6.7.2008 von Ines.

What a beautiful Sunday. We spent most of the sunny day in the green park.

I have been working on a new artistic bicycle performance for the upcoming GREENing the BEIGE event. For that I needed cardboard cars and trucks as props. My younger Chinese climbing friends helped me paint the cars in the park. It was a team effort and great fun.

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15.5.2008 von Ines.

Finally I managed to sort through the pictures of our rock climbing holiday in Thailand. This was long ago but I still like the pictures. Thailand is a nice for escaping the cold weather of Beijing. And Krabi is a beautiful place to climb - it is the climbing spot of South-East Asia.

More interesting are the pictures with the wide angle lens. I just find it hilarious how it distorts faces.

When we flew to Thailand was just the time when there was the bad snow storm over Southern China. It covered 6 Southern provinces in snow creating a disaster. We actually saw the white fields (that is not clouds) of South China from the sky.

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3.5.2008 von Ines.

May 1st is always a public holiday in China. This year it was proposed to work on May 4th (Sunday) in order to get May 2nd (Friday) off. Most companies agreed to that suggestion. So 5 friends and me decided to go for a 3 day 2 night wild camping plus rock climbing weekend. Unfortunately I had to participate in the bicycle race in the morning of May 1st, so two of us took a long distance bus to get us out of Beijing and into the North near the new rock climbing site.

As it was the May 1st holiday also other people were traveling with buses. It was actually good that we took the bus in the afternoon as the mass of people had already arrived at their destinations and the queue to buy a bus ticket was shorter than we feared it would be.

We met the others who had set up the tents right in the small bee valley where other Beijing climbers had set up 30 new climbing routes late last year. It is beautiful rock with many more possibilities to be developed. If you have a close look at this picture you can see a tiny white dot in the middle of the cliff (slightly right of the center of this picture). That is Echo climbing one of the longest routes in this area.

The first morning the weather was okay. It was slightly overcast but very pleasant temperature. We had a big breakfast together on our private “camp ground”.

And then we went rock climbing. There were some really interesting routes. Some had overhangs - some were face - some had chimneys. It was a lot of fun. Click here to see all of the pictures of this trip.

We were looking forward to the next climbing day. That morning we had nice breakfast when suddenly very strong wind started. We just finished packing away the breakfast remainders when it started to rain. We waited and read books in our tents hoping the rain would stop soon. After a while we decided to wait for the rain to get less and then pack our things and head back to Beijing. Echo and her friend decided to wait in her car. When we had a look their tent had already flown away… So we packed up despite the rain and drove back. Friends who stayed in Beijing that day said that it was a big storm with hail.

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22.4.2008 von Ines.

The climbing wall in Ritan Park in Beijing is always a nice place to meet up for climbing routes as well as bouldering. Even if the weather is still a bit chilly there are always some fun people around.

And we do not only come here for climbing. Last Saturday we were trying to find many difficult Yoga postures and challenging each other. It turned out that some guys are much more flexible than others…

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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.

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21.2.2008 von Ines.

Today is the 14th day after Lunar New Year which is a full moon night. This is the end of the Chinese New Year festivities. Today Chinese people eat little glutinous rice balls in a sweet soup. And they also light almost as many fire crackers as on Chinese New Year’s Eve. A few years back fireworks and fire crackers were forbidden in Beijing. Since they allowed it again it seems like people are going crazy. Every day (since I came back) there were fire crackers in the evening. But today it started at about 3 pm and now it is almost midnight and there are still many and they are still really loud. Chinese prefer to have loud fire crackers to scare away the demons. Sure here and there somebody does actually light up the sky with some fire works.

But then those fireworks seem to generate more smoke than light.

I did not write anything last weekend, the weather was just great and we went climbing in our park on our artificial wall again. This time there was no wind and it was really nice in the sunshine. But most of our climbing friends still think it is too cold and prefer to go to an indoor stuffy, smoky and expensive bouldering place.

Since a few months our wall now has the big red logo of a sponsor. They sponsored the prizes for the climbing competiton we had at mid autumn festival. But I think the wall looked nicer without it…

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7.2.2008 von Ines.

The year of the Rat has just begun. I got the stiches in my heel taken out. It can only get better.

Yesterday we celebrated our Chinese New Year’s Eve with our now 38 friends (2 came later) from Beijing with a Chinese banquette dinner with mainly Thai style food and pizza. The Chinese had imported some Chinese high percentage alcohol (Maotai). I tried to argue that as I had been taking antibiotics I unfortunately cannot drink alcohol. But it did not work, especially because Julien told the Chinese that I took my last tablet 5 hours before. So I did have to drink, but just a bit. Not as much as our Chinese friends.

We did the countdown for midnight according to the Beijing time so that we all could go to bed earlier (Thailand is 1 hour behind China). Getting up early for climbing before it gets too hot and being outdoors all day does make us tired in the evenings.

Happy New Year to all of you!

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5.2.2008 von Ines.

Well the titel says what I would like to be doing. Yes I am in in the rock climbing paradise of Thailand: Krabi. I am staying with my boyfriend in a hut in the jungle on Tonsai Bay.

All our 36 Chinese friends with families from Beijing are all staying in upclass resorts on the beautiful beaches of Railay Bay. But that is only a 30 minute hike or a 15 minute longtail boatride away. There are wonderful limestone cliffs everywhere.

So on the first day I should not have jumped off the cliff like all the others. I did noty enter teh water with mt ass first like most of teh other people. I did come into the water really nice - that means I really went deep - … and there was some rock. So now my heel is healing.

I was asking my Chinese friends if anybody brought some old climbing shoes that they could give me. But they did not. Yesterday morning I met the nice American from New Jersey who lives in Taiwan and he said he has an old bashed pair and I could have the left shoe. So now:

I can finally climb again! For rock climbing you only need to use the front of your foot, mainly the tips of your toes.

So yesterday I climbed some easy routes. It was so much fun! I did not lead climb just some toprope. I am happy again. That is also why I suddenly started taking pictures. And it is really nice and quiet here on the rock climbing beach of Tonsai.

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2.2.2008 von Ines.

I am currently escaping the winter in warm Thailand. It is warm here with sunshine, ocean, white sand, palm trees and cliffs. This is perfect for a climbing holiday. I actually did climb the first day. Just some easy routes to get the feeling of leading and feeling of this wonderful rock. Then I hurt my heel (not during climbing - no it happened in the ocean) and now I have a lot of time to read books, drink tea, watch all the Chinese and other climbers. That is good too. And hopefully in a few days I can go climbing again.

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14.1.2008 von Ines.

This winter has been so warm. There was no ice on the lakes in all of December and also the first 10 days of January were really warm. On January 6th we went rock climbing outdoors in Ritan Park. That was the earliest in the year that we have ever done that.

It was so great that we decided to go out into the park for the second time in 2008 this past weekend.

The sun was shining again, but unfortunately the temperature was really different compared to the week before. But we were 2 guys and 3 girls and it was fun to be outdoors.

For sure we had the right clothing. We were able to climb even though our fingers were frozen by the time we reached the top. We actually climbed quite often (well, that was the only way to get the body temperature up).

We thought we were tough till we saw this guy do gymnastics. He was wearing light shoes, socks and short pants. Nothing else. The temperature was about -7 degree celsius…

…at least there will be ice soon.

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