日坛公园 // RITAN PARK (Temple of the Sun)

It is strange to recall that less than five years ago I didn't know a word of Mandarin and had never given a thought to making the study of Chinese society and culture my life. Strange I say, but hardly difficult: rarely does a day pass when I don't see/hear something that strikes me as extraordinary, or that I don't wonder, with a fresh gust of sharp Siberian winds or yet another set of curious eyes fixed upon me, at what a surprising turn my life has taken.

I first came to China in the summer of 2005, traveling overland from Laos with treasured friend and collaborator Carrie (aka "the care bear") to visit Kunming, Suzhou, and Shanghai. I was taken with China from the first: it was nothing like I expected and so big, so fast-changing, so difficult to wrap one's mind around. I found it thrilling. I wanted it from the very beginning but was also terrified by the challenge it posed. I loved listening to Carrie speak Mandarin with cab drivers and merchants, wondering what the meaning of all those funny sounds were and what these crazy things called "tones" were. Carrie and I sat in smoky teahouses surrounded by bemused old men (or took coffee and tea at the Astor, as below)

taking silly pictures and having long anthro-tastic conversations: I picked her brain about her time in China and all she knew of its history, and she prodded me to tackle it as my subject area, insisting that "you should do what scares you the most" [editor's note: don't take this advice. this is terrible advice]. It was a rich, heady, very good time, but after two weeks in the country, Carrie had to hurry back to her research in Western India and I had to go on alone. For those of you who are under the impression that I am somehow "brave" or "courageous" for taking this route, please disabuse yourself of that notion. I was petrified. Carrie helped me buy a train ticket to Beijing from Shanghai and I set off. The last time I was at Beijing Railway station I remembered how I felt arriving that morning: disoriented, tired, and just plain scared. I think I started crying before I found the subway station and still it took hours to find a hostel with a free bed. Once I did, I didn't want to leave. But I had an Indian visa to obtain if I was going to make my flight 10 days hence and so I set out.

I walked all over the city that day and many of the following. The subway only had two lines at that time, I couldn't communicate with cab drivers (or show them the English maps that I could read), and the bus system seemed impossible: if you could somehow figure out which one to board you had then to tell the conductor your destination and pay a distance-based fare. There were thunderstorms every other day that came out of nowhere and everybody seemed to be shouting at me. I hated Beijing. To make things worse, my visa was taking forever. I made a total of four trips to the Indian embassy, which at that time seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

The one thing it was very close to, however, was a place that didn't appear in any of my travel literature: a park called Ritan, or Temple of the Sun. Here are some pictures I took way back then when I stumbled upon it.

(useful directions to the "slaughter pavillion")

A fair few of my anxieties about my visa and discontentments with the city burned off easily as I strolled through the shady park: more prettily dappled light I had never seen! Atop the small lake above, at the highest point of the park, was a pagoda with a 360 degree view of the metropolis.

One afternoon I visited the pagoda and found a small group of men flying kites and playing the erhu, a stringed instrument that sounds like a Chinese violin. I was especially charmed by the erhu player, who seemed to be moving his bow in concert with a kite he was watching. I didn't stay long, maybe 20 minutes, but it felt heavy, in the way that something you know will be memorable usually does. I felt like perhaps I was earning the city, and perhaps it was letting me in. Maybe I could do this; maybe I could take on this great challenge. When I left I stammered out a poorly pronounced "xie xie" (Carrie had attempted to teach me to say "thank you") to the erhu player and skipped down the stone steps to start my walk back to the hostel.

Ever since that day Ritan Park has been one of my favorite parts of the city, a special place with strong memories that keeps safe a little part of my soul. I am firmly of the mind that everyone should have such a place, and I hope you all have at least one. But it isn't my secret place. I go there to recharge, to remember the fear and mystery I first confronted this country with, and to remember how far I've come (holy shit guys, I can speak Chinese now!), but I also like to bring my friends.

Here are some recent pictures of Ritan in the winter, on a day I took my teachers Song Fang and Chang Hong for a stroll.

It remains, even in the cold winter months, a popular place for flying kites:

And if you want to hear what an erhu sounds like, as well as learn a few more interesting things like how the Chinese slang for "fucking awesome" literally means "cow cunt" (no seriously, young people actually say this - often), you should watch this Danwei interview set in the park.

Fisting in Chinese, etc. from Danwei on Vimeo.

Me, I'm going to try to pretend I never heard that last bit and hope that someday I will once again be able to eat mantou without experiencing a very unpleasant association.