Author: lauraleonilla

Mount Mogan 莫干山

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I was sorting out the pictures I took while living in Asia and finally decided to post some from the trip to Mount Mogan last fall. It was only a couple of hours away from shanghai and it was a very different experience of Chinese natre and culture. We satyed at a local hotel and had only real Chinese food during the two days, and besides the food I enjoyed the trip very much. It was really misty on the second morning when we climbed all the way up so I couldn’t get a clear picture of the whole view, but here’s something! The trip was arranged by Hutong School in Shanghai where I was taking Chinese classes at the time. They had other great activities too on a weekly basis and I highly recommend stydying there.

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View from the top of Mount Mogan
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Autumn leaves.
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Waterfalls. A tripod would have been useful for this one.

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There were many buildings around the mountain which some of were museums. We went inside some buildings but there were just old furniture and pictures on the walls. I didn’t take any pictures since it didn’t seem that special to me I enjoy more photographing nature, landscapes and such.

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There were somekind of ribbons hanging from the trees, we didn’t figure out why but looks nice.
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Forest mist

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I would have loved to have this picture with a clear landscape view on the back. Sadly the weather wasn’t too good but I might go again one day. I’m going to graduate with a bachelor’s degree soon and will apply for master studies in other Nordic Countries, if I won’t get in anywhere I like I’ve decided to take a couple months off from work and go to Beijing for an intensve Chinese course and travel around the country. Not a bad option either. I’m still taking Chinese classes here in Finland but I’m learning soooo much more slowly than back in Shanghai. I will write about learning the language soon!

 

Like it’s my Bithday.

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It’s my birthday today! I usually celebrate with my few closest friends but this year I was too lazy (or too old). However I always need a birthday cake, this year I put flamingos on it. The flowers I got from my dear roommate.

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The “party” was yesterday, I’ll be working tomorrow morning so right now I’m at my parents’ working on another jigsawpuzzle timelapse. 6000 pieces, I’m now done with the easy parts so from now on the process is sloooow. But I’ll get there. ❤️

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Jigsaw puzzles

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I’ve always had a thing on jigsaw puzzles. Ever since I was child I could spent hours sitting on the floor until the puzzle was finished. In general I like puzzles from 2000 pieces up, this one had 1000 pieces but I chose it because I wanted to try something…

I recently came up with an idea to combine my favorite hobbies, photography and puzzles. I’ve always taken pictures of my puzzles before putting them back into their boxes but now I wanted to try something different. I had never made timelapse videos before, but the idea of beign able to see the whole process from the beginning was fascinating.

I tried it out by making a three second clip when I was flipping the pieces and was surprised how easy it was. With the actual puzzle it was difficult to estimate how long it would take to finish, sometimes it takes four hours, sometimes more than ten. I shot one frame per minute in order to keep the film fairly short. It turned out pretty well for my first one but I noticed things I will have to take into account in the future so I also learned a lot from my little experiment.

Enjoy, there will be more to come!

Missing Asian food…

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I had had enough of Asian food by the time I left Shanghai in December. I was missing the vegetarian diet, foods cooked in an owen (Asian kitchens don’t have owens), proper bread, candy, etc.

However, the grass is always greener on the other side, I’ve started to miss especially all the spicy korean food, sticky rice on almost every meal, trying new foods all the time… There’s one Korean restaurant in Helsinki, it’s really good but rather expensive. Chinese food is of course available everywhere but it’s made to suit western taste and it’s rarely the stuff you could find in Shangai.

Kimchi and other stuff
Kimchi and other stuff
Korean seafood
Korean seafood
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In Korea the food is often cooked at the table.

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I really missed all the sweet stuff from Finland while in Asia, although there were some goodies available. I’m relly picky when it comes to the high sugar, high calorie things. If it’s just okay it’s not worth eating. In Shanghai I ate so many Snickers bars that I haven’t felt like having one since then.

Especially in Korea many coffee places have all kinds of local things that taste great!

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Korean dessert bingsu

Eating together and sharing food with other people is important and a lot more fun than the Finnish eating habits…

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There are some foods I don’t really miss, inluding intestines, lungs… In general everything’s worth trying, but sometimes one try is enough.

Chicken soup
Chicken soup

Back in Finland

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So… Shanghai and Korea times are over for now. I had so many other things in mind during the last weeks in Asia I didn’t put any effort on updating this. And I’ve now been in Finland for a month and gotten the most important (school) things done, so I can finally start again. It’s cold and dark here but it’s okay for now, I’m just happy to be back in school.

I missed the new year in China, but we celebrated in Finland too. Although I’m pretty sure it would have been better there. Maybe next year. And I’m still learning Chinese!

