Did I mention the word “Icebox”?! The wind here hails from the steeps of Siberia, with nothing to block it before it hits Beijing but the Gobi desert, where it just gathers up speed! So though yesterdays temperature was a high of 27 degrees, the 20 mph f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g winds brought the temp down to like 8!
We bundled up in all our new “North Fake” and “ugg-ish” clothes form the neighborhood “copy” market and braved the winds to search for some stone pieces that regular customers have asked us to scout out for them. The carvers from the countryside only come into the city for the week-end market, attatched to the well known Pan Jie Yuan,”dirt market”.

Its called that because in the old days, it was just that, a patch of dirt just off the third ring road where every week-end for decades the people have come to town to sell their wares. You wouldn’t recognize it as that now. Just in the years since we’ve been coming to Beijing it has added a new vaulted roof, paved it self with stone, and added enclosed shops! Much of the charm is gone, as is anything that is more than a few weeks old it seems. But the stone carvers still gather just outside the wast gate, and there you will find a mix of old and new, marble and granite, everythig from Buddahs to ELephants.Take a peek at the pic’s and see it something strikes your fancy—-the really great news is that things ship by size NOT weight, so go for it! Hope that ya’ll are all a lot warmer than we are now, it’s off for some hot Chinese medicinal tea for me!!!