"Not understanding differences in culture can lead to dance parties."

Title courtesy of today's small class and the wonderful similarity between the words "misunderstanding" and "dance party".

Please note my ability to simultaneously paddle and photograph.

This weekend was a whirlwind of touristing. On Friday after Chinese table we headed to the Summer Palace. We rented a paddle boat and paddled around the lake with an adorable 14 year old Chinese girl from Chengdu. There might have been an attempt to translate "I'm on a boat" into Chinese. It might have failed miserably.

After debarking and exchanging emails with our new "妹妹“, we wandered around the grounds, which were spacious and not too crowded. As with most outings, we ran into a group of Yalies (we're everywhere!), bought ice cream and were photographed with some Chinese people.

At least this photo was consensual.

Friday night I went to a rooftop beach birthday party, which was... different. Any opportunity to walk around barefoot is always appreciated, though.

Saturday was an HBA outing to the Ming tombs, which were okay. Actually pretty boring, but I feel like I should be nice and cheerful on this blog. They were large and historically significant, there we go. The best part was the long path of stone animals.

It was necessary to pose with each one, obvs.

Sunday I ventured onto the subway for the first time, which was an adventure. One of the transfers was ridiculously circuitous, but otherwise it went smoothly and we popped up at Wangfujing. We ate at a hotpot place, which was food heaven, then had frozen yogurt, which was whatever heaven squared equals. Then we remembered that we had come all this way not to stuff our faces, but to visit the Forbidden City, so we headed off.

Kaixin has the misguided idea that one should try to look natural and relaxed in pictures. It sort of cramps my style.

Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones who had heard about this "Forbidden City" place. The place was packed, and the weather was sticky. Brushing sweaty arms with hoards of Chinese people to get a glimpse of a chair... or an empty room is not really my cup of tea, so I appreciated the emperors' very nicely color-coordinated (read: all the same) architecture and watched people be interesting.

Next we went to Beihai park, to see the white dagoba of Chinese 110 course packet fame.

No, I'm not trying to be all artsy with my intense angle, we were just too cheap to buy the entrance ticket and this was as close as I could get.

Beihai park is beautiful. Why is it beautiful? Because it has the white dagoba? Why does having the white dagoba make it beautiful? Because in front there's a lake, behind it are trees, and the left and right sides are all bamboo.

There was temporary disillusionment when we could not find the bamboo to the left and right, but fear not, it was there. I might have to talk with Zhou laoshi about this though because "all bamboo" is somewhat of an exaggeration.

Pause to examine the word dagoba, which led me to perhaps the greatest wiki disambiguation page ever:

Dagoba may refer to:

• Dagoba, the French metal band.
• Dagoba Chocolate, a brand of organic chocolate.
• Dagobah, the fictional planet from the Star Wars universe

or

• Stupa, the Buddhist building style.

It's the last one I was looking for.

It rained a bit while we were there, and afterwards the sky was clear-ish, which made everything much more enjoyable. The park was my favorite part of the day...besides frozen yogurt.