Day 66- Chinese bonfire

I woke up to a beautiful blue sky, clean air day in Beijing!  You have no idea
how happy it makes me to open my eyes to see blue and not the typical Beijing
haze.  And to see the mountains so clearly? It's bound to be a good day :)

I had grading to do, and a midterm exam to write, so I forced myself to
stay to task until the mid afternoon.  My 'reward' (gotta love those operant
reinforcers) was to take a bus ride back out to Ba Da Chu temple.  The last
time I was there over Golden Week, it was raining, foggy, and cold.

As the afternoon sun was setting, we rode the cable car to the top of the
mountain for some views of the city.  It was clean and clear for miles :)

There was still a bit of fall color on the Western Hills
looking out over the lamasery.

As the sun was setting behind the mountain, the colors were beautiful.
This picture does not do it justice.  We were getting a bit chilled up top,
and were hoping to ride the luge down the mountain.  It had just closed, and
I missed my opportunity once again- dang it! We took the cable cars back down.

Since the park was closing, we only had time to quickly visit
the Lingguangsi Temple, which towers over the other seven
temples in this park ('ba da chu' means eight great sites.)

Once again, people were offering up their prayers....

...to the three Buddhas representing the past, present, and future.

This guy was on his iPhone.  I think he was looking
up his prayers to recite.  Or maybe he was just
checking his data plan.  Or texting his wife to say
he'd be late for dinner.  Who really knows?!

As darkness was settling in, these little girls were 'playing'
in the candles.  So cute :)

While this typical Chinese family of three were sharing
a more somber moment.  Perhaps thinking of a loved one?

The air was heavy with the smell of
burning incense.  

We tempted our fates when we returned to town, and had dinner at a new restaurant
(new to us, that is).  We chose it as the place was full, and they had a picture menu,
hooray!  Even with pointing at pictures, it was a game of charades ordering with
the waiter.  No less than three servers got in on the act.  Well, out of four entries, two
were delicious, one was ok, and this one (above) was NOT fit for human consumption.
We thought we were ordering potatoes- it was some kind of gelatinous nastiness.
If you are squeamish about textures, you couldn't eat this either.  It was loaded with
MSG, too.  Bleckkkkk.  I found out at work the next day it was a canned rice tofu.
Even my Chinese office mates don't care for it, either, and they eat all sorts or weird things!  

On our walk on the way home, there was quite the fire flaming up on
the sidewalk!  I couldn't tell what they were burning- propaganda of
some sort?  Who knows?  I figure it's the Chinese equivalent to the
bonfires we have back home in Indiana :)  Anybody got any marshmallows?!

G'nite, y'all!