After another few days of trying and failing to understand the Dream of the Red Chamber, we were fortunate enough to be given a day's holiday for the Mid-Autumn Festival on Thursday 19th, providing us with a four-day weekend. What better way to spend this time than in a yurt in the Inner Mongolian grasslands? As is always the case in such a highly-populated country, buying tickets was a challenge and we ended up getting a hard-seat return to Hohot (the capital o...

Freddie and I are sitting in our two-person flat in the Wudaokou (五道口) district of Beijing, where we have been living since the 24th August, and we have little intention of going outside today. The 'Air Index Quality' has risen to 220 ('Very Unhealthy' on the US Embassy website: http://tinyurl.com/BJ-air-quality ), but we need only to look out of our 16th-floor window to see the gravity of the situation. We can barely see the buildings opposite and the moun...

Late last night we were called by Rainbow, who broke to us that the four-person flat had been cruelly snatched from under our noses. Not wanting to risk any further disappointment, we instantly declared our interest for the two two-person flats. Freddie and I chatted long into the night with our Egyptian roommate, who informed us of his homeland's political situation from an Egyptian point of view. At midday, We met up with Rainbow again, who told us there was ...

After a hectic flight last night from Hong Kong, where I spent a week, I have finally arrived in Beijing and met up with my coursemates Freddie, Charly and Lucy at Heyuan Hostel, where we intend to look for a four-person flat. Despite the hostel's striking Qing-Dynasty architecture it was almost impossible to find. An impatient taxi-driver told me it was "in the Hutong," pointing at a modern driveway, before giving me too little change and driving off, leaving m...