Friday 4 July 2008

June in China

Right, so I didn't write anything during the whole month of June. I was working mostly, but there have been other things, let me just wrap things up quickly and put up some pictures. This was a month spent completely in China. The first thing I would note when getting off the plane was the smog of course, it hangs over the city of Beijing almost constantly. Very depressing.

There was a brief escape from that though as I took a trip to Chengde with some friends for a weekend. Chengde is a city about 250 km away from Beijing, built largely as an imperial recreation place. There's a large amount of temples, especially of the Lama Buddhist style, and an imperial palace and large grounds with all sorts of "beauty spots", mainly pavilions or houses in great scenery, built during the Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911). There's a couple of interesting-looking rocks too, and nice hiking in the mountains. I don't think there are any vegetarian restaurants, but you can get veggies from the regular restaurants as usual in China.






You get to Chengde from Beijing by various buses or a train. The buses leave from Sihui long distance bus station, or there might be buses from elsewhere too but at least from there. The ticket price is from Y50 up. The slow and crowded train that runs once a day during the night is only Y20.

In Beijing it's been a working and exercising mainly, and of course vegan club meetings. There have been a couple of team building events from work, going hiking to waterfalls and boating around. Some pics from those then:




Oh, and also a new vegan restaurant has now been opened in town, the Vegan Hut, but I'll write a proper review of that later. Finally, I have talked to the bosses and have got my distance work idea approved, so I shall be leaving Beijing soon. First, though, I'll be spending a couple of weeks in Shaanxi countryside, then returning to Beijing briefly although I won't have an apartment here anymore, and then off somewhere else. Haven't decided where to yet. Exciting, isn't it? :-)

4 comments:

Luaay said...

thank u brother

dreamy said...

Jari, you've got quite a number of spam comments :D Anyway, I thought the deer stand board was a real deer at first, silly... so have u decided where you would be headed?

Anonymous said...

i really admire ppl like you in west who have adopted veg/veganism as your lifestyle.It is very easy to be a veggie in india ,esplly in south india ,& there are plenty of choices.Can you imaagine there is even a religion whose soul is based on vegiterianism.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism).I am really apalled by level of cruelty & dependence on non-veg food in china & many western countries.
Hats off to you buddy for your perservance.Spread the veggie word!

Jari (travelling-vegan) said...

Yeah, don't know what's up with the lotto spammers... well, gone now. :-) I think I'll be heading south, but have to talk to the boss yet. I have a meeting with her tomorrow. More news then. :-)

For anonymous, I know it's so easy to be veggie in south India. I was in Hyderabad for a week and it was amazing! But it seems India is going in a bad direction as well. :-( I know about Jainism too, it's pretty cool. Anyway, thanks for the comment and welcome! :-)