Oh yeah, that bit.

So, I was going to write about the last day of my trip in Xiamen, but it just isn’t that interesting. I’ll throw in a couple of pictures to discuss the few highlights, but there weren’t many.

Jing and I’s first stop on the itinerary for the day was the Xiamen University, which has the repuation of being the most beautiful of all university campuses in Southern China. It was a bit of a snoozefest to me, but the buildings were certainly cleaned up and spiffy, in the way that they strived for, anyway. The problem was twofold: A) there just wasn’t that much of the campus to look at, and B) the damn wide open soviet realist style paved walkways. They could really use some more plants there, the climate is perfect for having a very lushly terrascaped place. Anyway, here’s a few pictures:

After that, we returned to Gulangyu, that tiny island just off the coast of Xiamen. Since the holiday of this holiday weekend had elapsed, it was a lot more mellow on the island that day. One of the things I most wanted to find at that point was a cafe, so we wandered around looking for one. I found one at the former German consulate, which served one of the most bizarrely named desserts ever:

Unfortunately, Jing didn’t want anything, only I was going to order something, and the cafe wouldn’t let us sit there unless we both ordered something. They were a little over-priced anyway, so I didn’t mind too much to have to leave, but the place wasn’t exactly bursting with customers, so it struck me as being a little too choosy with their clientele. Whatever, though.

We had already been inside all of the distinctive historical buildings and the like, so we just wandered, and I tried to take as many pictures of pretty buildings as I could manage. Here’s a few examples:

The plaza the last pictures were taken from was home to a bizarre bit of sculpture, or at least, I certainly think it was bizarre. It was a baby cupped in two alabaster hands, and I found it rather off-putting, but Jing didn’t agree with me. What’s your opinion?

While wandering, we came across a popsicle stand. This was most unexpected; I’d never seen popsicles in any fashion worth consuming in China. Sure, there are lightly flavored ice sticks for sale everywhere, but they look pretty nasty. The look of this stand was legit, though, so I was willing to give it a shot, and boy was I one satisfied customer. I got strawberry, but they had like a dozen flavors, and if I really had nothing better to do I’d consider sampling them all:

There really wasn’t much action after the popsicles. We came across a lot of people getting wedding photos taken, something I reported on several months ago, but I’ll throw up those pictures again for those who didn’t see them before:

(Here’s a link to the original story:

http://sandiegoson.blogspot.com/2010/06/everyone-loves-model.html )

Here’s just some pretty shots from around the edge of the island:

We finally found another cafe, later on. It was actually a really pretty place, and I think we were the only customers there. The coffee was actually pretty cheap, too, cheaper than Starbucks (which is cheaper than most coffee in China), and it was quite good. Their menu seemed to be made out of a small school notebook from 1960s China (in my mind), and here I have a picture of that as well as the environs:

After that, nothing to report. Here’s a series of successively darker shots of the area, corresponding with the fall of night upon us.

We had one last quiet night in Xiamen, and the next day it was off to the bus station. Our bus departures were separated by a couple hours, but not too long. I left first, and got strapped into a sleeper bus (metaphorically, mind you. China doesn’t do straps.) and mentally settled in for a 12 hour ride, which is what I was told would be the amount of time necessary to reach Shanghai. I actually cared about this, because I didn’t really want to miss any class on this particular day.

At first, I had a wonderful spot on the bus, as far as such things go. I got to lay down in one of the few slightly longer beds, because the entire bus was pretty much empty and I could take my pick. Unfortunately, only an hour later, we came to a transfer station and were ordered onto another bus that awaited our arrival, which was already mostly full up. This meant I had to take one of the regular beds, which was a few inches to short to accomodate my body laying in a straight line.

It was nighttime fairly soon, so after reading as much as I could of whatever book I had with me at that point, I did my best to try to actually sleep some. I got a bit, but nothing to be jealous of. 6am rolled around, and the time of our reported arrival fast approached. From my vantage point, it was impossible to get any clues from the roadside as to how far I had to go. Long story short: There was another 6 hours to go. This, for once, wasn’t due to me misunderstanding the service people, but rather just mostly because of traffic from the opening of the Shanghai World Expo, which was beginning that weekend. Yeah, the opening of the expo added SIX hours onto a transit time originally of 12. That’s insanity, in my book. But hey, maybe you guys heard the story recently about the week long traffic jam in Beijing? Needless to say, I missed all of my classes for that day, and my skeleton was pretty much in a trampled state from almost an entire day in a cockpit designed for someone half a foot shorter than myself.