5月1日： 国庆日朝圣祭祀天坛

Rob把本本摆在我面前，说，“it's your turn " 于是我接过了记录5月1日行程的大任。
说实话，我本以为一起开个blog，就是各抒己见的活。但，Rob,是那样一个有板有眼的人，就连写日志也要严格地要求按时间顺序进行记叙，他强烈提议，”他写英语版的，我尽可能的完全且准确的翻译，我写中文版的，他也会完全且准确的翻译，这样，我们的朋友就同时可以看懂他写的文章和我的文章“ ！！！ 好吧， 这个提议，我表示同意。：）

火车，如预料中的，晚点； 北京，如预料中的，拥挤；
我们选择在早上来到天坛，是为了体验皇室祭祀的宏大气魄，果然体验到了宏大的人山人海，只是不是华装衾袍，排列整齐而已。我高兴地发现，古时候，天坛在冬至会举行盛大的节庆盛典，那，正是我的生日。34项繁杂的礼仪项目，节前3个月便开始准备，排练的器乐仪式 。难以想象，那是何等的奢华和庄严…… 呵呵，全国人民和我一起过生日！
在推推搡搡的人群中，Rob多次难以控制的pissed off, 不过，他告诉我，他其实觉得人多比人少好， 找个台阶坐下来，看着那些不认识的人们的一言一行，也是很有趣的事。


Rob handed me the laptop and gave me the task of writing about our activities on May 1st.
When we first started this blog, I thought I would write my own articles in Chinese and Rob would write his in English. However, Rob envisioned us taking turns writing articles (all of which would be translated). I think this is a good idea, so I will translate Rob's writing into Chinese and he will help me translate the Chinese into English. This way all of our friends can understand everything.
The train was, as we expected, late. Beijing was, as we expected, crowded.
We chose to go to the Temple of Heaven in the morning, so we could see how the Emperor would have worshiped and performed ritual sacrifices. We found lots of people, but it didn't have the feeling of something sacred. I found out that they used to perform rituals during the winter solstice, on my birthday! These were very important rituals. There were 34 steps involved, and preparations were begun 3 months beforehand. It is hard to imagine the scale and seriousness of the worshiping. There were hundreds of musicians playing together and many sacrifices were made....haha. All of the people in China used to celebrate my birthday.
Rob often got pissed off while wading through crowds of people, but he told me he enjoyed sitting and people-watching. He said that's fun too.