九个月在亚洲

In a week from now I will already be in Seoul! These last days are incredibly busy: tomorrow will vanish entirely in school and at the Midsummer party we are arranging with our classmates. The bags have therefore been packed already to be ready on Saturday morning when the train to the North leaves.

Some pictures from the last entire week in Shanghai, 11th-17th of June.

Plugget inför tentamen tog väldigt hårt på VISSA.

The exam has finally been written!

Booking plane tickets can be astonishingly complicated.

Ouniweiya gets her diploma. Everybody passed the exam.

Rebei.

The diploma and I.

Shalina.

Xuaixian.

A combination of birthday cake and "last day of school" cake. I am really getting old...

Karaoke with our class!

Vuxenpoäng: 293802348039480324. Ser jag inte kultiverad ut?

At a Teppanyaki buffet with a chef at our table cooking all the food we ordered. 168 yuan seems to be some standard price, as it seems most Teppanyakis charge that.

On Saturday morning I will leave Shanghai for good, the one-way ticket was bought today.

Some pictures from the week beginning with 4th of June.

This disgusting egg appeared to have begun to develop a baby chicken.

I celebrated Sweden's national holiday at Laomatou, overlooking the World Financial Centre in the distance.

The mandatory night time picture.

Likt apor på Kebabs on the grille. Det fula namnet till trots kom detta att bliva en av våra favoritrestauranger. I really recommend a visit Kebabs on the grille if you grow tired of Chinese food: delicious and price-worthy Indian and Thai food! Located in the Central Plaza on the west side of People's Square.

The Propaganda Poster Art Centre is located in the cellar of a residential complex, impossible to find unless you know it is there. Lots and lots of propaganda posters from the Mao period. Taking pictures inside was not allowed. Entrance fee 20 yuan.

Less than a week of my stay in Shanghai remains. Time really has passed quickly. Before I notice I will be sitting on the train back to Sweden.

More pictures from my adventures, this time from the 28th of May and onwards.

In Nanjing. The train trip from Shanghai took 1 hour 19 minutes, leaving 15.00 and cost 140 yuan. We were aiming to climb the Nanjing city wall, but it proved to be hard to find the entrance. We got to look at the wall from this hill instead.

På Stora bron över Långa floden. Ena riktiga sagonamn. This magnificent bridge across the 长江 was finished in the 1960s, hence the statues. The bridge is some 6 km (?) long: walking from the closest bus stop to the top of the bridge took quite a while.

Is this a language or does this bus company just feel cool when they have some Latin letters on their bus?

Monument at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, commemorating the 300 000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre, killed by the Japanese soldiers during the Japanese attack on China in the 1930s. It was rather terrible: the soldiers were competing in killing civilians, the more you massacred, the higher status you got. Free entry.

Iris statue, holding a peace dove in the park outside the Memorial Hall. Taking pictures inside the different halls was not allowed.

Utslagna efter museibesöket.

På väg upp för Lila berget.

The one and only!

Ming tombs. 70 yuan.

After a somewhat long hill, some 300 steps to reach the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Free entry.

Nice view! After this we returned to Shanghai with a slower train leaving 18.32, taking 4 hours 11 minutes, costing 47 yuan.

Taking a Pudong picture from the Bund is a must.

Convenient with food constantly rotating within reach. The sushi tasted well as well.

It is unbelievably humid and hot right now, it is like sitting in a rainforest while sitting inside. School is getting close to an end: our exam will be in merely a week from now.

Some pictures from the week beginning 14th of May.

Titanic in 3D for 35 yuan: such a rip-off! This cinema had just opened in the new shopping centre next to our metro station.

Mat på the Bund. Eftersom jag hade halsfluss, så kunde jag inte äta annat än glass.

At Barbarossa, where the discussion topic game was given birth.

The headquarters of Evil.

An evening at the famous West Lake in Hangzhou The train trip took some 1,5 hours, leaving at 15.00 from Shanghai, 93 yuan one way. Right after this picture was taken, I got otitis, inconveniently enough.

The sun has set.

The Su Causeway crossing the West Lake.

Going by boat on the lake for 45 yuan.

On an island in the West Lake.

Lotuses.

Salted popcorn! In China they have this disgusting habit of sweetening popcorn: normal (salted) popcorn can be somewhat challenging to come by. Luckily, a Carrefour opened close enough our home to make it worth a visit.

In a Shikumen area close to Dapuqiao. Somewhat too expensive for us.

Näst sista skolveckan haver börjat. Standardfrasen "Vi komma ju vara här så länge" börjar bliva allt mindre aktuell. I och med min effektivitet i dag är jag nu ledig hela kvällen, vilket lär medföra tittande av Desperate Housewives.

Some photos from the week after our holiday week. As the days were getting rather ordinary, fewer and fewer photos were taken.

Rhäbecquah taggar karaoke! 58 yuan per room for one hour of singing.

Bakgrundsdansösen friskar upp sig med 可口可乐.

Visiting a school with Chinese students studying Swedish as their major. Lina var väl förberedd med en presentation.

Helena var en av kineserna som presenterade sig, bland annat med sång.

Strutsar på Shanghais zoo! Entrance fee 40 yuan.

A lesser panda.

A not so lesser panda.

Rather cute.

A lazy day at 星巴克.

Någon var missnöjd.

