Fujian Winter Trip 2012

Last year I participated in a week-long winter youth camp in Xiamen and its immediate neighboring city Quanzhou. Since it was an organized tour and everything happened so fast, I wasn't able to take down notes. Besides, we had a bus which took us to the places we visited and most of the time we were asleep. That's what I don't like about tours, everything is well-planned and you don't get to choose your destinations. However, it saves one from stress in commuting and struggling in an unfamiliar territory. I may speak their language but I am not at all confident in navigating through the area because I don't know about their transport system and I'm a bit afraid of the people. I've been to Xiamen and Beijing, my first time in China, in 2008, but like my 2012 trip, it was an organized tour. So I really wasn't motivated to learn about how things work there, a big mistake I learned later on. (I did redeem myself when I went to Shanghai early this year with my highschool friends.)

This post will not be helpful at all to anyone who is searching for a travel itinerary to Xiamen but I hope that whoever drops by this blog post will at least consider visiting the places I've been to. This post shall contain very few texts and will consist mostly of photos.

Departure from Manila

Arrival at Xiamen Airport in December

view from the top of a school in Xiamen

treats offered to guest: tea and mandarin oranges

carved wall depicting the history of Xiamen

sculptures in the park

九日山

Diamond Hotel's exotic seaworm in jelly and cucumber
(surprisingly, it tastes clean!)

鳳山寺 one of the highlights of the trip, for me

KFC-like restaurants are ubiquitous in Xiamen

bear in a park

artifacts in a musuem in Xiamen

Shrine of Koxinga (鄭成功廟)
Koxinga is widely venerated in Southern China as well as in Taiwan for  his military skills and his anti-invasion stance.

sculpture we saw while walking in the streets of Xiamen one fine night. It reads "war and peace"

cultural performance at a school

in 鼓浪嶼, one of Xiamen's top tourist destination

window shopping at night in Xiamen

 We went to many other places but most of these are schools where we interacted with some students. Missing Xiamen.
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composed this while listening to Baek Ah Yeon's "Introduction to Love", the theme song in the Korean drama series "When a Man Falls in Love". I don't watch the series though.