Hi Everyone,
Thank you so much for returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog (sorry for the delay, things were pretty busy here this weekend). I hope you’re all doing well and staying safe and healthy! I know that for many of you in academia, it’s the start of the summer, so I hope that your semester wrapped up nicely and that you’re enjoying the warmer weather. Here in Beijing, things have certainly heated up! It now feels like summer is in full swing as the thermometer tops over 90 degrees most days. Thankfully the humidity in Beijing has not been terrible (though the air quality has). Although no longer the focus of the blog, China is currently in the midst of a second, much smaller COVID wave. I’ve continued to stay safe & healthy (fingers crossed for my upcoming travel) and thankfully most people who’ve tested positive appear to have mild cases (Here’s hoping there isn’t any sort of return to COVID Zero coming). While I still was able to do a lot of fun things this month, the central event was definitely attending my first conference in person as a postdoc! I hope you all enjoy hearing about what I was up to this month!
Vegan Cooking Class! Dandan Noodles, Kung Pao Tofu, Sour & Spicy Celtuce Salad
One of the highlights of my May was that I got to go to another amazing Vegans of Beijing cooking class with Chef Zhou! This month, we made dandan noodles, kung pao tofu, and sour & spicy celtuce! Some of you may remember that we’ve actually already made dandan noodles, but they’re one of the most popular dishes – and one of my favorites (we don’t get the same people coming every month, so I’m totally fine repeating a dish). I was really excited about Kung Pao Tofu, because in my opinion you can never have too much tofu and I was also excited to learn how to cook celtuce! As usual, we started with all of the prep work first (I like this, so that we’re not eating lunch at 11:30 – we start the classes at 10:30). The first dish we made was the Sour & Spicy celtuce. For those of you who didn’t know what celtuce was, you’re not alone! I only knew it existed because when Jesse was in lockdown, he received some. Celtuce is a Chinese “stem lettuce” (also called “wo sun” in Mandarin), so it’s a rather fibrous plant, but it makes for a tasty dish when cooked properly (Jesse’s difficulty figuring out what to do with it made me wonder how we’d use the celtuce). Although this dish looks pretty simple, and only required a handful of ingredients, it was a delicious and refreshing salad! We chopped celtuce and carrot into super fine strings (almost like a shoestring potato) and then added some garlic to our bowl. The only cooking is done entirely by the oil. We heated some cooking oil with chilis (almost making a mock chili oil), and then poured that over the salad. The resulting dish had all of the freshness of the crispy carrots and celtuce, but also a ton of warm spice from the chili oil! It was really delicious!
For our second dish, we made dandan noodles! Having done this before, it was fun to pay a bit closer attention to Chef Zhou since I knew what the steps were and I could see if I could pick up some of the nuance he brings to the kitchen. While my knife skills won’t compare, I did love making this dish. We start with our topping, which is rehydrated shiitake mushrooms. One of the things that I’ve never realized is why dried mushrooms are so much more popular here then they are in the US. According to Chef Zhou, it’s that drying the mushrooms brings an added depth of flavor, whereas the view on fresh mushrooms is that they’re rather bland. While I still love fresh mushrooms, the array of dried mushrooms available here is amazing! We then add our spicy topping of mushrooms, garlic, and ginger to our delicious fresh noodles. As I think I mentioned last time, the Chinese noodle is different from the Italian noodle. Though the ingredients are similar (modular the exact type of flour), Chinese style noodles are meant to be served soft, so no al dente. The fresh noodles are really delicious (and usually vegan – the egg noodle varieties are generally specified) and I love how long they are!
The last dish was Kung Pao Tofu, which was one of my favorites! I’m going to go out on a limb and assume people are familiar with Kung Pao Chicken, so this was the vegan version. We started by lightly marinating the tofu and then we pan fried it on low heat with lots of spicy chilis, before finishing it off with leeks and cashews! For those wondering, the tofu is firm, but not super firm (we don’t press the tofu), so the finished product isn’t not overly crunchy (it could be deep fried, but we didn’t do it that way) and the cashews and leeks add a really nice flavor balance. It was a super delicious dish and one that I can’t wait to try to make again.
All in all, this was another amazing cooking class and all three recipes are ones that I’ll definitely be making again soon! I’m so glad that these Vegans of Beijing cooking classes exist since it lets me get a better sense of Chinese cuisine! I’m definitely a bit bummed that I’ll miss the next class, but know that I’ll be at the ones later in the summer (I might even be organizing one of them)!
