from china with love

i have been in this fantastic country for 5 days now - since i landed on sunday. and basically i have so much to write that if i start now i am gonna need a book and miss out on seeing more. i'll try to summarise though:

i landed in shanghai on sunday the 6th, after some 15 hours on the plane. very quickly you realise that china is more like another planet than another country. i left to beijing on tuesday and returning to shanghai this saturday after having seen the main sights. so far i definitely want to thank all people i met here for their hospitality (tzyy, sathe, carol, carlos) and others that have helped me a great deal before the trip (jenny, ying, sathe again etc.). i have met quite a few ppl that i had heard of before and finally got to hang out with while here and others who were friends but now are my friends as well. i might be forgetting smn so apologies in advance.

china is a fascinating place to be. you can see that in shanghai, that everything is moving fast and the modernisation of the country is going forward. but i'd prefer the term modernisation to westernisation as the underlying principles of the chinese are still based on their tradition, which i deem to be a good thing. beijing is more laid back in my perception and you can see the olympics coming, as there are olympic related works and mention everywhere. shanghai is also a big construction site, due to the constant growth of the city, but as they say, they may be larger in population, but it's a taller city in terms of buildings, as i found out for myself, and therefore smaller in size than beijing. that makes beijing a huge city, which i found out by walking for about 3 hours on the day i got here, for what seemed on the map to be a 15 minute walk. both places are a lot of fun, and for the fanatics (jenny?) - i am not able to choose yet :-) but there's plenty to do and see in both. the rest of the country i haven't seen yet.

other than that, the trip is so far everything i wanted it to be, only the duration for such a big country will always be short. the culture is so different, the language barrier is there but you would always get around and that's what i was looking for, a place different than europe. so far have seen plenty of museums, met different friends, been to tian'anmen square, forbidden city different parks, the ming tombs and the Great wall of china, which is really something. i also went out and enjoyed the nightlife for 3 evenings so far, and will be doing more of that, while currently trying to filter out which "non city" places i will visit. finally, i have been walking for more than 8 hours every day that i have been in china, and have used a bit of public transport as well, but prefer walking as i can see things first hand. i consider riding a bike here a bit dangerous, as everything moves so fast and the traffic in beijing is on the unpredictable side! :-)

there's so may moments and images to describe, but i won't go on for now. will probably go for this after i am back to london.

that's all for now, i'll let the photos speak for themselves, and don't know how my internet access will go from now on, but will try to keep it coming. see you all soon.