JIngdong Grand Canyon

SABIC Beijing office held a family day event last month. We visited Jingdong Grand Canyon for a hike. The park is in a very narrow canyon east of Beijing.

We took a bus ride to the eastern suburbs of Beijing but arrived at the restaurant a little early for lunch. They had a pile of corn in the courtyard so some of us city slickers played around with shucking some of the corn.

We also took a quick trip to a local orchard to pick some apples.

At this orchard they put a paper bag on every apple to keep the bugs off without using pesticides. That takes a lot of work but I have to say the apples were uniformly perfect.

Here is the spread for lunch. That, of course, is fish in the middle. I see tofu at the bottom of the picture. That may be pickled pig's ear in the lower right.

These chickens were wandering around in an enclosure at the back of the restaurant.

Here is the first of several pictures from inside the canyon. The pollution was pretty bad that day so difficult to get nice pictures.

The canyon is very narrow is certain sections.

Here are some of my colleagues taking a rest along the way. There are a series of lakes (all man-made) along the length of the trail.

This waterfall was at the head of the canyon.

I think the leaves on the water were interesting.

There were some fall colors on display.

After the hike a ride back into Beijing, we  went to a Japanese style restaurant for dinner.

I think these are mushrooms wrapped in bacon.

They do the flaming thing during dessert preparation.

During the preparation of the meal, the entire cook staff jumped up and starting performing Xiao Pingguo or "Little Apple". "Little Apple" is all the rage in China this fall. You can think of it as the China version of Gangnam Style.

All-in-all it was a fun day.