Literally freezing in Beijing

It's been pretty cold in Beijing, temperatures in the day rarely rise above freezing and at night it goes down to negative double digits. Truthfully, -10º isn't that bad... it only gets bad when there's any sort of wind, that's when the windchill factor kicks in and it hurts. By all accounts, this has been an extremely mild winter in Beijing, I keep hearing from the locals how bad it was last year.

But darn it, it hasn't snowed yet...

Frozen fountain outside Solana mall, one of our favorite hangouts... the mall, not the fountain


This is what sub-zero temperatures will do, even to flowing water

Frozen Chao Yang Park Lake, equally frozen photographer and a warm monkey...

Close up... dirty frozen thick ice, do note the bubbles in the frozen ice (at the bottom right), it certainly shows the thickness of the ice, by my reckoning the ice is easily two feet thick