China Post #14 Forbidden City

On Sunday in Beijing we did a walking, mostly tour. After walking one of the original streets in the city we rented a bike instead of taking a rickshaw to do a tour of a hutong. This was a terrifying experience since the cranks are not connected meaning that either rider can coast or peddle at any time so one ride may be leaning right while the other is leaning left to push on the peddles. Now I'm really curious how riding a regular tandem would be.

It seemed as though any time Linda really tried to push on the peddles she would pull on the handle bars making the bike try to swerve out from under us and when I tried to correct for this I discovered that the bar was not tight and I could rotate it forward and backward, the brake levers as well. Eventually we got the hang of things and we stayed upright the whole time, though I did not get much of a chance to look around. Dylan loved it though so that makes it worth while.

After the excitement of the ride we got lunch at a noodle house and tried fried noodles, boiled noodles and steamed noodles.Here is Dylan with a noodle mustache, naturally.
Next we headed to a park were we could get an overview of the Forbidden City. Along the way we passed a nut stand that is known for having great roasted chestnuts. There was a good sized line but Linda wanted to try some so we waited. They were quite good, kind of an interesting taste. Here is Linda all happy with her purchase.
Once we got to the park where we could get the overview I was confronted with this. The Chinese, maybe all asian cultures since when we were in SE asia there were lots of stairs as well, love their stairs. I'd recommend anyone who is coming to China to walk stairs at least a couple of times a week, maybe 20 floors a day to begin with or maybe it's the fact that I have Dylan on my back for all this.
Anyway, here is Dylan hiding while we get our picture taken at the high point of the park right in line with the center of the Forbidden City.
The park and the overview is definitely worth while and we can't imagine not doing one without the other. After looking around and getting an idea of the layout of the entire city, Beijing, we headed down more stairs to the entrance to the Forbidden City. It had started to rain when we were looking around from the top of the park so here are a bunch of umbrellas entering the Forbidden City.
From the entrance we took we were in the garden first. There were these sculptures which are supposed to be some sort of magical offspring of the dragon, similar to a unicorn.
One amazing thing about the garden s that everywhere you walk there are all these tiny inlayed pebbles to make panels with pictures. I actually think that the rain made them easier to see.
It seems that they really should restrict people from walking on the tiles but then there would be no room to walk so eventually all the pebbled will be broken out from people walking on them. Here further in is a huge slab of marble that has been carved twice, once over a previous carving. It is about 36m by 3.5m.
Here's Dylan and I just outside of the ceremony temple with dragon head water spouts in teh back ground.
Another view of the water spouts, it was not raining enough but they still run. It would look pretty cool to see all the dragons spitting water from their mouths.
A pulled back view of the ceremony temple.
Here is a video of what Dylan discovered that he could do in the borrowed baby backpack. Though later he tried to go in reverse and tipped backwards, though without getting hurt since the back sticks up behind his head.

Assorted

Happy Birthday to my dad, last Friday.

Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers in our lives.

Congrats to Chris and Joanna Eckstein on finishing the Tour of the Gila. Chris raced quite well staying with the lead group on the first few days and placing well in the TT before suffering a bit on the final day. Joanna was coming back from assorted broken bones on both sides of her body.

My dad just did his pre-registration for Paris-Brest-Paris, the 1200km brevet, held every 4 years. I'll get to register in another week. Hopefully dad finished his 300km this last weekend to finish the qualifying series.

China Post #13 Great Wall

After visiting Olympic Park we headed out to that great big long stone barrier. Xiaowei took us to a less traveled section of the wall and even though it was a beautiful day there was nothing that could be considered a crowd. Naturally there is a little village right were you access the wall and Xiaowei called ahead and had some chinese pancakes cooked and ready for us when we got there at one of the restaurants. After a quick snack we headed across a river and paid 2 nominal fees to cross some farmers land and were on the wall. It is really impressive...I probably did not need to mention that. It's incredible that the Chinese built a 4000-4500 mile long wall in just a couple hundred years.

