Ok, for those of you with no degree in Chinese geography, here is a quick intro to my new home: Jinan is the capital of Shandong province, which is located just south of Beijing and east of Hebei. The population of the city is around 6 million, out of which apparently about 4 million or so are living in the actual city and the rest just around it. Jinan has got to be the most polluted place I have ever seen, there is a white haze hovering over the whole city and it's so bad that while standing in the street, you can't clearly see the tops of the tall buildings. Yesterday i climbed all the way to the top of a little mountain nearby, and took in a view of the city and it truly looked like a sea of white haze, with some tall buildings sticking through it. But other than that, it looks just like any other Chinese city I have seen in the North-East... What Jinan is famous for are its springs, which in fact are located right in the city centre in a park area. I have yet to check that out but it's definitely on the list of places to go very soon.

As for something completely different, when in Beijing, we were browsing through the channels on the TV and on the national movie channel, CCTV6, they were showing a Swedish movie, located in the Finnish speaking areas in the north and telling a story of a little Finnish girl called Elina. How strange was it to see something like that here, all dubbed in Chinese of course!