A Chinese fairground on ice: chair-skating, ice-biking and sheep-sleighs...

We took a trip to Houhai at the weekend, to see what the Beijingers get up to when the lakes are frozen solid - and what an icy wonderland awaited!  We set about hiring some skates, but instead were tempted by the other imaginative delights on offer - ice bikes, chairs with blades, carriages pulled by life size, mechanical dolls, ice dodgems and - - - a sleigh pulled by a sheep!  Yes, a giant, real-life sheep, wearing little hoof-protectors, giving rides around the ice in a small 'sleigh'.  It had to be seen to be believed, but take a look at the pictures below for an indication....

We had a lot of fun on our bikes, even though - unsurprisingly - the steering was a bit skew-whiff (and God forbid you got a wheel or blade stuck in an ice rut!) and the brakes a little ineffective.  Despite the vast range of things on offer, many people chose to brave the ice simply in their shoes, slipping all over the place but getting stuck in with the hoopla and sausages on a stick nonetheless.... a dangerous decision considering the speed everyone is careering around at!  

 

After an hour of racing around, we decided to try the chairs - definitely one of the safer ways to hit the ice, even taking into account the accompanying pair of 2-foot long spikes with handles for pushing yourself around at pace.  Of course, some bright spark had the idea of forming as long a chain as possible on the ice, led by a brave man on a bike - Cue: chaos!  Then, as if it's not enough entertainment for one afternoon, a crazy man stripped down to his speedos, sang for 10 minutes in the -6 degrees and dived right in (to the special area cordoned off for swimmers in winter, natch...).

Just another afternoon in China!  If only we had proper winters in the UK - and fewer safety regulations...

Spotted on the sidewalk...

.... workers doing press-ups in the street on a Sunday in -6C!

Update: Korean marmalade tea...

...is delicious!  This could also be because it's made from the Youzi (aka pomelo) - my favourite Chinese fruit (see previous post).

 

What a discovery!

Wangfujing Snack Street

Just off Wangfujing (the main "shopping street" in Beijing, although I don't know quite who shops there...) is a snack street (this is different to the Night Market), where you can buy a wide variety of chuan'r () - see below for the delicacies on offer! It's a bustling little street, and has a surprising number of people actually purchasing and eating the food - though it has to be said that the normal meat skewers seem to be the most popular, no matter what the stallholders tell you.

A little interesting aside is that the character for chuan is 串which looks just like a skewer....Here are some candied tomatoes and small apples - you often see them being peddled around on the back of a bike:This chap has a selection of candied everything!Some of the more normal skewers...And some of the more unusual! (Though I'll admit I have never, ever seen anyone eating a seahorse or live scorpion....)This lady is selling the homemade yogurt that comes in small clay pots and is available from small shops all over the city - the chap in the right is the star of one of the above photos, and was a very keen subject!

Zhujiazhuang

Back in October, I took a trip to Shanghai and went to a small water village about an hour away called Zhukiazhuang. It was very pretty, and kind of what I imagine a Chinese Venice would be like (though having never been to Venice, this may be misguided....), even with small gondolas to take you around. Delightful!
We arrived in the evening and the small shops and restaurants directly along the canals were all lit up and looking very pretty - it was certainly much more picturesque and pleasant than wandering the small alleyways which were stuffed full of small shops selling generic tourist tack.In the back streets, however, there was a lot of local food on display - and I was left wondering who on earth bought it, as literally every second shop had a massive counter of these pork (?) delights, either tied up with string or wrapped in leaves. I didn't buy off the street, but did get it served over dinner and it was tender, sweet, sticky and delicious.

Korean marmalade tea and other Chinese hamper delicacies

I was pleasantly surprised to arrive back in China and find an unusual Christmas hamper on my desk.   While some items (wine, biscuits, truffles, toy snowman) were what you might expect in England, others most certainly were not, including:

 

- a box of dried kumquats

- 500g raisins

- Korean marmalade-tea (admittedly, this is not the real name)

- and, most strange of all, 500g of flaxseeds.

 

I can't get the jar of Korean marmalade-tea open, but as soon as I do, I'll let you know what it's like!  For the time being, satisfy your curiosity here.

Beijing's Big Freeze

As I'm sure many of you will have heard, Beijing (and seemingly the rest of the world!) is experiencing a Big Freeze, with temperatures here dropping as low as -16.7C during the night (the lowest temperature since 1971!), and hovering around -13C in the daytime.  Strangely, it seems more bearable at night, and I wonder if this is because I simply *expect* it to be colder then!

 

The heaviest snowfall in Beijing in almost 60 years meant that hundreds of flights were cancelled (mainly domestic, but also international - so Dave and I were lucky to land (safely on a snowy runway...) on Monday morning!), and for the FIRST TIME, schools were shut for a snow day.  Extreme cases in the north included this train, literally stopped in its tracks by a wall of snow.

 

However, it's remarkable how better equipped China is when it comes to snow, in comparison with the UK.  And if you remember my previous post about snow, Beijing actually only sees, on average, 3 snowfalls per year - so it isn't that common an occurrence.  A few flakes of snow can see the whole of London ground to a halt, including the Underground (which, in particular, never ceases to amaze me, seeing as it is UNDERground....).  Here, more than 20,000 people were dispatched to shift the snow: from the road, to the gutter, the gutter to the pavement, the pavement back to the gutter (yes - jobs for the masses!) all day and all night, which meant that Monday morning saw a steady, if slow, stream of traffic around the city.  Sadly, this means no snow days over here and,for the most part, it's business as usual for the start of 2010...

 

As an aside, this post is made using the "email to blog" function, as I can't access the editing part of my blog at the moment - so please forgive any dubious formatting etc!

Photo shoot

Every so often around town, you will spot a photo shoot with a moody/nonchalent/freezing model. I love these!

In action:
Off camera and freezing cold!

Aaah, Christmas!

Christmas is coming! And how exciting to be back in the UK, where Christmas is celebrated with more than a token flashing light and strip of tinsel!

I landed at about 3.30pm on Sunday and made it to the Albion, secret Santa present wrapped and in hand, to hit the Jesus Christmas dinner 2009. Well done Caro for organising! It was great to see so many of us together again - from places as far away as California, Brazil, China and Clapham - enjoying a good catch up as if no time had passed at all. This is exactly what I love about Christmas! Nice one, friends.

PLUS there is SNOW! It's slushy, and it's causing havoc - but hey, that's Britain and we wouldn't have it any other way.....

CUTE!

In Tiananmen Square, of all the iconic places in China, we stumbled across this very happy family from the Chinese countryside on holiday to see the sights that Beijing has to offer. We had some (slightly confused and confusing chat), the outcome of which was that they were just about as interested in us as we were in them - cue lots of photos.... The only one who doesn't seem to be so happy is the kid (in the best outfit I've ever seen) and I'm going to out that down to her discomfort in all those layers:


Check out how rigid she is! And note the slit in the jumpsuit..... poor thing - at least she was blessed with a nappy than is more than can be said for the rest of the toddlers we saw that day!

Another cutie!