And ice skating in Beijing is really something else. Especially on Qianhai Lake.

It’s not just the unavoidable presence of the PLA, whether riding ice dodgems, guarding ice bikes, administering the ice slide or guarding the ice skates.

The Chinese Army is the single biggest employer in the world, and they need to put that manpower somewhere.

It’s not just the robot-powered ice rickshaws, undoubtedly the most unnerving thing I’ve seen or heard in three years of travel. They’re musical, you see. Yes, they are singing, walking Chucky-esque robots.

Honestly. Would you entrust your child to this?

Although the ride-on skating animals, that one propels with a pair of pointy sticks, or a parent or grandparent trudging lovingly behind, are also kind of freaky.

The ice carriages are kinder, and make an excellent snack table.

It wouldn’t, of course, be China without a bit of live entertainment on the ice…

Neither of us had ever skated on natural ice, let alone in the retro white lace-up skating boots they still use in China. While I stuttered along, feeling every ridge, every crack, every embedded stick, terrified of breaking an ankle, Zac was, pretty much, in his element.

Though I like to think even I was marginally more stable than this guy…

I loved this little girl taking her turn at pushing her grandpa on an ice chair.

And these tinier tots enjoying their different rides… And, yes, that guy is about to fall over. That’s kind of part of the fun.

Zac, naturally, loved the ice slide…

And the soldiers who were administering it clearly loved watching the kids have fun.

One of the best things, though? Just watching everyone have so much fun, out in the fresh cold air, framed by birches and lanterns, enjoying a place that would have been reserved for the Emperor and his court back when Qianhai was part of the imperial pleasure gardens.

And if you’re in Beijing in winter, I thoroughly recommend you try it.

Perhaps accompanied by some candyfloss as big as your head.

Want to go ice skating in Beijing? There are two separate skating grounds on Qianhai Lake, one that is well groomed and only for skaters, another that is larger, less well-groomed and includes all ice toys. Head south from Gulou Dajie station (Line 2 and Line 8) and it’s a few hundred metres past the Drum and Bell Towers — cut right through an alley.

Payment for all activities is by a prepay card that you buy at the ticket desks: the card ONLY works on the skating area that you have chosen, but all unused charge is refunded at the end. Just charge your card at the ticket desk, head onto the ice and pay for what you want once you’re there.

Tickets to get on the ice cost 15RMB Monday to Friday daytimes, and 20RMB on weekends, holidays and evenings. Unlimited skate hire is 20RMB plus 100RMB deposit; unlimited ice carriage hire costs 20RMB plus 30RMB deposit; the ice bikes, which are excellent fun, cost 40RMB per hour plus 50RMB deposit; and the ice slide is 5RMB per turn.

For more on things to do in Beijing, click here.

The post Ice Skating in Beijing appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

And the park was a lake. With nine dragons.

Now, the Chinese have been landscaping dazzling gardens for over three millennia now, so beauty shouldn’t come as a surprise.

But…

It did.

Right now Chinese society is urbanizing as fast as the US did during its own Gilded Age, more than a century ago.

Rural Chinese are moving into the cities, or the cities are sprawling out to them, at the rate of approximately twenty million people each year. And folk live stacked on top of one another at a density that’s hard to comprehend.

I wrote about the buses. But we’ve waited ten or twenty minutes for a LIFT that we can compress ourselves into before (or, for that matter, after) the “overload” sign starts flashing.

And this is lil’old Kunming. Not Beijing, Shanghai, let alone Guangzhou, a city more populous than Poland.

With all these people, gardens and parks, however tiny, become a precious refuge. Every evening, the tiny concrete and bamboo garden at the base of our flats fills with grandparents doing calisthenics and mothers counting fish with their nappy-less babies.

The pool is placed, of course, with all due reference to the principles of feng shui. A system in which, like lucky and unlucky numbers and colours, the overwhelming majority of even the most educated Chinese place great faith.

Even high panjandrums at international companies have to go through a feng shui rigmarole to reassure their staff…

Cuihu Park is in the centre of Kunming, more water than wind. We’ve passed it but never stopped. It meanders over and within a lake once known as “Nine Dragon Pond” for the nine springs that feed it, as a series of paved embankments and concreted islets lovingly shielded with trees.

On our way we pass a little gateway that opens off bustling, high-rise, neon-clad Renmin Zhong Lu into, well, a surprisingly timeless space.

It’s tiny. A tree-lined path leads to a little bridge over water and a pavilion.

It looks quiet. But it bubbles with people.

Beside the path are rows of tables, at which the elderly sit for hours, gambling and kibitzing games of Chinese chequers (guys) and mahjong (girls). A little café churns out weak green tea for a cent or so per cup.

We stop a while. Kibitz. Make our (limited) conversation with interested parties.

