These are some photos from when we visited Bei Hai Park. Bei Hai Park is a park very near the Forbidden City; the name "Bei Hai" in English means "North Lake". It is a very beautiful park, and has been around for six hundred years or more.
Some of the photos are panoramic shots and are considerably larger to download at full size than other photos on this site.
Scooting along on the frozen lake atop little wooden sled-like contraptions is a popular pasttime. We decided to give it a try as well.
Nancy scoots along. Note that the poles used for pushing yourself along are long, sharp metal sticks. We couldn't imagine something like this existing in the U.S. - they'd be sued into oblivion the first time someone accidentally poked someone else with one of these poles.
Nancy again, having fun.
Here's Bryan doing the same. He found that the sleds were a bit too small for his American frame.
Go Bryan!
Here's an attempt to get a shot of the both of us on our sleds. But at arm's length it was not possible to get the sleds into view ...
Here we are at a very pretty arch halfway up the hill at the center of the lake.
Nancy's stands halfway down a beautiful winding staircase.
This panoramic shot is from the tower at the top of the hill on the island in the center of the park's lake.
Another panoramic shot. This time you can see the Forbidden City in the distance.
More panorama.
Another panoramic shot showing the Forbidden City in a little more detail.
Here's a bridge in the park. Did we mention that the park is beautiful?
The bridge again. We can't wait to come again in summer when everything is even more spectacular (although probably alot more crowded as well).
KFC fast food chains are all over the place in Beijing and here is a particularly disturbing example inside the park. 600 year old Chinese architecture meets modern American cultural garbage.
This is a map of the park. The ice sledding was in the lower right hand corner and the panoramic shots were taken from the hill in the island.
Bryan Ischo and Nancy Lau - 02.03.2001