a good day in China has no plan

I started out this morning trying to find the ticketmaster place, but no such luck. The addresses skipped from 54 to 112, so there is something about the chinese address system that I am missing.
I went to starbucks to de-compress from the search and read for a while. While in the vortex, I decided to just take a bike ride down to the Ming palace remains that I had seen on the map and had been by on the bus the other day. It turned out to be a perfect adventure. I went into the gardens where the majority of the remains are. Most of it is bases for the pillars that are no longer there, one small building and a few old statues. It was really peaceful and I felt like I was in the middle of a lot of good history. There are beautiful carvings in the bases that you can hardly see because they have been so weathered Across the street is more of what used to be the palace, but what is now a garden. There were lots of older men flying kites, and I asked one if I could fly with him. He did the best he could to get me a kite up and going, but the wind wasn't good for a crap kite flyer like me, so after a few tries he took the kite back. I think we both had a good time though nevertheless. I walked around in the park a bit more, among families playing badmitton and this guy playing with the coolest yo-yo I have ever seen. I took a video of it that I've uploaded, but it's sideways--sorry!

After the park, I took a short ride down to the Nanjing Museum complex, where the contemporary and historical art museums are both located. I basically spent the day there looking at some weird contemporary art, and some gorgeous ancient art. The contemporary stuff was a lot of commentary on how China is being changed my western modernism. A favorite was the papercutting from McDonalds and Burger King fast food bags. I think what most struck me about the historical art museum was how old things were. They had jade from tombs from 2500 BCE, from just outside their own city. The U.S. doesn't have that much history, and I don't think I've seen anything that old in Europe either. This really is a culture and a people that has been around for a long time, and while so many things have changed, so many have stayed the same. Writing it like that makes it sound kind of silly, but really---it's really really old. really. Jade carvings and clay pots that were from thousands of years ago looked in many ways like they could have been made just yesterday down the street. The carvings and craft were so much more intricate and advanced than I realized they could be for that era. I bought jade pieces last week that look like they could be in the museum alongside what I saw today. So, really, the same people (in a broad sense) have been doing the same crafts for thousands of years. Are you impressed? I'm impressed.

So then home, and yummy noodles from down the street and now blog and bed. Tomorrow I start my second round of clinic shifts at a new hospital doing herbs.

Oh--I forgot to mention, after all the looking for the ticketmaster place that would hopefully get me tickets and lead me to the dance performance I want to see, I found the theater by accident. It was closed, but it's really easy to get to. I figure I'll go back one night when the performance is supposed to be happening and see what's what. The world is funny that way, huh?

So, night! I have to get my smart-rest.