Well the last week has been a HUGE one for us with a trip out of town for some sight-seeing, a spot of drinking over a few rounds of darts (how British?) and experiencing the anarchy that is Chinese New Year fire cracker night(s). Because of this, and to save us (and you) having to contend with a chapter book for the last week’s events we have decided to do it over two posts. So here’s what we got up to for the first half of the last week.
2009 is Chinese Year of the Oxn and effigies of the animal are EVERYWHERE.Last Thursday I again headed out to continue my sojourn into the difficult territory of the Chinese language, this time with an eating theme. Having already had a bit of first-hand experience in this area and failing miserably, I thought that I would certainly benefit from it but also be able to pick it up fairly quickly (in comparison to, let’s say, Chinese words needed for a beauty parlour visit). This was a good one on the practical front – 2 hrs of classroom lessons followed by a short walk to a nearby restaurant and a lunch paid for by the school (read: paid for by us). In the end though it was still tricky, and unlike the lesson before that on bargaining that I went out and put to use immediately I have not had the opportunity to practice the dining out as we have taken the opportunity over the Chinese new year break to eat at home.
The evening of the lesson I DID have the opportunity to give the food ordering “skills” a test drive when I took up an invite to a game of darts and the option for dinner beforehand. What I was told was “a small social group who like to throw some darts and have a few drinks” ended up being a group of 12-15 expats from all over the world (along with one or two locals) who liked to hit the bar hard and were a great bunch to met up with. The opponent for the night was a team of local Chinese players who ended up taking us on the last game, but the REAL winner for the night was the pub owner, as our group farewelled two of the Finnish members with shot after shot of a variety of European liqueurs (I lost count after 4). In a stroke of great fortune the pub/restaurant (which happens to be our group’s home ground) also has a bit of a Spanish/Mexican flavour to the menu, including a very nice and (relatively) cheap Sangria.
Needless to say I rolled home sometime after 1am and woke up with a slightly sore head (not from any dart accidents, luckily). Fortunately the taxi trip home was a lot more streamlined than the trip there, when I had to ring the restaurant and hand the phone to the cab driver so he could communicate in Chinese where he was meant to go. Mental note: if you are going somewhere in China and you don’t know where you are going and don’t know the language, ensure you take the phone number of the place to are heading as the Beijing Taxi drivers sometimes have issues reading city maps (even those in Chinese, which it was in this case). All in all though it was a great night, and I am looking forward to the new comp starting in around March.
On Saturday we headed out with around 60 other people from Amy’s work to the area North-West of the city, to check out the Guyaju Caves and then onto the Longqing Gorge Ice Festival. While the history of the caves is not exactly clear, the local Government has really gone to a lot of effort to open up this great natural and manmade area to tourists. Notwithstanding the one and a half busloads of our group, there was a small stream of visitors doing the 2-3km loop that takes you past and into the three sections of caves that are jammed between the mountains to the North West of the Badalang section of the Great Wall. As to how many people know about it outside of China is unclear, as I would imagine that many overseas tourists would not have the caves on their list of Beijing Tourist destinations even though it is only 30min drive past the most popular section of the Great Wall for tourists. First stop was amazing, and the second one bewildering (imagine Santa, Walt Disney and Quentin Tarrintino getting together and writing a script over a kg of meth amphetamine). Statues of Disney characters, ice and snow sculptures, full ice castles and slides and a marvellous waterfall all on the front side of a dam – in Australia we try to hide our dams, whereas here they decided to build a dragon up the side (complete with escalators inside to take you up the mountain) and use the frozen surrounds to create a marvellous destination. There was also a very interesting ‘Cave of 100 flowers’ which appeared to be someone’s version of a botanic garden, featuring a broad selection of fake flowers and animals from all different parts of the world – it was ‘interesting’.
Section of the Guyaju Caves, north of Beijing.
Maddy having a crack at the old well.
Guihot's at Guyaju Caves, with Jackson Hole in the background.
We were advised to pack some warm drinks for our trip. I thought I could do better than that and purchased 3 thermoses – one for the coffee, one for soup and one for hot water to make up some instant noodles. They turned out to be a great investment as we needed the warmth of the drinks/food to combat the freezing temps – it was a fair bit colder than the temperatures we have been experiencing in Beijing.
Longqing Gorge Ice Festival
The dragon up the wall of Longqing Gorge.
In preparation for the Ice Festival trip Amy and I jumped into a taxi and headed out to al all sports shop called Decathlon (French brand), which is Beijing’s version of Rebel Sport. After a bit of wandering around looking lost we managed to track down the thermals to keep out the cold during the trip, and also checked upon their bike stuff (which I had to eventually drag Amy away from – you know how obsessed she is with them). In the end I told her that while the top bike offered was a good beast and better than any Rebel offerings, it was a bit on the exy side compared to home and she should head out to the real bike shops instead (which I begrudgingly offered to accompany her to).
On the school front Maddy is continuing to settle in to her school well, and has got an invite to a friend’s birthday party in the coming weeks. In addition to this she has been busily organising a play date with one of her friends and has been nice enough to let us into the conversation (albeit after promises of sleep-overs have already been made).
The next week for the Guihot family is a more relaxing one than the last, as Chinese New Year continues on to next Monday. All things going to plan I’ll be off to do a fitting for a Tuxedo in prep for a ball we have on Valentine’s Day, and will also be enjoying the last of the firecracker season.
On a final note, while we have been able to use the blog to post up some of our favourite photos from our adventures, others that we would like to have put up unfortunately couldn’t be included for storage reasons. To address this we have created an online photo gallery of our adventures in Beijing, which you can check out at
http://www.picasaweb.com/reece.guihot Up in the gallery currently is a collection of photos from our trip out to the caves and the Ice Festival. We will upload more to the gallery in the coming days. There are a few there, so feel free to pick and choose.
Longqing Ice Festival - main pavillion. Thanks Uncle Walt.
Yes, Grasshopper.
Maddy on the downward (ice) slide.
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