Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last updated. It's definitely been getting busy here at IES; classes have sped up and course loads are at it's heaviest. Apart from the increasing foreign/Chinese tension, Beijing is the same as always. The weather gets better and better each day, and it seems like we can all put our winter c...

Arrived here on Tuesday morning by China Eastern flight from Xi'an. First impressions of Beijing are good. In fact we reckon so far that this is the best place we have been in China, as a tourist at least, although Shanghai could arguably be an easier place to live as a westerner. Beijing is certainly more 'chinese feeling' and has far more of t...

Beijing turned out to be a really nice surprise for us. We were expecting congested roadways, heavily polluted air, and a crazy subway system chalk full of people pushing and shoving. Coming from Russia and Ulan Bator in Mongolia, where the acrid smell of burning coal is always lingering around, the relatively clean air in Beijing was quite welc...

  It is a travel day today from Beijing to Shanghai.   Another leisure breakfast, packing and then we were picked up by our escorts for the trip to the airport.  It was hard to say goodbye.  They are the perfect couple, so eager to please and we felt bad that we could do nothing special for them after they were so gracious to...

Woke up early to take advantage of the free breakfast+lunch.  We all packed our stuff, then had the rest of the day till arriving in beijing to watch the scenery, which seemed to combine the views of russian and mongolia! We even saw a section of the great wall from the train!  And the views only got better as we entered a valley area ...

Day 2-Welcome to Beijing   Our first day in Beijing was truly unforgettable. We got to experience life as a "common Chinese people," (as Amanda says it). We ate yoghurt and watermelon and dumplings for breakfast, which we both really liked. Then we got ready to hit the streets. Our first stop was the local police station where we had to reg...

In my last couple of hours in Shanghai before catching a flight to Beijing, i was doing the e-mail catch-up thing again when all of sudden I get this new mail in my inbox: "Hey buddy, i'm in Hong Kong, are you still in Asia? I am headed to shenzen and then up to Beijing in a couple days. Where's Pierre?" The timing of this e-mail could...

Bejing Day Three Today was Tiananmen square and our trip to the forbidden city. They are both together. I was surprised to see how many people were at the square including many locals. I really wanted to go into the museum to se Mow ze dongs body but the wait was an hour and a half and I decided I had more to see. As I was there I tried to imagi...

During my time in China, I have only been a passive wanderer in the markets. However, on my last day in Beijing and my last day of really backpacking, I decided to fill up my bag with cheap goodies. Off the the Silk Market, it was time for price battles with the merchants selling everything you could imagine. The authenticity of the brands and t...