The title of this post is, without a trace of irony, the title of the news program playing on the bus from the airport this morning. My flight wasn’t bad—no, wait, it was, actually. The last airport bus leaves downtown Xi’an at 1800, and my flight was at 2255, so I got to spend several […]
A couple things that have been nagging at me for the past couple days: Mandarin: lots of gwailos (ex-teachers?) speak it here. I know I felt good about my street navigation ability a couple posts ago (and it’s really not anything to brag about in Xi’an), but these people make me feel bad about not […]
I never take the tour. I never take the tour. WHY DID I TAKE THE TOUR? With that out of the way, the tour was not as bad as it could have been—just two enforced 30-minute shopping breaks. Unfortunately, those were (by 5 minutes) longer than our longest sight-seeing breaks. Sigh. It was pretty cool […]
My last day in Chengdu was nice, a bit exhausting, and not entirely in Chengdu. I spent most of it on the road to, from, or in nearby Leshan, home to the Great Buddha. Built in the 700s A.D., and at over 70 meters tall, it makes the Lantau Big Buddha at Ngong Ping look […]
Being hot, tired and miserable didn’t help my first impressions. It’s gotten a bit better. It’s still gray and big and industrial, but I saw a few of the parks yesterday and let the Chinese gardens work their curvy magic on me. I also went to the central square, briefly admired the Mao statue, and […]
23 May 3U 8704 Shenzhen 1600 – Chengdu 1800 26 May CA 4219 Chengdu 1850 – Xi’an 2000 28 May FM 9208 Xi’an 2255 – Shanghai (Pudong) 0105+1 31 May CA 0157 PVG 1705 – Tokyo (Narita) 2100 08 Jun CA 0930 NRT 1505 – PVG 1720 10 Jun CA 0930 PVG 1835 – Shenzhen […]
My first impressions of Chengdu are not great. My very first: I couldn’t see anything. Grey-out. It’s been raining a bit. Big, industrial. Cheap taxis. Bigger hostel/guesthouse operation than I’d like to stay in, too. Guess I’ll see the pandas and some temples and move on to other things.
In a personal first for me, today I was informed that I am banned from a library—the Lingnan University one. My crime? I foolishly completed some of the clearance paperwork for exchange students, including a certification that I have neither loans nor fines outstanding from the Lingnan library. According to the wisdom of Lingnan bureaucracy, […]
People are disappearing right and left. It’s no fun. I’m still sad. People I’ve known since August are disappearing, some forever—and the number of spring-semester exchangers I really hung out with, small to begin with, will soon be at the point where I can count it with my nose. In other Hong Kong news, at […]
I might have graduated recently, but I can’t find anyone to confirm it. I hope I graduated. I’m done with exams now, too, and I should be done with undergraduate education entirely. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do between now and the 12th. There are some nice domestic airfares in China, and […]
