San Francisco

We just got back from San Francisco, where we had gone to see our friends Giles and Suzi get married! And we also did an astronomical amount of shopping!

San Francisco - Out and About

I also took some shots of the wedding, sorry they're not much good. Of all the types of photographers I am not, I am especially not a wedding photographer :)
The wedding was really nice though. In Golden Gate Park, it was nicely set up and all went off without a hitch. Jane had to read some of the script from Buffy which may have surprised some people, but not the ones who know either Suzi or Giles! It also went very well.

Giles and Suzi Get Hitched!

We had a fantastic time, it was great to catch up with friends. One of the things about being in China is that it is pretty isolating so seeing friends that I hadn't seen since the last time we were in Aus was really great.

We also got the chance to go for a drive down to Monterrey Bay which was also very nice. San Francisco seems to have terrible weather in the summer, colder than Australia in the winter which surprised me (even though EVERYONE told me in advance, it's still weird). We had a lot of overcast days except for the wedding so that was a bit like Beijing.

On the whole, a successful trip and I'd definitely like to go back. Maybe in another season though, I'm hoping that the other ones are warmer :)

Abandoned Amusement Park

The following day from the Ice Festival, we went to an abandoned, half-built amusement park called "China's Wonderland". Apparently it was partly built in the 90s but never finished for some reason.

We got on another bus, but this one was not an express and was much slower than the last one. The country-side around this part of Beijing is quite hilly and steep, and there's clearly been farming for a very long time. Lots of terracing and alterations, old looking buildings and part of the Great Wall as a backdrop, it was a fun trip.

We got out of the bus, walked a bit and next to a petrol station was this place. From the front it looks pretty finished, there are buildings on either side, a car park, bridge across the highway. But once you get closer  you realise that's about all that's complete. All the other buildings are half-constructed frames or less in some cases. At the back of the site was a partly constructed Disneyland castle thing. The whole place was really eery.

We just wandered in past some people standing there (who it turns out are security guards and supposed to keep people out) and just had a look around. The place isn't big and we weren't allowed to (or physically couldn't in some cases) go into the buildings and I was scolded by a man wearing camoflage for climbing up a staircase.

I'm not sure that the photos do the place justice, it was really weird to be in this field, amongst these buildings with nothing really around. For a while after we arrived there was a woman on a loudspeaker yelling something from the village nearby, and we could just hear it when the wind blew our direction. It was very strange.
Here's my gallery from the place:

Abandoned Amusement Park

Once we got back we had to pack because we were leaving really early the next morning for Thailand! Getting back was pretty easy, we just walked back to the bus stop and got on the next bus to Beijing. Then we caught the train back with no problems.

Long Qing Ice Festival

A few weeks ago (just before Thailand), Jane and I went with some people to a place called Yan Qing to go to an ice festival and also to take photos at an old, half-built amusement park.

It would prove to be an odd trip.

First thing was to get to the station to meet the person organising the trip. Easy enough, it was only a few stops away. The only problem, we had never met her before. Still that part was fine. Then with everyone in tow (turned out there were 8 of us), we made our way against the pedestrian traffic during rush hour, to the bus station. Fortunately Nic (the organising person) speaks great Mandarin and could sort out which bus to catch. Then we sit on the bus, which is fine cause I was expecting to have to stand, for about 70 minutes until we arrive at this town. It seems completely normal so far but the weirdness factor grows by how weird everyone else thinks we are. Apparently white people (much less groups of white people) don't come here much and when they do, they don't come on the bus. And they don't stay in the hotels because only one hotel was allowed to have us stay. It was nice enough, so we dropped our stuff and having organised some completely illegal cabs, we were on our way to the festival.

We arrived and it was starting to get cold. We asked the cab guys to wait (each time in this story when I say we'd done something that involved a Chinese person, please note that Nic did it and I did not participate in the exchange) so as soon as we arrived they left.
We started walking up and found a huge number of lanterns with no people. In fact there weren't really any people anywhere. Which is also weird.
We started walking up the road, past all the lanterns (see the photos at the end for more details!) and finally ended up at the ticket office. Tickets were 100 yuan which is quite a lot (for comparison, the pension is about 300 yuan a month) and sort of explained why there was no one around.

Still we went in and it was all light, lanterns, sculptures etc, but no ice (other than the frozen lake). Eventually we found some of what used to be ice sculptures but were clearly in the process of melting. Uh oh, have we made a huge mistake?

