Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Daystar Academy's kindergarten (
www.daystarchina.cn
) runs a toddler playgroup for
parents with children three years old and under every Wednesday 9am-10:30am. It's a free
program designed to bring parents of youngsters within the community together.
One very important group worth joining on at least several occasions is the International
Newcomers' Network (INN,
www.innbeijing.org
)
. The group has firmly established itself
as a resource for all newcomers. It can help you make friends, answer questions, and
provide support if you're finding settling in challenging. INN meets in several places, and
for Shunyi residents, that's for coffee on the third Thursday of every month, 10am-noon.
The advantage of living out in Shunyi is that you have some great sports and recreation op-
tions at a relatively easy distance. A good many golf courses can be found out here if you're
partial to a hit or two. Mind you, it doesn't come cheaply and is generally the signature
sport of the local wealthy. The Beijing Riverside Resort Golf Club (tel. 10/8046-6566), for
example, is at your doorstep just off Shunhuang Lu on the Chaoyang side of the river. It's
an 18-hole, 72-par golf course, with total length of 6,428 meters (7,030 yards). The high-
light of the course is the many water obstacles.
Water warriors can take advantage of post-Olympic sites by joining up with Ao Fan Sail-
ing (
http://aofansailing.com
)
at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park. The club not
only runs summer camps, training, and competitions for sailing but also has kayaking and
other water sports. For the frozen kinds of water sports, cross back across the Chaobai River
and head a tad farther north to Qiabo Ice & Snow World (
www.qbski.com/bj
)
, the only in-
door place where you can ski all year round in northern China, let alone Beijing.
Shunyi also offers residents equestrian clubs, hapkido, ballet and dancing schools, and
swimming. Team sports are covered, too. The Beijing Devils make a serious commitment
each season to playing hard, both on and off the rugby field. If you're not quite into full-
contact rugby, however, the club also runs mixed touch rugby, offering you a less aggress-
ive way to be social and keep fit. Most training and competitions take place in Dulwich
College Legend Garden Campus. If you play cricket then join the very international Beijing
Cricket Club (BCC,
www.bjcricketclub.org
)
. (The word for cricket in Chinese sounds very
much like the word for baseball—compare
b
ǎ
nqiú
to
bàngqiú
—and some uninformed loc-
als will try to correct what they think is your poor pronunciation of the latter.) The club
holds Santa Fe League and Twenty20 League matches on weekends in Beijing, and parti-
cipates in matches throughout the country. The BCC also holds its training at the Legend
Garden campus of Dulwich College.