The 25th Chinese Astronomical Society Guoshuojing Symposium of Galaxies and Cosmology
Two weeks ago, I went to my first in person astronomy conference since I went to a Galaxy Cluster conference in Sesto, Italy in 2019. This time, the conference was in Huangshan, a city in China known for the iconic Yellow Mountain, one of the most majestic mountains in all of China. Because Huangshan is reachable via high speed train, I decided to take the ~ 6 hour train to Huangshan. Because Huangshan is much closer to Shanghai, I was able to meet up with Jesse when I arrived (Jesse also attended the conference). Once we made it to the hotel, we were greeted with possibly the most European atmosphere I’ve ever seen in China! I was definitely a bit surprised by how aesthetically Italian/Renaissance inspired the hotel was!
Because the conference was Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning, Jesse and I arrived on Friday afternoon (my talk was Saturday and I didn’t want to get in super late on Friday). On Friday, Jesse and I met up with my friend Paulo (he used to be a postdoc at Tsinghua) and went with some of his colleagues to explore the old city of Huangshan. We walked through a seemingly endless array of markets, seeing everything from amazing displays of dried fruits (the dried pineapple is amazing), to teas, trinkets, and food stalls. Jesse and I even got some really cool Chinese dragon figurines that have a carving at the base for a stamp! Because I don’t have a Chinese name, I went with “Zhen Xiang”, which is the Chinese word for truth (“Emet” means truth in Hebrew). It was interesting to see a radically different city. While Beijing and Shanghai has very different vibes, both are megacities with lots of tall skyscrapers and modern conveniences, whereas Huangshan felt older and a bit less hyper modern! Although there were still lots of fun art installations around the market area, the area we visited definitely felt a bit less overly commercial than the hutong shopping area near my apartment (there were far fewer anime figurines and a bit more traditional Chinese gifts). Because of the heat, we got some honeydew ice cream and a delicious waxberry juice to cool off (If you’ve never spent a summer in China, it gets REALLY HOT)!
After exploring Huangshan, Jesse and I met up with Jesse’s PhD supervisor, Chris Miller, who had been visiting China for about two months prior to the conference. I’ll share more about the conference in the next paragraph, but getting to hang out with Chris and chat about science was really helpful and definitely the highlight of the conference for me! Although Chris is far more focused on the statistical side of Astronomy than I am, he has done work with bent radio AGNs, so Jesse and I spent about an hour picking his brain about Project Low-Z and some future follow-up projects to it! It was also just really nice to see a familiar face! While I’ve met a lot of really nice people here in Beijing, this was the first time that I saw someone other than Jesse that I knew prior to coming to China (ironically, this week’s seminar speaker was also an Astronomer who does cluster science that I knew from when she was at Harvard and I was at BU). Additionally, Jesse got to take part in a mini Michigan reunion as he and Chris were joined by Prof. Hui Li (who’s now at Tsinghua), who got his PhD at Michigan a few years before Jesse. If anyone who’s reading this from BU has any plans to travel to China, please let me know! It’d be great to see another familiar face!
In terms of the conference, it was an interesting experience. While the science program appeared to be filled with interesting talks, because it is a Chinese conference (there were only ~ 10 foreigners), the overwhelming majority of the talks were in Mandarin. While I knew that going in, it was rather frustrating, because it was never clear which talks would be in English and which is Mandarin. If the title was in Mandarin, I assumed the talk would be in Mandarin, but if the title was in English, I had hope (and it was usually quashed). As such, there was many a talk that I couldn’t follow despite being interested (it is really difficult to both pay attention and follow a talk when the presenter is speaking a language I don’t know). It also made any of the coffee breaks and socializing that much harder as everyone was speaking in Mandarin and I can’t (and it really made me feel rather self-conscious about just being there). While the breaks are usually great for science discussion and setting up the collaborations, because of the language barrier, I didn’t really interact with anyone that I didn’t already know. Thus, I spent a lot of time doing my own research and paper edits while talks went on. I will say that most of the people from Tsinghua (except my supervisor who gave a Plenary talk and felt compelled to give it in Mandarin) gave talks in English, so at least I could follow those (those are who I took photos of – and I had to highlight that Skidmore Prof. Mary Crone-Odekon’s 2016 paper got a shout out at the conference!)!
