Wuk in China

Hello from Beijing,

 I only have a minute or two to say hello so I really will be brief. Everything is going well here -  We flew to Beijing with Sichuan Air early on Monday morning and then after a short rest we went to Tiananmen Square (where I took a lot of photos and filmed a short movie or two) and we watched the large PRC flag being taken down at the end of the night (it is raised every morning and brought down every night). That night I had a burger and Haixiao had a steak (it was the best western food I have had the whole trip - some of the ‘western’ restaurants REALLY don’t know what they are doing… including the imported restaurant chains).

The next morning we went on a bus-tour to visit the Badaling section of the Great Wall. On the way the tour took us to a jade carving factory and also to a ‘traiditional chinese medicine research centre’ - which was really just a scam to try and get money out of tourists even if it was genuine to some extent. The Great Wall was quite amazing and today my legs are still very sore from all the climbing up and down. There was also a very enjoyable cable-car ride which I took a cool movie from. (When I say cable-car I mean roller-coaster in slow motion, not a gondola like I was expecting)

On our tour was two other Australians, two ethnic russians now living in texas and a spaniard. We started to get to know each other and I decided it would be nice if we all went to dinner together. We had a sichuan hotpot (it was nowhere near as good as the hotpots they have in Sichuan but actually it was a perfect introduction for them because it was not as spicy as the ones I had in Chengdu) and then we went out to a couple of different nightclubs, the  night was quite enjoyable on the whole.

Unfortunately we were out until almost 4am and today we slept in so late and got delayed and messed around while we were trying to organise our remaining flights (here to Shanghai tomorrow morning, and from Shanghai to Chengdu on saturday afternoon) that we arrived at the forbidden city too late.and instead I just bought some tourist memorabilia from the hawkers out the front. (Having a native chinese speaker with me is fantastic :) - most tourists must spend around 2x - 5x more than they need to when they purchase things like postcards and t-shirts etc)

Anyway I have to run - tonight we are having roast peking duck with the two aussies again and as usual we are going to be late.

Take care all - I may or may not get around to posting from Shanghai so if not then I’ll see ya when I’m looking at ya and I’ll properly organise and post some new pictures on the site when I’m back home in wintry Adelaide.

 Cheers,

 Will

Hi all,

I am going to have to keep this brief because it is getting late here and I’m feeling tired - to make a long story short….

We arrived in Chengdu yesterday afternoon (the place is quite big) it has apartment tower after apartment tower after apartment tower, and every so often there is another conglomeration of apartment towers under construction, it seems to be more intense in many ways than I remember Tokyo being. (I most definitely have not seen so much development occurring at once in my life until now)

I have met the parents and they are quite friendly, the culture difference has not been a great problem - although there is a bit of an issue in the sense that 1) While I am here Haixiao and I must sleep in seperate rooms to each other and we can not be seen holding hands in front of her parents 2) Her parents do not want her to live in a place with me (we were planning on renting an apartment on the university grounds). This means that we have had to change plans and go travelling sooner rather than later. How things will pan out is anyone’s guess - but I can confidently say that the parents have no objection to Haixiao being with me it is just that they are unlikely to allow her to stay with me on a permanent basis until I prove to them that I intend to live in a fixed residence in Chengdu with her while she studies - and by the time things get to that stage we are virtually at the stage where we should be engaged and/or married in their parents eyes. Anyway, her parents do not mind if she travels with me around China at all so we will be leaving here on Sunday and playing it by ear from there. One possibility aside from the time we will spend together while we are visiting eastern China is that we spend a while at qing cheng or emei mountain (maybe 2 or 3 hours bus from Chengdu) - accomodation there is quite cheap as is food etc - and it qualifies as ‘travelling’ as far as we’re concerned.

I apologise for not being able to upload any pictures (other than this old one of Haixiao and myself from my second day in China)

I spent a long time messing around with one picture (the fact that the software on this computer uses chinese characters is not helping much) but to no avail. I will be able to post some pictures in the near future (tomorrow I hope) but I just ened to spend some more time sorting things out. (I only got the Australian power adaptor today - and guess what - it turned out I didn’t even need to buy one, Chinese appliances seem to use two different sorts of plugs and one of them is identical to Australian powerplugs) - it seems ‘universal’ power-points are quite common here and it just so happened that her parents had a whole powerboard that I can plug my various bits into with no problem.

I hope things are well there - I am off to sleep - I slept in this morning and I don’t want to look lazy again tomorrow.

Cheers

Will