A Day of Inspiration

We’ve had our heads down over the past few days trying to get stuck into coursework. We have a project for our Research and Development in Fashion class where we have to create a product of our choice, so a piece of clothing or accessory. I have chosen to create a handbag, and I have so much inspiration for this now! I’ve been drawing and collecting images that I might want to use in my project, and we only have a few weeks to do this so I feel quite busy with this project.

I had been speaking to Keireine recently who had informed us that we would be meeting the new head of Fashion at CSAD who was coming to visit BIFT. I thought that maybe it would be happening over the course of the next few weeks, however when we were walking through uni to class, purely by coincidence, Irene and Omar walked past! We didn’t know who they were of course, but I think they must have assumed it was us as we’re some of the only westerners in uni! We were so pleased to be introduced to her and it was a nice change to see someone who speaks better English than mandarin for the first time! She invited us to a lecture that she was giving to the fashion students that morning, and of course we went. Irene gave a fantastic lecture, with such insightful information and I feel like I have gained so much knowledge that I would not have otherwise received just from being on the Textiles course alone. She has a world of experience in fashion and a brilliant attitude and enthusiasm towards this passion of hers that I really think will be so beneficial to CSAD, and also the Textiles course in particular as there are people who want more knowledge of this area, which she could help to teach. I’m very quickly being added to this list!

Images from Irene’s lecture:

Preparing for a fantastic lecture

Sorry for the crap quality, just an example of what Irene was showing us in her presentations.

We had another surprise lunch that day with Irene and Omar in the uni restaurant (which we had no idea existed!) and we were able to chat a bit more to Irene. It was great to speak to her about her experiences and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to speak to her first hand about what she does in relation to Fashion.

That evening we went into the town centre with a few of our new friends. We visited a fabric and clothing shop there, and I absolutely fell in love! Every fabric or garment they had on offer was so utterly beautiful they made my eyes hurt and my heart ache! If only I was a millionaire… It was an extremely expensive shop! (For instance, a meter of fabric averaging about £50. Eep!) I would probably only use the fabrics as wall hangings as they were so wonderful just to look at. Even though I wasn’t able to buy anything, this was exactly the kind of place I wanted to come to for research into my project and for Textiles in general. I have been so inspired by looking at these fabrics and patterns. The images below show just some of what was on offer, I would have taken plenty more but only a few areas of the shop allowed photography.

A sample of the fabrics on offer there.

One example of a fabric costing over £50 per meter! Well worth it if you an afford it. What a stunning design!

Chinese wedding dresses

Heartache!!

Recent Days

The past few days have been quite calm in comparison to the first 10 days of our magical introduction to this stunning city. We had been so busy that coursework was getting left uncomfortably late. After our first time experiencing Beijing night life and waking up slightly groggy the next day, (oops..!) we were ready to settle down for a day, take some downtime and crack on with some work for Uni. So Sunday wasn’t very exciting! However it was great to get off our feet for a day and feel for once that I’d been productive in getting things done. I’m pleased with the work I’ve completed so far and getting back to uni over the past two days has been a great chance for me to get my head down and catch up on the things I feel I’ve missed. I was in Fashion Illustration yesterday where we were learning how to draw models in various poses, such as walking or standing, hand on hip. I’m interested in learning this as I’ve never done fashion illustration before and I think it is something that will come in very handy! I think I’m doing okay, the teacher nods at me when she looks at my work so I assume its acceptable but she can’t speak much English so she doesn’t go into detail!

Monday Classes: Drawing Techniques In Fashion

The basic guideline of a fashion model.

Head and shoulder structures of a fashion model drawing

Basic model stance

The hips are far too small here.

Walking stance

Hand on hip- a difficult one for me!

I couldn’t get this one looking right…

Yesterday was an interesting day. I hadn’t finished my homework for last week as there was so much to do and it’s all very time consuming! Trying to complete work this week has been impossible with the events we’ve had going on anyway! But me and Tori were lucky as we weren’t assigned any fresh homework this week which came as a relief. I got stuck into my work and continued drawing, painting and making patterns in my sketchbook to get me inspired, and I am very pleased with the work I have done so far! It is all part of the initial research stage at the moment but doing these drawing exercises is getting me inspired and motivated.

