One sunny Sunday afternoon we went to a lotus park! It’s about a 40 minute car ride from Guangshan. It’s not very big, but we did spend about 3 hours there. I will just let the photos speak for this one.
Category: China
Day With the Wan Family
I now have just a week left in China, and I am writing about something that happened in the end of May. Going to have to up the production, if I don’t want to keep having to remember things that happened months ago.
Qingming Park – Kaifeng
We spent the second part of our only full day in Kaifeng in Qingming Park (also called Millennium City Park). It’s a theme park based on a painting called Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan. The picture is the shape of a scroll rolled out horizontally. Unfortunately they don’t exhibit the picture (except for short periods every few years), so we didn’t see the original. When I was in China Art Museum in Shanghai a week ago, there was an interactive exhibition about this painting, but it required special tickets so we didn’t go in (the museum is free except for special exhibitions). But back to Kaifeng.
Dragon Pavilion – Kaifeng
When we arrived from Xinyang to Zhenzhou East train station, we spend some time to find the bus station, and from there we took the one hour bus ride to Kaifeng. Our friend, Bingjie’s cousin Diandian (gege – brother), picked us up. We went to eat, and after we went to the hotel he booked for us. But, a little problem, this hotel doesn’t take foreigners. If you ever go to China pay attention to this, because many hotels are only for Chinese residents. In this case the hotel doesn’t have to care about your registration with the government. At least I think that’s the reason, I haven’t actually checked.
Flowers of Kaifeng
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.