It's December now, and winter is setting in. The park is losing its fall beauty, but is still pretty in a way with, the water beginning to freeze with blue skies.
Amazingly, the cold weather has not put a stop to the dance or Tai Chi
groups, or deterred the exercisers from frequenting the park on a daily
basis. This dance group has been at the park every day from 7-8am since
I moved here. They move around a large rectangular fountain area with
synchronized dance movements.
I love watching this group with their swords.
I started attending this Rou li qiu class in October. I had walked by
this group of women dancing numberous times, and became curious as to
what they were actually dancing with. I could never get close enough to
see, but soon found out that they dance with a small racquet with a
ball balancing on it. One morning when I was "walking and talking" with
my dad that called after I got to the park, I approached a lady in the
back and asked if I could see what they danced with. Luckily a lady
named Jing that was standing nearby, could speak English pretty well
That in itself was a miracle because it is very rare, especially in a
group of older ladies, to find anyone that can speak English here in
Beijing. She had lived in the States for 20 years, and had come back
with her husband as they get ready for retirement. She explained what
Rou li qiu wsa, and I asked if anyone could learn it, and the next thing
I knew, I had the teacher and about ten other women standing around me
helping me buy the equipment from the teacher through WeChat. I had to
hang up with my dad so I could join in and be taught for part of the
lesson before it ended. The ladies were so welcoming and friendly with
their smiles, and I, with my limited Chinese, smiled back and thanked
them for helping me. Luckily Jing continued to help translate for me
for the next 2-3 lessons, and then her schedule changed and I haven't
seen her for a while. A group of about 30 women or so meet every day,
but I pop in on Fridays with my friend Amber that wanted to start coming
with me. This is our little "beginner group," with the teacher in the
blue jacket. They are such sweet women, that only speak in Chinese.
But they try and help us learn the dances they're working on, and I'm
slowly learning some new Chinese words and phrases.
We get people walking by that get intrigued with two non-Chinese women dancing with the locals, and they stop and stare. This particular morning, a man stopped and started video recording us. I thought I might as well put him to work for me and get a video of us dancing before Amber leaves in a few months. It was fun to watch the video and see how much we've learned and how much better we're getting at not losing the ball off our racquets!
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