Beijing, Bridge & Ball!

你好 Cambusbarron!

November started on a high, quite literally; we decided to go a trip to the longest glass bridge in the world. Located in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, is the 488 meter long bridge which stands at about 218 meters above the valley floor, which is roughly 66 stories, and is made from transparent glass!

To the get to the bridge was quite the challenge however. We first started by taking a five hour bus journey to the bottom of the mountain, which when compared to the Xi’an 19 hour train journey seemed like a breeze. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and looking at the big mountain that stood in between us and the bridge we all felt a bit, shall we say, unprepared. And we were right to feel this way; we managed to make it to the glass bridge after around an hour and a half of essentially continuous stairs and very regular food breaks. Making it to the top was quite the achievement however and we all felt like we had just climbed Everest. Bear Grylls had nothing on us! With every step we took we could not help but could feel the slight wobble of the 488m long bridge - according to the people that designed the bridge it was designed this way as to “create a thrill for visitors”. Thrill being one word for it.

While it was hard to forget the fact we were 218 meters above ground, in the end it was so worth it as the view from the top was spectacular and the photos looked amazing.

After the events of the day, we were given the opportunity to go to a hot springs (温泉). Our legs were killing us from all the climbing and we felt it would only be right for us to embrace the culture, even if that did mean relaxing in some warm water. The hot springs were nothing you get back home, and are surprisingly really common in China. There are roughly over 3,000 dotted all over China, having arisen from water that is heated by rocks inside the Earth’s crust. They are said to be beneficial for your health due to their mineral content, which would explain their popularity amongst the Chinese.

You could only spend around ten minutes in one of hot spring pools before you could literally feel yourself close to combusting from the heat, with the key being to stand in the cold for two minutes then spend ten in the pool. There were many different hot spring pools, from one that was milk-infused to another that was Oolong flavoured (a popular tea flavour in China). We were really glad to have experienced the hot springs and our legs definitely thanked us the next day!

In addition to all the bridge action we also got the opportunity to attend the St. Andrew’s Ball in Beijing (北京). We tried out the bullet train for the first time which meant it only ended up taking us around half an hour to get to Beijing, meaning we had some spare time to explore Beijing. Beijing was not as busy as I had assumed it would be, and surprisingly the air quality was better there than in Tianjin, a much smaller city. The ball itself was proper fancy and the food was sooo good! It was my first time, since being here, eating food made out of proper chocolate and not bean paste; I guess it is meant to be healthier but honestly it will never compare to a bar of galaxy.

We had our mid-terms exams at the beginning of this month; we all managed to pass HSK 2! After this, we were split up into two different classes, and have begun HSK 3, which is a bit of a challenge considering we can’t rely on pinyin anymore. Think I will need to be spending more time at the 图书馆...


再见

Erin


Exercise:
Do you have a favourite Chinese food? If so, do you know the name for it in Chinese?