The Screaming Frog

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Photos:


Photos from the National Day Holiday:


You can click the photos in this blog to enlarge them to full screen size.

…..could this be the week when nothing happens? It's good to have a quiet spell after the chaotic timetables of the last month, with time off mid-week being compensated for by working at weekends. Just having time to clean up my apartment & sort out some of the things on my ever increasing list... but who wants to hear about that? This is supposed to be about all the fascinating & interesting things that constitute life in China.....

…..perhaps this is a good time to list a few of those things that have become so commonplace now that I don't think to mention them but I'm sure, when I first arrived here, they were remarkable. The first one that springs to mind is sunrise & sunset. The official times bear no resemblance to the time it's actually visible. By late afternoon it disappears in the haze as a fading, red ball around an hour before it gets to the horizon.....

…..riding the wrong way in the bike lane. It's just not unusual any more. It's normal to look out for bikes, E-bikes & scooters coming at you head on at the same time you look out for pedestrians, & increasingly, cars finding their way from a parking spot to the road.....

…..horns, particularly on trucks & buses, that would be outlawed in the west due to the incredible volume. I have had to cover my ears on occasions when one is close by. They could definitely cause long term hearing loss & are used a lot.....

…..the small, tinny amplifiers that street traders use to advertise their wares. It means you can spruik all day using the same, endlessly repeated short phrase in an intolerably high pitched & irritating voice. It's difficult to tolerate while buying half a dozen bananas. To listen to it all day would be worse than an interrogation at Guantanamo Bay.....

…..packaging gone mad. The sheer amount of plastic & cardboard used to package the most mundane items. The photo of a pack of milk tea, wrapped in plastic with cling wrapped cups & the contents of the throwaway cups also wrapped in yet another layer. Gift packs for things like Moon cakes in the Autumn Holiday are an art form in their own right. (see photos).....

…..fireworks, night & day, on the street, near apartments, cafes & restaurants, on the path, on the road almost close enough to blow up passing traffic; anywhere really. I was recently at the newly refurbished La Mian near the Old Canal bridge when my conversation with Paul was stopped dead, in broad daylight, by an incredibly loud display that went on for several minutes ON a busy road. I felt particularly sorry for the two dogs on the footplate of their owner's scooter as they waited for a green light about 2 metres away from the explosions that echoed off the nearby buildings.....

…..it must be getting cooler, the Chinese teachers are telling me, in concerned voices, that I should be wearing more than a short sleeved shirt, despite the weather being very mild, that I should “look after my health” & asking, “Why you not cold?”.....

…..our new Tai Ji teacher is a short, shaven-headed, stocky, powerful man in his late forties or early fifties. I find his instruction easier to follow than our previous teacher's. He looks incredibly graceful when demonstrating the moves. How is it that, instead of becoming older & wiser I have let myself be persuaded to take part in next week's Sports Day display. I just can't remember sequences of movements, particularly when they involve simultaneous use of arms & legs. It might look more like a slow motion replay of an epileptic fit than Tai Ji.....

…..although we avoid it where possible we foreign teachers still eat at the Chinese cafeteria at the school. Many of the staff behind the counter now know that I don't eat pork but somehow think that the entrails of pigs or other animals are acceptable fare. Tonight I take my tray back to the table but can't identify some soft, flat squares of what could be animal or vegetable matter. It's not always easy to distinguish in China. I'm with an American teacher, Patrick. He doesn't know either. I know just enough Chinese now to ask one of the security guards at a nearby table. “Zhu pi”. Ah, pig's skin. Sorry, in my dietary lexicon that doesn't qualify as food &, much as I dislike waste, I don't intend to pick the otherwise edible items out from it. So it's just rice & green vegetables today. Bret & Landon, two of the new American teachers, join us. They happily tuck in, telling me that in the USA you can buy packets of pig skin as a snack food, including barbecue flavour. Maybe it's nature's way of telling me to become a vegetarian.....

…..I don't fill the YYW these days with the prices of meals in China but we have found, by chance, a very small restaurant near the Da Run Fa, not flash or elegant but run by a couple prepared to be patient with our rudimentary language skills & with a simple but tasty menu. Today, after reports of a cafeteria off-day, George, Mike & I drop in for chao mian, (fried noodles), green vegetables & jaozi, (meat filled dumplings), plus a large beer each. ¥27, under Au4.50. For three of us that is.....

