Time to catch up

Wow, it's been a while since my last post. I was abroad for two weeks in October, but I guess it takes forever to return to normal rhythm. I'd better finish up my tour of barns in Beijing before I forget what I saw. It looks like I still have 4 more places to report. Gee, I went to a lot more places than I thought.

I have researched on the internet and found that there is a sporthorse and racehorse breeding farm near Beijing, so I found the contact information, and address and made it a planned stop. I was calling the number since morning trying to make an appointment, but it never went through. My taxi driver also helped calling while he was waiting for me at each stop. In the end, we arrived the place without an appointment. The next obstacle turned out to be their 20-foot stonewalls. This place is surrounded by two-story high walls with huge solid metal gates all locked shut! From one side they have a lower gate, and I could see barns in there, but the gate was also locked with nobody in sight. We figured there must be another gate, so drove around, and arrived at a stable. However, that was not the originally planned destination. In fact I didn't know it existed, so not in my plan at all.

The barn worker first was suspicious about us. I would too as it turned out to be a private stable, but he became very excited and friendly once I told him that I was from the US and would like to see horses in Beijing. The barn was not the fanciest, but it was maintained very clean and all the horses looked well fed and shining. I could see the barn help was very proud of the horses he cared for. He pointed out a big colt and his dam to me, and asked me to guess his breeding. Oh mine, how would I know? They looked to have some blood, but the mare's size was somewhat small, so they must be some mixed breed.

He laughed and told me it was sired by a prized blood-sweating horse! The legendary blood-sweating  horse was known to run very fast with a lot of endurance, and they would bleed from the neck when they ran. The modern veterinary medicine tells us this phenomenon might be caused by parasites encysted in the skin bursting. It was also believed to be just a visual effect as the horse sweat, its hair color became so deep that it looked like blood. The actual breed is believed to be Akhal-Teke or a close relative. Other than the longer back, I really couldn't see any distinctive traits in this colt. However, they do have a horse that looks like a cremello or perlino.  He has a cute head, nice topline, but kind of short legged.

Anyway, this is just a detour, we asked how to get to his neighbor, the big well-secured breeding farm, but the answer was simply, "find an open door." Hmm, not too helpful. Well, if we couldn't find the door to get in, we should just head for the next stable. As we were retracing our route to leave this village, we saw the low gate of the breeding farm was open, and people were coming and going. We drove to the gate and let the person, who appeared to be guarding the gate and supervising the workers, know why we were there, but he said he had to check with the owner.  He called the owner and handed me his cell phone, and I got to explain to the owner that I am a sporthorse breeder in the US and my interest in seeing horses near Beijing. He was very welcoming and even apologized that no one answered the phone earlier and he was not there to greet us. I was a bit overwhelmed by the gracious hospitality over the phone. He called his barn manager to come to the gate to take us for a tour of his facility. 

My goodness, what a place! It is definitely at the caliber of Mr. Uli Kasselmann's farm, and to no surprise, this facility is in association with PSI! I saw a club house and the stable. Both of them looked like Mediterranean palaces. There were not many stalls, but everything is size XL in volume and height. The barn housed several stallions with jumping Holsteiner and Hanoverian bloodlines.  The grounds were all green completed with paver stone paths through the gardens and woods, a creek, pond, water falls, fountains, and completed with some swans swimming. There was an automatic horse exerciser, and a palomino stallion was getting a bit anxious and unhappy doing his rounds. The paddocks all looked kind of small to me, and the paddocks were wet and sloppy, not quite up to the standard of the rest of the property.

There was a big jumping arena and several riders there jumping or doing flatwork. I was told by the barn manager that they were team members of the Beijing Equestrian Team sponsored by the farm owner, and they were all jumpers as no one was interested in dressage work yet.  They have a coach sent from PSI. I later learned by googling, the owner is a real horse lover, and an official in several organizations, and very dedicated to the equestrian sports. However, I can see it is difficult to promote a sport that takes not only talents and skills, but also great investment and deep knowledge of the sport partner - the horse. Since the owner has so much security and privacy measures with the big wall and gates, I didn't take any pictures of this place. The place is called "Clearwood  Farm", and they do offer PSI style auctions, so I am sure whoever is interested can get the information.

The next two places are really not very exciting. One barn was in "Crab Island Resort". I was wondering what Crab Island was. How could there be an island in the middle of large land mass and no lakes? It turned out to be a theme park where you can do indoor crabbing (so I was told as I didn't go in to see.) There were several giant buildings, that looked like aircraft hangers, and the taxi driver said they were for crabbing.  We found the horse area, but it 

looked to be just for non-horsey tourists to ride in circles, so we didn't stop to check it out. However, I did see something totally wierd; couldn't guess what the whole structure was for. The taxi driver said they were all antennae. I am pretty sure the guy who was making the call on his cell phone had great signal! Haha.

