johannaiorienten

Legg one of my summer trip – Macau the Las Vegas of Asia

For you how do not know about this tiny place; Macau used to be a Portuguese colony and is situated right outside Hong Kong. On these tiny islands used to be fishing villages and a Portuguese community but today the transformation to Asia’s Las Vegas is almost complete and the historical parts are disappearing in a jungle of blinking lights and new casino buildings.

It has been ages .......but here comes an update on my life in china.

The summer holly day has now started and I have embarked on a big china trip that will take me around all the way from Shanghai to Macau to Hongkong from there up to Yangshuo near Guilin for some climbing. There after I will travel to Yunnan province to meet up with two friends in Kunming and travel northwest for two weeks and end up in Shangri-La to go back to Kunming. From there we will travel in different directions and I will go to Chongqing to meet Hans and go travelling with him for three weeks to Chengdu to see the pandas and then up to Kanging on the Tibetan high plateau for some hiking. There after we will have to take the train for two days to get to the Yellow Mountains to spend some time tracking there. After that we will spend two days in Nanjing and then finish of the trip in Shanghai where Hans will get back to Sweden.

I´m going to start to say if you (the reader)do not have a big interest in urban design and pavements do not read this entry!

The west lake park; there is a green strip of park surrounding the entire lake we only visited a small part of the park. The park is beautiful the location on the bank of the lake with bridges with path ways connecting to different small structures out in the water and back to the shore again. Al the path ways in the park was of different but coherent with a clear hiraky with the main roads paved in one way and secondary in another way and shortcuts in a third way but even under these main categories they had different designs with in the them. See first 8 images.

On the Saturday the plan was to go to Anji (the bamboo forest where the fighting seen in crouching tiger hidden dragon and Hero are filmed)! The boys (Victor and Robert) had asked us if we wanted to join them and go there, we tough it sounded like a good plan for the week end. When we arrived at the train station we (Jomante and I) realised that they had done no planning for this at all! They did not know the city that the train was going to in order for us to change there for the buss to anji. They tough that the train would take two hours to go to the city (that they did not know the name of) where we had to change to get the buss to anji. So it was a mess! We got some help to get the tickets and to find out the name of the city where we had to go. Well on the train after an hour we started talking with a man just to realise that the train would not take 2h but 7h! After a short discussion we decided to go to HangZhou in steed. The city is called the flower city (Nanjing is called the green city) and it was the Chinese capital during a part of the song dynasty (from 1123 to 1276). The city is located beautifully next to the west lake and the mountains.

When we arrived in HangZhou finding a cab was not easy here they wanted 100yen to drive us we managed to get it down to 50 but we still over paid! The taxi drivers in Nanjing are so much nicer  the always start the taximeter and drive the straightway.

We decided to have an early start of the day on Sunday to see as much as possible before going home. All I can say to people travelling in China is get up early before the places get really crowded. We started the day with a hike up one of the hills here 911m high; it was a nice start of the day, despite it was so smoggy that we could not see the surroundings. Then we got down we went to the Buddhist Jingci temple(10yen in entrance) where they ring out the evening every night and to the Leifeng Pagoda(40yen in entrance). The only disappointing thing when visiting old Chinese buildings is that most of them are not old but rebuild several times after they have been burnt down during different wars. The outside usually looks like traditional Chinese architecture put inside they are sometimes modern. This was the case of the Pangoda the outside was beautiful but inside it was a sterile and cold building; the park surrounding the building was really nice but not as nice as the free park surrounding the lake and it did not have the tranquility that the temple hade.

     

              

 During the last week on my way to Chinese class I saw three white people on campus it was so surprising that I had to talk to them (there is 10 000 students here and only 4 from Europe). It turned to out to be an American girl that works here as English teacher and here two couch surfers from France. She invited us to come out with here on Friday night. Before we meet up with here we took a quick look at the night club district here. It was so expensive (for being here) one beer 35yen (lunch at uni cost 5-12) and if you want to sit down in a sofa it cost 800yen(my monthly rent is 400yen) and if you want anything other than beer you have to by the entire bottle!! So we left the night club district after one beer and headed for a bar in another district where the prises where more humain one beer 15yen one drink 25yen(but be prepared to get you’re drink warm!!)