The area we were in in was quite mountainous and the wall climbed, descended and weaved through the terrain. The section we were on headed mostly up for a pretty good ways then had a saddle and a quick drop to a really long climb, of course beyond the saddle the wall had not been cleaned up or maintained so things were a bit more interesting the further out one walked. Here is a view looking down towards the valley from were we started, this is actually where we first got on the wall.

Here is Dylan and I heading up...
and the whole family continuing UP...
A view looking out past the first high point, out of the frame to the left to the really high point more to the right.
From where the last picture was taken in the saddle Linda, Dylan and I headed across the hillside on a trail to make a loop and hike a longer section of the wall without having to go up twice. As we headed off through the low trees we heard some yelling and turned to see a guy charging down the wall from our previous high point before the saddle. It was an amazing display of speed, balance and agility coming down the steps and smooth surface along the top of the wall in smooth sole slippers. He wanted to collect a small fee for crossing, maybe, his land. Once we dealt with that we worked out way across and got onto the wall where it looked like this.
That was shot right where Dylan and I got back on, while Linda headed down a bit further towards the low point. This is what it looked like heading back up.
Here is a panoramic shot from the lower of the high points.
As Dylan and I headed down from the high point to complete our loop, we were confronted by this really steep section that some people were reduced to crawling up.
Looking out from one of the towers back up towards the high point.
Linda coming down that really steep section after she finished her loop.
Here is where we had lunch after hiking on the Great Wall for a few hours. Not a bad view.
After the wall we headed back into Beijing to see the Flying Acrobat Show. It was sort of like Circ'us Ole in Las Vegas. Some of the stuff the guys and girls do is pretty amazing but both Linda and I were disappointed in the choreography and timing, were could easily see everyone doing the same thing, mostly, but off by a second or two. It was worth while though because Dylan was in a trance through the whole thing.

China Post #12 Olympic Park

This past weekend we headed to Beijing to do the tourist thing. It was a hectic weekend of running around and lots of walking, but hey we only had two days. We stayed at the Beijing Traditional View Hotel, which had its good points and bad, the first was that it was really had to find because it is in the Hutong area, which also was a good because there was lots to look at on the narrow streets around it. Anyway, that is for another post. In the morning our tour guide, yes we hired a personal tour guide, no bus for us, Xiaowei met us at the hotel and we headed out. First stop was Olympic Park. We parked in a huge underground garage and went up the elevator, emerging right in front of...

The Birds Nest Stadium is pretty cool, Linda was a little unsure of if she wanted to spend the time here but ended up really enjoying it. We just walked around the grounds looking at the buildings and getting the explanation of what different things represented. There were loads of people out selling stuff for kids to play with and Xiaowei bought this bird for him and Dylan to play with.
Here is the main walk that goes through the middle of the park. The stadium, flame and communication tower are on one side and the water cube, gymnastics facility and technology center are on the other,
At one end of the of the walk there is a nice "garden" with a bunch of trees and sculptures. Here we are in front of one called "flow".
One nice thing about having a tour guide is that you always have someone to take pictures and you don't have to ask some random person or set up a timer. Here is the stadium and the communication tower again.
The flame which used to reside on top of the stadium has been moved down to ground level so everyone can see it.
You can go into the stadium and walk around but it cost more money and would have taken up more time. The water cube also allows visitors inside for a fee that varies depending on what you want to do, look around, you can swim in the pool and apparently there is avery large water park inside as well.

It is definitely worth the time to go see the Olympic Park, especially since it is free to walk around.

China Post #11 Aircraft Carrier and Climbing

This story popped up in the google news feed last month from the Taipei Times. A quick summary is the Varyag was built in 1988 by the Soviets, sold to China by the Ukraine in 1998 for $20 million as just a hull, the Chinese started refurbishing it in 2002 in Dalian and it is expected to launch later this year. It is docked just behind the huge Ikea store right at the second to last train stop on your way into downtown. After trying to go to the store called Metro unsuccessfully, since they do not allow children shorter than 1.2m or about 4 feet, we drove around to get a better view than what you can get from the moving train.