…..Wednesday afternoon & some free time at last. It's a fine day, a bit smoggy but this is Jiangsu province after all. Dr. Wei hasn't been in touch for a while but has some time off this afternoon too before some engagement in the evening. Talking of engagements, today I meet her fiancée. He seems to be a really nice guy, quite shy talking to foreigners. His written language is apparently very good but his spoken English is not fluent. Not that an Australian would let that seriously restrict a conversation. She has known him for about nine years since they studied together in the southern city of Shenzhen, (just across the mainland border from Hong Kong). He has been studying orthopaedics for years but is now living in Yangzhou. I'm told I'll be among the first to know when the wedding is on.....

…..a sad story from the West Yangzhou section of the Number One hospital. A nineteen year old was due to be released today after a long stay in the hospital. He was murdered by an intruder last night. Dr. Wei could not find any news in the papers, on the TV or the internet. She shows me some pages from the hospital intranet which have been blocked. She is not happy with the suppression of the news & tells me what she knows of the story from her colleagues at work. The teenager's mother had a partner but her son was not happy about her choice & his mother turned the man down. He decided to deal with his “rival” by cutting his throat, at the hospital, severing the windpipe & carotid artery. The hospital staff who discovered the act were naturally traumatised. The murderer, having been tracked down by police, jumped from a window. Dr. Wei couldn't tell me where or how high, whether an escape or suicide attempt. The fall broke his spine & has left him paralysed in a vegetative state, in the hospital where he had committed the killing. The mother has, understandably, “gone crazy” over the loss of her son.....

…..word of mouth, the only alternative when the news is blocked or otherwise censored. I can't vouch for the veracity of this addendum to the previous tragedy but a friend, whose mother in law was having her hair done at a salon near the hospital, reports that the boy was in hospital recovering from a broken leg inflicted by the murderer some weeks earlier.....

…..I should finish on a more cheerful note. On a grey, rainy Saturday in Yangzhou no one seemed keen to go out for dinner tonight but in the end our friend Sunny, from the Bank of China, & his new girlfriend, Xin Xing are keen to show us a new place to eat. Erin, from Syracuse, New York, & Patrick, from Philadelphia, are willing to brave the weather. I call Jay & Farhat, from the solar panel plant & they come along. In the end there are too many for the small restaurant Sunny has in mind so we go to Huai Hai Lu, (Hotpot street to the foreign teachers). I don't initially get the name of the restaurant, Wa Wa Jiu. Then I realise that “Wa” means “frog”. The “Screaming Frog” naturally specialises in that particular cuisine. Farhat is not keen on frog but they also have fish & shrimp dishes.....

…..We end up with three dishes, all very oily, spicy & delicious. The frog, cliched though it may sound, does bear some resemblance to chicken. The vegetables with it are sensational, potato, peppers, garlic, lotus, in a selection of spices. Good choice, Sunny. Xin Xing is an interesting young lady. She speaks a little English but has studied for over six years in the Ukraine & speaks fluent Russian. With Sunny to help out the conversation covers a lot of ground & I think we all end up a little wiser & very full.....

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Photos

The sun sets on a developing city
East Yangzhou, facing west!

Packaging gone mad
a pack of Niu Cha (milk tea). Multiply this by billions

Packaging as an art form
Moon Cakes

Colleagues
(B) Tiger, Pan Laoshi, Quan Hui, (F) Cui Ping, Suzy

Colleagues
Tiger, Quan Hui, Cui Ping, Suzy

Street Trader
One of thousands around Yangzhou selling all manner of fruit, vegetables, clothes, toys, jewellery etc

Wa Wa Jiao
Dinner at the Screaming Frog. Frog dish bottom left.

Wa Wa Jiao
Farhat, Jay, Sunny, Xin Xing & the dumb photographer who got his hand in front of the lens

Wa Wa Jiao
Farhat, Jay, Sunny, Xin Xing

Street Trader
Don't let the rain stop business

Drag Artist
Advertising mobile phones on Siwanting Lu

Barbecue skewers
Street Food from a seller from Xinjiang, in the far West of China

Comments

[JJ]

not in a million years.............
would you get me within radar distance of the screaming frog! I think I would have died on the spot if I had been there & realised! You're a brave man Gungadin!.xx

[Tony Schick]

Screaming Frog
Hey Dave, Sounds like the name of a band! "The Screaming Frogs"... hmmm nice ring to it!

[Peter Bower]

nice to see
dave, i really enjoyed this one. it really it so easy to trounce about here in china and fail to make mention of the endless wonders. :-)

[Laotou]

Re: The Screaming Frog
So many good band names here just waiting for a translation....