It was our first full day in Beijing and we wasted no time to cut to the heart of the capital. Our tour guide, Raymond, took us to the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City (pretty damn epic sounding). As we crept through the massive structure that was once the home of Ming and Qing dynasty emperors, I heard Raymond mention that the Forbidden City had exactly 9999 rooms. Apparently, the pronunciation of the number nine in Chinese is very close to "eternity" or something like that and it was the emperors number, no one else could use it. In addition, people will pay for telephone numbers or license plates which have the number 8 in them as its pronunciation pertains to luckiness and prosperity. The number four on the other hand has a pronunciation very similar to "die" and fourteen sounds like double "die", prompting people to pay for license plates and phone numbers without these digits and for builders to skip the 14th floor entirely when constructing a complex. The concept of fortune has incredibly deep roots here, stretching back to ancient folk religion and touching every aspect of Chinese society even at the corperate level. Feng Shui masters are hired to plan office buildings, potentially deflecting bad chi at competing companies. It astounds me how serious luck is taken here (I don't believe I've heard the word 'auspicious' so many times within 2 weeks). Even though I may not identify with such omens of prosperity, I am finding myself drawn to the ancient balance that has been set up here for 3000 years. Taoism relates to the balance of one with nature, to let things occur and feel ones place in a cosmic order and the cycles everything goes through. The ying-yang, you know, that black and white circle symbol that was meaninglessly smattered on everything across America in shiny sticker form in the 90s? Yeah, well thats the anciant symbol of the Tao, the balance. From the active vibrant spirit of the yang (white) lies the seed of the mysterious forboding yin (black). This idea of disaster lying in the heart of promise and hope emerging from the depths of confusion in an unending circle is one I believe every human being can understand and one that confirms and reassures many of my private thoughts. I find it strange that a culture that has always praised the whole, the infinite, can revolve around something I find so insightful of individual nature (especially while being so involved with superstition).

I havn't been able to load any of the pictures I've taken this trip due to file size and inability to understand any of the commands for the editing program they have on this computer, but when I get back there shall be a hurricane of digital images.

As we continued to walk through the Forbidden City, ancient China's holy seat of imperial power, we encountered a honest to god Starbucks. If thats not a good focus for a values blog in modern China, then I'll slap myself exactly 8 times (for prosperity). But you're just going to hope someone else wrote about that because I sure didn't.