What to do when it rains in Beijing

Over the next few days in China we shopped, ate everything in sight, and hit all the normal tourist attractions. We were blessed with good weather for eight out of the nine days we were in China but the one rainy day gave us a good excuse to get off the tourist trail and goof off. The very industrious Chinese have turned part of the Water Cube into a water park so that's where we spent our rainy day. The place is amazing. It's clean, beautiful, and you can't beat it's location.





When we arrived at the water park I realized that no one working there spoke a bit of english. The park had only been open for a few weeks so things may have changed by now. Anyway, the staff kept trying to get us all to wear life jackets. I was trying, without success, to convey that we were strong swimmers and could handle the 6" deep water. We were standing in the very building where Michael Phelps won all those gold medals just a few short years ago so I pointed to Miniman and said "Phelps" then I pointed to BGC and repeated "Phelps" and then to myself and said the same. It worked! The staff let us go without life jackets. They either understood that I was trying to tell them we are strong swimmers (like Phelps) or they think we are members of the Phelps family. Whatever, it worked. We spent eight hours at the water park and the kids were still disappointed when it was time to leave.






The other interesting thing about this water park was that it had live entertainment. At intervals throughout the day live bands, dancers, and singers would come onto the stage next to the wave pool and perform. They had an unusual mix of dance styles (most notably belly dancers!) and most of the music was by western artists - there was a whole lot of Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, and Abba.




We were the only non-Asians in the Cube and my kids had a small group of followers everywhere they went. When they came down a slide, they were greeted by several women taking their pictures and clapping for them. Now, I'm not a fan of strangers taking pictures of my kids but it's unavoidable in Asia. I sincerely hope word didn't get out that we were relatives of Michael Phelps and these people thought they were getting pics of the next generation of Olympic medalists!

I think we've had enough for one day.