Beihai Park, 2 June
My host
brother and I had our English language class on 2 June at Beihai Park. Since Google in China for addresses is useless as there is no ordering system to the buildings, Beihai Park is a 15 minute walk East from where I live. Beihai is really easy to find on a Google map in Beijing since it is right in the middle and has a really big lake.
This is
the oldest and most well preserved imperial pleasure garden in the world. The
place is massive, and over half of it is devoted to the lake that makes its
home clear in the middle, and then stretches beyond the park limits farther to
the south. Air quality was listed as “very unhealthy” today, and from the pics
below you can see why. This photo was taken approximately 10am. A note for my Papa, all of these taken with Pentax!
I have
no guide book (might get one soon) what I know about this park is limited to a
brief wiki search, and the pictures below ;-)
Since
it was a pleasure park there is a main walkway which circles the lake but there
are lots of little side paths into nice shady spots. But beware! The best shady
spots require hiking up natural stone steps which have been there for at least
a few centuries.
The people of Beijing seem to use this as a natural
amusement park. They climb, they walk, they visit the temple alters, they
paddle boat, they picnic, they dance and they watch performing troops.
Paddle boats, and the
dim outline of a temple due to pollution
One of many groups of
people out practicing their dance moves
There was a group of
men practicing calligraphy with water on the sidewalk
Chinese hackisack
using an overlarge birdie from badminton instead of a bean bag
My favorite pictures:
Little girl feeding
the fishes while Dad helps, notice how much bread she has.
This style of intricately
painted ceilings was everywhere, but I like this shot best since you can see it
is outside and on an incline, but it still got painted.
Something about the
color and scaling of this picture really appeals to me
In this one you have
that bright paddle boat popping out of the gray pollution fog.
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