Woke this morning to falling snow – it’s that time of year. To this point we had not had any frost so the leaves are still on the trees. The green leaves against a white ground, the falling snow with its small light flakes,each snow flake standing out against an autumn gray sky – this [...]
Yesterday we left here at 4:30 p.m. to go to the Lotus Centre to shop. Rush hour is 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., and we arrived at Wudoakou subway station around 5:00 p.m. The street vendors were out in force – some had bike carts, some used tables, and others displayed their goods on blanket sheets [...]
The Blue Zoo Aquarium is a modern day type of attraction, and although it is very impressive, similar attractions can be found in many metropolitan centres. Personally we feel that people who come to Beijing for only a week or two would enjoy the old imperial treasures. These sites are steeped in history and forged [...]
In our last post we talked about the history of the Summer Palace and how it came to be in ruins. In this post we would like to show you some pictures of those ruins, and we thought of making some comments about why anyone would cause such massive destruction to such a beautiful place. [...]
We were invited to go visit the Old Summer Palace by Mike and his wife Chenxia. Mike teaches Grade one at the school and is from Wisconsin, USA, and his wife Chenxia is Chinese. They arrived at the gate of the school about 9:00 on Saturday morning and we set off. This park is situated [...]
Yesterday we went back to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. You can stroll around the first two courtyards free of charge, but to go further into the city costs 60 RMB. Here you can also hire an English-speaking Chinese guide for about 100 RMB ($16). We decided to explore on our own and went [...]
The Meal: On Monday we received a text message from Dave inviting us to go with him and four friends to see the Great Wall, and of course we said yes. We took the subway to the end of Line 13 where we met up with Dave, Doris, Alexander, Crysta and Kirk. We then walked [...]
Yesterday around 10:00 a.m. Xiaoling showed up at our door to take us to lunch, and presented us with a beautiful red and gold box containing moon cake, which is a big part of the Moon Festival. We took the subway to the north part of the city which Xiaoling described as a cultural area [...]
Although there are many cars in Beijing, bicycling is still a very popular means of transportation,and there are bike lanes on most streets. Our friend Dave invited us to go with him to look at some as he was planning to buy one. So yesterday we walked to the subway, took the subway and then [...]
All the foreign teachers were invited to dinner hosted by the director of the International Foreign Teachers department, Miss Yue, and her assistants last night. A bus was booked to take us to the restaurant and at five o’clock eleven of us got on board for the ride. It was rush hour in Beijing which [...]