In terms of the actual conference, I gave a talk on Project Morphology, my study of the shape of galaxies in protoclusters, on Saturday and I think it was well received. If you’re wondering how I have so many photos of my presentation, it’s because one of the grad students in my group was acting as de facto photographer for everyone in the group!
Jesse gave a talk on his work on the satellite population and halo masses of galaxy cluster on Sunday. And congratulations are in order as Jesse won an award for best oral presentation!
While I’ve spent much of the blog highlighting the amazing array of vegan and vegetarian foods available in Beijing and Shanghai, the reality is that Chinese cuisine is not super vegetarian friendly, especially in the smaller cities (and if you can’t really speak to the chef). While there are a lot of vegetable and tofu dishes, many of them traditionally contain small amounts of meat, which means that when a conference provides buffets for all of the attendees, those with dietary restrictions are out of luck. While the restaurant at the conference venue had signs for the foods indicating whether something contained various allergens, the signs didn’t correspond to the dishes put out, so it didn’t help. Most days, Jesse and I just ended up baozi, corn, and potatoes from breakfast and rice, bok choy, and corn for lunch and dinner (thankfully Jesse and I had brought lots of snacks). Despite the poor meals, I did have some good conversations, with Jesse, Paulo, Chris, and a few other people that I knew at the conference at meal times!
As I mentioned previously, Huangshan, the surrounding region, is known for the iconic Yellow Mountain. Unfortunately, because of our limited travel time and the conference, Jesse and I weren’t able to visit the mountain. Instead, you’ll have to enjoy my photos of the mountainous terrain from the train. Despite the conference and the lack of English being quite frustrating, it was wonderful to spend time with Jesse (and see Paulo and Chris) and really nice to return to a conference setting!
Astronomy Life / Life at Tsinghua
Outside of the conference, which was my big event this month, I spent a lot of time working on my paper revisions for Project Radio. I’m happy to say that I’m almost done! I’ve finished redoing all of the spectral index analysis following the referees suggestions and just need to finish editing the paper and remaking a few plots. Thankfully, I’m happy to report that while I understand some of the referees concerns with how we did the analysis, none of the results changed substantially. Thus, while I’m still editing the paper, I’m not dramatically changing the conclusions! Although not quite done, this Friday I had the opportunity to present this work at the lunch talks at Tsinghua. While I’ve given a lot of 15 – 20 minute talks over the last year, it’s been a while since I gave a 45 minute talk, so it was really great to flex those muscles again. I think the project was well received and people seemed really interested in what I’ve found. Additionally, I’ll be heading for a short trip to Leiden next week to discuss future LOFAR related projects with my collaborators there, so hopefully we can figure out some cool ideas to explore in the future.
The other project that I spent probably the bulk of the month working on was Project Morphology. As I’ve mentioned quite a bit over the last few months, this project has been a long and winding road of successes and failures in terms of trying to get the analysis to a point where I’m happy with it. As of last month, I finally have the Galapagos program working, so that’s been a great help and I’ve compiled all of the results so that I can compare our protocluster sample to galaxies at similar redshifts (essentially galaxies that are at the same era in the universe) but not in clusters. Unfortunately, on the Saturday morning of the conference, I woke up to find out that this work had been scooped by one of Zheng’s competitors. Since all of the Hubble data we are using is publicly available, it’s not anything nefarious, just rather frustrating as they found similar results in terms of the abundance of mergers looking at the same protoclusters. Right now, the focus has been on re-checking my analysis (we don’t quite get the same results for the individual galaxy properties, which is odd since we used the same analysis tools) and figuring out what the best way to move forward is. I’ve chatted with both Zheng and Song Huang, another faculty member here, as well as some of my other collaborators, and we’ve come up with a few other ideas that I’ll be working on in the coming weeks. However, it’s definitely super frustrating.
In terms of Project Low-Z, Jesse’s done some great work on the statistics of the clusters and the faction of brightest galaxies hosting bent AGNs. I’m working to compile the radio catalogs for the observations of the bent radio AGNs in low-z clusters. I’m cautiously optimistic that if I’m productive this month, I should have some new analysis later this month/early next month. I’m also still working on Project Quench and hope to have some more time soon to continue that analysis and better look at the array of wavebands available for our analysis. Here’s hoping it’s a productive next few months as I’d love to get two if not three papers (including Project Radio) submitted by the time I apply for my next postdoc position in the fall.
