Fast growing, fast changing, fast improving...fast! From TV and newspapers looks like everithing in Beijing is moving this way. And it's quite true. But if you move a little from the glittering buildings to the "old style Beijing", than you can find that, after all, there's something that is not moving that fast. No cars (well, not so many at least), no streetlights, no banks, no skyscrapers...only China, all the way around. That's the Huntong zone in Beijing, and if you're dwelling here, this is quite a normal way to park your "pedal-truck". Narrow streets, little space and many more people than a "first timer" in China can ever imagine. Dont' miss to visit these sreets, before they're replaced by some shopping center...

  Now think about a Summer landscape...got it? Ok, now remove from this image, one by one, flowers, blue skies, warm breeze, colors, smells, and what else?... well, it think it could be enough. So what do you get? Nothing very funny I think. Now try to do the same with the "Summer Palace" in Beijing... I did it, by visiting it in a cold and foggy Winter day, and I really fell in love with that place. To be sincere, if I would have had the chance, I think that I'd visited it in Spring, or early Autumn, but I got in Beijing in January and so... But believe me, it is really worth. The lake is frozen, the rocks in the gardens and the roofs of the pagodas are covered by a thin layer of snow, everything looks like crystallized. It is like walking into the biggest glassware exposition you can ever imagine. And one of the finest one. And above all you can see something that is not easy to describe, because is something that normally can't be seen. Well, maybe I'm a little strange, I admit it, but the feeling I got by walking through those frozen gardens was the that I could SEE the Silence. Believe me, if you get in Beijing during winter, even if it's so cold that the last thing you desire is walking by a frozen lake, don't miss to experience an "out of season" Summer Palace, you won't be disappointed.