A somewhat biased view on China…
Zhen Bian Cheng (ZBC) is a small fortified village near the Great Wall in the North of Beijing. This is one of the places around Beijing that I enjoy the most. Go and check the pictures in the gallery.
Usually, here is how we organize the week-end:
Saturday
4pm: Departure from Beijing in a mini-bus
6pm: Arrival in ZBC, we cross the village gate and go directly to the old house we will rent for the week-end
8pm: We have a nice dinner. The food is simple but delicious, especially potatoes…
10pm: Dinner is almost over, we are finishing a melted Camembert cooked on the fire. We stay around the fire for the rest of the evening, drinking beer and talking about anything.
12am: Time to go to bed. Some of us would prefer to have softer bed but we all manage to have some sleep because tomorrow….
Sunday
8am: Breakfast
9am: we are leaving for the Great Wall. It will take us two hours to reach one of the Great Wall’s tower.
12pm: We have lunch on one of the Great Wall tower. The view on the mountains and villages is amazing.
2pm: Time to go back to ZBC.
4pm: After a last beer, we leave ZBC.
6pm: Back to Beijing, big city…
We’ll go back to ZBC soon… Probably next month 
Links
The pictures
What is a Kang bed?
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November 15th, 2005 at 8:42 am
[…] I finally made the JinShanLing-SiMaTai treck on the Great Wall! Las week, a bunch of colleagues arrived from France, USA and Czech Republic for a 3 days workshop in Beijing. This week-end we organized the treck for some of them, the bravest amongst them!
This part of the Great Wall is quite interesting with beautifull landscapes, well preserved watch towers and… The Flying Fox to go down to the parking at the end of the treck! But you surely know that I prefer ZBC! 
[…]
November 21st, 2005 at 7:33 am
[…] As you probably know due to his multiple falls, President Bush enjoy riding mountain bikes. Yesterday, he rode is mountain bike on the Laoshan Olympic Mountain Bike Course. Which is quite funny for us because this official Olympic Road is the one we take to go to Zhen Bian Cheng and we did it by bicycle a few years ago, before it was chosen for the 2008 games! [link] […]