I slipped and fell on adventure

So, having accepted a job offer in Tangshan for 12 months we needed to sort out my visa… Unfortunately, during the process of gaining the internship I was never advised what was required to change from a student visa to a working visa… one of the requirements was having your original degree certificates notarised by the Chinese Government and then by some other Chinese organisation or institution… seemed a little complex to me. My mother scurried and scuttled through my bits and bobs back in Australia and fortunately found my original certificates then sent them to me in ‘Express Mail’, which is not a thing in China so I received everything after about three weeks. The documents then had to be taken to Beijing during the blue moon in the year of the Hippopotamus under the veil of night on a magical unicorn with golden hooves… that is… getting a work visa is an exceptionally complicated process that takes a bloody long time and unfortunately, I was trying to sort mine out when th...

I’ve mentioned feeling a bit disillusioned with many of the ‘historical’ places I’ve seen so far  in China, primarily because those I’ve been fortunate enough to see were ‘restored’ in the 80’s during the Cultural Revolution and much of the sense of history swept away with the dust of new concrete. My new contract means that I’ll be back to a semi nine to five resulting in a more restricted travel time line, so I figured why not make the most of Beijing, being only an hour away. So, I spent some time putting together a wee spreadsheet of everything off the beaten track in and around Beijing. I want to see something that other travellers might miss, something that the government may not have gotten to, something authentic. I n amongst all of this included the World Park and 798 Art District. My friend, Mark, was heading back to Ireland so I thought it a good way to say farewell by taking him to some unusual spots, and a nice way for me to start 2017. Unfortunately, Ma...