Morning in rural Beijing

If you hop on the highway and travel 30-45 minutes outside of the city's main ring roads, you'll enter a completely different Beijing. This Beijing has frozen in a time many still remember, but most try to forget. Industrial China has pushed aside the once glorified agricultural lifestyle to make way for big businesses and an even bigger economy. But many of the small villages in Beijing still remain intact, a shadow of the not too distant Cultural Revolution dream. My family took the opportunity to spend a weekend in one of these courtyard-style homes in Beijing's beautiful foothill mountains. The crumbling Great Wall was just a hike away from the home and another step back in time to an era almost forgotten in the long history of modern-day China.