In the Spring I was taking Chinese classes at our local community center.
We live in the Maizidian area just West of Chaoyang Park. Each of the little areas in this huge city has a government run community center, health center, several police stations, and more.
The community center offers many services including childcare classes, preschool, help for old folks, and more. It's a vibrant and wonderful place. Since this area includes many of the embassies some of the signs are in Chinese and English!
The free survival Chinese language classes are for local foreigners. It's part of the government sponsored "harmonious society" program. Our class's teacher was from a language school and was an actual professional teacher. She was awesome and so patient with our diverse group of foreigners, all trying to pronounce Chinese but sounding German, French, Italian, Indonesian, American, etc.
They also offer free haircuts to neighborhood retirees. Local hipster hair stylists volunteer periodically to do the elderly trims:
Here's the park square on the little lane that leads to the district buildings:
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