End of 6th Week

Went to Longqing Xia (a gorge) today. The scenery was pretty nice.
Almost everyone took a boat around the gorge, and some went bungee
jumping/zipline-ing, but I climbed to the top of the gorge with
another HBA student – I think we were the only two to do so. This
also marks the first time I have been drawn into having a photograph
taken of me with Chinese people. There was also a temple on the
mountain, but the design was pretty much exactly like every other
temple I've seen so far. Before the climb itself, there was a long
escalator from the bottom of a dam in the gorge to the top, which was
covered by a dragon-shaped enclosure.
I'm reading, bit by bit, the Tao Te Ching, one of the central Taoist
texts, which is quite interesting. This book is highly ambiguous –
not only are there significant translation issues, as this book is
written in an old form of classical Chinese, but the content itself is
subjective and interpretive by nature. This is not a bad thing,
though. The subjective and interpretive nature of the book, along
with its reliance on paradox, challenges the reader to discern meaning
and resolve the apparent paradoxes it presents. Thus, not only are
there many different translations, but there are many different
possible interpretations of each passage; the interpretation depends
on the reader, and the reader's experiences, which the reader draws on
to try to understand the book. For example, one passage states
something to the effect of "when there is no knowledge, then there
will be wisdom," which can be interpreted (in context) as "common
'knowledge' is often wrong, and society at large might not have any
way of realizing," though there are many other possibilities. There
also seem to be several levels of supernatural flavor present in
interpretations, from the interpretation that the book is metaphorical
and does not require belief without evidence to the full-fledged
traditional Taoist pantheon, which came from I don't know where. That
said, parts of the book may just flat-out be wrong – the reader still
needs to use his/her judgment while reading. I'm still not very far
through, so I need to keep reading.
Saw a partial solar eclipse on Wednesday. Apparently Shanghai had a
total eclipse.
I just heard a Chinese woman say "drinking tea is a better habit than
drinking coffee." I am inclined to dispute this, and I did. She
offered no compelling evidence beyond "tea drinkers seem more
relaxed," which may be true, but is really shabby evidence on the
whole. (I'm not drinking coffee or tea anymore – I have to go out of
my way to get coffee, and tea is too much of a hassle to make on a
regular basis.)
Saw acrobats last Saturday. Quite interesting, with a tropical bird
theme, and sections like using springboards to flip onto high objects,
contortionism/balance, a giant ferris-wheel type device that acrobats
navigated around (including blindfolded), a diabolo (Chinese yo-yo)
segment, flipping through hoops, plate spinning, gymnastic static
holds off of other people, bicycles, etc.