Chenglish Lesson
English and Mandarin are just so different, sometimes it’s even hard to figure out if something is a question or not. Open questions are often answered with “Yes!” or “OK!”.…
Posts by month
August 2018
18 posts
Two Lukewarm Beers, Please!
Bus, subway, train, bus, subway… and we’re in the center of Shanghai! During the long train ride, we came up with the Travelling Through China Drinking Game, which has yet…
The Venice of the East?
I’ll keep this one short and focus on some photos. But first… Here’s a striking visual analogy of what a conversation with a non-English-speaking local feels like. For both sides,…
Fake Soliders, Fake Apple
Another bus ride, followed by a long night train ride, followed by a subway ride and some walking… and we’re in Xi’an. The hostel we were staying at was definitely…
No Thank You!
Still in Beijing After having used the public transport systems in different Chinese cities countless times, we feel very comfortable with them. (Except busses, still no idea what’s going on…
The Great (Fire) Wall and the Forbidden Serv… City
Cliché tourist stuff ahead! You can’t do a longer trip through China without visiting at least some of the standard attractions. And the Great Wall is definitely one of them.…
Embrace the Filth
It’s hot. Really hot. The sun feels like god’s almighty laser aimed at my face to burn me to ashes. I’ve long switched from sneakers to flip-flops, even for long…
Kung Fu and the Shaolin Temple
Luoyang, especially the area around the Shaolin temple, is the home of Kung Fu. Our hotel was so up high in the mountains it nearly made the bags of chips…
Eating Like a Panda
We spent most of the time in Chengdu in a busy walking street that had a stream running in the middle and hundreds, maybe thousands of kids and grown-ups playing…
This Isn’t Too Bad At All
This was the first time I slept on a night train. After two hours in a 300 km/h bullet train from Yangshuo to Liuzhou, we spent 16 hours in the…
Green Tea vs. Black Coffee
Important learning of the day: Chinese people count to ten with their fingers using only one hand. (Technically they do number ten with two hands, but not like this 👐,…
At the Butcher’s Market
The people here are very open – they often come up to you and try to have a conversation without any intention of selling you anything. The only problem is,…
I Get Why People Want to Live in the Mountains
After crossing the border from Hong Kong to China and being held up for a few minutes because they somehow didn’t like that I spent a week in Egypt five…
I might have brought too much stuff…
Today I met the 14 other members of my group for the largest part of my trip through China as well as Yao, our guide for the next four weeks.…
Fuck it, I’m going to Disneyland
A metro map gave me the idea to take a little detour the next day… I was virtually passing by Hong Kong Disneyland on my way to my first guesthouse.…
Arriving in Hong Kong
Arriving at Hong Kong International Airport, I had no idea how the public transport worked. The system of fairly easy to understand though, once you know that you need an…
How Do You Start a Blog?
To be frank, I haven’t figured it out completely yet. Maybe that is what all of this is about. After a lengthy phase in my life of just studying and…