Tuesday Classes: Research and Development for Fashion Design

Beginning the project

Brainstorming…

Rice Bowl from Long Time Ago restaurant

Typical Chinese Lantern!

Not complete yet but I’m really pleased with the way this is going. Just quick fish sketches coloured using pro markers.

just black and gold ink on this drawing

doodling/ sketching peacock feathers and the necklace in the image. The necklace image was taken in Uni and it is of a piece of work that a student has done at BIFT.

expanding a photo

Here, I took a few ideas from the images and worked with them to create a nice background for this page.

The street lamps in the Olympic Park. I’m not quite sure where to take this and whether to colour it or leave it black and white, but I am quite pleased with my idea of adding to the image with extra triangular panels shooting out from the centre of the image.

Yesterday evening was…. Even more interesting let’s say! Our apartment has been keeping us on our toes… We had a very disgruntled neighbour come up to our flat last week and he complained because water was leaking into his flat from our shower. That’s a decent enough reason to be disgruntled I guess! But we have been either unable to use the shower or having to dash in for extremely quick showers ever since, being scared to use it in case it happens again! The landlord called in a plumber and they said that they’d let us know when they were coming round, but unfortunately didn’t. We arrived back at the flat yesterday after a long day to find it had been turned into a very dusty worksite, and the toilet had been completely removed to give them access to the drain for the shower. The plumber was still there but it didn’t look like he was anything close to finished. We were all concerned as to when we could use our bathroom again! We thought we’d wait for a little while to see what happened, and we were all in our bedrooms when I heard the bathroom light being switched off and the front door close. Curious… After having a peep out of the window, we saw the plumber strolling very casually down the street with a seemingly very precious pipe on his shoulder- our pipe!! He wasn’t coming back. We were moved to another apartment for the night as we hadn’t really been expecting an out of order bathroom, and neither had our landlord by the looks of it. We’d got use of a toilet, hurray! But we’d been half considering going back to our flat and trying not to drink anything as to avoid the need of the bathroom. That place was pretty minging! There were bugs running around on every surface in the bathroom and yet again we had no supplies! Needless to say there were three more disgruntled bunnies in that flat last night than our downstairs neighbour! I hope he appreciates that it was all for him!! I think we got a proper taste of what real Chinese life might be like for some other people last night. Either that or we’re just a bit unlucky! I had planned to spend the night glued to my desk and my sketchbook as I’ve been so inspired but unfortunately it was a possibility on that occasion. Oh well. Hopefully things will start settling down again! What an eventful evening.

This is what we were greeted with on our return to the flat last night! 

We left the apartment this morning pretty hastily to get back to ours. We were just happy to have our own rooms and belongings again and not to be completely surrounded by insects! We had English Corner again today so we prepared a few games for the students. Word Association, a talking charades game where we gave them words that they weren’t allowed to use when describing what the object was, and a name game where each student had to introduce themselves and say something they liked that began with the first letter of their name. The students seemed more engaged this week and it was much more enjoyable and fun to teach them. I have more inspiration for activities we can do with them next week and I am really interested and passionate about helping the students who want to learn. I’d love to be learning Mandarin myself and I feel the need to help them get to where they need to be, the same as if I was learning their language. Even if I can only help a little being so under qualified! 

Beijing Day 10

I’ve been bitten really badly over the past few days! It’s becoming all too familiar to me, so far I’ve just suffered the usual midgey bites but I’ve been attacked by proper mosquitoes now. I was really badly affected by them when I was travelling out in Australia and ended up covered from head to foot in bites which was thoroughly unpleasant, these bites are becoming a very horrible reminder of that! I was going to put up some photos but I’ve had second thoughts, my leg looks pretty minging!

