Behai Park

Jet lag caught up with us a bit today. It is such a weird feeling not knowing what time your body is supposed to be on! With tired eyes and bodies, we went in search of a relaxing, no-plan day. We ended up at the WONDERFUL Behai Park. Parks in China are so different than the ones we have in the US. People here pride themselves in beautiful things....beautiful parts of nature. It cost us about $5US to get into the park for the entire day. We ended up spending all day there!

The park is situated around a huge lake. There are wonderful walking trails and gardens throughout. We saw dancers, singers, gardeners and folks doing Tai Chi. We also saw an old man "painting" Chinese characters on the stones with water. The girls were fascinated. Everyone was still really curious about our little red heads, but everyone was so nice to us. We had a couple of girls make their version of a daisy chain (with bamboo) for each of the girls to wear on their heads.

The thing that we loved the most about this park was the adventure of walking through the trails. In the front of the park, there were beautiful trails up the hillsides guarded by bamboo fencing. On the back side of the park, trails were carved in the rocks of the hill. You could find a colorful pagoda around each corner. Our ultimate goal was to make it to the highest point in the park. From the top monument, you could pay about 2 yuan (30 cents US) to go to an observation deck. We saw our first views of the Forbidden City from the top! It was so huge and was gleaming in the sun with its yellow tiled rooftops (the imperial color). We are going to visit the Forbidden City in a few days.

Stay tuned!

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