Blogs from Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, Asia - page 8

Geo: 32.05, 118.78It only comes once a year and it's quit big in China.VALENTINE'S DAY.I got flowers. Roses. ( I only think I received flowers because Li was buying some for his wife so I think Luca thought he should buy some too... He assures me that wasn't true...) The Roses are beautiful, but like everything in China everything is over worked.When you buy biscuits. They are wrapped in groups of 6 and then those packs are then packed in groups of 4. Even the toilet paper rolls are individually wrapped and then put in bags of 12 or 24. The lollies are all individually wrapped and then they are wrapped with foil and then wrapped in the outside wrapper...The roses are the same. All of the leaves are stripped from the rose. It's then wrapped ... read more

Geo: 32.05, 118.78This place is amazing. During the Chinese New Year all of the shops are closed.This is the only time that most Chinese have holidays. So for the one week over the New Year everything comes to a complete stop. All around us here where we live especially because it is a place full of students they have all gone home so everything is closed. It's like a ghost town.... or should I say ... it feels normal.... but it's not normal for china.Our Driver took us to Purple Mountain to see Dr. Sun's Mausoleum. I thought it was going to be a hard walk up the 369 or steps.... but it was quite easy.Once again we where the only westerners.... but there was another young man and an older couple.The view was great... but ... read more

Geo: 32.05, 118.78Year of the Dragon. 2012The Chinese are crazy about fire crackers and fire works.We where warned........................"Get out of China if You can for the New Year Festivities."We thought.... "How bad could they possibly be?"WOW.... THEY ARE CRAZY......The more noise the better. Fire crackers..... very noisy but not very pretty.Fire works.... Still very noisy but very, very, very prettyThey were everywhere... The fun started around 5pm.The tradition was to set off fire crackers before dinner. To scare off any bad spirits and it scares the begeebers out of you.Then after dinner another round of fire crackers are lit.....THEN the Pretty ones come out........ They are really easy to buy..... At the local deli typ... read more

Geo: 32.05, 118.78Once a fortnight we have our fish man that comes and cleans out our fish tank.He replaces the water scrubs the glass walls.... he really is sweet.Today he rocks up with a lady....Ok I thought.... his wife? maybe she was learning how to clean fish tanks?Wrong and Wrong. She had two canvas shopping bags with her. His english is as good as my chinese..... BAD.He introduced me to her.... "Hello my Amway Teacher," he said pointing to her.Did I hear right? AMWAY? Was my fish man about to sell me Amway?I suppose it could have been worse!!! It could have been AVON!!Actually..... I quite like AVON!He started cleaning the tank as usual and I thought he forgot all about his Amway.NO. NO. NO. "Please sit down," he asked me politely. He started saying something ... read more

Geo: 32.05, 118.78It's strange the first thing we wanted to do was eat Chinese FOOD.Dinner...... Breakfast....There was one restaurant that was advertising I think it was a chicken? It still had the head on but the beak looks too long and skinny for a chicken? Well it's not a duck! We ate somewhere else.After dinner we went for a walk at the shopping complex. To our surprise FIRE WORKS.... but it's not the Chinese new year yet? We figured that it was for the opening of the funny chicken/bird but not a duck restaurant? Then the following morning our driver Li, took us for breakfast, a typical Chinese breakfast.Dumplings and soup.... read more