本 Adventures in China

Over 5000 miles across the globe, teaching English to 350 kids... Instagram: benedictquetzal

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Today is World Vegan Day! I’ve been vegan for 6 years and 3 months to the day. Since going vegan I’ve been more into food than ever before and during the past year I’ve had some particularly big food highlights…

Top left: Vegan buffet at Nangren Temple, Guilin, China. Local speciality of Guilin noodles: rice noodles with coriander and spring onions sprinkled with chopped peanuts.

Top right: Beach picnic in Belle île, France. Those flower looking things are artichokes. I’d never seen a real artichoke before, only in pre-prepared packets.

Bottom left: Picnic in Parc du Cinquantinairre, Brussels, Belgium with the Brussels Vegan Meetup group. Highlight was banana cake with olive pate.

Bottom right: The best dumplings and baozi (steamed buns) at Green Cuisine, Nanjing, China. Green Cuisine is no doubt the biggest vegan restaurant I’ve ever visited. It seats several hundred and is spread over two floors.

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Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, making dumplings for Chinese New Year, Guangzhou Evergrande FC stadium.

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Yangshuo.

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Travelling solo in Nanjing and Guilin: Green Cuisine vegan restaurant - amazing Chinese specialities here (dumplings, steamed buns and mock meat dishes), Nanjing scenes, Guilin parks and mountains, vegetarian buffet at Nangren Temple, Guilin.

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Editing music at Nanjing Lukou Airport. My in-flight to Guilin has been delayed 3 hours so thought I’d use the time well. I've written several new songs that I'm going to upload when I return to the UK.

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Paola's birthday in Baoying, Chinese lanterns in Yangzhou and recording a music video with WangMingXing in Jiangdu.

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Teaching at the kindergarten. Thanks for photos 3 and 4 Paola :)

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Yangzhou times and flat gathering in Jiangdu.

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Shanghai for New Years.

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Christmas Day and Fun Run at the kindergarten.

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Visited Baoying to meet up with Brittany, Paola and friends. Went to a BBQ at Herbalife where I met a local who’d been vegan for 11 years - photo of us is the one where she’s giving a thumbs up. Tried out Kung Fu with Brittany at the class she regularly goes to. Saw a shuffle dance crew dancing in a park and went to KTV.

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Great weekend trip to Wuxi with Paola and Brittany. Visited the Wuxi Lingshan Buddhist Wonderland (with our new friend Hank we met at our hostel) where we saw the 88m tall Buddha statue and a show about the history and origins of Buddhism. Also went to KTV, a house party and a club with people we met along the way. We almost didn't make it to Wuxi for the weekend as we missed the last bus on the Friday night. But some random guy outside the coach station said we could get there if we drove for an hour to a train station and got the train. So we got a lift in his unlicensed taxi, ended up going on a barge across the canal too, made the train and got there (Jiangdu-Yangzhou-Zhenjiang-Wuxi).

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Looking round Slender West Lake and Da Ming Temple followed by a night out in Yangzhou.

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So this is the flash card for the letter N that I’m teaching the youngest kids at the kindergarten. How scary is this?!

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Halloween activities at one of the kindergartens... It was pretty surreal. We handed out sweets to hundreds of children who charged around the playground whilst this thumping techno music played. Everyone got dressed up - parents, teachers and kids.

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'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' mosh pit

The kids in one of my classes started a mosh pit today during the class sing-a-long of ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’. It was good to see them getting into the music but when one chucked a chair across the room it was probably getting a bit out of hand.

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A good night out in Yangzhou… Played a few songs at Secrecy Bar and jammed with one of the locals then went and murdered some songs at KTV (karaoke) including Diamonds by Rihanna, Hey Jude and Bohemian Rhapsody.