It's a Wild World: Road Trips....Chinese Style!

So, my love of road trips back home is not a secret. I don't really like airplanes nor do I like the hassles involved in flying. Long lines, crowds, never enough space for your stuff....I also think driving from state to state or place to place is a great way to see more of the country. Our motto, which our kids loooove (ha), is that "getting there is part of the journey." Some of our recent road trips include trips to Disneyworld, to Washington DC for Chris' interview, back to DC for training, to Colorado, to New Mexico and to the beaches of Alabama. Early in the morning, we carried sleepy kids to the car, packed our gear up in our trusty minivan, grabed our coffee mugs and hit the road. We've always loved to plan our routes so that we can stop and explore local sights along the way, such as Judge Roy Bean's courthouse/saloon or Cadillac Ranch. I really wanted to continue this road trip tradition in China or wherever else we might end up in the future. Summertime just calls for a good road trip.

Well, obviously some things have changed in the past year. I've had to conquer my fear of flying. We also have come to terms with the fact that for us to take off across China for long distances in our minivan might be a bit foolhardy given our lack of the Mandarin language. It is pretty frustrating to not be able to communicate your most basic needs to other people. Although Chris and I are both working quite diligently on our Mandarin, it remains pretty slow going. That said, we have decided to make mini day trips in the surrounding area as much as possible. It remains a great way to see more of China and to get insight into the daily lives of the folks here in China. Plus, the city is surrounded by mountains and cultural relics like palaces and temples so there is plenty of stuff to see and do. I like the city itself, but everything is always super crowded. We hope that by heading out of the city a bit we will find some more natural and less-crowded surroundings.

We decided to start with a trip to Black Dragon Pool, which is about 200 km from Beijing. I managed to find some basic directions online, but they were of the "drive north until you get to the city of Miyun, then head northwest for 13 km" variety. Our GPS system is a life-saver, but it doesn't work that well until you actually drive somewhere and mark it. So, it isn't very useful if you haven't been somewhere before. Oh, and Google maps tends to print the names of the roads using Chinese characters instead of Pinyun, which makes their maps completely useless to us. We finally decided to just head out and hope that there would be some signs along the way. I wasn't sure how big of an attraction this was or how well-marked these things would be outside the city proper.

Anyways, we did get a tiny bit lost when we first got to Miyun, but then miraculously, we ended up on the correct road and found Black Dragon Pool. It all worked very much like going to a US park. An attendant waived us in to a giant parking lot, I fed the kids some sandwiches for their lunch and then we headed out for the hike. The park itself had a pretty steep entrance fee by Chinese standards and was actually quite clean and not too crowded. It was all Chinese families. We only saw 2 other Westerners there, but lucky for us, the signs were in English and Mandarin. As a side note for any local families contemplating it, the bathrooms were the pretty standard squatties, but they were in reasonable condition for rural China. We hiked for 4 hours, then hopped in the car, hit "home" on the GPS and came right back. There were lots of gas stations along the route so no worries there.

One random thing that we noticed was an explosion of little vacation cottages and motor courts and touristy "folk villages" in the mountains outside of Beijing. Although some English was used in the signage, these were clearly not aimed at Western tourists. Most Western tourists don't explore much outside the city beyond the Great Wall. I think the growth of automobiles in China and the increasing wealth of some people here is leading to more discretionary travel on weekends. Some folks might even have weekend homes out there that they go to in order to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. It is so interesting to see these changes taking place right before your eyes.

So, I have some other ideas of trips that we will try to take this summer to a few cities within 3-4 hours of Beijing. I'll keep everyone posted on where we go and what we do. Since most of the English language guidebooks are aimed at tourists, there just isn't a lot of information on road trips or driving directions to various places within China. Chris and I have both read "Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip" by Peter Hessler. I highly recommend this book if you want additional insight into China. It isn't all road tripping. He does make an amazing journey along the entire length of the Great Wall, but it also covers industrialization and the changing face of China.

Here they are lined up at the entrance to the park

The largest waterfall, which was supposed to "give you a fresh feeling that will last all day"

Before we headed out, we debated whether they had snakes here. Nobody we talked to had ever seen one. Then we heard this guy rustling around in the bushes behind us. He was BIG, probably 1-2 feet long. So, yes, there are snakes.