介绍:
A famous pavilion during the Qing Dynasty, Taoranting Park is a historical and cultural garden in the summer, integrating classical architecture and modern gardening art. Right now, it has been turned into a winter wonderland.
Although Beijing has not had many snow days this year, the hills in the park are covered by man-made snow and the lake has been frozen over with a sheet of ice over 15 centimeters deep. It looks like half of Beijing is on the ice. Aside from having beautiful gardens, the park also has a big lake with an area of over 16 hectares. There are ice sledges sliding all over the surface.
This is the sixth annual ice carnival held at Taoranting Park. This year, there are some special guests joining the visitor at the park. They are eight penguins: two emperor penguins and six smaller penguins with long golden eyebrows. The emperor penguins are a bit taller and their necks can stretch a lot longer than the other penguins. They seem right at home in this snowy environment.
This isn't the first time that they have visited Taoranting Park. Last year, the penguins were here for over a month and a half. The staff at the park built their habitat out of ice blocks and even lowered the temperature in the room so that they would feel right at home. Their caretaker Wang Jingwei explains.
"They have two meals a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. We feed them their favorite fish: capelin and mackerel. If the weather is good or when we get a lot of visitors, we could let the penguins come out of their house and play freely and interact with visitors."
You can see them waddling around and slipping on the ice. They're very mischievous and playful, and have also attracted many young audiences.
"I usually see them on TV."
"I like the smaller penguins because I think they're very cute. And they're a little naughty."
The penguins are a big attraction once again at the festival. There are also other activities at the park. For example, people can slide down a 6 meters high and 50 meter wide slope on giant saucers. These things can gather so much speed going down that you can spin left and right and even bump into other people. It's like playing bumper cars on snow. There are more than twenty lanes here so everybody can have their turn at this exhilarating sport.
If you prefer something more easy-going, you can play soccer in the snow. There are also snow tanks, snow motorcycles and snow Jeeps to add to the fun and games. Wu Di has just came off a snow motorcycle.
"It's thrilling. Driving on snow is so different from driving on the road."
Around me, children are driving snow bulldozers.
At Taoranting Park, there are 13 ice and snow activities in total this year. Park official Yang Yan says she has seen rapid development of winter sports in Beijing since the first Ice Carnival.
"In our first year, there were only two or three winter activity venues. Now, there are 30 or 40 indoor venues in Beijing."
As the weather cools, many other venues are also open to winter sports enthusiasts such as the Summer Palace, Beihai Park and Purple Bamboo Park.
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