Farewells

Unfortunately the last few weeks in Beijing were too busy for blogs, and unfortunately I haven't been taking many photos either to enable writing later on. Well, what went on was the longest series of farewells in history. (In my history, that is, I'm sure you can find someone being farewelled for 34 years, 5 months and 6 days if you check the Guinness book of records.) So this is dedicated to the amazing vegan community in Beijing, their great hospitality and amazing cooking and baking skills! Thank you all, you're so lovely! :-)

Oh, I do have a few photos, some of Laura's creations:


So, stuffed enough to decide to turn fruitarian, I finally left Beijing. Unfortunately donating all my material possessions didn't come through in quite that level, I have a closet-full of stuff in the office, including all these books. These are pretty much all dictionaries and course books of the languages I want to learn, so how could I give them up? In any case, after more than 3 years it was high time to say goodbye to the smoggy city, funnily enough right at the time when it's due to become non-smoggy for a couple of weeks due to the stupid Olympics that everyone hates. Well, maybe not everyone hates them, but it's hard not to having lived in Beijing recently.

Right now I'm writing this in Xi'an, the ancient capital famous for the terracotta warriors, but I'll only go see them tomorrow and the drum and bell towers didn't seem too extraordinary. Maybe I'm just tired of China right now, they are pretty nice. So I'll just post pictures rather than judgements without any basis. Or at least one picture of a huge drum. They used to beat the drums at night and the bells during the day, so people who were too lazy to wear their digital watches or look at the sun could tell the passage of time.

I also saw this interesting cross-walk. Yes, it is a circle, or a roundabout if you will, over the streets. I kind of like it. Nice green colour too. And I must mention the housing thing too! I booked a hostel room online, but arriving in the hostel they said the room isn't ready. So I took a long walk. Coming back in the afternoon they told me they would have to put me in a hotel instead because the previous folks didn't leave. So I got a nice standard hotel room instead for the price of the hostel. Lucky me, eh?

There also seems to be many more beggars in Xi'an than Beijing. It may be partly that they've been moved out of Beijing for the thing that "everyone" hates, but even a few years ago I don't think they were that many. Well, everyone, help and love each other!