Tomb Sweeping Day Urban Climbing

5.4.2008 von Ines.

In 2008 China changed the public holidays to some more traditional days. One of these new Chinese public holidays is the “Tomb Sweeping” day on April 5th where you should think of your ancestors. Many families gather together and burn money (fake money) for the family members that had passed away. And some families even go to the graveyards.

This year the Friday April 4th was the public holiday. We decided to join our Chinese climbing friends for a 2 day “Hike and Spa” trip north of Beijing. We started at 6:30am in Beijing to avoid the Friday holiday traffic and arrived early near Changping in Mang Shan. After doing a tour of all the possible parking lots (all empty) with our caravan of cars we finally stopped. All our friends and us were wearing hiking clothes and hiking shoes. I found it quite funny that the “hike” consisted first of stairs and then at the top we continued on a paved road. It was really beautiful weather. And it was peaceful as there was nobody except our group going up.

Here is a link to more: Pictures of the hike

When we walked back down the stairs it got really crowded. So many other holiday tourists came. We were really happy that we did start so early and have the place for us.

And as we are climbers we could not help ourselves but we had to start climbing on the man made walls. Even though I still do not know what they meant by “climing”…

After the hike we went to the nearby natural hot spring spa and just enjoyed the hot water pools and showers for a few hours. It is especially enjoyable when you know that at home you do not have any hot water…

The rest of the trip consisted of huge Chinese meals and the exquisite Chinese MaoTai rice wine.

Geschrieben in Beijing, Climbing | 1 Kommentar »