A Heavenly Day

Today was a day of rest. You might think that my life is all madness and never-ending fun, but there are more sides of me that you don’t know. Behind the façade of the upper class girl who enjoys the world of glitter and pompousness lies an inquisitive soul. Why else would I be in a place like China?

I followed the signs and arrived at the Temple of Heaven, where one could see said temple and whatnot. Temple shtemple – you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. I did go in with a hope that this one would enlighten me further in the art of religiousness (a subject a tad alien to my sinning mind) but nothing there. However, a massive park encircled the temple, and I walked around at a leisurely pace, taking in the scenery and what Beijing was waiting for me to discover.

I obviously searched for the road less travelled, and found a random web of footpaths that went deep into the woods, and suddenly I could no longer hear the hubbub of Beijing, so omnipresent elsewhere. Here I was close to Godliness.

I must say the Chinese are a peculiar lot, and I obviously say so partly because I fail to fully understand where they come from, where their minds rest and how their traditions work on their behaviour. Every 100 meters or so there would be one or two shirtless men doing tai-chi like movements, always next to a tree. They wouldn’t even lift their eyes so concentrated they were in their inner peace and physical strength.

After walking for a good while, I started hearing a female voice singing a beautiful opera. It all felt a bit surreal, like I was in a movie and all became Technicolor. As if by magic, my body knew one reason alone to move, and that was to get closer to the voice that sang such beauty. Finally, I arrived in a little oasis, a Chinese gazebo under which a group of elders sat around playing instruments and taking turns with singing old Peking operas. I sat down and they were all smiles, appreciative of my attention. One of them even offered me to sing, and so I did. I sang Streets of Berlin, and even though they didn’t understand the lyrics, they showed understanding to the feeling. So foreign we were to each other, beyond language and culture. We were miles apart in life experiences and how they affected our perceptions of the world – and yet here we were, all sharing a unique moment of human communion.

I stayed at the park for a few hours and enjoyed the solitude and being with myself for a while. Even I need that sometimes.