Today has been quite a new experience not just for us, but for Hongbon too! Reason being that we went to an antique market, and Hongbon hadn’t been before! For once it was him being shown around which was really nice. There wasn’t really anything of interest to me and the girls, there were lots of books there but of course there was no use in us buying them except for display as they’re all written in Chinese. There were many stalls selling beads and jewellery, and there was also an area which was quite largely dedicated to Chairman Mao, with huge portraits hung up and souvenirs with his face on being sold in every shop. The boys (George and Rob) wanted to go so that they could pick up some posters so we just decided to go along for the experience. The market was a good 45 minute train ride away from our nearest station, and we weren’t there for long, and as nothing was shouting out for us to buy, we wanted to make other plans. We decided to try and make it worth the trip, and the area is close to the central business district where the very typical city architecture is. I’d seen images of some of the buildings of Beijing before and I was up for going to see it so we made our way there. It was SO worth it. Even on my trip to Australia and Sydney, I don’t remember the buildings being that enormous. Beijing’s CBD is home to the most magnificent and incredible buildings I’ve ever seen! (Except the much more traditional Chinese palaces of the Forbidden City!) The building that made it’s biggest impression on us was the CCTV building. (Something to do with Chinese Television.) I’m going to let images describe what it was like as I’d have to be a professional writer to give you an idea in words! Images don’t do the size justice but here’s what it was like:

Gargantuan!!

A short panorama to fit the whole thing into a close up photograph!

These images are of the other buildings in Beijing’s CBD, in view of the CCTV building. All of them were impressively tall, and some were in construction, planned to be substantially taller than even the biggest buildings in the area on completion!

Images from Panjiayuan (the market):

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So last night, we had planned on heading out on the town for the first time to see what the night life in Beijing is like. After such a tiring day walking around we weren’t feeling up to it so we decided to save it for tonight. A night well worth saving in my opinion. There was yet another thunder storm tonight, by far the biggest we’ve had yet! So we had to wait  a while for the rain to stop as it was torrential. Typical on our first night out! I never really thought that it would be appropriate to write about a night out on the town in my university blog, but what an experience! I don’t feel like I can leave anything out.

The Chinese don’t seem to have as much of a drinking culture as we do back in England! They are quite a lot more, shall I say, civilised about it than we are! We went into one club which was like nothing I’d ever seen. I’m not sure as to why we didn’t stay, but the boys took us to a different club which was equally incredible. The interiors of these places are so stunning. Really well built and decorated and nothing like anything we have back in England as the decorations are of course very typical of the Chinese culture. Me, Rosie and Tori had a fantastic night. We all had far too much to drink and got very silly but this was our first night out in Beijing since being here and it was well worth the wait. We’ve really enjoyed ourselves and it was yet another very new experience for us.

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We’ve been here for 10 days now and it’s been one of the most eventful and wonderful experiences of my life. Everyday has been packed full of activities and we’re using up every day as well as we can to get the most out of being here. Everything is completely new to us, the culture is incredible and I feel so welcomed by everyone around. I feel so lucky to have been given this opportunity, I never would have thought that I’d be spending the first 3 months of my second year of university in Beijing, and I still can’t quite believe I’m here! But I’m with 2 fantastic girls and as we’re all in this together it just makes it all the better, and I’m so grateful to be here.

Beijing Day 9- The Forbidden City

Today was another day of choosing what we wanted to do on the spot and rolling with it! So we decided that today we wanted to go to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It was a seriously muggy day and we all really struggled with the heat from the word go, and because of this the smog had really settled onto the city. Me and Rosie started our day with a quick trip to uni to go and print off some images for our research, where we met Hongbon. As usual he was pretty much playing our tour guide the entire time! When we got to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, there were soldiers guarding the outside wall before we went in. They look so smart and extremely no-nonsense! It was a very new thing for us to see and they reminded us of the guards outside Buckingham Palace, but completely different! I decided not to take any photos of them, I felt that it might be frowned upon!

The view from the 15th floor- the printing room. A really smoggy day which turned out to be ridiculously humid!

Our first glimpse

We made our way into the first building and bought our tickets, then began our tour. The Forbidden City is such a beautiful place, so full of history and for us, a massive source of inspiration for our studies. The architecture is covered with beautiful patterns and sculptures, usually of animals and dragons. In some of the buildings there were huge magnificent thrones but you were only allowed to see into these buildings from the outside as they were blocked off from entry to the public. The smells you get from just standing outside are so strange! You can tell that the interior is so ancient because of it’s mustiness.

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It took us three hours just to walk from the entrance of the Forbidden city to the other side. There was so much to see, the buildings seemed to stretch on in to the distance for miles, rooftop after rooftop. In the distance there was a hill with a building on the top and two smaller ones at either side. We were able to go and have a look if we wanted to and really did want to, but by this point we were so sore and tired and hungry that we just couldn’t face it! We have three months here so that’s plenty of time for us to go back and explore some more. I have loads of pictures now and it’s all fabulous inspiration for my Textiles work. From colour to pattern to design, everything there was so amazing and just so inspiring to see. I feel very lucky to have had this experience! Yet another opportunity of a lifetime.

