Eurgh. Who'd have thought that moving to the country that invented bureaucracy, on the other side of the world, would involve so much hassle? Whether it was my cards not being accepted, a bank refusing to sort out a Western Union transfer because I hadn't brought utterly superfluous paperwork, filling a flat and paying rent while one of the tenants is away in Nepal, or what for the sake of magnanimity I'll call a miscalculation by Peking University as to what the tuition fees were and whether or not there was a registration fee, it has at times felt like I've been drowning in an ocean of paperwork and administrative trivia. Honestly, if there is some kind of one world government as conspiracy theorists would have us believe, it needs to get off its arse and start standardising things. Not that I can really complain as a Brit: I'm led to believe that compared to the process of getting even a tourist visa for the UK, what I've been experiencing is more like one of those central Asian lakes that have lost half their surface area thanks to Soviet industry's proud track record in water conservancy. Regardless of my views on Britain's immigration policy, the long and short of it is that my flat is filled, rent is paid, and I've saved my entire class around £120 each by spotting the tuition fee issue. It's been a good weekend. The only lingering disappointment is that once I got hold of all that money, it didn't actually make for a very impressive pile, so the photo I'd been planning to take would have been utterly underwhelming. Think of that scene from Dodgeball where Ben Stiller opens a briefcase containing $100,000, and you get the picture.

After the weekend that will go down in history as the Battle of Chi Bi of sorting out paperwork, the Oxbridge students were formally welcomed by PKU today. It didn't quite have the ceremony of a Cambridge matriculation, but they did at least prepare a simple lunch for us (their words; look at the picture and form your own opinion). The weird thing is, we don't actually have any classes until next week, although the Oxonians have an exam tomorrow morning, which sucks for them. Instead we're being treated to some excursions, including one to the Great Wall at Mutianyu which ironically I went to on Friday with a friend from Cambridge who was in town. Mind you, if the weather's as good as it was on Friday it'll be well worth a second trip; there aren't many things that live up to their hype when you see them in real life, but the Great Wall's definitely one of those things. If Hadrian's Wall inspired George R R Martin to create the Wall in Game of Thrones, one can only imagine what the Great Wall would have produced in him.

We also met our language partners today, students at PKU who are essentially university-mandated friends. It's probably a good idea for our language skills, although slightly redundant for me since I'm living with three Chinese people already, but it can't hurt to know a few more. Fortunately, although some people haven't exactly clicked with their partners, I got on quite well with mine. He's from Hainan (China's very own tropical island: definitely up there on the list of holiday destinations) and studying international politics with English as a minor, because Chinese universities tend to follow the American model rather than the British. Overall, although with no classes yet having taken place I'm far from settled into any kind of studying rhythm, I think I'll get on pretty well at PKU; the campus is lovely, at least when the weather is, and easily reached by bike. More pictures will come in the coming weeks, as well as a few posts that are less diary entries and more my two cents on whatever aspect of China I've thought about enough to come up with a half-baked opinion and vaguely witty title. Not to give anything away, but they really need to hurry up and sentence Bo Xilai...