A picture says more than a thousand words?
Picture time then.



This picture was bravely taken with callous disregard for my own safety and well-being. It's the interior of the main office building of Bank of China - everything's built with a special type of stone from a special mine in China, but after building this, there was no longer anything to mine. Oh, and they also grow trees inside of it. I'm sure both factors are very conducive to uh, banking? Either way, it looks impressive, with loads of security guards everywhere (I took two pictures before I was told to put the camera away), but if you just walk confidently enough, they'll let you in anywhere.






Wedding chocolate. I got a very humorous account of wedding rituals in modern China by my Jiefu (brother-in-law). The gist of it is that it's largely an affair wholly unconcerned with the couple themselves or romance; it's a family matter instead.






Outside one of the gates of Tsinghua (Qinghua) University, the most prestigious natural science university in China. The Chinese equivalent of MIT and KTH, if you will. I was waiting for my cousin - who's a student there, and yes, I'm damn proud of him - and noticed with some amusement the amount of photo-taking that was going on. The same thing happens daily outside Beida's gates, and ours look far nicer. Basically, it's proud parents/friends/relatives taking pictures of their baby boy/girl going off to Tsinghua. The parents/relatives devotion is truly unique; not long ago, as the new students started school at Qinghua, the whole sports field was filled with tents and sleeping bags of parents sending off their children to university. Now, all parents love their kids to bits, but only in China would you have hotels, other accommodations and sports fields filled with parents accompanying 18-year olds to uni. I don't know what you guys think, but I think it's touching.
Note: the clear blue sky! Only in Autumn in Beijing do you get these kind of blue skies. I adapt quickly; as I walked outside, I wondered for a moment why I was squinting. To my amazement, I realized the sun was actually this bright because of the lack of smog.





Two of the distinctive features of Beida, the tower and the (tiny) lake. Again, the blue sky. It's a wondrous thing, really.




This is my way to school. And apart from crossing one road, it looks like this the entire time. It's one of my favourite parts of the day.




Another pretty scenery. Beida is famous for it's beautiful campus, and it really is like heaven compared to the loud and messy traffic in the outside world.




Me out with the Swedish crowd last Friday. Notice that I'm the only Asian, but bafflingly, also the only one not doing the typically Asian victory sign. From left: Patrik, David (? new guy) and Tobias, the Swedish guy I met on the street.




Best. Sign. Ever. So all apartments in China use gas to heat water, which in our case means we have to be careful about ventilation, otherwise the apartment might, um, explode. Problem is, we've both forgotten to turn it off once each already (with proper ventilation, so it wasn't a big deal), so Hannah thought to post a multi-lingual caution sign. She's British, so the English is correct. She didn't know there was a specific word for this usage of gas in Chinese, and simply used the direct translation for "gas", which in this case means the gaseous state (as opposed to liquid and solid state). So in Chinese, it says: "Don't forget to turn off the gaseous state". Lastly, she thought to write it in Swedish as well, and considerate girl that she is, she didn't want to bother me by asking. Instead, she used Babelfish, and the Swedish sentence translates into: "Do not do it forget towards flipping (as in turning) away sickle." Sickle?!
So yeah: Best. Sign. Ever.