Ice biking, Chinese new year preparation and Wangfujiing shopping street

This Saturday - Ice biking and new year monsters!

This weekend I staid in Beijing. So my colleague - friend invited me to a Beijing winter trip with her family on Saturday. We went to Houhai lake which was frozen and went ice-skating and yes, ice-biking there. What is ice-biking Ice-bikes are bikes you can pedal with on the ice, but the difference from normal bikes is that ice-bikes have vats (Kufen') under the wheels (see photo). It was great fun! The sun was shining, the lake wasn't too crowded and we had a lot of fun! I even taught Julia (that's the English name of my colleauge - friend's daughter) some ice-skating. I was astonished I only fell down once despite the fact that I had not been ice-skating for ages.

For lunch, they took me out to a mushroom hotpot restaurant. Hotpot means that in the middle of the table there is a big pot for soup and you all eat out of it. The soup was great. It had more than sixty different kinds of mushrooms in it. Hotpot is a typical Chinese kind of dish. I especially liked the so-called tiger mushroom. Tiger mushroom is supposed to be especially good to prevent cancer.

On the way we also stopped to take a photo of the new olympic venues (National Aquatics Centre and National Stadium - interesting modern architecture!) which were recently finished. Many cars were parking on the side of the road already just to take a picture of themselves and the olympic venue.

In the afternoon we (Claudia and me) went on a culture lecture to learn about Chinese new year. The Chinese have a different year from ours. This year, Chinese new year starts on the 8th of February. That's why right now everybody is preparing (buying presents, etc. because the day before Chinese new year is somehow like our Christmas Eve). In the course we learned to paint some red Chinese calligraphy spring couplets. These are used to hang in front of your door to scare the "Xi" (Nian) monster off which is supposed to be afraid of red things - as far as I understood this legend.

The Chinese also have their own system of horoscopes. For their system, it doesn't matter in which month you are born, but in which year. E.g. for people born in 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993 and 2005 the astrologic sign is a rooster (Hahn / Henne). Roosters are supposed to be diligent, quick-witted, bold and pragmatic. Famous roosters were Confuciusa and Catherine the Great. I for example am a rooster as well (now, have a guess which year I was born :-)). If you don't know what Chinese astrologic sign you are, you can write me and I can find out if you want.

I shall tell you more about Chinese new year as soon as I participate in some further new year's events.

This Sunday - You can eat worms in Wangfujing shopping street!

Wangfujing is said to be the biggest shopping street in Beijing with a lot of malls, but also touristy shops and weird foodstalls nearby. In some part of the street, cars are not allowed and the street ressembles rather normal shopping streets there.

But I was scared off the foodstalls when I saw that they offered some worms / insects roasted on a spit (Spiess). And of course the street was very crowded because many Chinese buy new year gifts right now.

Intersting thing: I saw a Chinese brand shop there selling sport clothes and shoes. Have a look at my photo of its window whether the sign and their slogan sound familiar for you....? :-).

I quite liked the chopstick (Essstaebchen) shops where they only sell chopsticks in all variations. Now I have not only new Chinese books, but also new pairs of chopsticks. Hehe (she is Chinese, yes, this is her real name) supported me in getting some discount on the books. There is really hardly anything in China where you cannot get a discount or discount card. For the end of the day we tried out a new vegetarian restaurant "Lotus in the moonlight". Beancurd roasted duck (Tofuente) - Yummie!

Last thing: Last time I told you that at Jennie Lou's, the international supermarket, they had introduced linen bags and do not offer free plastic bags any more as before. Today I read this is a new Chinese law! They have a garbage problem here. That's why from the 1st of June 2008 supermarkets are not allowed to give their customers free plastic bags anymore. Now we know why.

Women hui lai le! Xi'an snow adventures

Women hui lai le! (We are back!)

Xi'an snow adventures

This weekend Claudia (another infoyear attendee in Beijing) and me went to Xi'an.

We had the chance to discover an unique Xi'an. Why? Firstly, the main season for Xi'an trips starts in spring. Then it can be really crowded. Secondly, we experienced Xi'an with snow or better said: even snow chaos. It was constantly snowing and everything was covered with a layer of snow.

In our youth hostel, Xiangzimen Youth Hostel, which is built in the form of an old hutong house with many Chinese decorations and very helpful staff, located right in the centre of Xi'an, we had a Chinese style room. Very nice!

Already the way from the airport to the youth hostel took us ages because the snow was so much without any winter service on the road.

