find out that the length of the wall is roughly equal to the distance between Stirling and New York. I think we must have been visiting the few feet of the wall that are the most attractive to tourists as it was difficult to see due to the river of people walking up and down it.

The views from the wall were lovely however and the skies stayed clear and blue for our visit.

Friday 22 July 2016

Well, our Summer 2016 Chinese experience is almost over and we’ve had a terrific time, learning some Chinese and exploring some of Beijing’s amazing sights. This week we attended a Chinese Tea Ceremony, while learning more about different types of tea that I thought possible, tried some Kung Fu and Tai Chi and paid a visit to the Headquarters of Hanban, the organisation responsible for Confucius Classrooms and Institutes throughout the world.

We’ve had our closing ceremony and we’ve been presented with our course certificates and it’s time to leave Beijing. We’ve had a lovely time, learned a lot and been made very welcome by the staff of the Beijing Language and Culture University. Our course leader, Meryl James from the Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools (CISS) has been an absolutely wonderful host and has looked after us all superbly. Hopefully, I’ll get the chance to visit Beijing again some time soon. It’s been feichang hao.