Sorry, its been a couple of weeks since I last posted. This is for a number of reasons:


1. I fell victim to the student's worst friend - procrastination. This meant that whenever I went on the computer, I spent time messing around on Facebook, frequenting Tottenham Hotspur forums, or watching episodes of generic American TV series




2. I don't have that much to write about. My life has settled into a [pretty decent] routine, whereby I go to school during the week, go out Friday night, sleep in on Saturday morning, Kung Fu at 5 followed by a trip to the Hot Pot restaurant, then back out again on Saturday night. Finally I try to cram in something cultural on the Sunday.



3. Alright, there aren't "a number of reasons", there's only two, and these are that I'm lazy and boring!


With that said, I will attempt to make this as entertaining for you as possible.



So if I strain my memory way back to the depths of last fortnight, I had to go through the painful ordeal of renewing my visa. I don't know if I'd mentioned this before, but a couple of weeks earlier, I had gone to the visa office, with the aim of renewing my visa, only to be told that I'd arrived two weeks too early! This time, I arrived at the visa office on the day that my visa was due to expire. I had all the correct documentation in place, had checked it with the head teacher at my school, and was confident that I could arrive, give my passport in, and all would be well. As with any classic comedy, things didn't go to plan. I got to the visa desk at 2:30, and the sullen looking visa-officer told me that I first had to go and renew my residence permit at my local police station. He then told me that the visa office shut at 4:30, and that I had to hurry up.


Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had to take the cross-city trek to the police station, convince them that I needed the residence permit before I got a new visa (and not vice versa), finally, I got back to the visa office, 5 minutes before closing time and handed in my passport. I forgot to mention that it was about 32 degrees this day, and the hot weather, combined with my nervousness about being classified as an illegal alien resulted in me sweating like a pig.


And this, my friends, is my one gripe with India and China - red tape, and lack of clarity in the public services. No-one seems to know what the right way is to go about doing things, everything seems to be last minute, and even the smallest of tasks will take you half a day to do!





So my cultural visit for last week was a trip to the art district. Anyone who knows their Chinese history, will have heard of the so-called Cultural Revolution which greatly damaged culture and intellectualism in China (I hope I don't get in trouble for this!). The result is that the arts still remain a fledgling sector in Chinese life; much of what you see are traditional Chinese oil paintings, using the images of the 12 animals, or some other Chinese symbolism, there seems to be little contemporary Chinese art. I was hoping that when I visited 798 (Beijing art district), I would see things using traditional Chinese imagery, but with a modern spin on it. Instead, I was treated to gallery after gallery of depressing paintings, that were technically very good (not that I'm anywhere near an expert), but seemed pretty uninspired. The place itself was fantastic though - a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of regular Beijing life, and a breath of fresh air to see lots of arty-types in Beijing. I'm sure that this place will develop well over the next few years, and is well worth a visit.

A couple of days ago, I went with the school to visit the Yanjing Beer Factory. Now, I should have learnt from past experience that a beer factory is not quite the Willy Wonka-esque place of my imagination, with rivers of beer, bridges of pretzels and mountains of crisps. In fact, the beer factory tour meant a half an hour walk through various control rooms, a Chinese tour guide, who spoke far too fast for me to understand, and a small paper cup of beer at the end. You'd have thought I'd already have learnt from my experiences at the Heineken and Guinness factories!!






Another blog comes to an end, so till next time,


Zaijian