May | 2012 | An Unweeded Garden

Browsing All Posts published on »May, 2012«

Looking in the wrong direction

May 29, 2012

“Look in the opposite direction to the oncoming traffic” doesn’t sound like the best piece of advice you could give someone about to cross an eight lane road in the middle of Beijing, but it’s surprisingly effective. The theory is that by showing the oncoming traffic you’re not paying any attention, the onus is with […]

Chinese lessons: part II

May 22, 2012

And so it begins, in earnest. Chinese lessons. Official Chinese lessons. Not Chinese lessons in a park, on a bench, with whoever has decided to take it upon themselves to teach me the Mandarin for Beijing Duck this week. No, I’ve enrolled at The Hutong School in Sanlitun. A proper school, with a proper syllabus, […]

Country folk

May 18, 2012

Thirty adults. Fifteen kids. Three rustic dwellings. One pizza oven and a dog. The pizza oven was an unexpected addition (as was Dan Dan the dog) to what was a fantastic couple of days up at a small village near Simatai last weekend. Naturally, the pizza oven, not being indigenous to these parts*, was knocked […]

Chinese lessons: part I

May 11, 2012

I’m not in the habit of talking to old men in parks, but sometimes you have to buck the trend and go with it. And so it was on Sunday, whilst sitting, reading by a lake in Solidify Lake Park, that I became embroiled in a conversation with an elderly Chinese gentleman. By conversation, of […]

Sunshine on a rainy day

May 8, 2012

Shiny, glitzy, sparkling – that’s what Hong Kong is supposed to be like. But when I looked out of my window at midday, reviewing the notes from the previous night’s focus group, it was so dark that it looked like it was ten in the evening! Rain, rain and more rain – interspersed with a […]