On Saturday, when we head off for the Terracotta soldiers, it was still snowing. There are more than 7000 Terracotta soldiers and some horses. They were built by the first Chinese king in approximately 200 AC in order to protect the king's tomb. This must have been quite a lot of work! The site is impressing. Our Chinese guide at this site was quite funny. He had a weird way of seeing things (like: "in the XY province of China, gypsies steal a lot" or other discriminating things like the treatment of farmers).

On Sunday, we mainly staid in the town center which in some parts looks old in Xi'an, like a real old city centre (something that does not exist in Beijing). We visited the Muslim Quarter with the biggest mosque of China. The Muslim Quarter was quite interesting. First we passed a muslim style market with many different nuts, dried fruit (we bought dried melon, dried pineapple and dried kiwi) and other sweets. In the quarter we tried some "green bean cake" and typical bread from the small shops there. We didn't try / buy neither pigs' claw (Schweinepfote) nor sheeps' head (Schafskoepfe) which were also sold there.

Another highlight was the Giant Goose Pagoda ("Da Yanta"). Supposed to be the "most well-known pagoda of China" (the Chinese really love superlatives) it is quite a big pagoda. Covered with a lot of snow it looked nice. We were surprised to see some swastika on the buddhist sculptures. They were in fact swastika opened to the left side and thus different from the nazi ones. We found out that these symbol is used to resemble the sun and is an old buddhist symbol: "In Buddhism, the swastika signifies auspiciousness and good fortune as well as the Buddha's footprint and the Buddha's heart. The swastika is said to contain the whole mind of the Buddha and can often be found imprinted on the chest, feet or palms of Buddha images."

Of course we climbed up the pagoda until we couldn't go any further. Going back into town, it was hard to find a taxi because it was still snowing hard. One taxi driver said he would bring us for 50 Kuai (the way there had cost us 15 Kuai). We didn't want to accept this kind of price increase. But after some time we found a normally priced taxi.

Our plane back to Beijing was delayed due to the weather conditions, but yesterday night, later than scheduled, but still, we arrive back in Beijing.

As always I attach some photos for you to have an impression of Xi'an.

THE two news of the WEEK

Thanks for your many e-mails as reaction to my Harbin stories.

First news: SNOW
It snows again in Beijing since today!
So what is so special about it?
My observations:
1. no winter tyres on cars (confirmed by a colleague)
2. obviously no service provided by the city authorities to clear the streets from snow
3. obviously no law saying that the owner of a house has to clear the sidewalk from snow.

Second news: LINEN SHOPPING BAGS
Jenny Lou's is a supermarket all over Beijing (maybe even China). They sell Chinese and European products. Actually, it is mostly known for the European products. You can e.g. buy a large variety of cheese there (normal Chinese people don't cook with cheese).
They used to give customers free, one time usage plastic bags for the shopped goods. Now this has changed: you have to buy a linen, multi time usage shopping bag and bring it with you next time.
I see this as a sign of increasing environmental consciousness. Maybe a small step, but still.

Back from Ice and Snow - My Harbin trip

Harbin weekend trip

Cold, colder, Harbin.

And we were there on the so far COLDEST day of the winter.

But let me give you an introduction first:

Harbin is located in Northeast China, on the railway track from Beijing to Moscow. I don't know why anybody would want to settle down in such a cold area, but I was told that summer's there are quite pleasant so maybe they built the town in summer and had spent too much money in the construction so they wouldn't want to leave once they noticed how cold it was there in winter time. Having "only" over three million inhabitants (the "only" being an "only" to Chinese standards), it is still the capital of a province.

Harbin has a long Russian-Chinese history. In fact, strolling around Central Avenue, most buildings look like either Moscow style (Russian) or St. Petersburg style (mixture of Russian and European). So when we arrived at the train station (we took the night train there), I thought I was in Russia. If it wasn't for the people on the street.... (they are looking very Chinese).

Harbin can give you a real winter experience with the Siberian winds reaching the city in winter time.

So Harbin is famous for winter activities. They have ski resorts nearby and they have the world's biggest Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.

That's why we went there. The Snow Sculptures are fully made out of snow and carved by many artists (mostly Chinese, but some international artists as well). This year being 2008, they had the Olympics as one motto - the other motto was France.

The Bing Deng Festival or Ice Light Festival is the second big winter festival in Harbin. There, most sculptures, many as big as real buildings in form of temples and many other forms, are most interesting at night when they use different colours of light to make them colourful. Amazing! I also attached one photo of the Ice Lights (the colourful building at night)

Though walking through the park at -28 Celsius is really really hard for your body! Frozen legs and fingers are the minimum experience. And then imagine you want to take pictures with your camera!

