Beijing and freedom!

A very late blog update, but things have been crazy since being released from quarantine and allowed to run riot in Beijing. After the quarantine hotel we moved into apartments on UIBE campus, just north of the centre in a fairly vibrant area. After a bit of freedom I soon realised I love Beijing. It’s a frantic, noisy, diverse and vast city. The streets are incredibly hectic at all times with incessant car horns, bus loudspeakers, public service announcements and pumped up Chinese pop music. Getting around is easy though - the subway is so clean, modern and efficient - and just 20p to get anywhere in the city! Taxis are everywhere and, along with everything else, so cheap. Taxis are quite an experience though; they never know any English and there seem to be no real rules of the road, just carnage. Chinese drivers are basically just playing a real life version of GTA.

I've seen a lot here, but there’s a lot I still need to see. Memorable visits include the Wall – obviously, the Confusius temple, the Summer palace and a lot of street markets and shopping districts. One place that particularly sticks out in my mind is Wangfujing snack street where you’ll find scorpions, grasshoppers, starfish and other insects and weird meat on offer. The caterpillar was the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten.

Wangfujing snack market

The course is pretty intensive and quite long hours, but with so many kids games and activities to learn about the lessons often just involve regressing back into an 8 year old and playing word games or grammar challenges for a while. Despite the long hours of studying we still get enough time to rip it up and paint the town red pretty frequently. I’m going to miss our usual haunts – the side street bars in San-li-tun and the Manchester pub in the beautiful bar area around Hou Hai lake.

But never mind, I’ll soon by leaving Beijing and heading for my teaching placement in Changsha, in central Hunan province. Should be awesome! :D