Skaters @ Qianhai
With the Drum Tower in the background. With spring already mostly sprung here in Beijing – though not leaves are out, there’s no ice on the rivers or lakes any more – it’s hard to remember how frozen solid everything was barely a month ago, but here’s a memory of how much fun Qianhai and Houhai can be in the winter, despite the cold. Brings memories of sitting by the
wood fire in my favorite cafe with some of my new friends or MSF colleagues
and watching the myriad variations on “things to move about the ice on” that
Beijing can come up with. Note how few actual skaters you see — it’s all skate-adapted chairs, bicycles, you name it.
Lantern Festival Day @ Ditan Park
The fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year is lantern festival, and it was on
that day that my colleague (and financial supervisor) from Paris and I chose to visit the park. I think that’s why there’s so much incense burning…
Visits to Seoul
OK, I’m doing it again: putting things out of order on my blog. It’s Sunday,
the 19th of March here in Beijing and I’ve returned this afternoon from my
second visit to Seoul in the past month. MSF has an office there where we’ve provided psychological support for refugees from North Korea. Since the situation has changed a great deal since we first started this work, MSF has
decided to close this office and leave local actors to serve the needs of this population in the future. Due to the luck of the draw, it’s fallen to our office to manage the last several weeks of this office until we close it, and especially to me as administrator to manage all the legal and HR
aspects of shutting down our office. The downside, of course, is more work for me just as I prepare for my blessed seven week holiday in the US and Europe…the upside, of course, is a chance to meet some great colleagues (two of our four national staff colleagues there have applied to become MSF expats in the field in the future, and the one expatriate still working there, a psychologist from Italy, is a pleasure to know and work with) and get to know another city and another office a bit.
This last visit was a week long, so I could really make a lot of headway on what needed to be done. I added a Sunday at the beginning and a Saturday at the end so I could explore the city a bit: I’ve not been since I visited it during my Jr. year abroad, back in 1984. Naturally, it’s changed a great deal since then. Here’s a good shot taken from atop Namsan, next door to the huge US military base and site of Seoul Tower, one of the major landmarks in town (I assume it’s a TV broadcast tower, but I dont’ really know — it looks like it), but I didn’t think to take any pictures of it, itself – just shots from its hilltop. Sorry. Enjoy!
Bukhansan National Park, Seoul
I was fortunate to have a free Saturday in Seoul to do a bit of exploring. Though my Beijing colleagues and friends kept telling me how lovely Beijing was — high teens or even 20 degrees, sunny — I’m afraid to say Seoul was quite cold — at or below freezing most of the time, and my Italian psychologist colleague seemed to take a perverse pleasure in reminding me that the cold winds in Seoul are coming down from Siberia. They felt like it. Yet despite the cold grey weather, it was a pleasure to escape to Bukhansan National Park, an area in northern Seoul amply blessed with imposing granite peaks (at 700 to 800 meters high, above a city that’s pretty much at sea level) and wonderful hiking trails. The park has some historical significance, both in terms of defense of the capital from various invaders over the centuries, and for all the religious temples that are scattered over the mountains. I thought of my good friend Steve’s comment from one of my Beijing hike shots, about how the temples perched on the ridgetops and hillsides were quite lovely. Here are some shots that give you a sense of the park, including a few with temple shots.
(so much world, so little time....) 