Textiles Inspiration

Decoration on the walls and ceilings

More rooftops!

The building in the distance

That evening we went for a well deserved meal in one of the best (but surprisingly most expensive) restaurants right in the city centre. It was the first time we’d been here so it was interesting to see! But not quite as Chinese as the rest of the city. We did go down a very beautiful street with hanging lanterns outside when we went for our meal but the main street was just full of the usual big expensive city centre shops: Prada, Omega, Pandora, Ted Baker, and of course a McDonalds! I wasn’t too interested as I can see all this back home, and I only want to be introduced to new sites here! However after our meal we did go to a market place. This was a proper market, with tonnes of stalls selling anything you can imagine. I saw my first saddening food experience… There were several stalls selling various fried foods such as squid and chicken, but these were all dead as they should have been. On the counters there were sticks with scorpions on them ready to be fried, and when we moved closer the scorpions all wriggled their legs! I knew I’d see something unpleasant when it came to food and animals at some point so I was fully expecting it and prepared for it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to witness as a veggie! But luckily that’s the only thing I’ve seen here that I’ve struggled with. The rest has been incredible, and this market is yet another place I want to go back and visit before our return to the UK! The list of things I’d like to buy is rapidly getting longer…..

Lovely Hongbon and his British fans!

The exit from the city

Market!

So much to buy 😀

This guy came up to me and Rosie and started playing Celine Dion’s theme tune to the Titanic. He was pretty good at it actually!

More things to make us broke! I’m impressed I didn’t walk away with anything this time to be honest.

We had yet another thunder and lightning storm that night. I woke up this morning and opened the window, it was really fresh outside which is such a nice change. It’s not massively sunny and I think it’s just fog outside now rather than smog but I think it’ll be a lot cooler today than it has been. I’m not sure what we’re up to today but let’s just see!

BIFT Day 8-Autumn Day Festival!

We’ve got the next few days off as It’s a very special festival season in China here at the moment called Autumn Festival. Everyone gets a 4-day weekend and giving that me, Rosie and Tori have been busy pretty much every hour of the day since we arrived, we haven’t had much of a chance to get on with coursework! We haven’t wanted to get any more and to let it pile up so a few extra days of breathing space has come as a big sigh of relief to us!

We met up with Hongbon and Landon as usual, come to think of it, I don’t think there’s a single day that we haven’t spent time with Hongbon!! I reckon that boy is due a day off from us. He brought us ‘Moon Cake’ that his father had sent him. Moon Cake is seriously important and popular at this festival as we discovered! It’s expensive and is like Minced Pies or Easter Eggs where they’re mainly only available at a certain time of year. They’re brilliant! I had no idea what to expect, in fact when Hongbon first said ‘Moon Cakes’ I thought he was talking about Space Cakes!! So I was worried he was supplying us with drugs! Having a Malteser moment there, oops! But when he opened the packet they were more like Pork Pies than cakes. There’s no way to accurately describe them, just really good comfort food, savoury, stodgy and very tasty. With duck eggs of all things inside them. Another tick off the list of things to try whilst we’re here! Thank you Hongbon!

Moon Cake Tin- Imma keep this 😀

Four lovely Moon Cakes!

When Hongbon and Landon came round, we all set off to find a subway train to….. Let me find the name….. Nanluoguxiang!! There’s an enormous market there with the most wonderful shops and food places, with everything from fabrics, to make up, to souvenirs, to clothes, to pottery, from cheap products such as bracelets for a few quid, or a silk scarf for a few thousand!! It was so crazily busy too! It is obviously a very well celebrated day and everybody seems to go to the main places such as this to shop and celebrate and enjoy their extra day off. I was in awe at everything, there was so much that I was desperate to buy! I could easily have spend several thousand there if I’d have had the money and the space to bring it back home with me!

