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In awe of Beijing: a reminder that age cannot wither her

By Erik Nilsson ( China Daily ) Updated: 2009-05-12 09:47:04

Even though I'd only flown halfway around the planet, I felt like I was a world away when I first came to China. It was as if I'd fallen asleep on the plane and had woken up on Mars. It was all so exciting.

In awe of Beijing: a reminder that age cannot wither her

The wonder of China hasn't changed over the past three years. But I have.

I haven't become the least bit bitter or cynical. Generally speaking, I wake up a little happier every day I stay in China, albeit very accustomed to my surroundings.

Once the routine stopped being adventure, even adventure became routine - that was, until I decided to take a walk to the Yuan Dynasty Park in Beijing. Even though it is a two-minute walk from my home, I hadn't been there in more than half a year.

This place had captivated my imagination when I first arrived in China. It had been the first location in which I'd seen such ancient structures as Kublai Khan's city wall share a cityscape with modern high-rises. I was awed by its landscaping, by its history, by the taichi practitioners who filled its spaces.

Little had I realized my walk to revisit this park would become a journey of rediscovery of my host country's wonders.

For some reason, that day, the men performing kongzhu (Chinese yoyo) tricks; the way sinewy cedars crown khan's dusty wall; the phalanxes of ribbon-waving middle-aged women dancing to techno in front of massive statues got to me.

The fact that I'd lived in China for a while and had seen such things many times had become a reason to barely notice them. Because I'd been here for a while, however, it was an entirely different experience when I again paid close attention to them, because I now better understood their context.

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