This week, the two PowerPoint slides that introduce my two English lessons feature less obvious aspects of the school dining halls.

First up is the stairway below dining hall number four.  It always seems odd to see ordinary people descending the stairs and bumping against the air-brushed beautiful people in the ads.

The basement of that building provides an assortment of small shops and a restaurant that features Western food. I haven’t actually tried that restaurant, but I sure have bought snacks from the quicky-mart and souvenir post cards from the small printing concern.

When I first came to Tianjin, postcards were only available at the Post Office, and they all had nothing to do with the city you were in.  Either they were a special series, such as pictures of antique ink stones, or they were the same old Great Wall postcards you could get anywhere.  Now it seems that many small printers have rushed in to fill in the gap in post card availability. And in a school like this one, full of architecture students who could mostly be professional artists if they wanted to be, it’s not too hard to find people who can make eye-catching postcards.

I took the second picture just last night. The weather had turned decidedly warmer, and since Tianjin, like most places on earth, doesn’t have the “real weather” of the Pacific coast, where it cools off at night, this means that strollers emerge from their winter hibernation to bask in the warm evening atmosphere.

Of course, they share the road with speeding bikes like the blurred bike in the center of the picture. People don’t walk on sidewalks so much here.

In this case, they’re strolling by the entrance to Dining Hall number one, the hall with those strangely-shaped light squiggles meant to attract the attention of the hungry.  Of course, by this time, (about 7:30 pm) the dining hall itself is closed and locked. But like dining hall number four, there are shops underneath that cater to students.

And there’s also a whole floor of shops above the dining hall as well. Many times have I enjoyed the hot pot up there, on evenings just like this one.    And that should suffice for this post!