This air vent structure is standing around in a beautiful spot under big plantain trees in our compound in Beijing. When I saw it I thought it would give a good object to decorate with mosaic. The management of the compound agreed and I set of to start to draw it, take measurements etc. My newly found old friend Sanny Wroblewski (whom I met already 5 years ago when we were posted in Turkey) joined me with her graphic design skills to turn the ugly cement blog into a dragon. The compound is named – Julong Hua Yuan – which means all dragons garden. One day we set off to get dragon- inspired.

That was fun. Now the work begins: finding tiles and cement, fibre netting and transparent adhesive, getting the tools and the production process ready. The idea is to involve the community of the compound. The tricky point is: its all in Chinese. Today with the help of my housekeeper Xu I talked to a tile selling company. It works like this: I write my points in English on the WeChat app to Xu, she translates it into Chinese in the app and then can chat with the tile manufacturer in the south of China on the Taobao platform which is the Ebay equivalent here. A bit complicated but it worked!