Happy Solar Explorations: Another crazy Saturday

Today, I went to the Bejing Botanic Garden...sounds pretty safe right? Wrong? It was the recipe for another ridiculous/weird/FUN! encounter!

I'll explain with the subsequent pictures...

Welcome to Beijing Botanic Gardens--which like all Beijing parks once again remind you that yes, it is the year of the rabbit! Happy Zodiac Year, mom!

Found guy making cool things out of bamboo. Bought myself a cool Praying Mantis (we're just kindred spirits, really).

my pretty praying mantis

I start posing with my new "pet", making everyone jealous

Then some girls dressed in traditional Han costumes (fashionable from like 1000 years ago--it's the equivalent of finding people in Victorian dresses strolling through Central Park.) invited me to their tea ceremony. So of course, I acquiesced (don't worry mom, I started talking to them first). One of the people in the group also played a flute like instrument called the "xiao". One of the xiao was handed down to him from his grandfather and dated back a hundred years ago to the Qing Dynasty.

When I asked them about their backgrounds, it turned out that 3 of the girls were also in college. They had met through an online forum. The lady in the blue organized this event and is a devout Buddhist(interesting fact, Beijing has a lot of Buddhists and Christians). From what I gathered, her full occupation seems to be the promotion of traditional Chinese culture from traditions to costume. She regularly organizes tea ceremonies (and a lot of them, like this one are free. Other are just based on donations. The costumes these girls wore were all free and borrowed by her from one of her friends in the area) Another one of her friends (I'm assuming this is some larger Buddhist network) also donated to her a plot of land on 香山, which she has promised to turn into an organic community garden. She invited me to their work day tomorrow, but I declined because I'll be climbing the Great Wall. But I'm pretty excited to check out their other events (Don't worry parents, I'm being cautious with strangers).