So I went to England for 2 weeks for some visa stuff and also a mini-holiday from my relaxing life of freedom in China.

But the word freedom there... being used in the context of China was seriously challenged when I went back to my home country. In England, I actually felt free, whereas here I'm just kind of... logically free.

Perhaps because I was born in some suburbs and grew up around a lot of pets and within throwing distance of cows and horses and fields, but every time I go back, I get a powerful resurgence of...contentedness.

This, I know, would be a temporary sensation. Grass is greener on the other side and all that.

Literally, in this case.

Yes, the first thing I noticed after getting back from London (see previous post) was how green everything was. It wasn't due to a different type of grass or different breeds of trees. It wasn't the time zone or something. But it was very tangible and real, certainly not perceived.

This is something I want to look into more at a later post, whether it is the pollution in the air, the angle of the sun through the atmosphere, the duration of daytime or perhaps a mix of these and more. Today though, I thought I'd just share some of the pictures I took so you can get an idea of what my home town is like.

Leicester

This is a small town I've posted about before so I don't need to say too much, but I will say it's roughly 52 times smaller in area than Shanghai where I currently live, with about 1% the population (depending on the statistics you go with) at just over 300,000.

The demographics are overwhelmingly white if you include all the suburbs and the whole county (Leicestershire) but going into the city centre and caucasians barely hit a majority; something like 55%. The rest are typically middle eastern of some sort, Indian and Chinese.

This was a surprisingly good feeling. I know there's a lot of anti-islam and by extension, brown people sentiment going on in the UK these days, but for me all I could think was 'Diversity!!'. It really does grind your soul when all 2 billion people within thousands of miles in any direction are distinctly homogeneously Asian.

I've been around the same basic cultural background, belief systems and political histories now for over 8 years, where the demographics are something along the lines of 99.9% Chinese, 0.01% other. So, It's one thing to go to a town where I can go grab an ice cream and be literally the only white person for a mile in any direction:

But it's seriously nice to be able to see a cacophony of cultures, religions and ethnic backgrounds chilling out together at the pub like it was just... nothing worth even thinking about.

So to me, despite being frustrated at a religion I despise spreading like wildfire across the country, I was feeling so refreshed and generally happy to see multiculturalism working to some extent all around me. Nobody was looking and frowning at others for looking out of place, and nobody was smiling extra at me or asking to take photos with me because my skin is paler than everyone else. Nobody cared about me, and that was great.

Anyway, I wanted to make the most of the fresh air as possible and I was extremely lucky to arrive when England was going through a very early summer; it must have rained one single evening the entire two weeks I was there. The rest... blue skies and dog walking weather:

This is Victoria Park, and again, a stark reminder of what freedom really is. I couldn't brush off the realisation that I could just go to the park, walk my dog, sit down, play sports, eat, dance, sleep all night, or whatever I possibly wanted as long as it wasn't a crime.

@grottbags dog was free to get disgustingly filthy in the pond to find a tennis ball, I was free to sleep. Nothing mattered. By comparison, most parks here have an opening and closing time. This is enforced by a troop of security guards who are always within visual range, sure to remind you not to step on the grass and stay on the designated pathways unless noted otherwise.

Green space is so few and far between that any park you do visit here is saturated with humans and their children. Dogs were to be kept on a lead (leash) and you are to be watched carefully by all the CCTV around the park.

Another sight I loved was the retention of historical buildings.

Again here in China, literally everything is under threat from demolition, to be replaced with high-rise apartment blocks. Even cave dwelling civilisations are getting the boot:

If the above houses in England were to be demolished, and everybody in the community took issue with that, the government would back off and figure something else out. This is something we probably take for granted.

So yeah

This was my first impressions going back; Freedom, as it was meant to be (let's ignore the UK's attempt to stomp out freedom of speech and its attempt to bring Chinese facial recognition police state technology to the British police force for now)

Anyway, here are some more photos of Leicester:

A panorama of Victoria Park where I frequented. The park goes on quite extensively out of shot; there's enough space for several football and rugby games to be going on with room to spare for sleepers, dog walkers, bike riders, picnickers and and entire fairground.

I could never get bored of how blue the blue skies get here. Blue skies here for some odd reason never get this blue

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This is 'New Walk', a centuries-old walkway, from 1785, extended from Victoria Park all the way to the town centre, about ta 20-25 minute walk. It's been maintained to stay absolutely beautifully peaceful with traditional lamp posts and healthy trees giving a natural glow of green-ish light on the buildings and people below. It has a museum, hotels, more parks, churches and so on throughout the walk

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The Clock Tower, obviously. Historically a place where goths would hang out looking miserable to attempt in vain to intimidate passer-bys, it is now a place for preachers to preach but has a fairly interesting history I may or may not have written about already. It marks the central point of the city and is surrounded in all directions by homeless people

Probably one of the most striking active prisons out there. Not a castle, this prison was designed and finally opened in 1828, at a cost of a whopping £20,000. We pride ourselves in our cool looking prison since it's easier than the effort to get to a point where we can pride ourselves in a lack of crime.

The Leicester Market. It's about 800 years old and is celebrated as 'the largest outdoor, covered market in Europe'. You might feel like you're in a totally different country here like Egypt or something, with shopkeepers yelling out their deals and bargains: '6 BANANAS FOR A PAHND, GET YOUR FRESH VEGGIES, ONLY A PAHND'.

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Churches seem to be able to photobomb almost any opportunity across England really, but there are some beautiful ones in Leicester, for sure.

Where to next?

After Leicester, I went to visit @mobbsclan in Gloucestershire, a land that puts the beauty of Leicester to shame. More on that next time.