November In Beijing
November in Beijing:
In November I spent some days in Beijing already. I think I will write some more about Beijing in February. But I wanted to share already some pictures with you. The first pictures are the Tiananmen Square, the National Museum and the Forbidden City. The next pictures are from a marketplace (market house) where they displayed statues of the Chinese Zodiacs, and as it was before Christmas even some Santa Clauses. The last series of pictures is from the Dongyue Temple. It’s located in the Chaoyang District. The temple was founded in 1319. Today it’s protected as a National Key Cultural Relict. The Beijing Folks Custom Museum is located in the temple. The temple is a Daoist Temple dedicated to the God of Mount Tai.
The second temple is the Yonghe temple also called Lama Temple. It’s is one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist temples in the world. One of the highlights in this temple is the 18 meter Buddha Statue carved from a single piece of Sandalwood. Then you can see one of the famous horse paintings and a Statue of Xu Beihong in front of his Museum. And finally a picture from the St Joseph Cathedral.
Road to Beijing (1)
You might wonder why Beijing, well as so often it all starts with a girl. She moved to China this year to continue her studies, and as I wanted to be closer to her I was looking for Universities in China (preferably near her) so that we could spend more time together. As I’m studying European Ethnology I tried to find something that would be in that field. And lucky me there is actually an ethnology University in Beijing, the Minzu University. So in November I went to China to get to know the country a bit. I visited the Cities of Tianjin and Beijing (I will try to add some pictures from that visit here in the next days) and what I saw there stunned me and I wanted even more to go to China to get to know this country.
When I was back in Innsbruck I tried to find out if I my University would credit me the hours if I would go to china and study there. The initial plan was to take courses in English about Chinese Ethnology. But then I thought that it would be better to first study the language (and they teach you about Chinese Culture there as well) cause knowing at least the basics of the language from the place you intend to live at is in my eyes essential to get to know the local culture. So I decided to write a demand for language courses at the Minzu University (I actually wrote them an e-mail if it would be possible to take both courses, the English ones and Chinese language courses but they never replied to my e-mail, but the plan is to go to Beijing a bit earlier and ask. I’ll try to get some of the English courses in Chinese Ethnology as well [ at least the museology course]).
I sent the demand around the 9. of December and was since that day waiting for an answer to know if the enrolled me or not. I was somehow worried that the mail was lost on the way to China or that I didn’t send them the right stuff and so on. But then on the 29.12. I got an e-mail telling me that they accepted me! Lucky me Bisi, Vic and Chris were here, so that night we could celebrate a bit.
So that leaves me with around 2 Months time until the semester starts in Beijing, but as I want to be there earlier cut that down to 1,5 months. Now I need to plan everything!
I made a to do list
- Tell my landlady that I’ll move out
- Unsubscribe mobile phone, internet and the fitness studio.
- Buy a plane ticket (and decide on which day to fly)
- Make a list of stuff I need to take
- Move out of my flat in Innsbruck and get my stuff to Luxemburg
- Finish some papers for University
- Get my Visa as soon as I get the papers from the Minzu University
I guess that would be the most important, but I’m sure that there is more to do but I can’t think of it at the moment.
First Post
Hi,
I have been thinking about blogging for some time, and today I mentioned this to Bisi and he set me up a blog right away. Well first we had to think about a domain name for some time (or at least I had to think about it for some time) and I finally choose Seyar. The meaning comes from the Turkish word Seyyar which means ambulant or mobile (street-) vendor. Actually the timing couldn’t be better as I’m moving to Beijing for 6 months in February.
So what can you expect to find in this blog in the future?
In the first place I guess it will be a way to keep my friends informed about what’s going on in my life (I hope I will find the time to keep the blog up to date). But I also want to show some Vegetarian/Vegan dishes (both self prepared and from Restaurants) If they are self prepared I will of course tell you the recipe so that you can try it out yourself. In the last place you might find everything else I think is worthwhile sharing.
I hope to see you back here in the future and that you enjoy the time you spend reading my blog.