The next place I went could probably be toatlly skipped. It was very close to some lower-end residential/commercial area, but the surrounding businesses all seemed to be the off colored sort. Anyway, I saw a few skinny rental horses, and one customer struggling to try to get the horse to move.

One day is really not long enough to go to all the places. There is another barn on the south side of Beijing in my plan, and they have Friesians based on what I found on the internet.  Hopefully, I can stay for a longer time in my future visits.

I left Beijing the next day, and here are a few shots at the airport, including the display of the ancient "drums" used in the Olympic opening ceremony.

The rest of the horse facility tour

Well, if I don't quickly finish up my blog on Beijing riding facilities, it's going to be the time for my next trip to Asia.

After stop 3, I went to three barns, all next to a river. The first was a new place as I understood it. it was set up very functional and quaint. The office looks like a little cottage made of stucco with it's own walled garden. The stable looks nice and new. A trainer was teaching a student, and I overheard very good instruction. They seem to have good lesson programs, and will be an interesting place to ride. I saw a very beautiful horse there. He is smaller grey, may be 14.3 hands, 150 cm or so, but very nice conformation and well muscled. I asked about the

 breeding, and he was a Chinese half-bred. I really think Chinese horse breeders don't need to aim for giant horses, but really try hard to develop horses with good conformation that are suitable for Chinese riders, who most likely are not too big in stature.

 

The second was a bit hard for us to get to as you actually need to drive on top of the dirt dike next to the river for several kilometers to get there. We arrived during lunch hour, so everyone was eating lunch, all the horses in the barn and people in their riding attire outside the rustic "club house", sitting or squatting around. It is not a fancy place, but offers beautiful natural scenery of river banks and woods. The golf course next door is not that bad looking either. It is a wonderful place for trail riding. The lady who showed me around said only experienced riders they would allow to ride out on the dike. I consider their horses very thin. They can certainly use some grains or perhaps just enough hay to fatten up a bit.

Next riding club is several kilometers away along the river. This is one fancy place, but

 unfortunately I don't know how much business they are really getting. It seems to be mostly a

 boarding stable for some private horses. The office manager lady showed me around and told me it is basically an exclusive membership club, and the membership fee is quite significant, but the club members get to enjoy a luxurious club house in addition to the horse facility. They do also offer individual riding sessions, but it is not clear if they really have a rental string or school horses. They were rebuilding the barn, so all horses were staying either in a covered corral or

 out at the pasture on the river bank. The horses don't look particularly high quality though some of them were pointed out as privately owned. The club owner has an imported FEI mare that could perform Prix St. George movements, but unfortunately no one is riding her at the moment and she is out in the pasture. The lady told me if I wanted to ride there, she would ask if I could ride this mare. I will definitely take on the offer if I have a chance to visit Beijing again soon.

OK, three more places to report. Stay tuned...

Stop 3

Here is my 3rd installment on the Beijing Equestrian facilities.

This is probably the most formal training center in Beijing. They have 60+ horses, including school horses and privately owned horses. They have a huge barn to accommodate the horses, yet they are building a new barn. The jumping ring is huge, and they have a decent indoor arena, plus a couple of warmup rings. I saw many people riding, and the horses appeared to be well cared for, including one stout warmblood looking horse enjoying his
legs cooled off after a workout.

This place boasts a coach from England and is a 4-star qualified equestrian facility certified by BHS. I can't say the riders I saw were of high quality. A couple of horses were ridden with a inverted necks, hollow backs while jumping with tight reins, but the students seemed to try hard in their lessons. This is a sizable facility with manicured lawns and parking lot, and seems to be a nice place for competitions as well. They have their own newsletters that are in glossy magazine print, the lady who showed me around gave me a couple of copies.

This is definitely a place that I will consider riding though the price is quite high here, close to the upper range of the US prices.

Stop 2...

It took me a couple of days to find time to continue with my blog on equestrian facilities in Beijing. After the official pentathlon facility, we drove toward north west for two private facility. The taxi driver helped me call in advance, but found out one phone number has been disconnected. I have pretty detailed instruction to get to the second location, so he didn't call. I thought it would not be too far, so decided to go check it out anyway. Well, I was wrong, it looked close on the tiny map I had, but Beijing is huge! It took us good 25-30 minutes to get there. It is a facility in the hills, a tourist area called Xiang Shan (Fragrant Mountain) with beautiful scenaries, and I was told this is where people go enjoy the red and orange colors of the fall. It was amazing to finally arrive the place and found it was on top of a beautiful knoll among a bunch of residential housing and a restaurant or nightclub right next to it. The security guard of the entire place told us the horse riding operation has been shut down though the horses still live there; he was kind enough to show us the horses. He reported that the owner made a lot of money from renting the houses and from the restaurant business, so he didn't want to be bothered by the little money from running the horse business. The horse stalls are on the first floor of an apartment. Won't that be great for a good "hardcore" riding school? Student dormitory on top of the stalls of their horses.

More to come, stay tuned...