Hey! I'm still alive, still in Shanghai partying the weekend up before getting serious about Beijing next week (like how to get there....where to stay...the small stuff).
I've read that the more time you spend in China the less you are able to say. Stuff that at first is really odd becomes everyday, but I thought I'd start a list, for my own memory as much as anything.
It starts with the hallway outside our apartment, on the 25th floor. Coming out of the elevator the first thing you notice is the shiny plastic wall hanging--two tigers around a character. I imagine it is left over from some holiday or festival--we saw similar things in Guangdong on the doors of houses. Moving down the hallway you notice a row of cactuses and plants on one window ledge, then the next window open and leading out onto a rooftop area, where one of the neighbours has installed a pigeon coop. Pigeon is a fairly common item on all the menus here. Further on my neighbours have hung their washing and have a stool and bucket out in the hallway--their apartment is only maybe two rooms so they leave the door open most of the time and a large amount of day-to-day life is lived in the corridor. Should also mention that the corridor is the parking garage for everyone's bikes.
And speaking of bikes, the things people here fit on them boggles the mind. Today I saw someone on a motorcycle with a flowerpot--that was just surreal, but its not uncommon to see them loaded with wood or water cooler tanks or anything you can imagine (plants are more common than you might expect). Also popular are attached trailers with everything from goods to people, with the poor person in front pedaling furiously in the traffic. And bikes and motorcycles here consider themselves halfway between pedestrian and car, zooming around on sidewalks and even 'jaywalking' when no cars are coming. A lot of the streets have unofficial bike/motorbike lanes, and cars seem to be as used to driving around them as the cyclists are to performing all sorts of vehicular acrobats to not get run over.
That's all for now--more next time!
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1 comment:
Great similarity with India. Same insight about being an expert after a few weeks, but just beginning to learn after a year or more....Once, in a car, followed a horse cart in heavy traffic. Driver slept--probably drunk--while the horse slowly moved apparently knowing where to go....Open doors and public living.
Waiting to hear about your Beijing experiences. Love, Grandpa Paul
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