Greetings, my dear Hive fellows!
Weekend is always desirable for me, and it has become more desirable when I have 6 working days of the week. So, I always try to make great use of the weekend in my busy life in Beijing. Today was such a great weekend. I visited Beijing to meet some Bangladeshi friends and colleagues at my university. I left my dormitory at around 8:20 a.m. in the morning and came back to my room at around 10:00 at night. It is a long time because this is November, and the day starts very late in the morning, and the sunsets very early in the afternoon.
Luckily, I am lucky enough to live in such a place in Beijing that offers me a great opportunity to make every weekend a special one with the facilities of doing a lot of things around the city, such as visiting hundreds of scenic areas, experiencing thousands of cuisine from different region of China in hundreds o restaurants all over the Beijing Municipal. Transportation is also very flexible and comfortable, making your journey excellent without spending too much money on transportation costs.
But there is a problem for long-distance areas such as Huairou, where I live, which is around 50 km north-east of Beijing downtown and the last bus that is relatively faster leaves the city around 7:45 in the evening, and the slower version that may be left around 8:20. So, I have to be much more careful about the timing of these buses, though the subways are okay for up to midnight for some lines or at least 11:00 for all lines. Unfortunately, my living district, Huairou, has no subway; I think the people of Huairou eagerly wait to enter the Subway area, which will make the Beijing Subway a greater one. Actually, Beijing is so big, and there is another district in this region after my district, which is Miyun City, that also needs the Subway line, and one line can easily connect these two cities effectively to make these two places more friendly for the visitors.
I used to go to Beijing early in the morning to have sufficient time to cover all of my locations, but this weekend, I just wanted to visit the Yuquan Lu campus of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, where my fellow countrymen are currently living. There were 8 students together, and I wanted to meet them and have dinner with them, sharing our native foods and having a great time together.
So, I left my institute around 8:20 am, which is also early compared to my weekend routine, especially on the eve of winter when the temperature has already decreased. Though the outside was quite foggy in the morning, I later found that the weather became excellent, with a clear sky during the day. I arrived in Yuquan Lu around 10:55 am in the morning, and I meet one of the brothers and took breakfast together, which was actually launch for the Chinese people in Chinese culture but for us it is still breakfast time!
Then I met with the other guys, though many of them were still lying in bed as it was a weekend! Then, we prepared our food menu, and it took a long time. We all had our meal together around 4:300 pm. Meanwhile, we talked a lot and discussed many things that were related to us. Actually all f us were enjoying the moment as we have not enough countrymen to meet everyday here in abroad.
After we had our meal, we set out for a walk around the WuKeSong Arena, an indoor basketball stadium built during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now, this area has become a great shopping area, a place for mass gatherings to shop and eat delicious popular cuisine. Still, there was a very busy life there, and I saw a huge gathering of Chinese and some foreigners entering the stadium for some, even I guess. But I hadn't enough time to enter.
We walked around the shops, checked some of them, and bought some from some of the shops. We visited the Huawei and Xiaomi brand shops to check out their latest products. One of our brothers checked out the Huawei laptops, and we found it interesting how the company has remained in a strong position after the massive sanctions from the Western world.
We enjoyed the day together, but I was getting late to catch my bus from the Dongzhimen, which was quite far from the WuKeSong. So, after 6:30, I said farewell to them and took the line 1 subway to the bus station, from where I would take the bus for Huairou. Luckily, I got the last bus to go back to Huairou, which is the fastest version of the bus series. I was happy that I could back to my institute quite fater.
It was a day of memory that will last forever. I hope to meet them again sooner in the coming days to have some more great times together.
I hope you like my blog over the weekend. It was amazing to have such tours, to meet some amazing people in some amazing places to enjoy myself, and to lose myself away from my busy life! If you have any queries, let me know in the comments, and I will try my best to answer them.
Thanks a lot for your time and attention. I will catch up with you at the next one.
Wish you a great day!