Mid-Autumn Festival

In China the beginning of October sees the celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival when traditionally Chinese people celebrated the end of the Autumn harvest, meet with friends and family in observing the moon and eat moon cakes. Today it sees a mass of people flooding from major cities to their home towns to meet their families. Despite the massive number of people traveling, myself and the other scholars decided this would be a great time to do a bit of traveling. Rocco, Caitlin and I decided to go to Beijing for 5 days.

Upon arrival in Beijing we soon realised after a few hours searching, the hotel we had booked did not exist. However, such a set back didn't stop us and we soon found a noodle bar and wifi to find a hotel. After a bit of searching we found a really nice hotel, possibly too nice for the likes of us, to stay in. After dumping our bags we headed off to the Sanlitun nightlife district of Beijing and went to MIX. We had a great night experiencing Beijing's unique nightlife as we met lots of locals and foreigners. The following day we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden city. Despite having been there last year it was a great experience; the sheer scale will never cease to amaze. We then went to the techno club Lantern Club in the evening. It was fantastic to finally hear techno music in China as it doesn't seem to be terribly popular over here. The next day we visited the Pearl Market to buy some clothes to keep us warm in the coming winter. Nearby, we found a Peking duck restaurant that we thoroughly enjoyed. When in China, as a general rule, we always look for somewhere with lots of Chinese people because surely if they like the food it must be traditional and taste great! The next night we decided to have a quiet one in and go for a swim at the hotel. The next morning Caitlin had a great idea to have a 'subway crawl', meaning that we would explore the city by getting off at random stops throughout the day. This was great as we found so many hidden spots around Beijing that we never knew existed.

Later that month Rocco and I escaped from the busy life of Hexi district and got the train to Wuqing which is in the outskirts of Tianjin halfway to Beijing. Wuqing is a residential area and is much quieter. It was nice seeing another side to this massive city.

The university organised a trip to Huanghuacheng section of the Great Wall at the end of October. We got up really early to go apple picking beside the Great Wall, have lunch and climb the wall itself. However, that morning the heavy smog meant that we had to pull over for 2 hours to allow it to clear before we continued on our journey. Unfortunately we missed out on apple picking and went straight to lunch. However, the farmers came to lunch and handed us each a bag with 10 or so apples. So now I've got a huge bag of free Great Wall apples sitting on my desk that I'm excited to get into. The views of the wall were breathtaking despite the smog. Rocco and I had visited the Great Wall in Beijing last year but it was great to see a different section as the section in Tianjin was far less busy and not as polished as the newly conserved section in Beijing.

Celebrating Halloween in China is a unique experience and completely different to how we celebrate it at home. It took some time before Rocco and I realised we needed a costume for Halloween, even in China. So we hastily cycled off to Tesco to get some DIY costumes. Being on a budget and remembering I once did art I decided to buy a white top and fashion it in some way to become a costume. Everyone's getting ready, Rocco's having a nap and I'm sitting on the floor with a marker pen trying to capture perfectly the exact outline of the Chinese app equivalent to Tinder: Tantan. A quick £2 solution to a massive problem. All the scholars then hit Helen's which is basically the unofficial University Union. It's a great experience speaking with loads of different people from different countries and discussing how they ended up in China.

I'm thoroughly enjoying my time so far in China and feel that even in the short time I've been here my Chinese skills have improved greatly. I'll keep you posted next month on news of the St. Andrews Ball and mid-term exams.

Until then

再见