17 Jun 2012

EXP3 WEEK1 VALLEY

Long Qing Xia

Long Qing Xia is a canyon outside of Beijing, about 50 miles north of the city. At the entrance to Long Qing is a village named Gu Cheng Cun. That was the empress’ garden during the Ming dynasty.

At Long Qing Xia there is a dam built in 1973 that provides Beijing with water. South of the Long Qing Xia is the Great Wall (Badaling), to the north is a national park and to the west the mountains Haitou. Long Qing Xia is fairly well positioned there in the middle. Long means dragon and Qing means honor or celebrate, Xia means gorge. The legend says that dragons go there to celebrate because of the natural beauty of Long Qing Xia.

The water in the river is very clear, and it is perhaps one of the reasons why so many want to go there, given that the environment in Beijing is so bad. Long Qing Xia is a good place to go in the summer if you want to escape the heat in the city for a while. Long Qing Xia is on higher altitude so it is usually cooler, averaging 7 degrees lower than in the city. Even in the winter, it is nice there. They build a lot of ice sculptures that looks very nice with a lot of different colors.

Another special thing with Long Qing Xia is that there is a long cave of the same style that is otherwise only found in southern China. 4 miles have opened to visitors now, but there’ll be more in the future.


No comments:

Post a Comment