And to your left...

While none of the family live(d) in Beijing, it turned out that my aunt had a friend who lived up there with her son and a spare room, so one weekend my cousin and I went ahead and bought two tickets on the over-night train to Beijing(a first for her as well!). Being cheap we got ones that meant we had to share a car with other people, we had the top bunks and some old folk had the bottom ones, though all in all it wasn't a bad trip.

That said... roughly two days in Beijing.
( Pics and babble under cut )

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF.... I accidentally deleted this post. Reposting.

Sorry for the lapse in posts, it being over a month since my last. Been busy(got a job, modeled for a life drawing group, started running more, drawing lots, overdosing on Asian programing, and so on). For the next photo post, I figured I'd focus on the place I spent, roughly, the most time, the city of Guangzhou.

( Do people still use dial-up? This isn't safe for that. )

It was hiding in Hong Kong.

Until yesterday it didn't really sink in for me just how unreligious mainland China is(for good reason, the government has issues with it). Yet, I spent yesterday in Hong Kong which, while being in China, is governed by a different set of rules, and found that it just seemed to keep popping up.

For example, I kept getting slightly turned around in this one area by Central and my 'oh shit, I've come this way already' point ended up being this big church which had this one priest(?) chilling by the main door who seemed amused whenever he saw me. This worked fine until I ran into another church that I assumed was the same one, despite lack of smirking man, making me lost. Oy. Never would have happened in Guangzhou since there's just the one church over on Shamian Island.

Any who, later on, while taking the metro, I was chatted up for a few stops and handed literature by a Jehovah's Witness, a French-Hong Kongese one at that! He seemed proud to tell me the number of Jehovah's Witness' in the US once he learned where I was from. Then, for noteworthy run-in number three, I was helped in getting to Shenzhen, after missing my train from Kowloon->Guangzhou straight through, by a pastor who lives there. He seemed an okay guy and had an impressive collection of stamps/pages in his passport from going through immigration nearly everyday to get to/from HK. Could have done without his 'You need to accept Jesus into your life to be happy' lines, though I figured it came with the territory for someone who moved to China "for God" and had "Jesus loves you! Amen!" on the back of his card.

...and to shellazure, Elena, crystaldrake's adorable kidling, and whoever else was born on or around Jan. 25th! :D

For a quick update on where the fuck I am, I got to Hong Kong alright. Didn't stay long before heading to Guangzhou, where I am now, to chill with my younger-older cousin. She's older than me, but younger than her sister/my other cousin in Shanghai, who I'll be staying with later on.

Don't get much in the way of webtime here so I'm pretty behind(and will only continue to get further behind), especially on fandom-related stuff. Finding I don't much mind. I mean, no squee but no fan rage/annoyance/wtf since losing my copy of BN: WW #2 somewhere between NRT and HKG either.