La daabacay: 26.10.2016
Currently sitting at the airport in Hangzhou. Waiting for boring time is always boring. And if the phone is in airplane mode because you urgently need battery after the flight, it becomes really boring.
However, I noticed that I can create Word documents on my phone. So now the battery is being used again. :) Writing is a good pastime.
So, let me start telling the story. I am at the airport because I am flying to Hainan for a few days. Hainan is a Chinese island on the southern coast. It is particularly famous in China because of Sanya. The city is located in the south of the island and is a popular tourist destination. There are apparently so many Russian tourists there that even the road signs are in Cyrillic. I will find out if that's really true in a few hours. It would be easier for me because Cyrillic is much easier to read than Chinese characters.
I only found out that Sanya is such a touristy and beautiful place after booking my flight. That's why I am not flying to Sanya, but to Haikou. Sometimes it's useful to do some research in advance. 😅 But now it's not a problem. From Haikou Airport, I will take the high-speed train to Sanya in two hours. There, I will spend two days observing the Russian and Chinese tourists as well as enjoying the most beautiful beaches in China, and then I will continue my journey to the interior of the island. I will probably stay there for three nights before flying back to Hangzhou from Haikou.
The interior of the island is mainly mountainous and covered with rainforests and rice fields. That's what I am looking forward to the most. I have planned to stay in Wuzhishan, a small town with few tourists. Let's see how well I can manage there. :D My Chinese is still at the very beginning. Well, actually that's an overstatement. This week, I bought something at a night market for the first time and had a conversation completely in Chinese. I was extremely proud afterwards. However, it was only more than three sentences. :D
That's the current situation. After Hainan, I will try to write a small report about the island and my time there. I'm not exactly sure if it will work out. Because the weekend after Hainan, I will be going to Shanghai and the weekend after that, I will be going to Tianjin. The Goethe Institute is organizing a debate competition for Chinese German Studies students in Tianjin. I will be representing Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST) and supporting our team. It will definitely be exciting. :) Our goal is to reach the round of 16. No team from our university has achieved that so far.
Until the next report, greetings from Hangzhou Airport. :))