Walking through GuoMao and Looking Ahead to the Future

Sep 07, 2025 10:04 am

This Week: Walking through GuoMao and Looking Ahead to the Future

A new walk’n’talk vid that explores the central portion of Beijing’s CBD district as it looked just before the big military parade last week. If you’re wondering if we were able to see anything in Changping, No. We could not. Oh well, next time? And some news from around China and tech that could change things… or could it?

🎵Listen to the latest podcast episode

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🎥 This Week's Videos

🏙️ Walking through GuoMao - Back in Beijing, exploring the business district with views of CCTV headquarters, CITIC tower, and parade preparations. 👉 Watch here
✈️ Melbourne to Sydney and Nanjing to Beijing - The final Australia video, wrapping up our two-week exploration with reflections on travel pace and future destinations. 👉 Watch here
📱 Full Australia 2025 playlist - The complete collection of videos from our two-week Australian journey, raising the question: fast travel or slow travel? 👉 View playlist
📲 Technology takeover - Some changes inside and outside of China has me thinking, Is my job secure?

🏙️ Walking through GuoMao

Back in Beijing after the Australian adventure, and what better way to readjust than a walk through GuoMao—one of the city's most recognizable business districts. The area showcases modern Beijing in all its architectural ambition: the distinctive CCTV headquarters with its bold geometric design, the towering CITIC building, and the constant buzz of urban activity.

I thought I’d take a walk through before the big parade to show a bit of the district as it looked with all of the preparations. Turns out I was wrong that they would shut down the whole city centre as they only shut down portions of the city as the parade moved through it. At least one person I know had a spectacular view of the tanks being loaded onto trains at the nearby railway station.

Sadly, even though there is an airport right next to my university, we saw nothing and heard only rumbles in the distance. Not only that, while the parade was going on, we were in class so we didn’t even get to watch it on TV! The hotel, however, did have it on in the morning and, thanks to the development of technology, I could also watch it through WeChat (which I think most people did anyway).

👉 Watch the full video

✈️ Melbourne to Sydney and Nanjing to Beijing

A last of the Australian videos is this wrap up we shot as we were transiting from Melbourne through Sydney to Nanjing and back to Beijing. It’s a short video mainly because we were constantly in motion throughout the transfer process (except for the nine hours on the plane when we ourselves were rather motionless despite being escorted back to the northern hemisphere ;).

Overall impression? Australia smells nice. Like barbecue and perfume. Not together, of course, but they mix on the streets. China doesn’t do perfume and its barbecue is much different. Not only that, many of the fragrances wafting about the streets of Australia were very similar to those I grew up with in Canada.

Worth a quick watch, if only for closure!

👉 Watch the full video [link]

📱 Full Australia 2025 playlist

And that’s a wrap for our Australian videos and my attempt to vlog along the way.

I now recall why I haven’t done this before: it takes too long!

As I’ve mentioned in previous videos and podcasts that there is a decision vloggers and content creators have to make when they’re travelling: do you go see and do one more thing or do you go back to your room or dorm to sort and edit the videos and photos you already took. I can’t hide the fact that I’ve always opted for the former rather than the latter - it always seemed like a better idea to keep going rather than waste time doing something I could “do later”. The problem became, however, when was “later”?

Several trips and years overseas later and I have HARD DRIVES full of photos and videos. All of that led me to think, believe, want and desire to finally vlog my way through a trip. Australia was that test.

And you might say it sucked. That’s fine. But we got it done!

Lessons learned (and I’m told I need to plan my videos better) so next time they should go a little smoother and not take so long to be released. Thanks for your patience. :D

👉 Access the playlist here

📲 Technology takeover

Two last bits here that I think I’ll also discuss on this week’s podcast:

China is doing away with its paper train tickets! This might not concern most people but, as a traveller, I can’t help but think it is a bit of a loss. Nostalgia aside, what happens if you don’t have a device with which to download or show your ticket? What if your battery dies? What if you forget your password and can’t get into your account?! Or, maybe this is just a reflection of reality that no one really uses these things any more? Either way, I don’t think many people will miss these things - how many tickets have you kept from your travels? Do you even know where they are?
Apple to release AirPods Pro 3 rumoured to contain in-device translation! I have said before that once Apple releases in-ear translation devices, my job is kaput. Well, maybe it won’t happen over night on September 9th (the next big Apple day), but it does have me asking yet again: what’s the purpose of the modern class? And, should I be concerned with students with Airpods on during class? To be honest, I think Huawei has already done this and many students already use transcription devices during class so they can read along in Chinese. Hate to say it but I think technology is starting to make good students look a little… dependent!

👉 What do you think? Are these good changes or just the sign of the times?

We'll leave it there for this week. Thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful and entertaining.