From Monday to Thurdsay we sailed the Yangzhe river in a very Chinese company (us and 200 Chinese in a small boat..). The boat was not what we were expecting, there were bugs in the bed and the whole thing had seen it\s best days but the river and the gorges were great. We took small boats and went to small rivers connected to the Yangzhe and that was great too. It was a pity that it was raining almost the whole time and it got really foggy so my pictures are not all that great. After the cruise we spent one day in a small 4 million people town called Yichang. Really liked the city, it was so lively in spite of the smallness and taxi started from 3 yuan! From Yichang we took a bus to Wuhan which is still by Yangzhe river. It\s so hot here since there is not so much pollution and we can finally see the sun! Wuhan is siprisingly modern , there are big malls and even western food available. We are going to see Mao Zhedongs summer villa and take a walk around the lakes today. Tomorrow evening we take a train to Shanghai, it takes around 15 hours so we will be in Shanghai on Monday.

We have spend 4 days in Chengdu and love Sichuan province! It's like coming to tropic paradise after dry Beijing. We have been to Sichuan opera, panda zoo (where there really were around 40 pandas!) and to a mountain near Chengdu. It's really humid and we have to do a lot of laundry after each day but it's all good. Tomorrow we take a bus to Chongqing, which is one of the biggest cities in the world with 32 million people and from there we start a 3 day Yangtse cruise. Really looking forward for the cruise and being outside these big cities for some time. There is most likely no internet available in next 4-5 days so next post is coming after the cruise. I'm trying to upload pictures but at least the connection in this hostel is way too slow..

It's the last day in Beijing, tomorrow we take the train to Chengdu, Sichuan. That is pretty much in the middle of China, train takes around 1,5 days. Looking forward to seeing Sichuan and getting out of hot Beijing! More reports to come soon!

Lasse arrived to Beijing today so I'm leaving the university for a quite nice hotel. Great to use a clean toilet for a change! We are trying to get tickets to travel but so far no luck, we keep on trying... I'm not sure if there is internet in our hotel but if not, I will continue from some internet cafe once I know where we are going!

School is out and handed in my last essay yesterday. Now I'm trying desparately to find train tickets to leave Beijing next week. It's hard because also Chinese people travel a lot in August. Probably will end up taking any tickets there is just to leave this overheated plasticbag city for some fresh air! 

Today I'm going to 798 art district to practise with my new camera which I finally bought last week. It's semi-professional so it takes a while to learn all the functions and features...