Sunday came and was planned to be our rest day. Our biggest goal was to find and go to church at an international LDS branch in Beijing. I had found the address from the lds.org web site, but after having multiple experiences where taxi drivers didn’t know addresses, I anticipated that unless I had more information than that address, that we would never make it. I could tell I was going to have to work hard to be able to get there. I was right.
Saturday evening, when we got home from our events, I started working on it. I went to the hotel counter and showed them the printout from the church web site with the building name and address and asked them if they knew where this address was. This stumped the hotel front desk. The best they could do was write down the address in Chinese as my first starting point. The next morning, church was at 10:30 a.m., so I got ready by around 8:00 and gave myself an hour and half to search the internet for any clues to get me closer to the address. I had already typed in the address before leaving the States to try to get direction with no luck. I googled all sorts of word combinations like “LDS Church Beijing directions “ or many variations thinking that certainly someone would have had the same problem as I did and put some type of clue or advice on the web – but no luck. Then, I typed in the street address and tried to find some businesses that might have some directions to get to at least the street – no luck. I then tried to find telephone numbers of any businesses or hotels that would be on the street so that the hotel front desk could call them and ask for directions. I found a few numbers there and wrote them down. Then, I found out the district (city area) that the street was on, and searched for hotels within that district, thinking that maybe if I could find a nice 5 start hotel – preferably an American chain – that we could take a taxi to that hotel, talk to a concierge, and then find it that way. Faster than I could imagine, 90 minutes went by, and now it was 9:30 with church starting in one hour. Emily was ready, so I told her we would just have to go with the information that we had and hope we would get there somehow. I took the newly gleaned information back down to the front desk where I approached the best English speaker of the morning staff. She too puzzled and puzzled over the address and the building name. However, when looking at the building name (Jin Tai) she did call what seemed to be some type of Beijing directory assistance (my best guess) and had what seemed to be a 10 minute conversation. Finally she hung up and told me that there was a street name of my address, but the building name was wrong – there was no building named “Jin Tai” at that street. We both looked puzzled at that, because I was able to show her the printout from the church web site, but she seemed convinced that there was no building on that street. Finally she said she was going to check the Internet. Of course, I was convinced that would do no good, because I had already spent probably multiple hours on the Internet trying many options, but I thought maybe the locals knew other ways to figure this out. By now, it was almost 10:00, and our chances of finding church were dwindling. The taxi drive alone could easily be 30 minutes or more and that assumed the taxi driver knew where he was going. And then, all of our sudden, our luck turned. She came out of her office smiling and said, “I found it”! Of course, I was surprised since the story seemed to be playing out that we wouldn’t find it. She motioned for me to come back into her office. There on her computer screen she showed me a local Chinese version of a Mapquest and a picture of a building. Then she told me what the problem had been. She looked at me very seriously and said “This building name says “Jin Tai” but that is not correct. The building name is “Jin Tai”. At first blush, the sound and spelling seems exactly the same, but because we had had our Chinese “tone” lesson the day before with our second tour guide, I immediately understood what she was saying. The address based on US characters was viewed as a monotone “Jin Tai” – which meant one thing. But the way she pronounced the real name, it was “Jin Tai” with a upward tone at the end. That meant something completely different. I smiled inside, amazed that she wouldn’t think of that immediately, and yet confirming that the same words pronounced with a different tone have completely different meanings here. Once she knew that, then she was not only able to find the directions but her search engine showed a picture of the building so we could recognize it when the taxi driver took us there. She wrote down the directions and was even nice enough to come out to the street and talk to the taxi driver to make sure he got us there – she even gave him her cell phone number if he got lost, since she now was an expert on how to get there. We got in the taxi and were able to get there in about 10 minutes. It turned out it was not very far.
The taxi driver took us to a tall 20-25 story office building. It was lightly raining and the doorman brought an umbrella over as Emily stepped out of the taxi so she would not get wet (how kind). We walked in the building and it was a type of mall inside. We wandered our way to the elevator and then went to the fourth floor. We stepped out, saw a n open door in a hallway, and looked inside. Two American ladies were talking in familiar words and familiar accents. We said we were looking for the LDS Beijing branch – and they smiled and said that we had found it! Mission accomplished. They pointed us in the direction of the “chapel” and we went inside and sat down. After all of that, we were actually early for church.
There are two LDS branches in Beijing. There were chairs set up for about 100 people and by the time church started there were probably 60 people there that Sunday. We had a very nice meeting. The leaders were very careful to announce the strict guidelines and conditions upon which the members and visitors could continue to operate in Beijing and asked all who attended to respect those guidelines. All who attend are foreign internationals with passports -- no Chinese nationals. One of the speakers introduced himself as an international student who had recently got a job here, originally from Orem Utah. Although we are in the hottest part of summer, the building was actually cool and Emily was cold. She turned to me and said, “No matter where you go in the world, the church is the same….sacrament meetings are always cold…” I laughed, thinking that was a variation of the more common saying.