Outside of my own research, we had two really good seminars this month. The first was given by my brother’s supervisor Ying Zu (it was really funny to see him do a double take when he saw me in the front row). Since I hadn’t met Ying before, it was really great to meet him in person! He spoke very highly of Jesse, but was also really interested in my work, especially my work on radio AGNs. The second talk was that for the first time we had an in person seminar speaker that I knew (and a seminar speaker that I knew who I did not directly invite)! Prof. Yuanyuan Su (from the University of Kentucky) gave this past Thursday’s seminar on her work on low-z clusters. Yuanyuan was a postdoc at Harvard when I was at BU, so I’d chatted with her quite a bit as my PhD supervisor collaborates quite a lot with that group and I’ve attended many a group meeting and local cluster meeting. It was really nice to chat with her and tell her about my work (and hear about hers)! Also, last week, I arranged for my colleague Lu Shen to give a talk in Zheng’s group meeting so that she could tell us about her work with JWST. Lu is also working on galaxy morphology and we’ll be collaborating on some of her upcoming work, which is also looking at galaxy morphology in protoclusters.
Beyond research, the Department of Astronomy also hosted an informal gathering to promote a bit of department cohesion and socialization. When I was at BU, the grad students, postdocs, and professors would interact far more regularly (typically at social hours on Friday or after seminars at the BU pub), so I was glad to see the Tsinghua Astronomy Department take this initiative. This is the first social activity the department did and it is really nice to see the department make an effort! The focus of the event was to just hang out and get to know others better. The event space was held at an arcade of sorts (basically, the venue had billiards, ping pong, karaoke, arcade games, and video games). While our initial ice breaker activity was a bit difficult for me (since everyone was speaking Mandarin), I really enjoyed the latter half, playing pool, pop a shot, and singing karaoke (I sang Fix You, Desperado, Superman (it’s not easy), and Viva La Vida). It was a lot of fun and I hope the department will do some more social events soon!
Goldie!
This was another wonderful month for Goldie! She continues to love to burrow under the covers and explore every nook and cranny in my apartment. Lately, she’s decided the the shower (when it isn’t on) and the closet are her favorite places to hang out (I don’t know if it’s because the weather is heating up or what, but for whatever reason it’s always cute to pop into the bathroom and see her just waiting in the shower). Regardless of where in my apartment Goldie decides to spend the day, or if I catch her in full nap mode, mid yawn, or just staring at me, she is a bundle of joy!
Also, she’s decided that despite all of the toys I’ve bought for her, the chords from bags are the best toys!
I will say that with the conference, she definitely missed me and was excited to see me come back! One of my friends of Kehillat Beijing watched her, and I could really tell how lonely she was by the time I got back. While I’m definitely a bit nervous to leave her alone as I travel (I’ll be gone two weeks), I’m comforted to know that another friend from Kehillat Beijing will be stopping by to check on her, clean the litter, and make sure she has plenty of food and water! I’m really going to miss her when I travel abroad.
Vegan Food (Including an AMAZING Vegan Buffet)
At the beginning of the month, I went to an amazing vegan buffet at Vege Tiger with a friend from the Vegans of Beijing. For only 80rmb (approximately $12) there were ~ 100 different delicious dishes and boy did those dishes not disappoint! Everything that I tried was amazing! The buffet was mostly Chinese food, but did feature a couple Western dishes (including veggie burgers, tacos, and pizza – though I stuck to the Chinese food). I think the only down side is that there were so many items that it’s hard to just really enjoy one dish since there were so many I wanted to try! I definitely plan to go back and eat some more!
I also had a lovely dinner at Tianchun Miaoxiang, the vegetarian restaurant near Tsinghua with Pablo and Daniele! We got orange juice, “military tofu” with a delicious spicy mock meat, mushrooms with okra, bamboo and seitan stir fry, string mushrooms with veggie sausage, fried lotus root, and flame tofu! This has definitely become our go to restaurant (I’m so glad that my friends are willing to eat vegan food with me)! Everything was delicious, but the mushrooms and bamboo were my favorite!
At the end of May, Jesse’s friend Sarah visited Beijing, so I got to hang out with her and some of her friends and show her a bit around Beijing. We went to Fuhui Ciyuan, my favorite vegetarian restaurant in Beijing (it’s the one by the Forbidden City that I went to with Jesse). Because we were a large group, we got to try a ton of different dishes. We got chrysanthemum tea (which came with a delicious fruit platter), yellow peach juice, fried eggplant, eggplant & sword beans (a dish I learned how to make with Vegans of Beijing), sea grapes (a very unique seaweed-y taste there), bamboo & veggie chicken, vegetarian duck (which comes with wonton wrappers and you make into a delicious little taco), spicy mushroom skewers, curry with scallion pancakes, fried beans, mustard mushrooms, fried seitan strips, and tofu with a spicy salsa. My favorite dishes were the mushroom skewers, eggplant (both), and the curry! It was an amazing dinner and it was so fun to make some new friends and show people Beijing!
