Beijing Dance Academy

The Beijing Dance Academy is equivalent to (if not greater than) the Juilliard School in America. The differences are that here they focus solely on dance, and they are all Chinese—which means they are amazing. The students dedicate their lives to their art, from the time they are young kids, maybe 6 or 7 years old. On our first day here, we observed the beginning of a children’s classical Chinese dance class. All the girls were in class 10 minutes early stretching their middle splits. When they teacher did come in, and called roll, their way of saying “Present” was to go down into the splits and wait for the whole class to be marked.

The way it works here is that the students study through their childhood, then around age 17 or 18, they can go dance professionally. After a few years of that, they can come back for their undergraduate degree in performance, theory, choreography, or teaching. Some even go on to get graduate degrees. One interesting effect of this method is that all the teachers are pretty young, as opposed to the 60-year-old teachers we have at BYU.

After 8 years of persuasions from our professor, Jiamin, the Dance Academy is finally allowing outside students into their classes. This is the first time in the history of the school that they are opening their doors in that way, and we are the first students who get to dance with these amazing dancers! Intimidating? Yes. Some of the teachers were very kind and welcoming to us, and some of them seemed like we were pests to have in class, same with the students. Our first week, we took Chinese classical dance classes—which is like ballet, but there is all this detail with the hands and focus that is hard to grasp. The next week we took various Chinese folk dance classes, most of which involved fun props like brightly colors fans, or little porcelain tea cups that you clink together. Our last week, we took ballet. It was a relief to actually know what they were doing and what it was supposed to look like. I love ballet—at least I loved the men’s class that I got to go to, maybe because I could actually get my leg up as high as most of the guys, as opposed to in the girl’s class where I would have been far below standard.

Apart from taking their classes, some Chinese graduate students came and took out classes as well. Again, our days were pretty packed with classes, but we had a little more free time and short breaks between classes, so it didn’t seem as stressful as in Xi’an.

We also took Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting classes. It’s interesting to me that everything in Chinese culture seems to be connected. These classes emphasized the use of breath and energy in order to create the right look. Those things are common elements in dance, and important parts of a lot of Chinese philosophy. It’s really beautiful how rich the culture is.

Saying Good-bye

We all really came to love Xi’an and the friends we made there. We felt like super stars most of the time. Everyone wanted to take pictures with us, and try to speak English with us. We had some great interpreters, students who wanted to show us around Xi’an, and the Chinese teachers who danced with us.

We received so many gifts from the people, we really had no way to repay them. When we drove away on our bus, we waved good-bye to a group of students standing on the curb who came to see us off.

Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors—the Eighth Wonder of the World? I don’t know when they added eight, or who gets to decide, but it must have been sometimes after 1974, when a lucky farmer, Mr. Yang, discovered the first vault while digging a well on his land. A few years later, two other pits were discovered around Vault One.

So where did these 8,000 distinct army men come from? The infamous first emperor, Qin Shihuang, of course. He wanted to immortalize his great army, while protecting his nearby tomb at the same time. Only about 2,000 figures have been unearthed so far, but each one has distinctive and different features, poses, and faces. Underground, the figures were all painted as well, but upon exposure to the air, the paint faded and disappeared almost immediately.

Sometime before its more recent discovery, parts of the underground army were discovered by a seemingly angry mob (according to the video they showed at the museum) and many of the relics were broken and destroyed. Thus, the excavation process is also an assembly process for restoring the figures and lining them up in the rows.

Huaqing Hot Springs

Way back when, when concubines flourished in Imperial China, a stone pool was built around a hot spring at the base of Li Mountain. This was somewhere between 221-206 B.C. in the Qin Dynasty. Throughout the next 1000 and some years, emperors kept enlarging this pool and building others around it, making more space for their beautiful ladies to bathe. Today, the restored hot springs palace is another tourist attraction close to the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor who united China 2200 years ago.

I loved visiting the hot springs because of the mountains surrounding them! We’d been stuck in the city for 2 weeks, so it was refreshing to get out and see some natural beauty. The Qinling Range was green, luscious, and misty, just like I was hoping to see in China. There was a ski-lift transporting people to the top of the mountain where there is a Taoist temple. I would have absolutely loved to go up there, but alas, we didn’t have enough time scheduled into our day for that. We just got to wander around and see the various pools and reconstructed buildings.

Pancake Soup and Tang Paradise

One thing I’ve learned in China is to never expect what you want. We were told we were eating pancake soup, but our dreams of Western pancakes swimming in maple syrup with fresh fruit floating on top were far from the truth. Probably a good thing, too. This specialty dish was amazing. You start by taking this dense, undercooked bread, shaped round like a pancake, and ripping it into tiny little pieces in your own bowl. We were so hungry by this step that we ate the bread. Pretty tasteless, but it was the only thing on the table. After our teacher saw us chowing down on the bread, she told us we would all get sick because the undercooked bread would expand in our stomachs. That turned out to be false, but we stopped eating the bread and waited for our soup. The waitresses take your bowl of bread pieces and go fill it up with lamb soup. Then, you add your own spices and cilantro. It was one of my favorite meals we have had in China so far, and that could be because of the cilantro.

Our next stop was a reconstructed Tang Dynasty palace. Not much of the architecture was actually antique, but it was absolutely beautiful with the landscaping and gardens to wander through.


Before we left, they had a water and light show on one of the man-made lakes. They play an epic cartoon movie on the wall of mist they shoot up out of the lake. The main character—the Chinese equivalent of Mickey Mouse—was an orange jack-a-loupe who helped three soldiers defeat a creepy witch woman. The effects they created with water and lights were really amazing. I’d never seen anything like it.

Real Love

When our Chinese friends said they wanted to take us to sing karaoke, we had totally the wrong idea. We were hoping for the classic bar/restaurant setting with the possibility of just laughing at other people singing. We were so wrong. After a short walk, we came to a nice, tall building and were greeted by a young guy in a really nice suit. He took us up in an elevator that opened up into this trendy, empty lounge area. Then we walked down a black hallway and he opened a door into our own personal room with a huge couch, and TV.

Turns out, we get to just sing out hearts out privately—they don’t want to hear us anyway. They had a very extensive list of English songs (Taylor Swift, Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson) along with plenty of songs in Chinese. We sang for about an hour and a half, but then had to go back for dinner. It was a strange experience, kind of like the Pleasure Palace: a big building that you can’t see into, people dressed really well escorting you around, and the overall feel like you are in Vegas and you don’t really know what you might find behind the next door.

Moslem Street and the Great Mosque

China is made up of 56 nationalities. The majority, which is the largest majority of people in the world, are the Han people. They make up 90-some percent of the population in China. The rest of the population is made up of various other minority groups. One of these groups is the Hui people, and they are Muslim. Islam was introduced to China during the 7^th century when Persian and Afghan merchants came to China and started settling in and marrying local women. A mosque was built in Xi’an in 742 during the Tang Dynasty because of the growing Muslim community. It is the oldest mosque in China. Now, surrounding the mosque is Moslem Street, vendors that sell snacks, clothes, and souvenirs.

The problem was that it was dark, so the pictures aren’t the greatest, but here are some of the better ones.