Sunday, 21 July 2013

乒乓和公园/Ping pong and public parks

The other week I decided I should finally try and get some activity beyond walking around, and headed to 地坛体育馆(Dìtán tǐyùguǎn)/ Earth Temple Gymnasium (so named because it is right next to the earth temple found in the earth temple public park) to see if I could find some tennis courts and ping pong tables. The Earth Temple Gymnasium is not a singular gymnasium. Or I suppose it is, but it's in the center of a large number of other exercise areas (basketball courts, running track, swimming pool, etc.) in about the same area. This made it a little difficult to find the part of the complex that I wanted to find, but, after wandering around for 20 minutes, asking for directions, wandering around for another 15 minutes, looping around to the same lady and asking for directions again, I finally found the building I was looking for. It was filled with badminton courts and ping pong tables, but, alas, no tennis courts. My search continues. The ping pong tables were very nice and filled with boys half my age or men twice my age playing ping pong very well. I asked the front desk and found that tables are rented for 20 RMB, or about $3, an hour, though one generally brought their own opponent. This was not a location for pick-up games.
While this information is good for future reference, at that point I was walking around by myself looking for someone to play. As I left the gym, I decided to walk through 地坛公园(Dìtán gōngyuán), the previously mentioned Earth Temple Park. From the textbook we used in my second-year study of Chinese at Oberlin, I was aware that Beijing's public parks are a wonderful gathering ground for the locals, especially older men and women, who use it as a place to socialize and perform such exercises as strolling on the paths, playing badminton or ping pong, doing T'ai-chi/太极拳 (tàijíquán), dancing, and walking one's bird. That last one is not a euphemism. Caged birds were and are fairly popular pets in China, and it's not uncommon to see old men walking or running with an occupied bird cage.

I was directed by the gate operator to the north of the park, where she assured me there were some public ping pong tables. I'd like to take a brief moment to point out that the characters for ping pong are awesome: 乒乓(pīngpāng). They look like hitting a ball back and forth, and the pronunciation in Mandarin, owing to the difference in vowels and the high tone, sounds fairly onomatopoeiac. So it's pretty awesome.

Returning to the story, I walked north through the park in pursuit of ping pong. I passed some beautiful gardens and old-looking buildings (very few buildings in Beijing are actually that old, though many are built to look like they are). Though I've yet to return to it, Earth Temple public park is definitely a park that I aim to see again. After walking to what I thought was the northern extremity of the park, I still had not found the ping pong tables There were many of the outdoors exercise machines that are common in Beijing (I will need to take a picture of these at a later date, they're literally everywhere, and commonly used), all in use, but no ping pong tables. I walked through what I thought was the northern exit of the park, and finally came across an enclosure of five ping pong tables, all occupied by Chinese men and women in their 40s to 60s playing solid ping pong. The level of play was not quite as high as the kids in the gymnasium, but they were still all solid players.

After watching for a little bit, one of the men who was not playing at the moment waved me over and asked if I could play. When I responded that I could, he told me to come in and hit around some. I walked into the enclosure, talked with the man who waved me in for a while about why I was in China, where I'm living, how long I've studied Chinese and the like, and then stepped up to the table to hit around some. I played with two separate people for a total of 20 minutes, just hitting back and forth, no match. They seemed to be about evenly matched with me, maybe a little better, though we weren't keeping score, so it's possible that they were just testing me, feeling me out. After a while, I left, still needing to get some dinner. The guys I were playing with told me that there were people on the tables just about every day, so I should by and play some more. I haven't had a chance yet, but it's something I definitely will be doing again. It was much more laid-back than the atmosphere in the gym, and it was a pretty good time. The people were all 老北京人(lǎoběijīngrén) / Old Beijing'ers, and so had a pretty thick accent that I had trouble deciphering. However, they were quite fun to hit around with.

For a more interesting and better-written look at ping pong in China, I suggest this article, written by the former Luce Scholar whose apartment I'm currently staying in, Chris Beam. It's a pretty great article.

After leaving the ping pong enclosure, I walked back through the park towards the exit. On the way I passed several strange sights:
 

An old man practicing t'ai-chi by himself, surrounded by 4 or 5 motionless white cats, while, in the distance, a solitary tuba played "Do Re Mi" from the Sound of Music:

A square full of people standing in ranks and clapping in time together.

Another square of people dancing around to what appeared to be modernish Chinese pop, immediately followed by a square of people walking around in circles waving their arms to different music, which could have been some older pop music:


And finally, a square filled with a bunch of people doing t'ai-chi by following along with an instructor. This wasn't particularly strange, except that there was a couple standing awkwardly off to the side, out of the square and in the main pathway, following along badly.

All in all, they were several weird scenes to walk by on the way out. But it was a fairly cool park. A final note, exercise clothes seem to be less popular in China. At least among the older crowd that frequents the public parks (those in the gym were dressed appropriately). The dancers, the walkers, the people playing ping pong, the people using the exercise equipment...all of them looked like they could have just left work. Almost everyone was working slacks and a polo or button-down shirt. The only exception were the runners, which are relatively rare. Bizarre.

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