This was shot from inside the car and through a construction gate, though we could have gotten a very similar view from the top of the Ikea parking garage. A couple of interesting things. It is a ski jump style carrier, you can see the ramp at the end, as opposed to a catapult take off. It will apparently have better on board defense than an American carrier that relies on other ships for protection. Last, the reported name to be is that of the last admiral from China to take Taiwan, now that has got to go over well with the neighbors. Obviously, since this news is coming from Taipei there is going to be some bias to it.

Monday was a holiday, Labor's Day, so we got a one of the high school girls that lives in the building to babysit Dylan and we headed back up to Daiheishan to get some exercise. We had intended to try and make our way up quickly and possibly multiple times, nothing like 1300 steps to get your heart rate up. Of course we were thwarted by the holiday crowds. Again we had to be dropped off well below the trail head and make our way past hundreds of stationary cars to get to the gate. We were making our way up and had not gone too far when I heard a very familiar noise that made me stop in my tracks. It was the sound of a power drill on rock echoing off the cliffs. I found the guy about a third of the way up a cliff that looks to be 200-250 feet. Linda and I headed off in the direction of the cliff and found a group not too far from the cliff that was with the guy drilling. They turned out to be a group from Dalian that tries to get out most weekends and on Wednesdays at an indoor wall. They invited us to climb with them on Wednesday and to run a lap on the route they had just put the anchor in. After that we finished up Daiheishan and headed back to Shama looking forward to climbing on Wednesday.

With a little emailing we got directions to the climbing wall which is in fitness center in the basement of a hotel. We took a very crowded train ride into town on Wednesday at caught a taxi to the hotel. The wall was small but the people we psyched to be climbing and having a good time. We had fun climbing, meeting people and trying to figure out future climbing plans. We left a bit after 8 and caught a cab back to the train station only to find that the trains stop running at 8. So we had to catch another taxi back to the DDA which was quite a bit more expensive than taking the train 8 yuan vs. 60 yuan. Dylan was being watched by one of the Ayi's that works for another family in the building while we were out.

Here is a video of Dylan during the Wednesday morning Mommy's group that meets at the Shama playroom. He reminds me of that game where the gophers pop out of the holes and you have to whack them.

Now we are getting ready for our weekend trip to Beijing.

China Post #10 Bingyu Gou

On Sunday we headed out to a really pretty valley up in the mountains called Bingyu Gou. From the photos that we'd seen it looked like a nice scenic valley with a river and and some limestone pillars sticking up out of the river. Now some of this turned out to be true but other thing could not have been further from the truth.

It probably was not the best day to go with it being a holiday weekend, the parking lot was full and there was a line of cars a half mile long waiting to get into the lot. Once we got dropped off and walked past the waiting cars we came to the entrance with its ubiquitous stone totem.

Now the dams in the back ground should have been our first clue as to what the park was about. We paid our entry of 120 yuan a person and we got on a ferry to go across the mini lake that the dams created. Dylan was IN LOVE with the boats.
As we motored up the river along with another boat, several others were headed in the opposite direction also loaded down with people. It is hard to see in this shot, but there is a temple on the top of the highest peak, then as you head down, a cell phone tower, power lines and another boat. Quite a contrast.
As we neared the dock we saw one of the pillars that sits out in the river, though thinking about it, it might not be "in" the river if it were not for the dams. Regardless it did look cool.
After docking and trying to get ourselves oriented, which was made more difficult by the driver we took miss translating south to north, telling us to meet him at the north entrance, which was closed instead of the south entrance. Once we got things sorted, it was into the heard. There was a resort off to the right across a bridge, a zip line to the left that you had to cross these concrete blocks to get to.
Other options included a ferry of some small boats, and everything cost more money. Here you can see the resort in the back ground and several of the rented boats to go along with another floating pillar.
We managed to find a way to get by without having to pay for one of the "activities" that involved some very steep stone steps up and over a ridge. At this point we should have figured it out but we were still holding out hope that things would get more scenic once we moved further from the entrance...remember the boats headed the opposite direction loaded with people.

