Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest

Atop Silver Mountain. 

For a Spring Festival outing, Scott and I went with our friends Te-Ping and Ben to see the pagodas about an hour outside of Beijing. This is one of the few ruin sites that hasn't been destroyed in China and used to be a sacred Buddhist shrine/scene spot during the Ming and Qing dynasties. There are a handful of pagodas/stupas still standing, which are gorgeous.

Happy Year of the SheepGoat!

Today officially marks the beginning of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the week-long celebration where basically all of China shuts down and the greatest human migration happens, as everyone who moved from the countryside to the cities returns home for the Spring Festival. On Monday alone, 850,000 people left Beijing. That's a lot of people.

View from our bedroom window on the eve of Lunar New Year. BOOM! 

Pucks on Ponds in Beijing

A couple weekends ago, Scott played in a pond hockey tournament at Houhai, which is a huge lake in the middle of Beijing. In the winter, the lake becomes an outdoor playground, with speed skaters mingling with teenagers zipping by on ice sleds and children playing in bouncy castles put up on the ice.

Pond hockey + cold weather = Wings hat all day.