Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

10 Things I Loved About Beijing



1. Watching the way people live: bicycles, late nights, mahjong, toy dogs & pet birds, tai chi in the park, calligraphy on the sidewalks




2. Learning the meanings behind the symbolism and “lucky” numbers

3. Big, open spaces

4. Yashou “fake” clothing market

5. Yogurt



6. The highly efficient subway system (and how they had murals about the location at every metro station)


(This was at the Beijing Zoo station)

7. Beautiful, lovely picturesque parks with those dreamy willow trees




8. Art in every form, in every place: architecture, sculpture....



9. Fresh peaches that were in season


10. Tobogganing down the Great Wall (yes, you can do that... and even take a cable car up!)

Friday, October 1, 2010

Beijing, Part.1

To those lovely people who participated in the blog hop yesterday,
thank you so much!

To those wonderful people who have started following me,
thank you so very much!

I'm mentioned that I've been delaying China pictures because I can be a crazy idealist who wants to go through all her pictures and edit them before posting. Today I decided that I won't be that way. I'll post my pictures in parts instead - that way, neither of us gets too overwhelmed :)

***

Beijing, Part 1


Can words describe the feeling of visiting one of the oldest civilizations in world history?
How does one even begin to tell of all the sights and memories that raced through my eyes, heart and mind from the moment the taxi picked us up from the Beijing South Station? I don’t know why I allowed my camera to remain in my bag throughout that taxi ride where I had my first glimpses of Beijing. Perhaps half my mind was too concerned with communicating with our taxi driver using the meager command of Mandarin I possessed. The other half of my mind was probably completely engaged in taking in the sights themselves to remember that memories are best shared by photographs.

Were I an eloquent writer, I would go into a narration of that first taxi ride in Beijing. But I am not, so pictures will have to suffice. If you like what you see, you have to visit China sometime in your life. China simply oozes with character and charm, these pictures don't do it justice. It's a pretty incredible country.

Entering the Forbidden City

Did you know that most of the tourist in China are from China itself?

The Forbidden City is pretty huge.

Beautiful parks... almost surreal.

Wouldn't have guessed I was in China :)

Temple of Heaven grounds

A fun and simple way of learning calligraphy!

Part 2 to follow :)

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Checking in from China

Wahoo for AnchorFree VPN! I can access Blogger and co. while in China!

Bicycles are still a mode of transportation here, though the use of cars, buses and the subway is getting more popular.

Me, at the Temple of Heaven (photo by my sister :))

Wow, its only Day 2 in China and the sights, sounds and experience is already amazing.
Don't have much time to elaborate, but I'll try to keep this blog going as much as I can while I'm here :)

Zai zian for now!

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Off!




Off to the airport in 7 hours,
Flying off in about 10 hours.

"Where to?", you ask?
Off to where my great grandparents came from...
Why, off to China, of course!

Beijing, Shanghai & Hangzhou, to be precise. :)

I hope to be able to pop in and blog while I'm there, but can't guarantee it.
There's this thing called the "Great Firewall of China" that has blocked:
Blogger
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
Wikipedia
and a bunch of others (not Etsy, however!)

So, unless I manage to scale it successfully,
I shall see you all in 2 weeks time.
TTFN!

:D