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We set off from there in decent time as Tori’s brother was arriving that evening. He’s studying Mandarin at a University a short flight away from here and he gets the holiday too so he took advantage to come and see his sister. We’d been walking around all day so our feet were absolutely shattered. We’d planned on meeting Tori’s brother George and his friend Rob back at the flat then going out for a meal together, but when we arrived back at the flat and collapsed on the kitchen floor we just knew that wasn’t going to happen! A good take away and bed time was sufficient for us after such a long day. But yet another fantastic one as usual!

Hongbon, Landon, Me, George, Rob, Tori and Rosie.

Beijing Day 7 (BIFT Day 3)

We had a half day today as we only have a class in the afternoon on Wednesdays. After last nights unexpectedly late night and several days of being busy busy busy we had a well deserved lie in! But we headed in to uni for 12 in order to speak to Carolyn who was the woman who organised the classes we’re doing. She is also the woman in charge of organising the ‘English Corner’ lessons, which are basically just English lessons for the Chinese students. Having three British students has obviously been an advantage for them in some ways as they have asked us to help teach the class and speak English for them to improve their skills. We found out that we were pretty much organising and planning the class which came as a bit of a surprise to us! We were nervous but we decided to create a few games for the students to play which would help them with words and spelling. We also printed off a few tongue twisters so that if there was someone who got something wrong, they would have to stand up and read one. This was extremely entertaining!! Peter Piper especially! Carolyn actually left us to it about half an hour into the 3 hour lesson so we were on our own teaching this class! But I think that considering we’d had very little time to prepare and not known what to expect, and also with the help of HongBon, we did a pretty good job! Some of the students knew a fair bit of English like HongBon but there were quite a few who understood very little so it was difficult to get them to understand what we wanted them to do but they seemed to have a good laugh, especially when mine, Rosie’s and Tori’s punishment was to recite a Chinese rap song whenever we made a mistake during the games! They seemed to find that enormously amusing!! It was a good afternoon and it was great to be so interactive with the other students. I’ve got quite a lot of inspiration for was kind of activities we could do in next week’s class so I’m looking forward to that.

Tonight we’ve had another incredible thunder and lightning storm! Even bigger than Saturday night, and this time it was right above our heads. It has been really hot and humid all day so I’m not surprised that the weather has broken out like this! Me and Rosie sat on the balcony for a while and watched the spectacular bolts of lightning break through the clouds this evening. Everything is calm now though so I’m sat getting on with some coursework ready to take to Uni next week, as we have the next 4 days off for the Chinese Autumn Festival! No idea what’s happening or what we’re going to do but let’s just see! (HongBon has some plans for us :D) I’m so excited!!

Getting stuck in there!

Beijing Day 6- BIFT Day 2

This was a much more successful, less stressful and productive day today! We didn’t meet quite as many people but I already feel well into the swing of my work and have loads to do. And after our eventful evening, a lot to catch up on! Me, Tori and HongBon were in the same class together today so I was already off to a better start. The teacher spoke fluent English and the actual class was also in English too so there was no problem figuring out what work we had to do. Rosie was in the class I was in yesterday but luckily she had Zoe, Tina and Lucia to go in with we were all fine.

I really enjoyed my class today, we have to catch up on last weeks work as we were a week late arriving so we have a lot to do. We’ve been instructed to research primary and secondary images and to do 15 sketches and a few detailed drawings of something that we would like to make. Anything like a garment, accessory, piece of jewellery.. Maybe a hat or a purse? I spent a portion of the day brainstorming ideas and I no have some good ideas of the type of thing I’d like to create. I’ve also already completed a few sketches of things that have interested and inspired me so I’m quite happy with the work I’ve produced today.

Signs in a restaurant window

A rice dish from our lovely 4th night!

Nice rice dish!

A very simple Pro marker sketch of a Chinese lantern!

