Ordered a ‘fixed gear’ bike from Hong Kong the other day which arrived yesterday. It’s been amazing cycling round Beijing - with its wide avenues and flat roads - on such a fast bike. The bike’s also had quite a lot of intrigue around town. If I go to a restaurant with it, the waiters get all interested. The other night, we went to a Xinjiangnese restaurant and the owner actually let me lock my bike to his motorbike for safe keeping! Luckily he didn’t ride his bike off with mine attached.
Hopefully doing a race from central Beijing out to the mountains on Saturday morning. That’s if I can get hold of a helmet in time! The lovely student loan company has managed to more or less screw up the admin of my student loan so it STILL hasn’t come through, rendering me a bit pennyless at the minute. Luckily, it costs next to nothing to eat in Beijing and I cycle everywhere so I should survive for a bit longer! Paying the rent is another issue…
I went to the great wall the other day, which was fantastic. Like, really fantastic. I went in 2006 but it was full of tourists and the weather was rubbish. This time however, there was barely another soul out there and the visibility was fantastic. I’ll add some photos later. If you have me on Facebook, check them out.
It’s a week’s holiday for Chinese national day at the minute so we all have a week of university. Just as well since the work load is huge! We haven’t even started classical Chinese yet either and we only just got instructions for the first part of our assignment for SOAS so… better start having no friends!
I WILL write that article soon, I PROMISE.
