the people's park

at the center of shanghai, near the shanghai museum, shanghai art museum, and nanjing road.

kari and sarah: supermodels for life

my friends look too sharp, loitering in black and red.

a failed attempt at a jumping picture

burgundy

i haven't done a good-ol'-fashioned outfit post in a bit.

here is what i wore to the first day of school this term: vintage black dress (long-sleeved with really thick fabric); beloved burgundy sweater that used to belong to my grandmother; scarf i bought at a "yard" (apartment) sale last year; thermal bottoms; and my favorite favorite boots, whose appearances i struggle to limit to a couple per week.

i'm in my new bedroom in a new apartment in this photo! my sadly white walls have, by now, been covered in posters.

shanghaied

, some shots from a trip to shanghai this fall...

it's surreal that i took this with my own camera:

at yuyuan bazaar. i'm wearing a scarf from suzhou. my cloisonne bracelet provides that essential little orientalist touch.

everyone's favorite japanese-h+m-type-thing on nanjing road, shanghai's actually charming hypercapitalist pedestrian street, which is similar to the more soulless wangfujing in beijing.

taking in the afternoon:

bar rouge, on the bund. some bits of shanghai were a little too shanghai for me, and the clubs fell into this category: compared to beijing, things were often too shiny, too westernized, too populated by expats--not beijing-y expats (NGO people, students, diplomats, artists), but really stereotypical expats (english-only, business, finance, real estate).

railways and waterways

photos from a trip to suzhou, near shanghai.

we ate a dinner of dumplings at the beijing train station before taking the overnight train. i love sarah's headband--you can just get a glimpse there of its gorgeous flowers.

bradford looking crazy on the train...crazy but well-dressed.

yep, i could probably live here. south china perfection.

my chinese teacher/friend at the stone lion grove garden in suzhou. love her flats.

en route to the local opera museum, we wandered suzhou's beautiful canals and bridges and wide alleys. lea had on her signature boots...i like them!

great big wall in china

continuing the trend of anachronistic posts, here is the second of my three visits to the great wall. my friends and i hiked from jinshanling (my favorite site on the wall) to simatai--hours out in the sun, and so beautiful.

look at that sky! (not to mention bradford's grin and sweet t-shirt)

descending stairs in a guardhouse in style. the shirt is one of those tees with nonsense english on it that is ubiquitous in china.

 

mimi, styling an american flag sweatshirt and ray-bans, against an incredible vista.

there was a great breeze coming in the windows of every guardhouse.

 

the forbidden city

photos from a day, long ago, this fall...when my class went to take in the forbidden city, beijing's old imperial palace. today the palace is still at the physical and political center of the city. tiananmen square takes its name from the outer southernmost gate of the palace.

in my autumn tourist's uniform: korean cardigan from the wholesale market near the beijing zoo and my university; vintage blazer (over my arm) that i got for free from a church basement sale in chicago, and puma sneakers from another similar charity sale...to me, the forbidden city is less about the spectacular architecture (my chinese art prof would call it "monumental") and more about the contrasts between the weird, super-flat, wide-open plazas between all the central buildings and the narrow, high-walled alleys in the imperial court quarters along the sides of the area.

the maze of red-walled side alleys. one of the best parts was the accidental plants growing on the gold roofs.

getting crazy in one of the museum rooms...blazer plus zoo market scarf.

we went to a charming alley/hutong near the lama temple for dinner. it is apparently the "next nanluoguxiang," but fortunately it's still got a bit of grit and funk to it. the alleys around it are not yet tourist-ified at all. if i move back to beijing (which i hope to), this is one of the neighborhoods i would like to live in:

we ate at the superb western-food vineyard cafe for dinner, in a gorgeous old courtyard house.

miaofengshan

we visited a huge number of temples in china this fall. here's the hike up to miaofengshan temple.

i love jimin's outfit. in the left of the photo.

at that point, we were still enjoying the gorgeous fall weather...we hiked all the way up to the buildings on top of that mountain!

 

 

a favorite chinese scarf, bought at the dongwuyuanr (beijing zoo) clothes market for 15 or 20 kuai, which translates to less than 3 american bucks.

schoolday

this exemplifies my average roll-out-of-bed-and-sprint-to-classroom outfit in beijing, at least before it got cold. i was spoiled this fall because our classes and dorm rooms were in the same giant building.

secondhand sweater and flats. dad's t-shirt. h&m mirror necklace and lace shawl.

that excellent little scar on my leg? from doing a cartwheel in my living room last spring and landing on an armchair...doesn't matter how many rocks i climb, caves i crawl through, or parties i dance at; it's always the weird small things that get me.

nanluogu alley evening

nanluoguxiang, a haunt of nels frye of my beloved stylites in beijing, is in one of my favorite areas of the city, just east of houhai. it's a traditional-ish hutong alley that now features boutiques, restaurants, bars, and cafes. some pictures of my first time on the alley below...more to follow.

 bradford, allison, kari at evening...allison in a nice skirt, as usual.

a bar: utopianism.

allison's gold scarf, at a restaurant in a restored old courtyard house.

i'm addicted to this place.

old beijing

i am back in the usa after fall abroad, and i still have a ton of photos to catch up on! below are some shots from around beijing.

allison surveying the west beijing sunset from our building.

mid-autumn festival tea on the lake in purple bamboo park, haidian district.

 

 

at propaganda, wudaokou.

 

 

bradford using my windowsill correctly.