Saturday evening, when we got home from our events, I started working on it. I went to the hotel counter and showed them the printout from the church web site with the building name and address and asked them if they knew where this address was. This stumped the hotel front desk. The best they could do was write down the address in Chinese as my first starting point. The next morning, church was at 10:30 a.m., so I got ready by around 8:00 and gave myself an hour and half to search the internet for any clues to get me closer to the address. I had already typed in the address before leaving the States to try to get direction with no luck. I googled all sorts of word combinations like “LDS Church Beijing directions “ or many variations thinking that certainly someone would have had the same problem as I did and put some type of clue or advice on the web – but no luck. Then, I typed in the street address and tried to find some businesses that might have some directions to get to at least the street – no luck. I then tried to find telephone numbers of any businesses or hotels that would be on the street so that the hotel front desk could call them and ask for directions. I found a few numbers there and wrote them down. Then, I found out the district (city area) that the street was on, and searched for hotels within that district, thinking that maybe if I could find a nice 5 start hotel – preferably an American chain – that we could take a taxi to that hotel, talk to a concierge, and then find it that way. Faster than I could imagine, 90 minutes went by, and now it was 9:30 with church starting in one hour. Emily was ready, so I told her we would just have to go with the information that we had and hope we would get there somehow. I took the newly gleaned information back down to the front desk where I approached the best English speaker of the morning staff. She too puzzled and puzzled over the address and the building name. However, when looking at the building name (Jin Tai) she did call what seemed to be some type of Beijing directory assistance (my best guess) and had what seemed to be a 10 minute conversation. Finally she hung up and told me that there was a street name of my address, but the building name was wrong – there was no building named “Jin Tai” at that street. We both looked puzzled at that, because I was able to show her the printout from the church web site, but she seemed convinced that there was no building on that street. Finally she said she was going to check the Internet. Of course, I was convinced that would do no good, because I had already spent probably multiple hours on the Internet trying many options, but I thought maybe the locals knew other ways to figure this out. By now, it was almost 10:00, and our chances of finding church were dwindling. The taxi drive alone could easily be 30 minutes or more and that assumed the taxi driver knew where he was going. And then, all of our sudden, our luck turned. She came out of her office smiling and said, “I found it”! Of course, I was surprised since the story seemed to be playing out that we wouldn’t find it. She motioned for me to come back into her office. There on her computer screen she showed me a local Chinese version of a Mapquest and a picture of a building. Then she told me what the problem had been. She looked at me very seriously and said “This building name says “Jin Tai” but that is not correct. The building name is “Jin Tai”. At first blush, the sound and spelling seems exactly the same, but because we had had our Chinese “tone” lesson the day before with our second tour guide, I immediately understood what she was saying. The address based on US characters was viewed as a monotone “Jin Tai” – which meant one thing. But the way she pronounced the real name, it was “Jin Tai” with a upward tone at the end. That meant something completely different. I smiled inside, amazed that she wouldn’t think of that immediately, and yet confirming that the same words pronounced with a different tone have completely different meanings here. Once she knew that, then she was not only able to find the directions but her search engine showed a picture of the building so we could recognize it when the taxi driver took us there. She wrote down the directions and was even nice enough to come out to the street and talk to the taxi driver to make sure he got us there – she even gave him her cell phone number if he got lost, since she now was an expert on how to get there. We got in the taxi and were able to get there in about 10 minutes. It turned out it was not very far.
The taxi driver took us to a tall 20-25 story office building. It was lightly raining and the doorman brought an umbrella over as Emily stepped out of the taxi so she would not get wet (how kind). We walked in the building and it was a type of mall inside. We wandered our way to the elevator and then went to the fourth floor. We stepped out, saw a n open door in a hallway, and looked inside. Two American ladies were talking in familiar words and familiar accents. We said we were looking for the LDS Beijing branch – and they smiled and said that we had found it! Mission accomplished. They pointed us in the direction of the “chapel” and we went inside and sat down. After all of that, we were actually early for church.
There are two LDS branches in Beijing. There were chairs set up for about 100 people and by the time church started there were probably 60 people there that Sunday. We had a very nice meeting. The leaders were very careful to announce the strict guidelines and conditions upon which the members and visitors could continue to operate in Beijing and asked all who attended to respect those guidelines. All who attend are foreign internationals with passports -- no Chinese nationals. One of the speakers introduced himself as an international student who had recently got a job here, originally from Orem Utah. Although we are in the hottest part of summer, the building was actually cool and Emily was cold. She turned to me and said, “No matter where you go in the world, the church is the same….sacrament meetings are always cold…” I laughed, thinking that was a variation of the more common saying.
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