Family vacation in China

We did it! We had climbed the Great Wall of China!!! So we are all heros. Alvin and I have our "Hero card". Whilst, Amanda and Matt had a bronze plate "Hero certificate" each with their chinese names engraved on it.

The weather was extremely cold as you can see from the way we dressed! The temperature range from 0 to -3 degrees in the day, and it gets even colder during the nights. At Chengde, the lowest temperature was -16 degrees. Even wearing 2 pairs of socks couldn't help. Our toes and fingers were so numb.
We had seen so many things in the 8 days - the beautiful palaces and temples and even the Olympic Stadium (still under construction; Beijing will be hosting the Olympic games in 2008). We have learnt so much about China's history and culture from the interesting stories told by our Chinese guide.


At Wangfujing food street, Amanda ate smelly toufu and Alvin ate cripsy fried grasshoppers! Not forgetting that Alvin and the kids loved eating the sweet potatos too!

We watched 3 very amazing live shows. The first was "The Golden Mask Dynasty" at the Happy Valley Theme Park, the second was an Acrobatic show and the third show was the most interesting - a Shaolin story (on the right is a photo of a little Shaolin Monk).


On the left is a photo of the different dumplings we had for dinner. However, after 7 days of eating chinese food, the kids cannot resist and had to eat burgers at MacDonalds!

Overall, we had enjoyed ourselves very much. Despite my falling sick for 2 days, and Alvin fell sick on the 6th day of the trip. We wished we could see snow in Beijing as we wanted to experience what it is like. However, 3 days after our return it snowed at Beijing. The fog and snow was so bad that it caused havoc to traffic and the flights in and out of the airport had to be cancelled. So fortunately, we were able to return home safely. It felt good to be back to home sweet home!