在后海骑冰车 (ICE-CYCLING AT HOUHAI)

One lovely crisp winter day last weekend I dragged my old classmate Ding Ding (who has a real English name which I just can't get accustomed to using) out to Houhai, having heard an appealing rumor that there one could rent some sort of ice-bike to traverse the lake's frozen surface.

It was true! After paying $1.5o to enter, we had an array of vehicle choices. There was the ice bike, as above, seating two and available in a variety of colors. There were ice skates. There were two-seater sleds propelled by vicious-looking ice picks.

(yes, there was also cotton candy, along with popcorn, roasted sweet potatoes, and kettle corn)

There was at least one sheep-drawn carriage:

For the kids, there was a mini-carriage pulled by a robot dressed in children's clothes and sometimes bearing the head of the sheep. It boasted a speaker that blasted shrill chorals and seemed only able to move in circles. Ding Ding and I both found it extremely creepy. This was as close as I was willing to get for a picture.

There were also at least two repurposed bumper cars which, though mechanized, didn't move very fast. I attempted to sort the different types of vehicles by quality and assign them by proportion to different segments of the population: elites, workers, cadres, the burgeoning middle-class. Ding Ding (below) threw popcorn at me until I shut up.

It was the best day I've had in weeks. Why don't we have these things in the States?