Our new friend also showed us where we can by cheese and butter, there is an international food market (underground by the main library here, I have never seen such a big library before in my life! I will have to go there and see if I can borrow a better Chinese book the one we have in Chinese class, since it is not very good).

     

              

Today has been an event full day me and Jomante decided that it was time to pay a visit to IKEA mostly just to by some necessities and to go to the food store. After a week here I am missing my usual breakfast home i always had the same natural yoghurt with müsly and something more like tea, juse or knäckebröd with cheese. Here yoghurt is not to be found, have not found cheese or butter ether, but I need to investigate this further where if possible to find it here maybe wall-makt .

To get to IKEA we got a note from one of our classmates with the directions how to get there in Chinese and English. After some help from a police officer and two pedestrian that got in to a shouting contest discussing the best way to point us in (to find somebody that speaks English here is like winning the lottery) we found the bus. After getting on the bus and paying the 0.2€ that the buss cost and riding it for aprox 25min we were starting to get nervous if we have missed the right stop. So after first being told to get off then being called back on to the buss and then 4 women got in to a heated argument where it was best for us to get of (the people are very loud when they discuss anything here but always very helpful). We found IKEA there was no chance we would have missed the stop we could spot the signs several hundred meters in advance before the bus stopped to let us of.

On the outside everything was a s normal except the Chinese signs under the name, a yellow and blue box building. Well inside the mix of Swedish, English and Chinese was a quite amusing sight. We manage to get some of the important things that we have been missing here like towels for the shower, al the towels we have seen outside Ikea are in the size of kitchen towels. A new toilet seat, a lamp for the desk and Knäckebröd, both me and Jomante went a bit crazy at the food section!

After getting back from IKEA we had to go and apply for our visa and pick up or medical exam report and chest x-ray. As usual whit any paper work here in china it is five different tills that you need to queue fore since every till just dose one thing. Have to go back on the 18^th to pick up the updated visa and my passport!

Then I had to go and pick up ure head teacher from Sweden at the airport he will be here now for one week to evaluate the program and discuss how to improve the course.

           

Today we had allot of things to do Jessica is going back to here parents for a week; and she is leaving tomorrow so she wants to help us to sort everything out to day, to get us set up for our life here. And it was a long list; getting a Chinese phone number, router for the room, getting a internet connection (it cost 1€ month and I share mine with Jomante so 0,50€ a month), sign in at the international student office at uni and not to forget a visit to the police station( a must whit in 24h of arriving in china if you are not living in a hotel or hostel). We also went back to the market today to get some more necessities. Here at university the staring at us have actually not been that bad as we thought it would be before we got here, but it seems that the more we carry the more they stare! And today we were carrying allot!

Today we also got a proper look on the campus area and unfortunately we missed the best day to the  cheery blossom on the cherry tree road on campus the rain that came the day before we arrived had washed away allot of the flowers! but it was still beautiful! Especially the tree covered with red ribbons the Chinese write wishes on red ribbons and tie them up in the cherry trees in spring.

     

              

We have arrived after 12h in the air and 17h in transit time we are finally in the historic but smoggy city of Nanjing. After a 4o min drive with taxi we arrived at the Nanjing Forestry University it was like coming to a quiet oasis shielded from the traffic chaos outside the campus gates. Between all the buildings there are small parks, flowers and interesting trees. The buildings on the other hand are not that nice have clear communistic architectural features, concrete, repetitive façades that imposes over the area surrounding them.

On the way to China I had eleven hours it transit time, to wait for my travelling companions and the flight to Beijing, before we on barking to our adventure in China. This meant I had time to meet an old friend of mine (she flew up from Munich just to spend the day with me in Berlin).

In Berlin I had the third breakfast of the day (hade one at 5-home and one at 6.30 on the plane)and the best one. After having a short stroll around Alex with the TV-tower designed by Herman Henselmann disappearing in to the clouds, we made our way to the Bauhaus Archive designed by Walter Gropius in 1964 but building work did not start on till 12 years later. Currently the archive has an exhibition on “Chairs without Legs” (21/3 – 10/6 2012) many constructed under the Bauhaus era but also newer designs relating to the movement.