And then we wander up to Cuihu Park, and take a walk along one of the paved roads that lead across the water.

It’s so green! Fields of water lilies, weeping willow trees, tailored conifers, stands of bamboo, red-tiled pavilions. And from almost every viewpoint it’s made to feel as though you’re alone with nature.

You’re not, of course.

Even compared to the parks in Hanoi, we are gobsmacked by how many people there are, doing so many different things, in this tiny space.

One walkway is lined with musicians, playing the instruments whose names we don’t yet know, generating the nasal, sawing, gonging pentatonic tones that mimic the sounds of the alien language we are learning.

A man plays a trumpet-like instrument on a park bench, solo. Two bandstands, almost side by side, boast their own house band, each with their own enthusiastic audience.

Then, bizarrely, three competing duos of traditional dancers, all from the same one of Yunnan province’s 26 ethnic groups, within a space of a hundred yards.

They’re here for the tourists, yet, bar a couple of backpackers and us, their seated audience is largely elderly, low-income and Chinese.

There’s a wooden shed selling cheap plastic toys and snacks of pickles, sesame, peanuts, sausage, jellies, a children’s fairground, rolling inflatables on which to jog, hamster-style, on the water.

In an open area on the central island, maybe 30 or 40 metres square, we count four separate classes.

There’s a Chinese dance class, with a handsome, black-clad teacher and some of his older female students dressed to kill. A disco dance class. Something that looks like Country & Western, except the music’s Chinese, so it can’t be…

Or can it?

And calisthenics, or tai chi, the staple of Communist Asia.

Both classes and audience move round each other effortlessly, intuitively. They are used to life in small spaces, the kidney-compressing squish of the public buses, creating space for others to do their thing.

We gawp quite a bit at the views of willows and high rises. Cuihu is not a beautiful park by Chinese standards. But for Z it’s beautiful. And for me, it recalls the koi carp pavilions in the Japanese gardens I walked with my grandparents in southern England as a child.

We head towards the big pavilion on the central island, drawn by the crowd. What are they watching?

A singing class. Maybe a hundred people, all gathering in the sun to sing.

The songs sound uplifting, parade songs, not marching songs, not folk songs. A tribute to great mother China, perhaps? We don’t have the Chinese to hear them…

But it’s strangely moving to see so many people gathered here in a public place to sing.

There are no school-age children. I’ll write about Chinese education later, but let’s just say for now that kids in an emerging hyperpower with a Confucian tradition don’t get the downtime we unschoolers provide.

This city centre park gives us a sense of scale. A sense of multitudes of people.

But on our first weekend here, we went up to Haigeng Park. It’s in the suburbs, on the borders of a sports-boat lake that also serves for hydroelectric power (in central Laos, we saw the Chinese need for hydroelectricity writ large).

We came for the minigolf. And HaiGeng has two 18-hole championship minigolf courses, splendiferous affairs with waterfalls, Zen gardens and fake grottoes to play through.

What struck us about it, though? The scale.

Yunnan is a small province, as Chinese provinces go — only 4% of the nation’s landmass. It’s around 400,000 square kilometres — a bit smaller than California, a bit bigger than Germany, a bit less than double the size of the UK.

There are sixteen (count’em) football fields. Towering blocks of athlete accommodation. Multiple gymnasiums. A vast boating lake, whose architecture rings Z’s bells. An entire network of internal roads.

Swathes of human-powered, durable exercise machines, on which we swing and jump. Tracks. Pools. Tennis courts. Basketball courts.

And, no, it’s not the only place this size in town.

I fell in love with Indonesia.

And now I’m a little bit in love with China. Don’t hate me, Indonesia.

The post The Friday Photo: Nine Dragon Pond appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

As he put it, “Zipwiring is aerial. Zorbing is, ummm…, terrestrial. And whitewater rafting is the aquatic equivalent.”

Or, “Wooooooo! Wapids ahead!!! Woooo!!! More wapids!!!”

Whitewater rafting is, actually, an almost flawless combination of adrenaline, nature and physical activity.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, whitewater rafting means, essentially, paddling a toughened inflatable dinghy down a mountain river, over white water and rapids. What folk don’t often mention is that you cover quieter stretches too.

So when you’re not soaring, bouncing and howling your way over rocks, chutes, swells and chop, you idle gently downstream, admiring the landscape around you, like a character from The Wind in the Willows (or, perhaps, in our case, Three Men in a Boat).

Now, I’ve wanted to go whitewater rafting for a while –- since a climber friend came back from a trip babbling about rafting being “one of the most fun things ever”. And I’ve had an eye out for a good place to do it since January, before we hit the Andes next year.

So the Maiting River, which runs through a dramatic forested gorge in the mountains outside Rantepao, seemed perfect. I had thought about a two-day trip down the nearby Sungai Sa’adan, where the rapids run grade IV and V at this time of year and water level.

