BEIJING BLOGGIN': Beijing Beauty, part 2: Bei Hai Park

An image of Beijing used all to often in Western media is that of the crowded, dirty, smoggy urban jungle with all its restless discomfort. You don't hear or read a lot about any oases of peace, havens of natural beauty, even though they do exist, bang in the middle of Beijing. One of my favourites has to be Bei Hai Park, or Beihai Gongyuan in Chinese. Built around the massive North Lake (Bei Hai), its foundations were laid in the 10th century. Marco Polo himself is said to have been received on a Bei Hai hill by the then ruling Mongol Khan.

Today, Bei Hai is the ideal refuge for a chilled-out afternoon surrounded by trees, wonderfully fragrant flowers and quiet, peaceful water. With a number of small pagodas, plants, smaller structures and lots of nooks and crannies on one side of the lake, a walk around the water (or a boat trip across) will bring you to a steep hill, on top of which sits Bei Hai's most famous attraction: the White Dagoba (Bai Da). (I won't go into any details of what exactly makes an architactural structure a Dagoba, mostly because I don't know. I'm sure Wikipedia has some info though.)

Scattered around the park you can find numeous snack food stands selling barbequed things and yoghurt (in heavy little jars with straws), little shops offering all kinds of souvenirs from Beijing Opera-style hats to Mao caps, and artists performing this and that.

I regret having only made it to Bei Hai once in all my time here. The one day I spent there (with two friends on a day off), I did an incredible amount of walking, climbing and talking (both in English and Chinese, yay!), and though I was exhausted in the evening, I couldn't have had a happier outing. I remember constantly clicking away on my camera, simply because there is so much to see, and because the scenery is too gorgeous not to try and ban it onto, ehm, disk.

My shaky, out-of-focus impressions below don't do it any justice at all, but I hope they can help to re-shape that image of Beijing as that massive, soulless grey hole.

Bis dann,

Nadine