Mayke Ame: Tibetan Refuge in Beijing.

Just getting inside of Mayke Ame, was completely like travelling to another world. The decoration, the music, the cloth the staff was wearing… wow!



Guess what! At the entrance it was a Prayer Wheel! Oh yes! I made it to run! :D



To select the food was so difficult, but I always like to try the food of other cultures, so finally I just let Zoe to choose the more typical things.

The first thing I got was the Yak Chas Tea, made with yak butter, tea and salt… this is a quite typical drink in Tibet. I´m afraid I didn´t like it… maybe it´s the kind of savors you should have the custom of taste them to enjoy them, so, I´m not saying it´s not good, just that wouldn´t be something I´ll drink again.



The different dishes we had were really good, you can have an idea of them here:







As I mentioned, Zoe was friend of part of the staff, so in a moment she ask the Chef to come to our table and to explain me how to cook Tibetan food… :$ Oki, I had hear the explanation and even recorder it in a video… but no, I haven´t try to do it by my own! ;P



There it was a special food offering chest:





During the dinner different artists had been singing and playing Tibetan instruments, wearing as well typical cloth.






When we were finishing our dinner, someone of the staff was with a lot of white neckerchiefs and started to distribute them to the clients.



So, everybody should give (as far as we want), neckerchiefs to people, no matter if you knew them or not, wishing them good luck, with a special music played for that. In one of the tables were several Lama´s Monks and they were the ones that started, after the musicians went to sing specially for them. So, it became in some kind of “wishing good luck dance” with all the people at the restaurant. After exchanging the neckerchiefs, the leader of the group invited all of us to continue dancing, so, we all, including the monks, made a big circle taking the hand of people situated at both sides and started to jump-run-“dance”. I should say it was really happy and funny surrealistic moment! :D




At the end Zoe took me to the monks table to great them, so the one that was some kind of the Dalai Lama´s representative gave me a special blessing plus a signed pic of the Dalai Lama. I had been searching info about that to explain it better at this post, but I´m afraid I have no clue if it´s normal to be a Dalai Lama´s representative in Beijing, I was quite surprised of that.

(Hem... yes... he was talking by the mobile when I took this pic! ;P )

Yeaph! Was such a great experience! A Tibetan party with a lot of strangers including Lama´s monks! :D




I have already talked about this place at the post "A Mystic Experience: Lamas in Beijing Second Part" but someone advised me it will be more useful to place them in different posts, so here is it, it contains exactly the same of that post, in case of new comments about this place, I´ll write a new post.

Walking in... Beijing, China: Marco Polo´s Bridge

This is one of the forgotten places of China. Not many tourists here, but it´s an important place, first of all as a historical relic, but also due an incident occurred in 1937, when the war with Japan.









Yeap! I recommend visiting it!

A Mystic Experience: Lamas in Beijing Final Part

During the dinner different artists had been singing and playing Tibetan instruments, wearing as well typical cloth.






When we were finishing our dinner, someone of the staff was with a lot of white neckerchiefs and started to distribute them to the clients.



So, everybody should give (as far as we want), neckerchiefs to people, no matter if you knew them or not, wishing them good luck, with a special music played for that. In one of the tables were several Lama´s Monks and they were the ones that started, after the musicians went to sing specially for them. So, it became in some kind of “wishing good luck dance” with all the people at the restaurant. After exchanging the neckerchiefs, the leader of the group invited all of us to continue dancing, so, we all, including the monks, made a big circle taking the hand of people situated at both sides and started to jump-run-“dance”. I should say it was really happy and funny surrealistic moment! :D




At the end Zoe took me to the monks table to great them, so the one that was some kind of the Dalai Lama´s representative gave me a special blessing plus a signed pic of the Dalai Lama. I had been searching info about that to explain it better at this post, but I´m afraid I have no clue if it´s normal to be a Dalai Lama´s representative in Beijing, I was quite surprised of that.

(Hem... yes... he was talking by the mobile when I took this pic! ;P )

Yeaph! Was such a great experience! A Tibetan party with a lot of strangers including Lama´s monks! :D



As far as I had took some vacations days during my stay in China, I was willing to go to Tibet, but all the people I talked about it, told me it wasn´t a good idea to du such travel having just 3 days, they said the problem was that Tibet is so high and usually people get sick and need at least one day to recover at bed… a real pity!

A Mystic Experience: Lamas in Beijing Second Part

As far as the Lama´s Temple was the first Temple I had visit during my days in China, I was so excited with the experience and talking about it with some of my coworkers, one of them, Zoe, told me about a Tibetan Restaurant very good where she even known part of the staff, so we went there one night.

Tibetan Restaurant

Just getting inside, was completely like travelling to another world. The decoration, the music, the cloth the staff was wearing… wow!



Guess what! At the entrance it was a Prayer Wheel! Oh yes! I made it to run! :D



To select the food was so difficult, but I always like to try the food of other cultures, so finally I just let Zoe to choose the more typical things.

The first thing I got was the Yak Chas Tea, made with yak butter, tea and salt… this is a quite typical drink in Tibet. I´m afraid I didn´t like it… maybe it´s the kind of savors you should have the custom of taste them to enjoy them, so, I´m not saying it´s not good, just that wouldn´t be something I´ll drink again.