However…

Under-14s are not allowed. And, while I’m kind of blase about most age limits, this one exists because you need adult strength not only to paddle the raft but to make your way to shore without serious injury should the raft tip up (they do), or you fall out (folk do).

As we reach the very top of the gorge, when I hear it roaring below us, my slightly childish concern that Grade III rapids means “no fun” rapids, begins to evaporate.

Getting there, in fact, is an adventure in itself. From dragging the 4WD out of the ruts on the road up the mountain — the single worst road I have experienced in a lifetime, far worse than any Borneo logging road, Mauritanian camel track, or Kenyan lorry jounceabout — to bouncing the cattle truck into motion, to slipsliding the hour or so down from the village to the rocks which frame the river.

There, Osbert, our lead guide, gives us a safety briefing. Which is great until he gets to these bits:

“If you fall out or the raft tips up, swim on your back. Don’t swim face down as you can hit hidden rocks.”

“If you fall out, head for the shore and wait to be picked up downriver. Don’t try and swim back to the boat.”

And, the piece de resistance, this:

“When I shout ‘boom boom’, that means ‘rocks overhead’. Get in the middle of the boat and crouch down low, away from the sides.”

This instantly transitions me from a slightly (?very?) childish fear that these rapids will be NO FUN AT ALL to maternal fear for Z’s cranium.

Used as I am to Asian safety equipment, the fact that these lifejackets fit, the helmets look like they could take an impact and the throw ropes are in good nick makes me, paradoxically, rather worried that Z might actually get hurt.

But we’re off. Paddling across the channel, which splits around a boulder, into a surging swell of water which looks set to spin us straight into the black granite wall of the gorge.

I have about enough time to think, terrified, that we’re going to hit the cliff head-on and crash, when we do exactly that.

The raft, being inflatable (doh!), tilts, slides up the side of the ravine cliff a little way, hangs in midair a little while, then angles back, and sploshes into the water.

Z is howling with joy. I can’t help whooping.

My fear transforms instantly into excitement, and we’re ploughing down a neat, narrow water chute into…

Well, into waves about a metre or so high, curving backwards away from the rocks and clashing in a way that waves at sea only do when nasty tidal currents collide…

“Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy!” yells my spawn, his eyes wide with total joy, as the guides and I plough the water, paddling hard on the left side.

And then we’re out.

We’re racing.

And the water calms.

I look around. We’re in one of the most beautiful gorges I’ve ever seen. Ducks scoot low over the surface of the water. Dark green highland forest stretches down to a pebbled beach fringed with palm and wild banana as the leisurely brown river ambles by.

“Wapids ahead!” yells the child, who has appointed himself mission videographer and is delivering a vocal running commentary from the relative safety of the middle of the boat.

A long, gold and black striped lizard of the kind they call “iguana” here picks itself up from the sun on the bank and enters the water at surprising speed, disappearing beneath the gathering waves.

Then we’re in. Bouncing, jostling, paddling hard around the rocks, great slabs of water thudding into the boat as though someone’s chucking in barrels of the stuff stage left.

A lurch as we scrape across a submerged rock and tumble off the farther side. I almost fall backwards off the edge of the boat but my feet are locked under the dinghy frame.

My son sounds like an underage John Motson commenting on the Derby…

My biceps are beginning to feel the strain.

And then through, the current slowing, waves turning to ripples, and cruising past the most idyllic stretch of waterfalls frothing white down the sheer black granite, kingfishers darting low and blue over the waves.

We break for lunch after an hour or two of this heavenly alternation, on the stony banks of the calming river. Then idle, again, downstream.

It is safe for Z to swim downstream with the current here, and he leaps from the raft to float “gently, gently, gently down the stream”.

A few more gentle rapids, and we reach our pick up point, a little farm where the kids have just caught fresh fish from the circular pond Torajans carve out of the centre of the paddy. Life here is raw and brutal, but it’s a beautiful place to be.

Thanks to Debbie @ Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Friday.

The post Rafting the Maiting River appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

I blame my son. There we are, last day in Luang Prabang, beautiful World Heritage town, all geared up to mooch around and finally visit the oldest temple in Laos, when we get talking to someone who insists we should go to a waterfall. There are rare Malaysian sunbears, elephants, and, the kicker for the young master, a zipwire.

Envisaging this as a sort of one-off flying fox over a waterfall, which Z can undertake while I watch admiringly from the side, I agree. And off we set. Z clad practically in jeans, shirt and sandals. I clad rather less appropriately in a shortish frock and flipflops.

The elephants, as Z predicted, barely vaut le voyage. Understandably irritable, rescued from logging to lug tourists in howdahs on hour-long poddles to waterfalls, beach donkey style, they bear no comparison with the creatures we’ve been lucky enough to see in the wild.

