Pudding and Chopsticks

Construction crane hanging over the bus stop.

Not much going on today. I’m just at my usual day off place. Starbucks. I don’t need to explain why if you have been reading my posts up until this point.

Anyway I would go out and take some photographs but I am feverishly working on some personal projects and what not that don’t necessarily involve the taking of photos. As much as I would love to get the camera out and go wonder around I can’t.

However, I will try to take some snapshots of random things. With the point and shoot. Easy enough right. So I might have something to post in the next few days. I’ll try not to take too boring of photographs.

Today is well, tomorrow is a holiday. I got a few days off which normally I would plan to go somewhere. But again, working on the personal things. I would love to go to Shanghai and check out the photography market and art galleries. Maybe someday soon. We’ll see.

But for now I’m going to try to bust out these things so that I have more time to post about random nonsensical items that I’m sure you all want to read about.

This is a photo I took the other morning behind a market. It looks like a house. Pretty sure it is. There is even a chicken in front picking through the muddy trash for food.

Anyway, it’s no wonder that most people here don’t have the same expectations to what a proper house should be, or rather be built like. Outside my apartment the paint is falling off the concrete walls, cracking, etc, but it’s a million times better than living in this place. Which, I would imagine was the place to be 10-20yrs ago.

Give it another 10-20yrs and demands about construction, materials, and quality with increase. Just not right now.

I wasn’t there, nor do I know the context. And I realize that I may be taking this a different way then the way it was intended. Also the women that said it, well, I don’t know her. All I know is that she is in China’s middle class, has a expensive house, married with a child.

She was talking to my friends wife. They were talking about salary and the women stated to my friends wife, and I am paraphrasing here,  “So your husband must be making over 500K RMB a year right?”

To put that in context you can understand, that’s 79,248USD a year.

So, this may not be what all Chinese think but she can’t be the only one that thinks we make 80K USD a year.

And it’s quite funny that, to be honest, now days it’s pretty hard to make 80K in the States.. So..

Anyway, that made me feel good inside. To think that I make way less then that but I am expected to make somewhere near that figure. This sucks.

I don’t understand why people walk in the road, along the road or any part of a surface where cars drive.

There is a perfectly good sidewalk over here people.

If you knew how Chinese, or rather, I should say inexperienced drivers drive when they think they own the road and don’t yield to anything, you wouldn’t even want to leave the house, much less walk on the sidewalk.

You can’t say it’s culture either. I mean, who’s culture is it to walk in harms way on a road..

This is what I presume to be a little road side garden. Notice the little sprouts, and the nicely tilled rows of dirt. I also noticed a funny smell which was close to the cow manure that they would spread on the corn field back in my home town. But this smell was off a little bit.

I then notice the white stringy type junk on the dirt. I’m 87.4% sure that it’s toilet paper. That would make.. well. the smell. Great. How lovely. I don’t want to know what they used to fertilize it.

Boat rolling through.

Notice the child playing next to the right side by the edge of the deck. I guess he’s hard to see, but he’s there. Playing away with not life jacket, and parent close enough to catch him.

A green pool some something back hidden in the middle of nowhere.

That everyone, is a mutli-millions dollar, and I mean expensive apartments, gated area for super rich, and it’s on a road out in the middle of an industrial area with chickens picking in the trash. Yep, China is full of these contrasts. Ferrari’s parked next to old VW Santanas and three wheel bikes. Rich people living in the ghetto. Poor, rich. It’s all mind blowing. Anyway enjoy the chickens.

Sunsetish type pano.

Random photos from the Sunday outing.