The campus is a bit like a ghost town right now, almost everyone went back home for the holiday week. So that's a good time to see what's behind the gates of the campus.

We have a very good system on campus for cycling, or more accurate, for using a bike. There are hundreds of yellow bikes with a small number plate and the have a lock which can be opened by entering the right combination of numbers. So to get this code you need to send the number of the bike, in WeChat (the Chinese WhatsApp), to a certain number and it gives back the code for the lock. It is very convenient because then you don't have to buy a bike and these bike are all over the campus. They can't be taken off campus so mainly at the different entrances of the campus are many bikes.

Anyways, in the morning we took the bike to the south-gate and went (by foot) off campus. Across the street was a huge park with a flower exposition, but that didn't seem that nice to go to, maybe some other day. A little bit further down the street is a shopping mall. We checked it out and it wasn't that big or special, mainly just a lot of small shops with clothing. There also seemed to be an international cinema, at least that is what it said, but when we went there and asked if they also have movies in English or with English subtitles they hadn't.

On the way back we were looking for some place to eat lunch. There are many different restaurants around the campus and we got stopped by a woman who really wanted us to eat in her restaurant. She took us by the hand, asked the chef to take a photo of her together with us and sat us down. We ordered three different dishes, deep fried potatoes, noodles and squid. That was very tasty and the woman was very happy that we (more or less) 'choose' her restaurant.

In the evening I went out eating with Roman and Victoria together with three local students. They took us to some nice Chinese restaurant and ordered some specialties for us. We had shrimps in a sweet sauce, sweet potatoes covered with caramelized sugar, fried eggplant, crusty pork with sweet and spicy sauce and two different types of soup.

Of course everything here is eaten with chopsticks and it was actually funny that also the shrimps are eaten with them. It was a bit difficult for me to remove the exoskeleton from the shrimps with just chopsticks. Because it is not common to use hand while eating, I (and everyone else) got plastic gloves and I was allowed to use my hands. Another small difference with Europe.