YEN, Chengde...

I'm now back in Beijing, having spent Saturday and Sunday in Chengde, which is the old 'Imperial Summer Palace' - a mountain retreat for the Emperors back in the 18th and 18th centuries. In fact, I was reminded by the plaque and the museum inside the palace that it is also the place where the Beijing Treaty was signed in 1860; which was 'the treaty of national humiliation' ceding hong kong etc to Britain (remember there was another museum dedicated to this in Yuanmingyuan in Beijing!)

Saturday, when we arrived, it was raining heavily, so we chose to visit 2 of the temples; 1 that is a miniature of the Potala Palace in Tibet, the other with a big carved goddess in it. Potala was interesting, the other one not so, and both charged a fortune to get it.

This morning we woke to beautiful sunshine and spent 3 hours hiking around the Imperial Palace which was fantastic; its huge with lots of green, forests and other stuff (the emperors built things that represented other chinese minorities as a sign of resepct). Lots of nice pictures on the website.

Random events in Chengde:
-found a hotel for 30rmb each...saw the rooms and promptly left!
-Chris being unprepared for rain, and thus walking around in shorts, t-shirts and a pink umbrella which he bought for 5rmb!
-cheap taxis (5 or 10 rmb maximum)
-fantastic train journey there and back with beatuficul countryisde, rivers, villages, cliffs etc. I LOVE China's scenery!
-being told not to walk on the path by 'officials' in the park in case we started forest fires (hmmm)

Earlier in the week I had attended a UN Youth Employment Network meeting people from the ILO (International Labour Office) and other 'experts' on youth. It was interesting, and came with nice food etc. We also had an opportunity to talk to John Elkington -the 'god' of CSR (the area of businesses being more responsible that I am interested in), which was great. Its official...the new 'buzzword' for CSR is 'blended value', since that is what the man himself has said. Actually his company(consultancy) has used that word in their reports before, but John created the phrase 'triple bottom line' over 11 years ago and its still the most used term.

We also had a reunion (from the inner mongolia trip) where we all went out to beautiful hou hai (my favourite place to hang out in the evenings, over a lake, in couches, wearing shorts) and I am now a twice weekly regular football player at lunchtimes (so unfut, especially playing in 25/30 degree heat).

We got a negative from Swiss Re on sponsoring AIESEC for CSR, so have to look for alternatives for that (hoping to get a powerful international business organsiation's chinese branch to endorse us and reccommend us to their members to sponsor us! -will meet them in about 10 days). This week I'm emailing all my contacts looking for (paid preferably) internships or long-term job opportunities. Depending on the replies I'll decide in a couple of weeks when/if I am travelling or working this summer, and also what kind of studying I will do next semester.

I'll end this now and post again with less 'personal' stuff soon!
Adam