With the conference, I didn’t do as much vegan cooking this month, but I did make some delicious veggie burgers, seitan, and lentil guochujang stir fry! Also, with the return of the crazy high temperatures, it’s official popsicle season! I’ve been really enjoying my 3 ingredient lemonade popsicles (seen below) as a good way to beat the heat. And although I didn’t make it, I did enjoy a really tasty vegan oatly ice cream bar!
Jewish Life in Beijing
Since my last blog post, I went to three delicious and festive Shabbat dinners (I missed one when I was at the conference). With Roberta & Ted back in Beijing, it’s been really nice to have a larger crowd for Shabbat! While I enjoyed the smaller Shabbats in April, it’s just so nice to have a room full of people singing together. Our first Shabbat was a tradition Kehillat Beijing shabbat, featuring delicious food from Ted!
Because of Shavuot, last week was our Shavuot Shabbat! This was also one of the first Shabbat’s where we had tourists joining us (ok, these were people who had lived in Beijing and were coming back for a trip, but nice to see some new faces). Roberta really outdid herself with two delicious challahs (especially the pesto one), and we had a lovely meal overall!
This past week, we had an amazing Italian Shabbat! Roberta made a delicious garlic challah (the savory flavors are really good) and Ted cooked us an Italian feast! We also had a huge crowd, so it was great to see a lot of people, especially before the summer kicks in and people start to travel more.
While I’m a bit bummed to miss the next two Shabbats because of my travel, I’m so glad to see the Kehillat Beijing community thriving! It’s definitely a defining part of my time in Beijing and I can’t imagine what it would be like to be here without it.
Exploring Beijing
This month I did a lot of exploring of Beijing! Here are some of the cool statues and subway art that I saw around the city (most of it is from the Qianmen area near Vege Tiger)!
And here are some of my favorite photos of random statues, stickers, bike blankets, and everything in between!
Also, I saw lots and lots of flowers. While the weather is starting to get to the point that it is so hot that flowers can’t really thrive anymore, they still look beautiful (we probably have another week of peak flower season). I’m sure for many of you, all of your flowers are in bloom, so hopefully you’re enjoying all of the flowers just like me!
China Drawings
This month I have two new drawings to share with you all (I have a couple more that didn’t quite get finished it time, so I’ll share those next month). The two drawings are pretty different, but both were “loosely” inspired by people watching in academic talks. Let me know what you think!
Animals of Beijing
Outside of Goldie, I also saw some cute cats and dogs this month. Of course, I have to highlight my favorite puppies in Beijing, Mimi & Honey! They’re always so friendly and they’re really good at begging for food! I also saw a lot of neighborhood cats (including some who live with my neighbors).
Jesse and I also spotted some friendly cats in Huangshan!
However, the highlight was definitely these adorable kittens who joined our cooking class this month! Chef Zhou told us that he has new neighbors in his hutong who have cats and cats came strolling into the courtyard as we cooked and ate (I assume the non-Vegan classes have more cat-friendly ingredients) and were just overall adorable!
What Was I Reading/Watching
In terms of books this month, I’m still reading Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden (no relation). Set in Boston, Dead Ringers tells the story of what happens when deadly dopplegangers appear and try to take over your life. I’m a big fan of Chris’s previous suspense/thriller work (I’ve met Chris multiple times at Boston Comic Con) and he does a fantastic job of blending the spooky and supernatural! It’s really a fun read (and also really nice to revisit Boston in literary form!
