As I was editing the photos for my Kaifeng post, I inevitably came to the conclusion I will need to post them in two separate posts. Focusing on the photos for the first post (about The Dragon Pavilion), I noticed a theme: a bunch of the photos were of flowers. So, let’s call this An Intro to The Dragon Pavilion Through Flowers.
Tea Shop
Another one about tea, yeah. I just want to show you some photos. About two and a half months ago Bingjie, Alex, Fabio and I went to Kaifeng. We stopped in Xinyang on the way, because we had to wait for our train. So we had some food and, of course, some tea.
School Life
When I came to Guangshan, I expected to be planning workshops, doing some urban gardening and having occasional events for underprivileged children. Well, for this kind of projects, things don’t always go as planned. (Look at me talking like I’m not doing this for the first time ever.) As it turns out, instead of doing all the above mentioned activities, I have been teaching. English. To kids. Who are really quite bad at English. And I don’t speak Chinese. You can imagine I wasn’t overly excited when I realized what they expected me to do.
Art and More Palaces – Beijing Day 4
Our last full day in Beijing started with something that I really wanted to do and that was to visit a place with a lot of contemporary art. Chen Guo suggested the 798 Art Zone in north-eastern part of Beijing. It is a large compound of all kind of buildings, but the main feel is sort of industrial, because there are a lot of warehouses and exposed piping.
Palaces and Hutongs – Beijing Day 3
After visiting The Great Wall we apparently still had enough energy to say yes when our hosts invited us to come to a nightclub. The club was very western and very expensive (we were guests so they paid for us), but it was fun. The next few days I felt the lack of sleep, but there was a lot of interesting things left to see, so I tried not to dwell on it. I can rest in Guangshan.
Great Wall, Wild Wall – Beijing Day 2
The second day in Beijing, we visited the Great Wall, which is a must if you come to Beijing. We went to the Mutianyu section. I have nothing to compare it with, but I thought it was excellent.
Evening in Beijing
The Friday before last (so, the 22nd), we went to Beijing for 5 days. It is a picturesque city, or at least the things we did there were, so I have a ton of photos. I decided to spread them out over a number of posts, because I think I quite like the format of using less content per post. Anyway, I can experiment with it.
We went to Beijing by fast train from Xinyang. The trip took around four hours – we arrived around 6 o’clock, just as the light was starting to diminish. They said the air was the best they’ve had all week, and honestly I couldn’t notice a difference compared to Guangshan. The next morning my snot was a bit black, which meant that nonetheless it wasn’t quite the same. From the train station we were headed to the hotel for dinner. Beijing has seven (7!!!) road rings and our hotel was just out of the 5th ring. Between that and the immense amounts of traffic in the city, it took a while before we got there. I took the photo soon after we left the station, and by the time we sat down to eat it was dark outside.
The “ZOO”
Last week on Thursday we (volunteers) joined the two lowest grades of the kindergarten (3 and 4 year olds) on their trip to the ZOO. The parents came along, because there are a lot of kids and this just makes everything much easier.
How I Came to China
Story time! Or rather, explanation time! Doesn’t sound quite as exciting though. For those who are reading this and don’t really know how I came to live in Henan for 5 months (and for those who may not know all the details), I want to outline the steps that lead me here. They’re not very complicated, but I thought it would be good to write them down.
Botanical Garden in Guangshan
I have visited the botanical garden in Guangshan twice now. To be honest both times were about three weeks ago, but in the mean time we’ve been to Beijing and I haven’t managed to select and edit any photos, not to mention writing a post. Everything will be here eventually, no need to worry. I could never deprive you of this amazingness (it could be a word?).