The Little's in Guangzhou

This past weekend, our friends and fellow Olmsted Scholars (class of 2007), the Little's from Nanjing, came to Guangzhou for a visit on their way back from 4 weeks in Southeast Asia.  You can see their blog here.  We took the ferry to Shamian Island and walked around there for a while.  It was a very fun day, it's always a great pleasure to visit with good friends.

Ice Lantern Festival in Harbin

The video is a bit large because there were so many pictures to put in.  This place was amazing (and cold).  Some of the highlights were the snow sculpture of the Bird's Nest (the Olympic stadium in Beijing) and the snow sculpture of the rocket.  They had ice skating, ice slides, a camel?, horse drawn sled rides, frozen fruit on a stick (especially good), fireworks, and an ice skating performance.  Truly a wonderland. 

Skiing in Yabuli

On our second day in Northeast China, we went to the Yabuli ski resort.  It is supposedly the biggest in China, but it is really not that big.  They have 11 runs, but only 1 is accessible to everyone - you have to pay extra to ski on the other runs.  So, since this was Jenny's first time skiing, and Tim hasn't been skiing in over 10 years, we decided to play it simple and stick with the one slope.  You can see from the video that Jenny is a natural at skiing.  We had a great time, and will probably be skiing again in the future. 

Spring Festival Trip to Northeast China (Part 1)

During the past week, we went to the northeast part of China to partake in some of the frozen festivities that occur up there.  Over the next several days, I will be posting little parts of our trip with pictures.  On our first day, we arrived in Harbin, and, though we had brought enough clothes, we weren't quite mentally prepared for the cold.  On top of that, because it was the first of the Chinese new year, nobody was out - and no shops were open.  But that didn't matter too much, since we were tired and willing to call it an early night.  We did get some photos of the lighted ice sculptures that were near our hotel in front of the train station.  These were just a small sampling of what was to come later (Yes, they are completely made of ice, and if you try to lick it, your tongue will get stuck).