Summer 2011 in China

My summer was eventful and the time went by really fast, so I think it’s time for a post to wrap-up what I’ve done over the last couple months. Since returning to China from the US on June 7th, I spent most of my time in Nanjing. A lot of that time was taken up by work. I taught English classes each week, wrote two English articles for an English website and English magazine in Nanjing, and translated articles and ads for a Chinese-English magazine based in Nanjing. I went to a wedding in early June. It was my first wedding in China.

In early July I went to Beijing for a long weekend, taking the new high-speed train there and back. The last time I went to Beijing was in 2008 and the train at that time took about 11 hours. The new train makes the trip in just over four hours.

The train took off from a new train station in Nanjing, the largest one in the country. It was finished on June 30th and I took a train on July 7th.

There are many escalators to accomodate a large number of travelers.

I met up with some friends in Beijing, including one young guy who was my student in high school three years ago. He is now studying traditional Chinese medicine at a university in Beijing. Besides the things pictured on this table, I also ate an octopus that was so fresh that the tentacles were still wriggling and suctioning to the plate and to our chopsticks.

I spent one day at a conference run by a student group, Global China Connection. I saw some well known business leaders speak, including a long-time journalist in China, James McGregor, whom I’ve admired ever since reading his book a few years ago.

I visited two beautiful lakes in the center of Beijing, Qianhai and Hohai.

I also made it back to my old neighborhood in the university area and walked by my old apartment. I had to check Beijing’s second Apple store, too, just to say that I’ve been to all four Apple stores in China.

I spent a long weekend in Shanghai in early August. I helped a friend move from Nanjing to Shanghai. There was a typhoon that hit the eastern coast of China during the time we were there. It didn’t directly hit Shanghai, but we did get some strong winds and a lot of short, heavy rainfalls. I also went to Changzhou for one day. I went with a small group of people, my roommate and three of our friends, two who have young kids, and we went to a dinosaur theme park with rides and a water park. I didn’t have a swimsuit with me so I stuck to the roller coasters and similar rides.

At the exit of one ride that does a lot of swinging and spinning is this vomit bin:

There was a TCBY frozen yogurt stand in the park, too.

To cap the summer, I'm off to Seoul, South Korea for five days and Japan for nine days. More travel stories to come...