Travel and Honglinjin park
Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I catch the BDA bus to China World Trade and then walk to my E-Tower for my Mandarin lessons. The bus normally takes about 50 minutes to get into the city. Normally I just listen to music, memorize Chinese characters, read books and ignore everything that happens outside the bus because of this I missed a small minor difference between the Australian roads and the Chinese roads that makes a major difference. About three weeks ago it started getting cold and on the first really cold day there was a fog. On that day the traffic was really bad and it ended up taking over 90 minutes to get into the city. Now that isn’t really news except for the fact that it was almost all spend at freeway on ramp. Why? Well in China they put the onramp about 50 meters before the off ramp. This means that all the cars trying to get off the freeway need to avoid all the traffic coming onto the freeway. Traffic often comes to a standstill for 50 meters with virtually empty road after the off ramp. It gets especially when there is a traffic light just after the exit because then people are basically stopped in front of the cars coming onto the freeway. In Australia you have the off ramp before the on ramp. This means that the cars coming onto the freeway are able to fill up the spaces left by the people exiting and you don’t have the mess that you have over here.
On Tuesday and Thursday I’ve been going to school with Sheree on the School bus. I tutor a grade 9 boy for about an hour and then spend the rest of the day studying Mandarin in the park right next to the school. I’ve really enjoyed going to the park. Every morning between 7am and 10am there are about one thousand people in the park participating in various activities. There are groups of people playing cards around a collapsible table or a park bench. I don’t know what they’re playing yet but I’ve been them playing the same game at the markets when it’s quite. There are also old people that play Chinese chess on the special Chinese chess tables setup in various locations throughout the park. There are about 200 people there are learning ballroom dancing. Then there are another 100 people that are practicing more tradition Chinese dances on the other side of the square. In another part of the park there are people playing Hackensack in groups or three to six people. There are also a number of groups that singing every morning. There are also about 80 people that practice some form of martial arts. There are also about 20 men that bring their birds into the park every morning to sing. Now on top of these activities there are families walking around and other people relaxing, painting and reading in the park as well. The thing that impresses me the most is that all of this is happening when it’s about 5 degrees. It’s really nice seeing a park being used by people and people smiling and having fun.
