Faith in Humanity: Welcome to Peking University!

I went to school at 8am this morning to do my VISA and it was utter chaos. The whole farce began yesterday but to keep the long story short, I concluded that it was faster to extend my VISA at the Immigrations Office myself. I'll probably do it next week or something.

So now I have 3 hours to kill before lesson begins. I decided to whip out my camera, take some pictures and bring you guys on a quick campus tour of Peking University.

The school has multiple entrances but as the Paralympics/ Olympics ping pong events were held in PKU, the gates are heavily guarded and only staff, students and spectators are allowed to enter the University.

The building in the background is the place where the ping pong events were staged. It's still cordoned off and this is the closest I can get without getting shot at by the police. Yes...There is a police station (not security guards) in the University.

The campus is clean and green but one thing you will notice is the vast number of bicycles parked everywhere. There are 2 types of bicycles in china. One is powered by electricity and you charge it as you would charge a handphone. The second is, of course, thigh powered.

This is one of the numerous canteens on campus. The food is not fantastic and service is crap but you can't really expect much when the most expensive item on the menu costs only 5 RMB (about 1SGD). A hot soya bean drink will set you back about 1RMB (20 cents).You pay using a stored value card.

This is the School CoOp. Check out the Old School notebook I am going to use. So primary school sia! Beside the normal things you may expect to find on a University Campus, there are also shops selling fresh produce from the farms, a shop selling bicycles and numberous banks and shops selling hot water bottles and buckets.

This is the PKU Library. It is the largest Library in Asia or so I am told. Looks BIG! I don’t think I will be spending much time there. Libraryphobia!~

If you have nothing to do in the evenings, you can also catch a movie on campus. There is a theatre on campus and tickets costs about 10RMB (thats SGD2!). They are showing Iron Man, Kungfu Panda and Red Cliff now. The only catch about the movies may be Robert Dowey Jr speaking Chinese instead of English. Seriously!

Another unique thing about PKU is the large number of parents following their (undergraduate) kids around. I saw a dad walk his son to the toilet to get hot water! Parents helping their 20 year-olds check their sitting arrangements prior to class is also a common sight here.

So are caucasians speaking perfect chinese (better than mine at least). There is one beside me in the cafe right now. But that is another story altogether.

I leave you with some of the sights of PKU.