As many of you are likely aware, this was a big month in terms of TV. Starting in chronological order, I finished Extrapolations on Apple TV+. Featuring an all-star cast (including Daveed Diggs playing a Rabbi!), Extrapolations is an anthology show telling a series of interconnected stories about the near future and the potential climate catastrophe. Although it definitely isn’t an uplifting show, it’s incredibly poignant and highlights a lot of the current concerns with the rise of carbon emissions and our inability to curb global warming. I definitely recommend it. Later in the month, I finished the final season of NCIS: Los Angeles. While NCIS: Los Angeles has never been my favorite show and at times, the show teetered a bit too much toward the ultra-violent/glorification of the American military for me, it was always an enjoyable show and I’ll definitely miss having the adventures of Callen, Sam, Kenzi, and Deeks every week. It’s also a bit surreal because the show has been on for 14 seasons, so I was in college when it started (and having just missed my 10 year Brown Reunion, that also feels a bit surreal). Next, I finished the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. While I was a bit skeptical coming in as the 4th season had let me down a bit, I really think they stuck the landing in season 5! As always I loved the dynamic between Rachel Brosnahan’s Midge and Alex Boorstein’s Susie. While the time jumps threw me at first (I really thought I played the wrong show), I liked getting to see into the future for these characters. I also really loved getting to conclude the show with Midge’s set on the Gordon Ford show. It was really nice to see some growth with the characters, too! Also, I was surprised, but glad that the show did include the decline of Lenny Bruce, as I always wondered how they would contrast the sunny disposition of the show with his sad ending. Lastly, I loved having Jason Ralph (Rachel Brosnahan’s real-life husband) on the show (I loved him in The Magicians on Syfy). Just last week, I finished the 4th and final season of Titans on Max. Titans has been one of my favorite superhero shows because they really do a great job of highlighting the unique team dynamic of the Teen Titans and Brenton Thwaites does a great job of playing Dick Grayson/Nightwing. I really enjoyed exploring “The Red” and turning Tim Drake into Robin! While the live action super hero tv shows have sometimes been hit or miss, I’ve really enjoyed Titans and will definitely miss it. I also finished the third (and likely final) season of Ted Lasso! Ted Lasso has been one of my favorite shows since I first watched it (thank you Shelby for the recommendation). Ted Lasso has always been a feel good show and I love the spirit of optimism and determination that resonates within it. In particular, I felt like the focus of this season was on forgiveness and I really liked the parallels created between Jamie’s narrative with his father and Nate’s narrative with quitting and returning to the team. I particularly loved Ted’s rather trippy experience where he comes up with “total football.” I also liked seeing the growth of Roy and Jamie’s friendship and seeing them grow from unfriendly teammates to best friends. Ultimately though, I just love getting the dose of optimism from Ted and as someone who hasn’t seen his family in a long time, the idea of needing to be with your loved ones really hit home. I also really loved the entire message and take home of the finale! It was some marvelous television! The last show that I finished was The Flash. The last remaining show in the CW’s Arrowverse, the final season of the Flash was definitely a bit of a disappointment. The show’s early seasons were great, but the last few have been less and less enjoyable as they replaced known comic characters with original characters who just weren’t that interesting. While it’s sad to see the end of the Arrowverse, I’m hoping future comic book tv shows can be a bit fresher and less repetitive.
East Meets West
In my exploring Beijing, I saw a few distinct American (and European) influences. When Jesse’s friend Sarah was visiting, we walked around Wangfujing and popped into a Lego Store and saw some of the most amazing Lego displays!
Additionally, I saw some cool Tom & Jerry graffiti in Huangshan and some other cool Tom & Jerry, Disney, and Powerpuff girls decals (and a cool moving Little Mermaid trailer/advertisement). I also saw a “Wassup” t-shirt (I had to snap a picture of this because of the t-shirt my Aunt Pam got me as a kid), the first KFC in China, and some interesting NBA apparel!
Anime & Comics
And of course, no Astronomer in Beijing blogpost would be complete without all of my photos of anime & comics statues, figurines, and stickers. This month, I saw a ton of Pokemon stickers & lots of Hello Kitty! I also saw some one piece, Dragon Ball Z, Slam Dunk stickers, as well as some cool new Batman figurines (and yes, I’ve already bought one of them – don’t worry, they’re small). As always, I love stumbling by some cool anime and comics stuff. However, I think my favorite was these awesome JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures panels that I saw on a bike at Tsinghua!
For those of you who made it this far, thank you so much for reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed hearing what I was up to in Beijing (and Huangshan) in May. As always I’d love to hear from you, so if you’d like to comment, please message me below, or e-mail me directly. As you’re reading this (especially if you start Monday night US time), I’ll be on my way for a two week trip abroad, so my next post might be a bit shorter (since I’m focusing on life in China on here), but I know I already have some fun plans that I can’t wait to share with you. I hope that for all of you, that June is a good month and that you stay safe, healthy, and cool!
In Peace,
Emmet