What else did we do?

We visited a Siberian tiger park (of course the world's biggest of the kind. Yes, the Chinese like superlatives.). There we went inside with a truck and drove around in the tiger's park. It felt somewhat awkward driving around in there. The tiger's were really impressing.

Another highlight was the winter swimming. Each day at 2 pm (the "warmest" time of the Harbin day), there's the possibility to swim in the Songhua river at Harbin. The outdoor temperature then was only minus 18 degree Celsius.

Also, Songhua river is no river in winter. It is frozen and even heavy trucks can drive on it. So they need to prepare a hole in the ice in order to enable people to have a bath there!

The Chinese swimmers (one of them at the age of 82) walked the five minutes from the cabin to the hole in the river at normal speed and without showing signs of freezing. They were only wearing normal swimming clothes - as you can see them in Europe in the swimming halls. Then they got into the water and swam around for some minutes, got out and stoically walked back to the changing cabin.

Unfortunately, we hadn't brought our bikinis and bathing suits so we couldn't join :-).

The last interesting sight I want to mention was 731. 731 was a Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental Base during World War 2. There they had a germ factory where they grew germs for dangerous diseases (like the plague) that they would then throw out of a airplane over populated areas in China so that the Chinese might get ill from the diseases.

They also did human experiments there. "Scientifics" were doing experiments on real human beings (Chinese) to answer questions like: what happens to human beings if they are exposed to a vacuum? With which temperature of water do you have to treat a frozen leg in order for it to still be there afterwards and not fall of? The visit of the sight was very cruel.

If you want to know more about any of the sights I mentioned: google and wikipedia have entries about the sights and Harbin.

Last thing to mention is the souvenir I got from Harbin: although I was wearing many many layers of clothes I caught a cold :-(!

Hope to hear from all of you again soon!

Katharina

Back to Beijing Sightseeing - Tiantan

Today I visited the Altar of of Heaven - Tiantan.

Tiantan is located in a big park area and - guess what? - of course being Saturday it was crowded with Chinese people doing sports, dancing, singing, playing cards etc.

I want to describe one kind of sport which is not known in Germany:

The thing they play with looks like a mixture of indiaca and badminton with feathers. But unlike badminton you do not play it with a racket and unlike indiaca you do not play it with your hands, but the Chinese play this game with their feet. Maybe somebody knows it and knows the name?

After having passed all the sporty people, I entered the altar area which until 1913 had only been open to participants of the yearly ceremony. Which ceremony? Well, the Son of Heavon, i.e. the respective king, had to bring animal sacrifices to Heaven. It seems that the ceremony was quite long (not a nice ceremony for vegetarians); in the end the sacrifices were burnt and the king had to sign an offical announcement that the ceremony had been held.

One curiosity: there was a door called the "Seventy year old door". One emperor was so old that the usual ritual way he had to walk by foot was too long for him. So they build a back door in order to shorten the way he had to walk before the ceremony. However, the emperor feared that his successors might become lazy and always use the short way. That's why he issued a decree saying that only kings older than 70 years were allowed to use this door.

Chinese food - yummy!

It is amazing how manifold chinese food is. I am not talking about dogs and ants, but about vegetables, fruit and tofu combinations. Just to give you some impression what this kind of food is like some examples:

- sweet corn and apple soup

- tofu fish (looks like fish, but is an imitation)

- rice porridge with spinach in it

- Chinese dumplings (a little bit similar to ravioli) filled with mushrooms and egg

Some vegetables and fruits I eat I do not even know the names of. But all in all I quite like the variety and taste of Chinese food.

For those who visit me you can really look forward to the food - I can show you some of the best Vegetarian Chinese food.

Back in Beijing

After a holiday too a cold and relatively bosky ("waldig") European country in the heart of Europe I came back to Beijing yesterday.

I had spent Christmas with my family in the Augsburg region and New Year's Eve with my boyfriend in the Nuremberg region.
We spent New Year's Eve eating Raclette, shooting rackets into the sky, chatting and playing games with some friends. Especially the table racket was a highlight :-).

Apart from that, I can really recommend the new "Fürthermare", a newly built thermal bath including a fun bath with water slopes. So if you currently stay in the Nuremberg region: Fuerthermare is really worth going there. For more information pls. check: www.fuerthermare.de

Hope to hear from you.