Saturday, January 10, 2009

Ice skating

Being the proper Florida boy I am, I've only ice skated about twice in my life. Near my home in Beijing there is a huge ancient artificial lake that freezes over from December to February. Said lake is called Houhai (后海), and while just 15 years ago a typical neighborhood, today it's a big bar and restaurant center complete with ancient ceremonial towers...and in Winter ice skating. Silvia, some friends and I went the other afternoon, and I learned to ice skate!

So while we skated, on this one opening in the ice some old Chinese people thought it would be perfect to jump in. I've only seen things like this on television, and now feeling how cold days like that one really are I remain more confused than ever on why Chinese people will only drink hot water all year long, then jump into a frozen lake in Winter for health purposes.

2 comments:

Chad said...

Wow, it's hard to imagine that you are skating over the same lake we paddled over a year and some change ago:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chad_harris/1321450477/sizes/l/in/set-72157601858080790/

Same place, right?

Arielísimo said...

nope, it's a different lake. but it's only about half a mile away from the one we paddled in called beihai (北海). i'm sure that one is equally frozen over, but i don't know for sure. i'll look into it.