frauke at large

is frightful … but actually quite delightful, if you check out the pictures below.

With a little delay and definitively too late to make it a white Christmas, the last two days have seen the campus dusted with snow. Turns out China manages to deal with 2mm of snow much better than the UK – there was no traffic chaos, no schools were shut and amusing snowmen and snowchildren were built during the lunch break … this one has a pen for a nose! Oh hang on: Shanghai airport was closed for a few hours … hmmm.

Want to bling up your phone and protect your health all at the same time? Well here is the answer: a 24 Karat gold Hello Kitty sticker that you stick on your mobile phone … looks bling and (apparently) protects against those evil phone radiation waves … Hmmm!? Really? Well, whatever they do … might be a good investment … what with gold prices rising and all …

It’s official: autumn has arrived! After a glorious week of sunshine, blue(ish) skies and temperatures of up to 25’C during the day, the cold has arrived and autumn is at a point of no return. The sky has gone dull and grey, temperatures have dropped to a chilly 15’C and the occasional rain cloud has turned into a whole plethora of rain clouds. But among all the autumny weather, the dreariness and the shorter days, there is one thing on campus that has its swan song right about now: my favourite tree on campus.

Not quite sure which species of tree it is yet (still investigating) but every year it treats us with this most amazing spectacle. All year round it features green, relatively unspectacular leaves and no one spares it a second look. But with the weather turning colder, the leaves transform into this most glowing and vibrant yellowy – red and becomes a real show stopper. This year it gets two thumbs up for extra ‘spectacularness’!

With yet another crazy taxi ride survived and under my belt, I came to think … there are really only 5 different types of taxi driver in China. Even with the plethora of cheap taxis available in every city, they all fall into one of 5 categories:

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Went to Hong Kong for a few days to get away from the usual Golden week crowds on the mainland. Had a fantastic time.

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Not being able to break with tradition, I have to provide a brief report on this year’s mooncakes – seen as today is mooncake day and all! This time it’s not the ones that we were given to by the university – I gave those away, but the ones that I was given to by some students. Very sweet of them, thank you!

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… Expo visitors are asleep! Never put off by a good sleep in various positions and on even more diverse surfaces, here a minuscule selection of photographs of the many sleeping Chinese at the Expo.

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Had the privilege to get a free ticket to see the Shanghai Expo yesterday. after reading about it on various other blogs and several hours of watching the Expo tv channel in hotels in Shanghai, I could not resist but to see it for myself. Summary of the day: it well worth it if you have a free ticket and a spare day, but don’t expect to see much from the inside … too many long queues and too much to see.

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Since there is nothing important, new and world moving to report on at the moment it’s back to reporting on the old and the mundane.

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After being off the air for quite some time, I feel compelled to share some pictures that were taken on my latest trip to Shanghai.

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