A walk through China

Statue in Guilin

Making peanut brittle! Yummy!!!

Pic: fishing birds, the Chinese tie string around the birds neck so it won't swallow the fish and then take the fish from the birds mouth.

On my way to work

I always think of you on my way to work. I think to myself I really need to blog about this. I wish I had a camera to film the streets I walk down, so you could experience it as I do.

I teach English two evenings so; this is one of my routes to work. I leave about 6:00pm and believe it or not, I initially fight the crowds from the elementary public school just getting out. I come to a large busy 4-lane street where I have to cross the road one lane at a time. It is not unusual to be stuck on the center line while busses pass me both directions. It is not for the faint of heart. On the sidewalks there are several serious games being played this time of day by men; cards, that they slap down as hard as they can with an outburst here and there, and some kind of checkers with very large pieces and a board 4x the normal size. The games draw very large crowds.

Several men sit on their scooters along the canal. I have no idea why they are sitting on their scooters……perhaps to people watch. The canal is called the “Stinky Canal”. You can be sure that if China calls it stinky, that indeed it IS stinky. Part of the year they grow lotus in the canal, which helps a bit.

I turn the corner where there is a nonstop line of small businesses. All the size of half a one car garage including the garage door rolled up. Probably the majority of the people live in these windowless dwellings. People and families go about their business and home life for everyone to see. Kids run rampant all ages everywhere, while others have mothers hovering over the top of them to do their homework. It is a striking disparity from my own home country every single time I walk down this road. I can never get used to it.

I turn another corner down a small street and then I duck into a dark alley with an entrance the size of a doorway. This area is what I call China’s China; poor, dark and foreign. To my immediate right is a garbage house where dogs, cats and people are often pillaging through. I turn several more corners through apartment buildings with iron bars covering the entire apartment.

I turn my last corner where things begin to brighten and walk through the gates of Easy Talk. I have two lively groups of children and wonderful assistants who I will soon share pictures of. Often when I walk into the school, one of the assistants has a comment about my hair. To her it looks like my hair has exploded, and she must comment on it. It always cracks me up.