Temple of Heaven

I've posted more pictures on flickr.com for your enjoyment... Lots of pictures from the Temple of Heaven (tian tan). This time I added brief captions on some of them. There are some attempts of capturing details, but I have a small and light camera suited for photography dummy (moi) and travel so there are limited things I can do.... ;p

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15506077@N03/

The park is the largest green space in the city. The Olympic green may be bigger, or at least comes close to it; but that's way out of the city while the Temple of Heaven Park is very much in the city. Ticket to get into the park is very cheap, equivalent to $2 CAD. Then it cost another $5CAD to see the main attractions: the temple, the museum, the actual spot where it is considered to be closest to heaven and therefore was where the emperors performed all the ceremonial rituals. I did not know how many steps there were in those rituals; they had to have a little museum to showcase the cumbersome procedure!

The most amazing part of the architecture was the details on each and every piece of building material; everything was hand painted (recently restored; renovation will be completed by Olympic time) and it's jaw-dropping to think how much work was involved in its making. Apparantly when the Ming Dynasty changed to the Qing Dynasty, the emperor ordered the color scheme changed completely to reflect their preferences and interpretation of color!

Check out my photo posting on flickr for more details...

I'm also impressed by the cleanliness of the public washrooms in the park. I dreaded going at first but was so shocked by how big and clean it was, considering it was a public washroom in a very busy park! Granted I was there on a slow day, weekdays during working hour; the place was spacious and smelled normal. There were toilet paper at the entrance and there were enough stalls with western style toilets! The floor was not wet and liquid soap was available from dispensers. All in all, it was not what I expect from public washroom in China. :)

I went with some friends to the Pearl market, which is just across the street from the East Gate of the park. I am so proud of myself: I didn't buy ANYTHING! :) Lara and Lindsay, however, were out of control and we literally could not get out of that place!! The sales ladies were downright aggressive, at times physically :P Lara had her arm pulled and one sales chased us to the elevator! They are absolutely relentless! When not participating in the bargaining, it's both amusing and tiring to watch it unfold. :P As a participant, I'm sure it's quite draining for Lara and Lindsay! but they were certainly happy with their purchases and both had huge smiles.... I suppose it was all worth it :) This place never cease to be entertaining.

I've had 2 days off and needed every minute of it to feel refreshed enough to go back to work again. Yesterday I went out late at night to get a foot massage and a whole body massage, and realized for about $25CAD I was pampered (in the painful but super effective Chinese massage way) for nearly 3 hours! I felt so much better after that, and even more so after sleeping in until lunch time! Took it easy today and just stayed in. Went to the Happy Hour at the Canadian Club in the Embassey and had a great time. Met lots of people who worked at the embassey and introduced myself, including a former colleague of mine from Industry Canada, who is now working for DFAIT as well and posted in Beijing! What a small world! :)

It's late now, I should hit the bed if I want to wake up in time for work...

note: I added more to the last entry

Instead of starting a new posting, I added to the last one I posted earlier today. Probably shouldn't have done that. I left the story half told so I continued on. So, if the last time you read that entry it ended with "to be continued, off to dinner" then you can read the end again as I have now completed my story about Dashan. sorry...

BTW, I no longer have access to my own blog website. However, I appear to still be able to post to it. I just cannot see how it looks as a blog site. If it doesn't look so good, bear with me, I'm posting blindly :P

Oh, did I mention it rained HARD the day before yesterday? It poured and poured! I woke up and the sky was dark, 5 min later it was nearly pitch black and the storm hit hard. It was actually kind of scary but this is aparently how it rains in Beijing in the summer. Either no rain or it rains HARD! I was so happy!! Remember I've been praying for rain? Air is clean again. :) Even today I can still feel the effects of the rain and air is still reasonable. It's great! I love rain in Beijing :)

BCCP pre-opening

It's been a crazy few days. I haven't had much time or energy to keep up the blog, especially at the level of detail I had been providing... I am not sure I can share some of the operational or logistical information. So, I'll just skip those details.

We were supposed to open on May 1 but delayed to May 6, which is tomorrow. The construction or at least the positioning of all exhibit items have not been completed. The wall towards the end of the exhibit about the Pacific Gateway and the 2010 Olympics are yet to be finished. But otherwise, the exhibit area looks great!

When the tour is given by someone with a good knowledge of the exhibit and who can tell the stories with a bit of passion and enthusiasm, it is a great experience to go through the hall. I along with some other host team members have been practicing and learning the material in the last few days. Not just where the picture was taken, what it was about, but also the whole concept behind the design of the whole exhibition area. When it all comes together, it tells a great story. The video segments being played as welcome at the impressive welcome area on 6 gigantic vertical screens is very well done and the scenery combined with the background music is quite moving and leaves a strong sense of patriotism...

As will be the case in the future, the pavilion is open 6 days a week, including the weekends. Technically Monday is a day off but only the first floor exhibit is closed. The facility is still open for business programming, which takes place any day of the week and we VIP hosts need to be there to provide tours to visiting delegations. So we worked through the weekend getting ready for the opening tomorrow. In fact, we opened today for a business delegation.

It was a long day. As usual, things change from one minute to another. A few minutes before the first visitors showed up (45min early, mind you!! ) we found out many processes had to be changed and responsibilities had to be reassigned, etc... hectic and stressful, no doubt. Overall, we pulled it off quite well. We even had a visit from the Canadian Ambassador to China, AND a surprise visit by a celebrity, Dashan!

