Beijing Tourists
4Oct2009 Filed under: China By James, location:Lucky, lucky you – I don’t post for weeks and now you’ve got two in five days! I’m celebrating the purchase of my beautiful new camera and I’ve got shutter fever. So here’s a bumper crop of photos from around Beijing.
First up, here’s a few snapshots of the area around where we live:
On Friday we trekked north of Beijing to the Summer Palace to check another site off the world heritage list. The central man-made lake is surrounded by landscaped hills and hundreds of pavilions, temples, pagodas and bridges. The palace was once the playground of the Kingdom’s Emperors, yet is now home to 50,000 tourists who all decided to descend on the day we arrived:
Last night we made our second visit to the Chaoyang Acrobatics (we first went for Jeannie’s birthday last month). This time we were seated on the front row, giving us a great view of the fear on the acrobats faces! I was also armed with my camera, so here’s what we couldn’t show you the first time around:
And as a final Brucey Bonus, here’s a short video clip of the crazy kids:
Izzy Kenyon
October 9th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Good to see you couldn’t keep Jeannie off the stage – she looks good in that headress, though must have proved tricky when she did her infamous headstand for all of … um.. 30 secs?
~Uncle Denis
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
have lost touch you over the last few weeks.
Excellent pics, very interesting.
Mind I think its thanks to your new camera.
Wow aren’t I awful.
Can I presume that ANCIENT POYSER is my brother Graham?
What made you choose China?
Did your your Grandfather have any influence ie Buddihsm?
uncle Denis
James
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Well I’ll take the photo comment as a compliment…!
It’s like ‘Guess Who’:
ANCIENT POYSER isn’t Dad….
he’s older….
any other ideas….?
It’s your cousin, Richard!
Why China? Good question… a few reasons really, main one was timing – we were ready to stop for a while (we were getting a bit numb from 7 months of sight seeing) and China seemed like the best bet. It’s a huge place overflowing with culture, history and sights so there’s plenty to occupy us. Given China’s rise to power it’s really interesting to be here inside the beast. Beijing’s an amazing city – it’s huge, bustling and far more developed that we thought it would be. It’s also cheap to live here and we can have a great lifestyle for a fraction of the costs back home. There’s certainly plenty of Buddhist influence here, although it’s more apparent in other countries – Vietnam and Laos in particular. We’ve been to a couple of temples here in Beijing and they’re a little faux – the monks wear Chinos and patent leather shoes under their robes! There’s a temple (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayuan_Temple) in the south of town that was built in the 7th century, I’m going to trek over and visit that soon – hopefully it’s managed to retain it’s tranquility.