The different dishes we had were really good, you can have an idea of them here:







As I mentioned, Zoe was friend of part of the staff, so in a moment she ask the Chef to come to our table and to explain me how to cook Tibetan food… :$ Oki, I had hear the explanation and even recorder it in a video… but no, I haven´t try to do it by my own! ;P



There it was a special food offering chest:



(To be continued)

A Mystic Experience: Lamas in Beijing First Part

As I explained at the post “My China – Introduction: why, how and knowing what I went” in March 2005 I had been 2 weeks in Beijing.

As someone that takes care more about news of Europe and America, and that haven´t ever being so real interested in Asia, my knowledge about China and Tibet + Lamas, was so poor, but at least I already knew about the problems between them and that the Dalai Lama was exiled in India. So, for me was a big surprise to know that there´s a Lamas´ Temple in Beijing and that there are some people representing the Dalai Lama! But I´ll go step by step!

Lama´s Temple in Beijing

I went there alone and I´m afraid it was no possible to find a guide (not a person, neither a book nor an audio item) in Spanish or English there. So, I had enjoyed the place without having explanations at all… but it was so mystic anyway… that is particularly interesting when you think about where the Temple is located… better if you watch it with your own eyes!



Neither the parking was especially inspiring…



But once inside, the smell of the incense, the view of the different buildings and the people with their rituals, makes the magic to start!

The first thing I did was to ring the bell. As you´ll see in the video, I didn´t know what it means, neither the cost and the person in charge didn´t spoke English… but well, finally I´d understand the cost for 3 attempts was 10 RMB (quite chip, btw).



I´d ask latter on about the meaning of that, seems to be for good luck. Since then, I got the custom of ringing the bell in all the Temples that it was possible! :D
You know? When I´m watching something so beautiful (could be a landscape, a place…), there´s a moment when I feel like levitating… I start to move slowly, like trying to feel with every single pore the beauty that surroundings me. Well, how to avoid feeling like that here:



Go to ImageShack® to Create your own Slideshow

Also to watch them praying was so mystic! Just a pity, again, not to know the meaning of what they did.



Walking around, I discovered something that just latter I knew it was a Prayer Wheel. I saw several people going to make them run… So I decided to do it as well!… while doing it, the thought of “would be this just for men?” crossed my mind, but nobody told me I shouldn´t… :)



There was also a room with a Buddha’s statue that even appears at the Guinness Book of Records due it was carved out of a single white Sandalwood tree, the statue is 26 mts. High.



Yes, I know, the pic of the Buddha is not so good, but actually it was forbidden to take pics. there.

(To be continued).

My China – Introduction: why, how and knowing what, I went.

Again due work, I had been in China for month and a half in March 2005.

Of course it was an incredible chance to meet Chinese culture face to face from an unusual perspective, as far as I was there working in normal working time, so, I had to live, for example, the experience of rush hours traffic . But let´s do it step by step!

I won´t tell the whole story, that would be so long, so I´ll do it “by chapters” in order to also have the freedom of writing about other experiences in other places in between, without leaving you with doubts about how a China´s episode had finish.

Introduction

Well, I should admit Asia wasn´t one of my favorite destinations. I really can´t explain why, due I really admired things of Asian countries and cultures, so, I´m not saying I wouldn´t like to go there, actually I would love to go back to China and also to go to Japan and Thailand; just that if someone asked me to do a list of the countries I would love to visit, Asian countries wouldn´t be the first ones.

So, when my boss told me I should go to China, I was quite surprised and excited. When he told me I should go for more than a month… I was like a child with the first bicycle… on one side quite excited and wishing to go… on the other hand really scared! Would I be able to be in a so extreme different culture country, along, for more than a month? Then he told me I should go to open the office in Shanghai and to help the one that will open the office in Beijing… I got in panic! I started to think what exactly I knew about Chinese culture (something so basic if you want to do business with a culture that is different than yours)… and I started to discover that most of the things I thought I knew about China was about Japan! :& For example: paper walls or Geishas… So my real knowledge about China was: Confucius, Chinese food (that everybody says what we have in our countries is whatever but not the real Chinese food), Mao, how they became communists (but learned with small related scenes in movies) and that they all have black hair and almond eyes.

I started to investigate a bit more about Chinese culture, but most info I got was about tourism travels. At least I learned that they respect a lot the authority, they work so hard not taking care about the day of the week or the time and that everybody (out of China) was concerned about the urban legend that says that China will be in the close future the new world power. Ok, that wasn’t really a lot, but that was the only information about China culture I had with me when I travelled there.

The special complication came when just few days before travelling to China, I started with a lot of pain in my arms and finally the doctor detected me arms tendinitis… so, I had to have my left arm immobilized. :(

The adventure started at the airport… in Madrid! As far as it was an intercontinental travel and I would be there for a month and a half, mostly working but I´ll also will try to do the most of tourism as I can, plus the fact that it was winter there; I was carrying 2 bags, 20 kilos each. That´s what I knew was normal for an intercontinental travel… BUT! That wasn´t the case! I was allowed to take just 1 20 K. bag with me! :( So… there I was! In the middle of Barajas Airport, at 5.00 in the morning, with my left arm in a slim and 2 bags completely open trying to decide what would be really worth to take with me and what to leave! Thanks of God Curro went with me to the airport… otherwise I have no idea what would I do with the bag I had to left! (Taking the other bag with me would cost me 1000 euros!!!!) and how to move the things with just one hand!

Well, being at the plane, flying over the Alps… the view was that marvelous that made me think it just can be a good omen!



I had been 2 weeks in Shanghai, 2 weeks in Beijing, 3 days in Xi´an and 2 more weeks in Shanghai. Quite a lot of nice experiences to share! :)