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We were all absolutely shattered after today, and we were all looking forward to getting home and chilling out, and also had made plans to catch up with our work. But spontaneity cropped up again! Me and Tori were in the classroom with HongBon and a woman came into the classroom to speak to him. When she left, he said that we’d been invited out for a meal in the evening! No other information than that, we were just going for a meal with the woman! She turned out to be the course leader, and we had no idea whether we were going round to her house, out for a meal, out with teachers, out with just her, if anyone was going us, what time, no information! Which we all found very interesting and amusing! By the end of the day we had found out that we were being taken straight to a restaurant after Uni by HongBon, but that was all we knew! We were so tired, and starving! We hadn’t been expecting this and we had no idea what we were expecting, so we headed off for the restaurant. We were imagining a place like we went to on the first day, but when we turned up we were totally gobsmacked. We were led into a building with some women in beautiful red silk dresses, and they took us up a flight of stairs and through a few corridors which stunning interiors and decorations. We were taken past empty eating areas and tables, then led into a private room with a huge round table in the middle and about 13 place settings. As we had no idea what was going on we were very surprised to see all this! It was such a lovely place to eat. We had to wait for a while as we were very early, whilst all the time our energy was slowly escaping our bodies after the full on day we had! But eventually the teacher (Dori) turned up and brought with her a group of third year students from various courses around the uni. This turned out to be a welcoming hello to China for us and a meet and greet with the students. They ordered food for us and we all got chatting, asking questions about each others cultures and Uni lives. The food was as usual, incredible and such a wonderful treat for us. I just can’t believe how welcoming and warm these people have been, I feel like they have really gone above and beyond their expectations to make us feel happy and at home, and it really is working. I love it here.

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A wonderful surprise!

Beijing Day 5- First Day at BIFT

Today has been the most stressful day so far by far! I have to say it only started badly, but gladly it improved massively as the day wore on. We were taken to our classrooms when we arrived at uni and I was in completely separate building to anyone I knew let alone a separate classroom! We were all pretty nervous this morning so it didn’t feel great to be left on my own. Thrown in the deep end is definitely how I’d describe it, but it’s all part of the experience! I was told I had been given a buddy to help me out with the work we were assigned and with translating for me, but plenty of people walked through the door before the 9 o’ clock bell rang and none of them looked like they were going to introduce themselves as my buddy! Eventually the teacher arrived and began teaching the class. She spoke and wrote in Mandarin obviously, so I had absolutely no idea what was going on, and it didn’t look like my buddy was showing up. After exchanging messages with Richard and the girls to figure out what was going on, a good 40 minutes later the teacher made an attempt to tell me what we were meant to be doing. I got the gist of it luckily and got to work, and shortly after, the bell rang for break. I’d nipped out to get a drink and when I returned, a few of the students were waiting for me outside and decided to introduce themselves to me which I have to say filled me with so much relief! I was seriously stressed throughout the first part of my morning, but Cheng Chen (….Dave!) invited me to sit with him and offered to translate for me a little so that I knew what to do. I began to feel a lot more comfortable after this!

I went for lunch with HongBon, the girls we met on the second day and Rosie and Tori. Dave approached me on the way out of the building with another lad I hadn’t met before  but had seen in the class that morning. He introduced me and told me that this was the buddy I was supposed to have had, but he didn’t want to introduce himself because he was nervous as he didn’t speak very good English!! I thought the point in me having a buddy was to help translate wasn’t it..? Anyway, I got it sorted in the end! I headed back to class after another very nice lunch where I was very warmly greeted by a few of the other classmates! A lovely girl called Zhao (Lily) was very enthusiastic and pinched me off the previous group of students I had been with before to get me to sit with her. We got on very well and had a lot of good conversation. She also helped me out well with the translating which was brilliant, and I finally got some good work done that day. It’s been a very eventful day! Tonight we’ve had HongBon back to our apartment for pizza and we’ve spent the rest of the night doing homework and a lot of not a great deal else! It’s been good to chill out a bit. We’ve got to prepare ourselves for another day in uni tomorrow, I feel that it’ll go a bit smoother so I’m feeling positive and excited to meet more new faces and lovely people and to see what the next day will bring! We’re walking into everything blindly at the moment so I’m just going with the flow and seeing what happens! I think it’s a good way to live!

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Beijing Day 4- Sunday

Words can’t even begin to describe how amazing today has been! I’m actually getting bored of using the words amazing, incredible, insane…. but nothing can describe it any better! We were picked up today by Hongbon at the flat, and he took us to Olympic Park via the subway. Nothing could have prepared me for what a sight we saw! I’m not sure I’ve even seen pictures of the Park let alone in real life. It was just stunning. The most enormous space with the most impressive architecture, our feet hurt by the end of the day from walking around so much. We didn’t even see a quarter of what there was to see. Pictures can’t justify what it was like, but I’ll give it a try and give you an idea!!

