Busy weekend. Juggled outside Friday night for a few hours and woke up early Saturday to go hiking up Fragrant Hills Park. First we arrive at the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha. We walk really far, then finally arrive at the temple, freezing. Take a look at the architecture, admittedly interesting, then peek at the main attraction and move on. Didn’t understand what I was looking at until after because the huge blanket covering the bronze sleeping Buddha made the room look like a bunch of statues staring at a velvet lump. Unfortunately, everything was labeled with ‘no pictures’ – presumably to force people to visit to see it since, hypocritically, there were pictures of all the other major sleeping Buddhas in a nearby building…
Nevertheless, I managed a picture of the gate almost identical to this.
Freezing, we scurry to the closest (and most overpriced) restaurant we cab find… overpriced being almost half the price of an equivalent North American restaurant.
Next task: scale the hill. The Temple of the Sleeping Buddha lies near the base of the Fragrant Hills Park (Xiangshan Park) – an old royal garden of sorts. Nice roads of stone tiles twisting up to the base of the… mountain is more appropriate. Pay the fare and go in. Looks like there’s leftovers of Spring Festival celebrations. Empty stalls and lanterns floating like bubbles, they look pretty pretty on our dismal day.
Looks like flying red jellyfish!
We start the hike… more like stair climb. The whole way up is laden with stone stairs ~4m wide. The steps look more like a necessity as we progress and incline steepens, revealing dramatic dropoffs to the side. After a grueling 2.5hrs, we make it to the top. Lots of nice buildings around. I pull out my soccer ball and start juggling. Minnows to bread, two little boys approach and nibble at my stalled ball. 1v2 starts and they manage to outlast my fiddling, pouncing on the ball and knocking it over the edge. Excellent.
Start heading down again. Scenery is impressive, but cloudy smog hiding bare trees don’t make for a particularly nice view. Down almost instantly and off to somewhere else.
Halfway up; chairlift for lazy/incapable tourists.
Arrive back in the part of the city without trees after a sleepy bus ride. Pass by an empty Google China building and to Beijing Duck! Apparently it’s an extremely well-known/respected restaurant. The restaurant decoration and mood confirm it. Immense menu, I spot many desirable dishes. Ostrich looks particularly tasty. Duck is a given. Lots more. Camel hump is interesting, but we have our six dishes for four people already picked out.
The food arrives. Beijing duck first. Fu yuen (server-person) explains the history behind the duck. I get a certificate proving I ate Beijing Duck with the serial number of the duck, a short history of the restaurants, and a conspicuous one-line: “Over 1.5 billion ducks served.” The boastful slaughter is darker than the McDonald’s equivalent, but effective nonetheless.
Food is unbelievably good. Best in Beijing. Duck skin like salty marshmallows, ostrich meat a tasty cross between chicken and beef, some delicate ‘duck nests’, tantalizing strips of duck dressed in wraps, some sweet chicken balls dancing in pineapple slices, and a desert of Chinese fruit covered in hardening caramel has to be licked up before the sweetsauce immobilizes. A most satisfying set of meals. No picture I have does it justice.
Sleep 12hrs, and have another next day of nothingness. Sickly development from sweating+freezing up the mountain. Hazy snowdrapes obscure continuous blasts of fireworks as the last day of Spring Festival withers away.
-dough