I sit here in my room with the temperature slowly warming up. Spring is almost here even though it snowed in Beijing yesterday, and many parts of Tibet and Mongolia expect heavy snowfall over the next week. But not in Chengdu. On Wednesday, when I left the university for Xinnanmen Bus Station, I didn’t know […]
I am back from an exhilarating and excruciatingly painful journey to Emei Shan. Trip report of that will come shortly, but first I must go back a week. Last Sunday, I went to Tianfu Square, which is the center of Chengdu. I had mentioned then that the Square was just crawling with cops. It seemed […]
Finally, after a few days of seeing just Birdy, I get to meet a few of the other foreigners here. Just around the corner of the university gates are a few restaurants. Many of them are run by Muslims. Probably because Xinjiang Province is close by. They are quite distinctive from Han Chinese. You can […]
That’s Carrefour in Chinese. A short 1-km walk from the university gates, and there it was. It being a Monday, there was not much of a crowd. Our purpose in walking here was to find a towel, or maojin as it is called in Chinese. A bath towel, if you please. What I like about […]
Today morning dawned…well, no different from the other yesterdays. Chengdu seems to be almost always dreary. I haven’t seen a blue sky yet. Dark. Grey. A hint of rain. Damp. That is about it for the weather. I wonder what job a weather forecaster would have here. Weather forecast for tomorrow? Wet, cold and chance […]
It’s around 8 degrees Celsius. My fingers move slowly across the keyboard. There is no heating in this room apart from an AC, and the roof needs a new roofing, if you are looking for the best roofing experts you could try here. I sit here, clad in my full-length jacket. Outside, the sky is […]
Standing Against Time, originally uploaded by soulmuser. Sometimes, on days when the sky turns too blue…I look at one or two photos, and it makes me happy to think that I was there once too. Standing together, me and the temple – waiting to turn time not knowing that it had turned already.
A few years ago – was it almost 6 or 7 years ago? – when I left China I wrote to a good friend of mine about the ending of one stay – she wrote back saying that all endings are beginnings. It stuck in my head. Just as one thing turns over to an […]
I have had a very happening day. It’s odd how we spend days together seemingly closeted in a little space of inaction, and then there are days like today where it seems that all of life’s clowns have gathered together to pull your ears and twist your elbows and dive their fingers through your nose. […]