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Chinese new year in Helsinki.

Hope there’s still someone interested in what’s going on in my life. I’ll be posting some pictures from my travels in the near future!

Beijing

~ lauraleonilla ~ 2 Comments

During my stay in China I had to of course visit the capital Beijing (北京). I didn’t really plan my trip, just booked one night in a hostel and took the train to the city. Later on my arrival night my three week-old iPhone broke down, so I had to came back to Shanghai already the next day. Two or three nights would have been enough time to see all the essential places, but with my Chinese skills, without internet or phone I just couldn’t do it. I recommend planning better than I did.

I didn’t know much about the city before going, I just wanted to see the great wall, which I had to pass due to my very limited schedule. But I got a couple of cool pictures to show. 🙂

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Some Chinese flags at Tiananmen square.

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Some kind of buildings.

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Garden expo had all kinds of plants, trees and different styles of buildings. The admission fee was about 100 yuan, a bit pricey, but we only live once…

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This was on my to do list right after the Great wall, the great Beijing duck! There was another one in Hong Kong before and now they’re everywhere. Since Chinese people love to copy, I’ve heard that they’ve made a lot of diffrent ducks for promotional purposes but I’ve never seen another big one besides this. A lot of stuffed animals with the same design are sold all over the country though.

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Beijing is definitely worth visiting while in China. It’s often packed with (Chinese) tourists, but if you want to see something very Chinese, then Beijing is the place. In many ways Shanghai is like any big city, except for the location, but I could imagine living in Shanghai is more fun than in Beijing.

 

Air quality in Shanghai

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The air quality in China and Shanghai is never the best possible, but right now it’s on its worst possibly ever. This is how the view from our balcony looked like today. It was already bad yesterday but this was something I had never seen before.

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According to Business Insider and common sense the pollution is caused by the lack of wind, increasing amount of cars and factories working for Christmas season. Yesterday (Dec. 5th) the air quality index was somewhere around 400, which is hazardous. Today it was over 500, “beyond index”. 

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My roommate said he had wanted to buy a mask but they were sold out everywhere. I’m just hoping the smog will pass asap, below a picture from about a month ago on a normal day and on the right side today.

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Yu yuan Garden

~ lauraleonilla ~ 2 Comments

While still living in Shanghai I had to visit some more tourist attractions, so I went to Yu yuan some time ago. Yu garden is located in the old city of Shanghai, surrounded by some horrible souvenir shops where Chinese people try to sell you cheap Made in China stuff with a profit margin about 90% high.

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The garden itself is beautiful and more “Chinese looking” unlike most of Shanghai. I went during the week at afternoon and it wasn’t very crowded, I don’t know about weekends and holidays though. The admission fee was a couple of euros and well worth it.

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Lanterns

There were a lot of different kinds trees and plants, including bamboos of course.

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Bamboos

Seeing so many ponds with koi fish in China made me curious about what happens to them during the winter. I looked it up and apparently they survive even snow and ice.

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Koi fish

In China dragons symbolize power, strength and all kinds of good things. I’ve heard that a lot of parents want their child to be born in the year of the dragon. I was one of the lucky kids.

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Dragon wall

The garden has also many Chinese style buildings between the trees and plants.

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Right outside the garden the area is packed with foreign and chinese tourists, worth walking through but personally I prefer shopping on eBay.

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Outside the garden

Chinese printing

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I’ve been doig some work for my roommate’s business and this time we wanted to get boxes printed for tablet pc’s. I prepared a file with Illustrator and we took it to a printing shop. They made us a sample, it was accepted and the production could begin. They printed us a bit over 100 boxes…

The original logo for the print.
The original logo for the print.

However, someone at the printing shop decided to use his design skills by modifying the original logo. Some of the straight lines on the letters were made curvy and something weird happened for the lower part of the X-letter.

The new logo.
The new logo.

There was also some stuff between the paper and the box. The guys were eating rice while working?

Something between the box and paper.
Something between the box and the paper.

We suggested the printing place would just print out new paper/ sticker whatever to cover the boxes that were messed up, but they said they couldn’t do it, so we’re now waiting for whole new boxes. Looking forward for the result!

And btw none of us are professionals on graphic design, but aren’t the businesses supposed to do what we pay them for, not what they think might look cool? Especially when not informing the customer of the changes made on the design.

China is sometimes like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get!

Feeling lucky?

~ lauraleonilla ~ 2 Comments

Somekind of packaging found from a Chinese convenience store. I’m still not able to read 汉字 but i’m prettty sure this litte red box will help anyone to get lucky!

(Red is the color of good luck in China.)

Who wouldn't wish to get lucky with her?
Who wouldn’t wish to get lucky with her?