Thursday March 17, 2016

Shèng pàtèlîkè jié kuàilè!*

*“Happy St. Patrick’s Day” in Chinese

Hey, here’s a good travel tip: if you ever want to become the center of attention in a foreign country, all you have to do is be two caucasian parents of three Chinese children, dress everyone up in green shirts on St. Patrick’s Day, and walk around the world’s biggest public square. The natives will love it! Plus you’ll have about 60 billion pictures taken of you by several thousand other people, upping the odds of your family’s vacation going viral. See, Trip Advisor doesn’t tell you about stuff like this. But I do. Because I care.

Another grand day here in the People’s Republic. Today we visited Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. Dorothy and I had seen all of this before when we first came to China to adopt our beautiful daughter Aelex, but it was even more amazing this time around to see it with all three of our kids and watch them appreciate the sheer majesty of the breadth and depth of their native culture. Five thousand years of history does’t really come across as viscerally in the history books as it does in person where one can walk in the footsteps of your ancestors, see through their eyes, and appreciate the scale of their achievements firsthand. It was humbling to be able to give this gift to our children, and it is one that we hope they hold on to for the rest of their days.

Whoa! Hold up there chief. We’re here for the snark, not the feels.

You’re right. I’m sorry. Back to our regularly scheduled absurdity.

Have you ever played human bumper cars? No? Then you must visit a high volume Chinese tourist site and compete with the locals for access to narrow views of enclosed attractions. It’s not as much tourism as it is free-for-all-fight-to-the-death-kill-or-be-killed-I’ll-see-it-if-it-kills-me tourism. Lines? Order? Ha. Chaos my friend. Pure. Chaos.

Oh, and the inventor of the Selfie Stick™? I’ll find you. I’ll find you, and kill you. Because you deserve it. Nothing in the history of mankind has done more to ruin the lives of other people in close proximity to each other since Dog Poo Scented Perfume™. And I’m pretty sure I just made that comparative product up. But I can’t be sure. Because I watch perfume commercials sometimes and they all make me think of the smell of Dog Poo™. But either way, the life of the Selfie Stick™ inventor still hangs in the balance. Mark my words. And by the way Apple™, you spend millions of dollars, time, and brand capital fighting governmental attempts to force you to override your built in iPhone security systems but you don’t ship a single version of your product designed to be incompatible with Selfie Sticks™? Get on that Apple. Or you’re next on my list. You can mark my words too.

Other than that stuff though, today was great. The Forbidden City remains my all-time favorite historical site, and that includes The Vatican™ (sorry Roman Catholic Church, but at least when I tithe 10% of my salary to the Forbidden City Historical Trust™ at least I’m getting a tee-shirt or a magnet or a bottle of water in return. I mean what exactly am I supposed to so with eternal salvation? Get your marketing people on this Pope. You’re falling behind.) It strikes awe, pleases the eye, and fills the mind with wonder. The commitment to pomp, ceremony, and splendor was taken to it’s logical terminus in Imperial China and it astounds to think what man is capable of achieving when it is able to convince the overwhelmingly poor majority of its population that it deserved all of this luxury through divine right (again, I’m looking at you Catholic Church. Get on the ball already.)

After the Forbidden City we went for another delectable lunch of far too much food that tasted far too good for the sake of my ability to continue fitting into my clothes while on vacation. The house speciality was noodles with fermented bean paste (I know, “Yum” right?) which came with a bulb of raw garlic. The proper way to eat the noodles was to peel a clove of garlic, take a bite, then eat some of the noodles. It was delicious. Although, according to Dorothy at least, after lunch she compared my breath to the world’s longest Selfie Stick™.

Next up was the Temple of Heaven. A sprawling complex built by the Emperor that he used all of twice a year to 1) pray for a good harvest, then 2) thank heaven for said good harvest. Seemed like a bit of overkill to devote the incredible amount of resources it must have required to build such a splendid temple that was to be used so infrequently. But then again, I’m not an emperor, so what do I know?

By this point the whole Congiusta family was more than a little ready for some much needed R&R. Two days of jam-packed, nonstop sightseeing can take its toll on an already jetlag-ravaged, psyche so in recompense, we all had ice cream for dinner and turned in early. Tomorrow is another relatively full day of sightseeing, including paddle boats, the Hutongs, a Peking Duck dinner, and an evening Kung Fu performance. All that said, it’s about my bedtime as well. Until tomorrow’s entry.

No green beer to be had, but the green tea is plentiful…