Oh, yeah. And the bears, it turns out, are at the other waterfall. The one without the zipwire.

Zipwiring, to the uninitiated, is an adrenalin-fuelled rush, in safety harness, down steel cables strung, generally, between rainforest canopy trees. Z loves it.

I, well… I have vertigo.

The last time Z and I went zipwiring together — as opposed to the simpler flying fox — was in Guatemala. He was four, rising five, and I barely out of my twenties. His competence, confidence and sheer, unalloyed enjoyment has increased exponentially. My inner wuss, by contrast, grows ever more clamorous with age.

Anywise. Rather than the innocuous flying fox I had imagined, the zipwire at Tad Sae waterfall is a relatively lengthy canopy trail, leading from platform to platform through the trees, over jungle canyons, off small cliffs, down very substantial trees by rope, covering ten stages over a kilometre or so, at heights of up to 90 metres, with a maximum length of 200 metres.

As the chaps who run the thing strap me into the harness, and I tug snatches of skirt into a sort of playsuit effect in the hope of preserving some modesty, it begins to dawn on me quite how much I dislike heights.

Ascending the cliff by rope ladder does not help matters, although the awareness that my flabby backside is on display to no fewer than four Lao guys does inject a contrasting note of utter mortification, which distracts from the vertigo rather as pinching oneself in the thigh mitigates the impact of an injection in the upper arm.

Also, unlike the last time we undertook such an endeavour, I am not riven with fear for Z’s safety.

In fact, the safety standards are, I am pleased to see, really pretty good — outstanding, in fact, by Lao standards. I am fairly sure that EU safety law would require a secondary pulley as a failsafe, but their ropes, harnesses and links are in good nick, their helmets actually fit, and Z and I remain firmly attached to one or another wire at all times.

Z goes first, leaping from the platform and whirring along 70-odd metres of wire at a lethal height above the ground with whoops of satisfaction, and not the slightest hint of fear. I follow.

I think, for sufferers of vertigo, being near the edge of something high is much more scary than stepping off it in a safety harness, with a rush of adrenaline to compensate.

Being on the edge of a platform 40 metres or so up a tree, so high that it wobbles in the breeze, on the other hand, is my idea of hell. Which is, of course, what greets us on the other side.

Z is raring to go. I am running with cold sweat, hanging on to the line to which my safety harness is strapped, as my pulse approaches danger levels.

Off he shoots. The boys give him a kick by bouncing the line up and down so he flies up and down in the air.

I genuinely enjoy the race, and the bounce, and the buzz of trees whirring past, until I look down. On our next attempt, I am endeavouring to film with one hand and slam, feet first, into the tree which houses the platform.

“Look, Mum!” Z says, when he and the chaps have finished laughing. “The next one’s a vertical zipwire!”

“A vertical zipwire?” I say, eyes half-shut. I really don’t want him to catch my vertigo. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“Don’t worry, Mum,” he says, supportively, standing far too near the edge for my liking. “I’m a bit scared of heights too.”

If one is halfway confident, or wearing appropriate clothing, or not sweating with terror, vertical drops are a pleasant abseil down a tree. If one is unconfident and sweating with terror, it is a matter of being winched down on a rope, in the manner of someone moving furniture, perhaps, to extend the metaphor, a table with an indecorous cloth.

Z whizzes down. I begin the ungainly lowering process, acutely aware that I outweigh all four of the chaps and that my dress is riding up. There are howls of laughter from 30 feet below.

“Mum!” Z yells up. “Everyone can see your bum!”

“I know, darling,” I say. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Buy some decent shorts,” he says. “Knee length. And wear them.”

The only shorts commonly available in tourist sizes (L, XL and XXL) in Laos are on the jailbait side of hot pants. Think hot pink cheerleader-meets-Juicy-Couture-with-a-dose-of-80s-disco terry towelling. Not so much mutton dressed as lamb as mutton dressed as foetus. Especially the ones with the floral print.

On the 200-metre run, I begin to feel what Z is enjoying, and what I used to love as a kid: the breeze, the thrum of the wire, the pace of the trees and ground whizzing past, soaring, quite literally, through the tree tops.

Then I fail to utilise the forked stick the guys have given me as a brake — I am pretty sure this is not the EU standard — nearly take out two of them, and hit the padding on the tree with sufficient force to knock down twigs and branches.

Anywise.

Sir salvages the family honour by acquitting himself effortlessly. The guys, who probably aren’t that much older than him, are genuinely chuffed at how much fun he is having.

He is looking more sturdy, and carrying himself with much greater physical confidence, over the course of the trip. And this sort of challenge — one of fear, rather than physique — is a great thing for him to conquer.

Oh yes. And the chaps have taught him a Lao insult: sosijaya. Which means, they say, “your face looks like a bat”.

The post The Fear Factor appeared first on EscapeArtistes.