Canadians may not know who he is but I'm sure anyone in China or anyone who spent significant time in China knows him. He is Canadian, by the way. He made his name in the Chinese entertainment industry and is a HUGE deal here. He speaks better Chinese than many Chinese and does a form of stand-up comedy called "xiangshen" here. EVERYONE here knows him and he has a huge fan base. So when we heard he was coming in an hour, the students hired locally were so excited that their eyes were glowing! :P Being a VIP host, it was part of my duty to follow him as his entourage while he toured the facilities. While I wasn't his fan and have never watched him perform, it was still quite an experience to meet both the ambassador and a big celebrity all in one day, and the first day! I wonder who else we will encounter?!

The glamour of the job aside, standing around for 9-10 hours a day is not a fun thing to do (some of those time was of course break, just not regular and not long), especially in some of the shoes people are wearing. Luckily I have wonderful shoes and my feet didn't hurt; it was still super exhausting. There was a rush to buy comfortable shoes after the first few days of work... ;p

Tomorrow, we will be open to the public. We really don't know what to expect. It could be anywhere from being super crowded to very very quiet; planning of resources will have to adjust accordingly as the day goes on. It's definitely interesting to be part of all this fluidity! :) Those who are coming in future waves, you don't know what you are missing!! :P Now that I'm here, I feel so lucky I'm here at the beginning; just being in the middle of all this chaos and somehow helping to make things work is an experience in itself. (Not to mention the weather will get so much hotter and the smog so much stronger as it gets to the peak of the summer).

Sorry, no photos to post. Been too busy to take photos of the pavilion, perhaps I'll go one day when I'm off to take some photos and post them. I wish I could give you all a guided tour of the place, I did my first VIP guided tour with a group of business delegates today! As I was the only Chinese speaking VIP host, I was assigned to do the tour in Mandarin... Having never received the material in Chinese, I had to do a lot of translation in my head! I managed quite well and only stumbled on "sea otter"... which I now know :) I'm sure I will be doing this many times in the months to come; probably get to the point where I'd be giving this tour in my sleep... ;p

BC-Canada Pavilion – Orientation and Training

We were finally allowed to go inside the pavilion for a tour and training on Tuesday! A quick tour of the first floor exhibits took roughly 15min of speed-talking by Karen who knows every inch of the place inside out… =) Since the site is still officially a construction site, we weren’t allowed yet to wander around.

I won’t post pictures until the Pavilion has been completed so you’ll have a better idea. :) suffice to say it’s very nice, and the design is cool!

Training took place on the 2nd floor business area. Orientation of what to expect, what we need to know, etc… was followed by a detailed study of all the imagery being displayed in the exhibits so we know the stories behind each image as well as why it’s important; we anticipated the questions that visitors may have and shared knowledge of the place/topics/activities/industries referenced in each image. It was a lengthy process but well worth the time investment. We all need to be experts in all of these subject matter and be able to speak to any of these with ease in case a visitor asks a question about any one of the images. I find I am learning so much more about Canada with every training session! Every extra bit of information is making me more of a Canadian =)

Of course, given that we received this thick package with hundreds of images, it will take a while for me to know it all by heart. It will help once we are permitted to wander the first floor and study the exhibits in detail then I can put these information into context and do dry runs in my head. Our business program starts on Friday, May 5. The soft opening was supposed to be May 1, but it was proven too ambitious and delayed to May 6, I believe. Being in the Pavilion physically, watching Bette and others run around trying to deal with issue after issue, I’m starting to appreciate just how enormous a task this is to get all the ducks in a row for the opening and for the smooth sailing of the pavilion from day to day… Let me just say that I don’t envy Bette’s job. Just to clarify, for those of you who don’t know, (which is pretty much all of you), Bette Sterling is the lady who is in charge of running this place =) She and Kathryn Burkell from DFAIT hired me for this position.

There are a lot of staff here, more and more each day as the students from Canada finishes their exams and join us here. There are also Chinese students who are studying in Canada and local Chinese students. Our staff family is ever growing. Getting to know all of them has not been possible yet; I will do better once they start wearing name tags :p

There is only one issue with the Pavilion that I wish will be resolved shortly – the bathroom. Not the cleanest or most fragrant. =( This is still a construction site and the workers are on site all the time so it’s hard to keep it clean and odor free. I can’t wait for construction to finish so it will be maintained at a level acceptable by Canadian standards… For now, yikes =( Hopefully this is not about to be your lunch time :p

We also had the opportunity to visit the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. As I crossed the gates of the embassy, I had this warm fuzzy feeling of going home – stepping on Canadian soil again after a week out of the country can give you this funny sentiment. (of course, everyone loved the Canadian washroom ;P) Even the ambassador Rob Wright himself spared some time to come and gave the group a quick welcome speech. Among the group, I felt particularly like I’ve come home since I work for DFAIT and I would be working in the Embassy is I was here on a posting. I took the opportunity to introduce myself to some of the people at the embassy… I’ve even got a badge to access the facility while I’m here thanks to Kathryn and the gracious hospitality of my colleagues here. =) A small gesture such as this really helps to make someone feel welcomed and valued, even if I don’t end up using this privilege – so nice to feel like I’m a part of something or a member of a family when I’m thousands of miles away from home!