Summer Palace in Winter
Beijing Travelog #11
Sun 29 Nov 2009, 5pm - Third Ring Road, Beijing
We're settling in to our new hotel along Beijing's 3rd Ring Road after visiting the Summer Palace earlier this afternoon. The Summer Palace is huge, 9999 rooms. The tradition is that heaven has 10,000 rooms and building that many on earth, even for the emperor would have been sacriligious. I think maybe ancient ledger pages, standardized across the entire empire by the legendary civil service, offered only 4 columns for numerals. Either way, it's huge and we didn't get to see all of it.
Here's a picture of one of the main towers from a distance:
Up close it's a bit more intimidating:
After climbing these stairs and getting deep into the palace we stopped briefly for a rest. A young local man came over to us, spotting us as Westerners, and struck up a conversation about the United States. He said he really wanted to visit the US to meet some N--gers. "Like in Alabama," he added.
Our eyes just about popped out of our heads.
Rather than ignore his racial slur (almost certainly accidental) we tried to help him learn more about our language and culture. We explained "the N-world" is considered very rude and insulting, even though it is used frequently in certain kinds of music. Probably he'd heard it from US pop music. Probably also he heard the similarity to a common word in Chinese, 那个, that is often pronounced "negga" in conversation, and that's why it stuck with him.
Sun 29 Nov 2009, 5pm - Third Ring Road, Beijing
We're settling in to our new hotel along Beijing's 3rd Ring Road after visiting the Summer Palace earlier this afternoon. The Summer Palace is huge, 9999 rooms. The tradition is that heaven has 10,000 rooms and building that many on earth, even for the emperor would have been sacriligious. I think maybe ancient ledger pages, standardized across the entire empire by the legendary civil service, offered only 4 columns for numerals. Either way, it's huge and we didn't get to see all of it.
Here's a picture of one of the main towers from a distance:
Up close it's a bit more intimidating:
After climbing these stairs and getting deep into the palace we stopped briefly for a rest. A young local man came over to us, spotting us as Westerners, and struck up a conversation about the United States. He said he really wanted to visit the US to meet some N--gers. "Like in Alabama," he added.
Our eyes just about popped out of our heads.
Rather than ignore his racial slur (almost certainly accidental) we tried to help him learn more about our language and culture. We explained "the N-world" is considered very rude and insulting, even though it is used frequently in certain kinds of music. Probably he'd heard it from US pop music. Probably also he heard the similarity to a common word in Chinese, 那个, that is often pronounced "negga" in conversation, and that's why it stuck with him.