中国

9^th September 2002 -

内モンゴル	北京生活
杭州、紹興、上海	司馬太長城
クリスマス（イギリスで）	河南省
石林	シーシュアンバンナ
シーシュアンバンナ（続き）	三峡

Background
In September 2002 my six months in Japan ended, and I returned to the same university in Beijing to continue studying Chinese. Since this time I would be there for a much longer period of time, I have had some chances to travel outside Beijing, and hope to do some more extensive travelling in the next year. The trip to Inner Mongolia with a few friends during the Chinese National Day holiday was really fun, although some of the organising left something to be desired - how would you like your 'organised' tour operator to leave you stranded in the middle of a desert? Our class outing in December to the area around Shanghai was great too, although because of heavy rain the first two days we didn't see all the things we had hoped to. It was good to be guided around by our teacher, who had of course been there before and could give us a running commentary. Shanghai is an amazing city and has a very different flavour to Beijing; the only downside is that seeing it reminds one of all the things Beijing doesn't have...
Although last year I spent Christmas in China (which was largely a non-event), this year even though we didn't have a scheduled holiday I returned home for Christmas and New Year. I have put a few pictures I took at home up here, mainly so that my Chinese friends can see what Christmas looks like in the UK.
After the end of my first term back in Beijing, I went with Oliver (from Germany) and Kim (from Korea) to Henan (a little south of Beijing) and then Yunnan (waaay south of Beijing). We didn't want to go in a tour group, so went by ourselves and thus were able to make up our plan as we went along; we had a wonderful time and saw some amazing things. Going from Beijing to Yunnan basically involved crossing the entire country from north to south, and this really gave us an impression of how large China really is.