Planning my trip home in December/January is fairly exciting, as it seems that it is possible to get it cheaper than I had imagined. I shall hope that everything works out fine.

Some more pictures from our holiday week of the International Labour Day.

Gold in the Shanghai Museum. Free entry.

Modern banknotes are way more convenient, as fitting A4 sheets in my wallet would involve to much folding.

Xu 小姐, vad betyda de här tecknen?

Our Chinese textbook concentrates on teaching us how to discuss differences between Chinese painting and oil painting. Necessary vocabulary to know when visiting Shanghai Museum!

Holiday in Tokyo! The flight took some 3 hours to Ibaraki Airport to the north of Tokyo. As the airport is very small, it can be hard to catch a bus to Tokyo. Making reservation to the Spring Airlines airport-Tokyo shuttle bus is advisable (the contact details are available at the Spring Airlines homepage). Showing a Spring Airlines flight confirmation on the same day that you travel with the shuttle bus gives you a cheaper bus ticket, 500 yen one way for the 1 hour ride (1000 yen without Spring Airlines flight confirmation).

Yummy Japanese food. Everything I ate in Tokyo was delicious!

At the Imperial Palace. Unfortunately it began to rain while I was wandering in the gardens.

The Pokémon centre (Hamamatsucho station) in Tokyo! One of the main reasons to go to Tokyo at all!

Euphoria!!!

"This is a Yamanote line train bound for Shinjuku and Ikebukuro."

Supposedly the world's most crowded pedestrian crossing in Shibuya.

A delicious pasta, pizza and dessert buffet in Harajuku for 1150 yen!

The controversial Yasukuni shrine. Japanese soldiers who were killed in the Second World War are commemorated here. As both China and Korea views Japan as an aggressor in the war, it is in these countries deemed highly inappropriate for higher Japanese politicians to visit this shrine.

Shinjuku, the capital of Tokyo.

Ice Cream City in Namjatown. ALL kinds of ice cream can be found here. Entrance fee to the Namjatown amusement park (Ikebukuro station) where this is located is 300 yen (only the entrance fee, no rides on the attractions).

May I tempt you with squid ice cream?

Or how about some delicious garlic and mint?

In the end I decided to eat some ox tongue, double cheese, black sesame and wasabi ice cream. The double cheese was my favourite, although none of them tasted bad.

The Tokyo Skytree, the world's second tallest building, in the background. It opened 22nd of May, which meant that it was not yet open when I visited it. The gold-coloured building is the headquarters of a brewery: the building is supposed to resemble a glass of beer with foam on top.

Last night in Tokyo was spent in Shinjuku.

Farewell Japan!

The plane from Shanghai arrived on time, meaning that we could depart on time. The 3,5 hour flight back was much more pleasant than the flight to Ibaraki, which was a horrifying experience indeed with constant turbulence. It was like sitting in an earthquake.

Hem ljuva hem, home sweet home!

Back from Nanjing I once again have time to write. The Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing is sure worth a visit, in spite of the disgusting photos. Do count on being a sight yourself if you don't look Chinese: one man even came and sat next to us, shouting to his friend to take a photo quickly before we left. They did not care to ask us if we would mind them taking a photo of us.

Some pictures from the week beginning with 23rd of April.

Tömningstiderna på dessa rariteter i gatubilden äro minst sagt exakt angivna.

Qinci Yangdian Taoist Temple in Shanghai. Entrance fee 5 yuan. Although it is new, I really liked the interior. It was somehow so peaceful and calm and as it is too new to be a major tourist spot, it meant that I was the only foreigner there among a handful Chinese engaged in some ceremony.

The museum commemorating the first meeting of the Communist Party of China, that took place here in Shanghai, close to Xintiandi. Free entry, but a ticket needs to be picked up outside the museum.

Early Saturday morning in Suzhou, famous for its gardens. Very early in fact, as the impolite ticket vendor in Shanghai only wanted to sell me a ticket to an early morning train leaving at 7.00, arriving in Suzhou at 7.25. Cost 40 yuan one way. It is wise to go to the train stations early, as you need to pass a security check and there might be a queu (although they are rarely particularly long). The most time-consuming part is in fact locating which platform your train will be leaving from, as there usually is a huge board with ALL of the departures of that day slowly rotating in a list, which means that you may need to wait for a while before your train appears on the board.

Getting a cold in Suzhou won't be a problem, as ginger is readily available.

Liuyuan was fairly crowded already in the early morning. Entrance fee 40 yuan.

While I was enjoying the chattering tourist groups, my roommates were freezing on a mountain with their horses in Gansu and sweating on a 沙滩, beach, on Hainan respectively.

I can't tell if this was 京剧 or 越剧， but it was some kind of Chinese opera.

A minor mishap...

The Confucius Temple in Suzhou.

As with everything delicious in China, this comes from Taiwan. A bean dessert with something ice cream-like that is not ice cream.

Living silkworms in the Suzhou Silk Museum, entrance fee 15 yuan.

This carpet was indeed beautiful, but somewhat too expensive.

I'm going up, up, up, up, up... Entrance fee 25 yuan.

Suzhou's suburbs seen from the pagoda.

Back to Shanghai with a gaotie, a high-speed train, departing 19.02, arriving 19.27 in Shanghai, 40 yuan.

The bridge with 9 corners in the shopping area next to the City God Temple in Shanghai.