Mid-Autumn Festival travels
For Mid-Autumn Festival, Max, Caitlin and I went to Beijing for 4 nights and 5 days. Mid-Autumn Festival is traditionally a celebration at the end of the autumn harvest and is celebrated by meeting friends and family, eating moon cakes and observing the moon.
The first night we headed down to the Sanlitun district of the city, as this is where most of the nightlife is situated. We went to MIX and had a good night, experiencing what Beijing’s nightlife has to offer as well as making friends with both locals and other foreigners. The next day we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. That night we went to Lantern Club, also in the Sanlitun district. We all thoroughly enjoyed our night and was great being able to listen to some techno again as it isn’t the most common type of music in China. The following day we went to Pearl Market to buy some clothes and souvenirs then went to a traditional Beijing restaurant to have Peking duck. We then spent our night in the hotel, going for a swim and having pizza for dinner. The next morning we did a little ‘subway crawl’, getting off at random stops around the city and going exploring. This was a very cool experience as every place we got off at was slightly different and allowed us to discover places we didn’t know existed.
The next week, back in Tianjin, Max and I went to Wuqing, a rural town on the outskirts of Tianjin. We wanted to visit Wuqing to get a small break from the city and to see another part of the Tianjin. It was nice seeing Wuqing as it was very different to the other districts we had seen, even though there wasn’t a lot to do there.
Towards the end of October, the university organised a trip to the Huanghuacheng part of the Great Wall. On the way there, the coach had to pull over, as the smog got too thick. This delayed us by at least 2 hours but it was all worth it when we got there, as the views were breath taking. It was also nice to see another part of the Great Wall, as it was much less touristy than the Beijing part we went to last year. Its experiences like these that make you realise how fortunate you are in life.
During October, we also had the unique experience of celebrating Halloween in China. It was, understandably, very different from all the previous Halloween’s I have celebrated. Max and I, as per usual, left things to the last minute and found ourselves cycling off to Tesco to get ‘costumes’ while everyone else was already getting ready. The costumes were very DIY to say the least and that’s probably the most I’m willing to reveal about them on this blog! We started the night at the local bar ‘Helen’s’, which was amazing. I loved how there were people from so many different countries and also getting the chance to speak several languages on a night out which doesn’t happen too often back home!
I’d say I am now fully settled in and have adjusted to my routine. Tianjin is a very large, beautiful and metropolitan city which has lots to offer. I love the campus set-up at the university and it’s a great experience for me as I won’t be living on campus when I go home to study at the University of Strathclyde. My Chinese is improving and I am beginning to find it much easier to communicate with the locals. Not only that, but I’m also getting a chance to practice other languages. I have already made good friends both within the university and outside it. I have befriended Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Scandinavian, North and South American, African, and English people. And of course, Scots!
