Blogs from Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China, Asia - page 5

Photos: …..it's cooler now, considering it's summer, rainy & gloomy. We often need the lights on during the day but at least it's reasonably warm & the humidity is tolerable when it's not hot..... …..it's not my decision to visit Papa John's for pizza. Western food here is over priced & not a patch on the fantastic variety available in hundreds, if not thousands of eateries around town. Still, democracy must be seen to be a practical option so I go along with a group of teachers, ostensibly for a group birthday celebration for those of us whose birthdays fall on, or near the end of the school year. Luckily our friend Shen Yue is back from Nantong for a while, is at the school & accompanies us. We may not have understood that the women ... read more

Photos: …..while most of you are surfing the 'Net, here in the Middle Kingdom we are wading up to our necks in an unpleasant sludge of proxies, disconnections, no connections & restarts, while THEY, (whoever THEY are.....), still valiantly try to maintain total control of this, not hundred, but many million-headed monster. The proxy program sometimes works, sometimes takes forever. Now & again, it's possible to get straight onto some sites without the proxy but everything is blocked with it on. Suck it & see. It sucks!..... …..I have learned two words for paranoia in Chinese. I prefer the second, Wang Xiang Kuang, or “absurd thinking insanity”, but the first one, Pian Zhi Kuang, “slanting or predjudiced, persisting in, insanity” is not bad either. (more accurate interpretation by my Chinese readers are welco... read more

Photos: …..why would anyone in their right mind get up at 5.15am on a Sunday morning, Easter morning in fact, to run 21.? kilometres around the streets of Yangzhou in the annual Half ma-la-song, sorry, marathon. No idea, but I & probably half of the rest of this school of, including students & children, nearly 5,000, is ready to run. The original plan for the school buses to take us to the East bus Station has been canned so we all start with a two kilometre walk to the start line, through the rubble of recently demolished houses where work has started on new apartment blocks..... .....at the start, watching stocky Chinese men with their running shoes, marathon issue tee shirts & competitor numbers having a final cigarette before the race begins. Several foreign teachers are ... read more

Photos: …..this week it's Qing Ming Jie, or the Tomb Sweeping Festival when, if you have an ancestor's tomb to clean up or to visit & burn paper money in memoriam, this is the time to do it. It's also an appropriate time to note that China is starting to realise that burning, according to China's Consumer's Association, 1000 tonnes of yellow paper on this day country wide is not having a positive effect on already woeful air pollution..... …..also apposite is the concern over the rising cost of burial plots, particularly in the bigger cities. I saw one report of a Trade union worker in Beijing who, in 2009, paid ¥60,000, (nearly Au$10,000 or more than his entire family earns in a year), for half a square metre in a Beijing cemetery to inter his ... read more

Photos: ….winter is hanging on & when it's grey here it's really grey. Not only the sky but the very air around us is grey. The visibility is such that anything more than fifty metres away is noticeably faded. The new building developments on the far side of the New Bridge are just a ghostly outline, dark grey against a light grey sky as I ride along the road, a mid-tone grey. Even a northern English industrial city in winter doesn't boast so many shades of grey. Roll on spring..... …..ask & ye shall receive. The next day is beautiful & clear, a blue sky almost to the horizon & the sun visible almost until it actually sets. The first blossoms are coming out. Bring it on..... …..Fu Nu Jie or Women's Day is a big ... read more