I have already put up some photos from my time at the excellent Bookworm Festival in Chengdu – click here to see them – and here are few more from my time in Beijing.
I only had a few days in China, sadly, spread between the two cities, but I did get a chance to wander the streets a little, and see a few of the sights.
At the Beijing Bookworm, I did a panel event with Ian Whybrow (author of Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs, and much more), moderated by Lee Williamson, editor of Time Out Beijing.
I don’t have a picture of that event, sadly. Nor do I have any pictures of the wonderful hotel where the Bookworm put us lucky authors, the Opposite House. But I do have a few touristy snaps of Beijing sights, and so I’ll put them here.
The Forbidden City.
The Apple Store.
A tower block near my hotel and the Bookworm.
Another view of the Forbidden City.
Some Canadian writers. They were also speaking at the festival, and we spent the morning sightseeing together.
The Temple of Heaven.
Pork buns.
Beijing duck.
My flight home. And Uncle Morton’s flight to Mongolia. I didn’t actually see him in the airport, but I like to imagine he was there, on his way to Ulaanbaatar.
Just before Easter, I was lucky enough to be in China, visiting Beijing and Chengdu as a guest of the Bookworm Literary Festival.
The Bookworm is a small chain of bookshops in cities throughout China, run by a wildly energetic expat named Peter Goff. This year was the 10th that he and the other bookshop managers have been running a wonderful festival, bringing local and international authors together.
Rather than writing about my experiences, I’m simply going to put a few photos here, along with some explanatory captions. I’ll put up some photos from Beijing another day, but all the photos below are from Chengdu, my first stop, where I did several events: some talks, a school visit, and a workshop.
Chengdu is a city of about ten million people. It’s the capital of the Sichuan province, renowned for its magnificently spicy food. And it’s famous too for its pandas; Chengdu is home to the Giant Panda Research Centre, where you can watch families of pandas lounging about their pens, happily crunching their way through great piles of bamboo.
At the entrance to the Bookworm Bookshop in Chengdu.
My first event: talking to children in the Bookworm. Among my other events, I also visited a local school….
…and taught a workshop in the bookshop to a group of writers working on their own children’s novels, YA novels, and picture books.
Pandas. Any visitor to Chengdu is urged to see the the Panda Research Centre; I wasn’t disappointed.
More pandas…
A food stall. I didn’t eat here; I’m not even sure what was on some of these skewers. But they looked intriguing and inviting.
A tortoise in the beautiful Wenshu monastery…
…and some advice for visitors.
A pair of dragons, spotted on the wall of another monastery in Chengdu.
A statue from the same monastery.
And another statue.
Tibetan stallholders outside the Wenshu Monastery.
Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, and the food is spicy and peppery and utterly delicious, although I’d better not reveal the content of this particular meal, in case I upset readers of a sensitive disposition. Alright, it’s a rabbit.