It turns out we had not made a huge mistake because inside this tent thing were the real ice sculptures. There were dragons and buddhas and temples and deer and all sorts of things. They freeze the ice around these lights so that when they build the stuff it can be lit up. It looks amazing but oh so cold. Having looked around for a while, we made our way out again, Nic called the "taxi" drivers who said "sorry but it's too late and we don't want to come out now." Hmm. Fortunately there was a guy with a van there who would take us all for less than the cost of the two cars, and he would wait while we finished taking photos of the lanterns.

At this point a few people (Jane included) were completely frozen and just got in the van. I wandered down with everyone else and we got to see a few lanterns before the security guard started turning them off. When asked why he was turning them off an hour before closing, he replied "there's no one here." Not sure what we were then.

After a completely insane trip back into town (the back seat of the van wasn't attached, we had 3 people sitting in the boot and the driver insisted on spitting out the window every 500m) we got to the hotel, dumped our camera gear and started looking for food. We couldn't find anywhere! We walked for a while but it was so cold we headed back to the KFC we passed, but then I remembered having seen a bunch of people eating in this basement place. Turns out it was the local noodle shop. My food was quite nice, there was soooo much of it and Jane's and mine together cost 14 yuan, which is just over $2. Score!

Then it was back to the hotel for a good nights sleep. We didn't get one though as our window faced the roundabout where everyone was beeping all night, along with the town clock that not only bonged the appropriate number of bongs each hour but then told you the time and date in Mandarin.

Anyway, here are the photos I took, I will get onto the tale of the abandoned amusement park. . .

Long Qing Ice Festival

Chinese New Year

Hi All!
I haven't written anything on my blog lately, partly cause not that much has been happening but I've also fallen out of the habit so I will try to post a little more in the future.

It's currently the middle of Chinese New Year (called Spring Festival in China). This is one of the times of year where the Chinese get a whole week off that they usually use to visit their families. The news said they were expecting upwards of 3 billion trips (planes, trains, cars and buses) over this period and also explains why I'm not in the US. The tickets were going to cost me way too much so I ended up staying home.
The other thing about CNY are the fireworks. There was a sign in the lefts in the building saying that they are only permitted to let off fireworks between 7am and 12am (only 19 hours a day!) but they broke that in the first day!

As of Sunday, they started just after 7am and went until a bit after 3am the next morning, then started again around 8am or so. They have calmed down a little now (so they're not going constantly) but in the evenings it's still pretty regular. I'm not a huge fan of fireworks, probably even less of a fan now, but they have been nice to watch. I took a video at about 10:30pm the other night (people with no bandwidth like grandparents may not want to watch at home :)

That was from my apartment window looking out over the frozen lake in the middle of the complex.

It was also my birthday the other day which was nice. There are some people here that it was nice to see (hi Adam and Anita!!) but I was definitely missing Jane and everyone back in Aus. Usually we have a nice big birthday party with everyone who's around and I really missed that this year.

Heating... Part 3

As people suggested might happen, now that the heating has been on for a few days, it's now really hot in the house! Before I was sitting at the desk wearing a jumper, merino jumper, t-shirt, jeans, socks and slippers and sometimes my beanie if it was really cold. I still got cold hands after a while even wearing all that.
I'm now down to jeans and a t-shirt and I wouldn't feel uncomfortable wearing shorts I don't think. The floor is heated too so I don't even need my slippers any more!
It's warm enough that we've now had to open a window, so I guess the Chinese like it warm in their houses (and shops, offices etc)
Bring on the depths of Winter now, I'm ready now that I know I have a nice warm house to come back to.

Heating... Part 2

Just a couple of hours after my last post, I realised that it wasn't so cold in the apartment any more. Then I was in the kitchen putting stuff in the bin (which is right in front of one of the wall heaters) and I noticed it was warm!!
So the heating now seems to be on, which is very nice. No one is sure if it's just on for testing or on properly but since it was coming on next Tuesday, I'm hoping they're not going to bother to turn it off.

We have heaters in all the rooms, which is really nice, and it seems like there is under floor heating too. Either that or the apartment downstairs is really warm! So the house is at least a few degrees warmer, I was too warm last night and I definitely don't need thermals and a jumper like I was wearing before.
Now all I have to do is to keep making myself go outside when it gets really cold!

Heating...

A few people have asked me about the heating (probably because we've been complaining about the cold:)
Some background to this in case it hasn't come up is that most buildings have centrally controlled heating which is in turn controlled by the Beijing government. It turns out that there are some guidelines as to when they turn it on. Basically testing starts around the 7th of November but the heating itself doesn't get turned on until either the 15th of November (next Tuesday) or until they get five days in a row of average temperatures below 5 degrees. Which is pretty cold for early November.

In short, it looks like the heating will come on next Tuesday because although it's getting into the negatives at night, it's still getting up to the mid-teens during the day.