Snowboarding in China - Nanshan review 南山滑雪场

1. Intro
Just an hour away from Beijing, Nanshan 南山滑雪场 is a decent sized place to spend a day polishing your shredding skills. Cost-wise, it's not that cheap compared with other resorts in the Beijing area, but that's because it's the best one. Also on weekends it can get quite packed, but then again that's China.


Nanshan is especially good for those who like to freestyle as this resort has the biggest & best park in all of China! (Here's Denis in the park doing a grab)


2. Transport
The best way to Nanshan is car. But, if you don't have a car, the second best way is to take the Nanshan shuttle bus. It departs every morning at 08:30 from Sanyuanqiao 三元桥 in northeast Beijing.

OMG I just checked the website and starting from Feb 1st, there's a new bus departing from Wudaokou 五道口! That's just like 2min from where I live! Awsome, no more getting all geared up with board, taking the subway and getting stared at by the locals.

How to get back home? No problem, the bus will take you back at 17:30.

**Remember, reserve a bus seat or lift ticket one day in advance by calling the hotline: 89091909. They will then message you a discount number that you can use when you buy your lift ticket!

3. Slope
Snow at Nanshan is of course all manmade. There are 3 chairlifts and about 4 main runs. Most are quite easy, green / blue runs. There is one short section from the top of the mountain (see picture below) that is steeper, some might consider it a black, but anyway it's quite short. Here you see the 2-person lift next to Mellow Park.


View of Mellow Park, it's a great place to practice your jumps. They also hold the annual Red Bull Open here, apparantly the biggest snowboard competition in China.


Checkout those monster kickers!


This is on the way to the top. The lifts are quite slow.


4. Base
There are 2 buildings for rentals & lockers. I think it costs about 30 RMB for rental plus you gotta pay a deposit. There are also 5-6 stores selling gear.


Here is the canteen where we had lunch in front of Mellow Park. There is an outdoor and indoor section. A great place to recharge and get some sun. There are 2 other places to eat, apart from the standard rice + chicken / pork meal, they also serve Korean. A set meal of rice+meat+soup or noodles will cost about 30RMB. Of course there's always the skewers 串 and my favorite - roasted sweet potato.


5. Bottomline
Shuttle bus.................................30
Resort entrance ticket....................20
All-day weekend lift pass
(with 40% reservation discount)........200
Total..................................RMB 250

SALT

Last Sunday we went to SALT for Frances' farewell brunch. SALT is located in the Lido disctrict 丽都 in NW Beijing, known for being a quiet expat area.

SALT is an upscale restaurant that serves a modern western cuisine. It has won a number of expat foodie awards including Best Restaurant, Best Steak, Best Contemporary Cuisine, etc. They have a great brunch set menu that's not to expensive, you can choose 2 course (138 RMB) or 3 course (158 RMB).

I had the cold muscles (not pictured) which were fresh with a tangy flavor.


Here we have some sort of soup that Denis ordered. Seemed okay.


Here's my main dish, risotto. The rice was fine and taste was fine, nothing special though, what I should have ordered was....


The STEAK! This was the highlight of the brunch and I didn't even order it. The steak was very jucy and soft and done just right at medium rare. Sauce was also delicious, I will have to come back to order a full portion for myself!



Banana pancakes with chocolate sauce for dessert. The bananas were good but pancakes were weird....sort of hard and crispy, not soft and fluffy...i think they got a bit too creative here. Chocolate made it all better though.

Score: 3/5, if i ordered steak would have been 4/5

Only in China

Seen on the road to Wanlong ski resort

Live inside a transformer

Alright this has nothing to do with Beijing but this guy's tiny Hong Kong flat is so cool....it transforms into 24 different configurations!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/garden/15hongkong.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Snowboarding in China - Wanlong review 万龙滑雪场

Wanlong 万龙滑雪场
I'm sure all you boarders & skiers are wondering what's a Chinese ski resort like? Let me preface this by saying that I've experience in a number of ski resorts in countries like USA, Canada, France, Japan, Australia, so I like to think I know what I'm talking about.

Needless to say considering there was not a lot of natural snow, I was impressed with Wanlong. The snow is decent (hard packed & dry), runs are medium length, resort seems organized, food is good, hotel was great.

Wanlong is about 4 hours from Beijing above a town called Zhangjiakou 张家口. Because it is so far away, you usually stay overnight.

The mountain itself is not very big...there are 2 main charilifts and a 3rd one in the middle that goes to the top. There is also a cute cabin at the very top where you can rest and warmup. The runs are medium in length (much longer than the better known Nanshan Ski Resort 南山滑雪场). The difficuly is also much harder than Nanshan, steeper gradient + harder snow. This is not a place for beginners.

I was pleasently surprised with the average skill level of all the skiers/boarders. This means there were less people and no long lift lines! The only few improvements would be to speed up the chairlifts and put in more jumps or a park for doing tricks.

I also must warn you that during Jan it is damn cold. At the bottom it is about -5-10C but on top with the wind sheild it must have been -15-20. Goggles and face mask are a must! Especially if you are going full speed down from the very top. I could see frozen drops of water on my friend's eyelashes.


Food
There is a large cafeteria in the 2/F main building. There was much variety: noodles, dumplings, rice, pasta, sandwich, etc., quality was not bad. The only bad thing is everyone must purchase a card and put $ in the card to buy food.



Shuanglong Hotel 双龙酒店

Besides snowboarding, this was arguably the best thing of the trip. 5 of us stayed in a 2 bedroom suite, with 2 beds in each room, so we just added a mattress for the 5th person.

The rooms were fully equipped, and I mean fully equipped, includes the usual plus complementary: desktop computer, humidifier in shape of bear, Dove chocolate bars x 5, plate of fruit, ski magazines, hotplate & hotpot, eating utensils, plates, bowls, water machine, coffee mugs, coffee, toothbrush, toothpaste, toothbrush mugs, etc. Breakfast was full Chinese + Western buffet with tonnes of choices. Most impressive for a Chinese hotel.


Overall a nice resort and I would be happy to go again.


Cost (RMB / person)
Bus there and back......................200
Hotel (suite for 4+1bed)................324
Lift ticket 1.5 days (15% discount)....399
Total........................................923

BEIJING TIP: sites for learning Chinese

Seeing as I've been in Beijing a while studying Chinese, I have come across a number of online resources to use. As you can imagine, there are countless sites devoted to this, but here are some good ones I have come accross:

MDBG - a great English-Chinese-English dictionary, I use it everyday!
nciku - dictionary and more, lookup characters by drawing them with your mouse. They also have mini lessons a vocab tracker.
chinesepod - great podcast with new audio lessons each week, too bad you gotta pay.
popupchinese - audio lessons for crazies taking HSK
skritter - good reading & writing drills

Beaches

Ok first post of 2009 but i'm continuing my San Diego series

What's a trip to San Diego without checking out the beach? The beach is definitely a major part of San Diego culture and one of the main reasons why someone would choose to move here.

Here are some nice pics from my visit to Pacific Beach


Loong pier, the white huts are also very cute


Only a few ppl and the gulls here today as it's still winter....


Nothing better than clam chowder by the beach!