beijing: window to china & more!

here we are in "tibet" (雍和宫 yonghe gong - a tibetan temple)

here we are in "hangzhou xihu" (颐和园 summer palace)

and today's visit - this feels like some "ancient greek civilization"..

(圆明园遗址园 ruins of the summer palace)

the ruins of the palace are preserved as a "monument" to 毋忘国耻...

once magnificent grounds reduced to incoherent random pillars and rubble. it's described by the (obviously western) guidebook as a "tiresome monument to comtemporary Chinese xenophobia". the place is pretty 凄凉... for a moment, you realise why the chinese use(d?) phrases like "洋鬼子". but huh, the emperor take so much taxes to build his miles and miles of summer pleasure grounds - doesn't seem very right too!

look! these are the evil evil foreign troops looting yuanmingyuan,

the old summer palace, while the qing officials are hapless during the second opium war!

but the catch phrase " 中国崛起 " now - the rise of china again is indeed amazing,

prob cos the chinese have a thirst for knowledge 他们 好 好学

- chinese rabbits included!

this is 馒头, my housemate's rabbit =)

she slides around the place cos the tiles are too slippery for her little paws

she hopped right onto my bed!

PKU-NUS swap

I sat in for admin law classes in NUS in jan before leaving for china, and coincidentally, the 2 PKU students "swopped" with us were taking that class! but selfishly got wrapped up in pupillage & SEP stuff, didn't properly host them... but they're been so nice since we reached beijing... their friends in PKU too have been so warm! 北方人很好客... so true!

and then i abashedly found out that they have no "buddy" in NUS (what is LSRIC doing?) - who can help host them? =P