Anyway, once we were past our second (first the boat then up and over the ridge to get to a bridge) water crossing we walked a short distance and were confronted with a small amusement park. There was a swinging pirate ship, water log ride, animated dinosaurs in the water around the rides, tram and mini bus rides. There was also this stone, the "beauty" stone.
For those that have not seen what some Asian toilets looks like.
Sadly at this point it was nearly impossible to enjoy the scenery. There were hoards of people and the mini buses were constantly speeding by in both directions honking their hors for people to get out of the way. All on a road that was only wide enough for a person or two in either side of the vehicle. See video at the bottom of the page. This did look pretty nice though.
Especially when compared to this. More contrast.
I was starting to wonder how much longer I was going to have to put up with the oversized golf carts, it had only been about 10 minutes when we came upon this scene at our 3rd and final river crossing. You can't see all the options here, but there is a person on a zip line, another on a tight rope with a hand line and a handful of different walk ways.

Again all costing some amount of money, and again not signs pointing to a way around without paying. We chose the cheapest and easiest option which was basically squares with gaps between them mixed with sections that were oversized rolling pins that you walked on. Dylan actually enjoyed walking across this more than I though he would.
At this point I was pretty frustrated with the whole thing. Between trying to not get shoved off the trail and not run over and having to pay for everything after paying to get into the park I just wanted to get out. Then we saw a sign saying how far we had to go, 5.7 km to the south entrance and it was all on a road, nobody was walking it but there were plenty of cars to keep us company. Ultimately one kind individual made her boy friend pull over and offered us a ride. We were both done and hopped in, I had to roll down the widow to get the door closed and stuck the top of the baby backpack out.

OH yeah, and the rock is not limestone, it is quartzite.

We met up with the driver at the south entrance and got in to head home. I though this sign was quite humorous and might sum up a lot of things from the experience. It is for a speed bump.
Here is video of one of the nicer golf cart buses.

All in all I still thing that Bingyu Gou could be a nice place but I don't think I would even consider going on the weekend again, especially a holiday weekend. The Chinese seem to have this inability to appreciate nature for what it is and feel the need to turn it into something different. If you are supposed to be having fun it needs to be an amusement park with rides. We've seen 3 now, Discovery Land, which we have not been to yet and is near Golden Pebble Beach seems like your standard park, the one just off of Xinghai Square which was OK, though expensive and finally the Bingyu Gou one which seems utterly excessive and a waste of a beautiful natural setting.

China Post #9 Xinghai Square

On Saturday we all headed into Dalian to check out Xinghai square. The day was kind of overcast and foggy, it reminded me a lot of San Francisco. In fact the weather here is very much like in the SF bay area. This is supposed to be one of the must see locations in Dalian and billed as the largest square in Asia, though it is more of an ellipse. The main feature of the square itself is this tall totem right in the middle.

Carved into the ground around the totem are all 12 of the Chinese zodiac signs. Below the signs are the elements and below those are the years for each sign and element. Here is Dylan next to his.
Outside the zodiac circle there were fields of flowers and in the background if you looked inland, there are loads of tall buildings, usually built in pairs.
There was a bike rental place just outside of the "square". Lots of people were renting tandems and triple bikes like this one.
This group was having some trouble getting started again.

Headed out of the "square" towards the beach there is this long sculpture of footprints.
They lead to a sculpture of a boy and girl playing in the sand up on this platform.
It was almost like a stretched half pipe for skate boarding. It was really steep at the tops and kids were trying to roller blade or ride scooters down it. We stopped at a coffee shop nearby that looked good and had been recommended by some of the "mommies" from the local expat group. While it was expensive the mocha and irish cream cheese cake were very good.
All around the edge of the ellipse were these wire mesh sculptures of people doing sports, I think there were all olympic events.

Back towards town is a large expo hall that is all glass on the front which made for nice reflections of the buildings behind.
For dinner we headed into uptown to a place called Brooklyn which is owned by an asian-american from Chicago. They are known for having the best pizza in town. We arrived before they actually opened but we're allowed in to look around and at the menu. This is the upstairs eating area.
The sausage panini was great.
and the pizza was definitely better than any other pizza we've had out here and it would be a pretty good restaurant in the US. It is just nice sometimes to eat something that your body is more accustomed to.
Here is a video of a game that several people were playing off of Xinghai square, out by the beach. I have no idea what it is called.