It was Sunday morning in Beijing, so for many of us it was time to go to church.
After a short bus ride we parked in an alley next to a high rise building. We left the bus, walked alongside a hedge until we came to the street and the front of the building. It had stores on the street level and the entrance boasted an awning which sported two large red lanterns. There were uniformed men near the entrance, I don't know if they were police, military or security.
Inside the lobby, to the left was a Dairy Queen and to the right was a liquor store. Curious location for a church, it riminded me of where I attended church when I lived in Manhattan, New York. That building had on the ground floor, (adjacent to the church lobby...the chapel was on the 3rd floor) a deli, the Museum of Native American Art, a restaurant and the lobby to a 30 plus storty apartment building. Throughout the years I lived there, the shops and such went through several different incarnations but there was never a liquor store. Above the chapel, which because of the high ceilings occupied the space of the third and fourth levels, was an identical space occupying the fifth and sixth levels. It housed tennis and racquetball courts when the building opened in 1976. During the first year or so you could hear the faint bouncing of the balls during the church services, a little distracting to say the least. Eventually the courts were closed and the space was left empty waiting for anticipated growth when it would be converted into another chapel. It was often discussed but never seemed to materialize. The space was in due time converted and put to use. Today it is the site of the Manhattan L.D.S. Temple. The original chapel on the third floor is still in use for regular Sunday services.
I don't recall what floor the Beijing chapel was on, but it did not have the high ceilings like Manhattan did. It was more like a large meeting room that had been adapted into a chapel. The service that we attended was an English Speaking congregation, or branch, reserved for foreigners only. We were told that the Chinese and foreign branches are, by law, not permitted to interact in any way. Missionary work or proselytizing are not allowed. If a Chinese resident wants to learn of a Christian Church's doctrine they have to go to the semi-autonomous former colonies of Hong Kong (more) or Macau (more) where such religious activities were allowed to continue. The Hong Kong LDS Temple was allowed to remain in operation when Great Britain's lease expired and the colony reverted to Communist Chinese control.
The Beijing LDS chapel occupied only a portion of the buildings floor. In the chapel's lobby there were bulletin boards filled with notices of activities for the three different congregations that use this chapel.
There was also a nursery and the offices for the various branch presidents and clerks. The particular congregation which we attended is the same one that the U.S. Ambassador to China, Governor John Huntsman, attends. He was the governor of Utah before being appointed ambassador. He was not present the Sunday that we visited, however, so we didn't meet him.
Dee Anna wasn't feeling well and left the service to sit outside in the lobby. I joined her. We could still hear the sermons through the speakers there. When the church service ended we left the building to continue on our scheduled activities.
After stopping in at the Dairy Queen for some ice cream cones...Yumm!...we then drove the short distance to Pearl Factory, passing a couple of Buddhist temples along the way (sorry, I have no information on these).
We had lunch at the factory restaurant, presumably, to build up our strength so that we could do some serious pearl shopping.
After lunch we descended on the Pearl Factory. Our tour started with a brief lecture and demonstration, by our hostess, on the history of pearling both natural and cultured. The differences between them and their consequent advantages and disadvantages.
.Farmed Oysters that grow Cultured Pearls are by far more productive as demonstrated in the photos below. It is rare to harvest multiple natural pearls from a single oyster, but in these photos of a farmed oyster there are over 30 pearls in a single oyster.
The orientation was given all under the watchful eye of the Empress Dowager Cixi.
Furthermore, the color of the pearl can be altered depending on the type of seed or implant inserted into the oyster and changing its environment and what it is fed. In the store after the orientation we saw a vast variation of pearl colors and hues. Here a just a couple of examples:
If you are going to China to buy pearls do you homework before you leave. The factory tours are probably not the place to get the best prices and products. There is a lot of information on the Internet on how to get the best product for the best price. (The same goes for the Jade, Silk and Cloisonne factories.) You can enjoy the factories and extract some information and if you choose to or you can choose to be annoyed. Thankfully, for me, this was the last factory tourist trap that we would be subjected to. After the Pearl Factory we headed for the Summer Palace.
Up Next: The Summer Palace
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