I am a PhD student majoring in Human Geography and Urban Studies and I'm based in UK. For both academic purposes (conference attendance etc.) and personal interests, I have been travelling to quite a few destinations in my life. Most of my visits are located within the urban area (for this is exactly the field I am doing research on), and I do enjoy living in this "nomad" lifestyle to experience different cultures, spaces, and times.

Though I enjoy tourism, the "everyday" is still something I can not avoid and have to (learn to) embrace. Several "must-to-do" things in my everyday life are:

(1) reading: I like to read books on political theories, anthropology reflections, sociology debates, as well as the concept of space;

(2) movies: prefer non-Hollywood movies which attend more to the emotions and moods of human existence rather than 3D techniques;

(3) operas: nearly every week I will go to Royal Opera House at London for an Opera or Ballet performance;

(4) paintings: I used to be a fan of Turner and now I am more attracted by the impressionists and the cubists; for Picaso I prefer his "blue area" to his other periods

(5) beers: you may know that in UK the only place to social is in the pub. People will take a beer and then wander randomly and talk casually. After a short period of cultural shock I am now increasingly getting used to this lifestyle (aka. one beer after a whole day work)

Before coming to UK, I lived in Beijing for seven years and got a lot at that time (degrees, relationships, knowledge, and most importantly, the ambition to know the world with simultaneous heterogeneities). It is for this reason that I would like to take Beijing as my second hometown, besides the one where I was born in central China.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

When travel in other cities, I frequently reside in couches of local friends (most of whom are my friends when we were all in Beijing). Then I start to think another possibility, a possibility to meet even more people with more diverse backgrounds. I believe this will be another way to know the world, so I am here now.

Interests

As has been mentioned in the first section (About Me), the "must-to-do" things in my everyday life include (but are not limited to): reading, movies, operas, paintings, and beers (but never went into a drunk situation).

We can talk about this in more details if, luckily, we can sit down in-person and talk with each other face to face. I think I am a good story-teller with a lot of stories to share with you.

• culture
• books
• literature
• performing arts
• ballet dancing
• beer
• pub crawls
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• opera
• anthropology
• geography
• history
• sociology
• tourism

Music, Movies, and Books

When I was a teenager, I used to like books on political philosophy (authors including Plato, Leo Strauss, Machiavelli, Hobbes etc. ) and economic history (especially those on China's urban history). I also read a lot of poems and novels at that time, as all teenagers do. Then when I decided to make an academic life, I had to give up the above interests and shifted the focus to books more related to my research. It is in this context that I am now spending a lot of time reading books on urban planning, architecture, state theories, ethnography, methodology, and geographical thoughts.

Music: I love Folk, Jazz, Blues, Classics, and New Age, but I can hardly enjoy rock&roll. Recently one of my favourite musicians is Ludovico Einaudi, an Italian pianist whose music makes me feel relaxed and hence can focus more on reading and writing.

Movies: I love movies such as "The Hours" (a biography of Virginia Woolf), Boyhood, The Golden Time (黄金时代), In the Mood for Love (花样年华), Big Fish, Mary and Max, Shinya Shokudo (深夜食堂), and many others which we can talk about latter.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Travel for more than 1,000 kilometres by free riding at Tibetan border area.

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: anything about Human Geography; Chinese culture/literature

Learn: anything about another language/ culture/ life history

What I Can Share with Hosts

Choice of readings (in both English and Chinese)

Favourite movies

Travel experiences

Little-know Beijing attractions

Life in UK

How to map the city

Countries I’ve Visited

France, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, United Kingdom