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That night HongBon and Landon said they were taking us to a barbecue. We weren’t sure where or what kind but of course we said sure! Having no idea of what to expect we all headed off for the subway and caught a few trains to another part of Beijing that we hadn’t been to before. We had to walk a long way before getting to where we wanted to be and after our day walking around Olympic Park, our feet were sore! But it was SO worth it. The barbecue turned out to be in a restaurant on a huge strip of restaurant. There were so many lights and we were hounded by waiters trying to usher us into their own places, but HongBon knew where we wanted to eat so we had to plough our way through! The restaurant was called Long Time Ago. It had a themed interior with stone walls and symbols carved into them, and we were shown to a table with another section in the middle made for cooking. I think the only way I can describe this is with pictures so let’s give it a go again! We were all in agreement that this was by far our favourite meal so far.

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We’ve been here for four days now and every day seems to be better and better than the one before. (Touch wood I haven’t spoken too soon!) We’ve already seen so much and have so much more to see which is the most exciting part. Uni starts tomorrow, I’m really nervous about it but I hope we’ll settle in quickly. I’m looking forward to learning new things, our timetable includes garment manufacture and cultural understanding so I am intrigued as to what we’ll be doing. It sounds so exciting!

Beijing Day 3

This was a Saturday so everyone from uni has been off, including all our new found friends. We planned to meet up with them and go for a bit of a shopping trip, a subway ride away from our apartment. We didn’t have Richard to help us out from the moment we left our apartment this time, he’s having a well deserved weekend off! I’m pretty sure he’ll be glad for it too after the last few days he’s spent with us! So we were able to test ourselves and navigate the subway on our own, which was a lot easier and cheaper than we first thought! We made our way to the stop just outside the shopping mall where we met the girls. Tina wasn’t there this time, but two new girls were with Lucia and Zoe, and they were called Vivi and Su. Another lovely pair!

Our local subway!

Beijing shopping mall

Baskin and Robbins. So worth it.

The girls and Hongbon dropping us off at our apartment.

After a day of gawping at the amazing fashion wear in the clothes shops and green tea- flavoured cakes in the cafes, HongBon and his friend Landon came to join us and they all took us for dinner at this incredible restaurant, an experience I haven’t come close to in my life! By far the most insane and most Chinese experience we’ve had so far in my opinion! From entering the restaurant, it took us 3 hours until we began eating, there was so much going on. Firstly we were ushered into a waiting area by a band of waiters who appeared to be shouting at us at first but it turns out they were just guiding us to a table, then after a good wait with some authentic snacks, we were taken to another waiting area with Bonsai trees, fish tanks and lettuce plants all around! Just before we were taken to our table, we were approached by some women who worked at the restaurant who wanted to take us to have free hand care. The most surreal experience! There was just a table in the restaurant with women who washed, scrubbed, massaged and moisturised everyones hands before they went in for their meals! My hands have never felt so soft. Then eventually when we went in to our table, we had absolutely no idea how to order so the girls had to order for us. Not to mention wanting to avoid pigs brains, braised tripe and intestines! You got to choose sauces to put in to a dish, and a selection of raw ingredients which were brought to your table, and there was a hot plate for cooking set into the centre of it. You chose the dishes they brought out to cook on the hot plate, then you’d place the raw ingredients that you’d chosen into the dishes, before dipping them into the sauces. With really long, slippy wooden chopsticks that were so difficult to use! We (I) made such a mess dropping everything! All the while there was a chef who was using noodles as ribbons to dance with every time a table ordered them! It was by far the most difficult and frustrating meal I’ve ever eaten, but also the most entertaining, insane and wonderful meal I’ve ever had! I had no idea it would be anything like it was and even though I found it difficult (and not to mention having to give way slightly to my veggie ethics!), I enjoyed every second. Such an amazing experience.

First waiting area of the restaurant!

I swear he isn’t trying to be rude here, that symbol doesn’t mean the same as it does in England!!

Hong bon making me laugh again.

One incredible meal in China.

That night there was a massive thunderstorm so I sat out on the balcony to watch and listen for a while. It was really late at night and I’d already nodded off by the time it started so my jet- leg was still holding out strong when I woke up this morning. What a day we had though, all we did was go shopping and head out for an evening meal and I felt like I was having the experience of a lifetime! I seem to love this place more and more as the days go by.