Joy to the World

One of them days

A quick run to the grocery store, that's all it was meant to be.

I grabbed my down coat, scarf and gloves, and headed down to the basement to retrieve my e-bike that was being charged in the storage room.

I zoomed over to the nice new grocery store in my neighborhood, which is in the underground floor of a sparkling new mall. And even though it is not common in America for malls to have grocery stores, it is quite the norm here.

The eight-story mall is decorated for Christmas, has Christmas music playing, and is just lovely!

To get from my place to the mall I had to maneuver through the road construction that I've mentioned previously.

I decided to get lots of groceries. After all, I could carry them back home on my e-bike, so it was no trouble. I got big heavy items, like liquid laundry detergent. I put everything into two big recyclable cloth bags, which I estimate to have weighed about 25 pounds each.

After shopping, I went to the other end of the underground floor of the mall to enjoy coffee at the new coffee shop. Ah, it was so relaxing! There's nothing quite like an infusion of hot caffeine on a cold day.

Then I started back to my place on e-bike. I got to the construction part of the road when my e-bike died. I tried to re-start it. The scent of burnt wires wafted through the air. I pushed my e-bike to the side of the road. Fortunately, half a block away was a repair place. After an hour, they had repaired my bike. The repair lasted for about ten feet. I pushed the bike back. They fixed it again. That repair lasted about 20 feet. I pushed the bike back. They couldn't fix it. And I couldn't stay there forever.

There are no buses in this area, and no empty taxi is cruising for passengers in a construction zone. So I had to leave my e-bike there and walk home. I walked about a mile back to my place, carrying about 50 pounds of groceries (it could have even been more, quite seriously).

And I was wearing heels.

Furthermore,  I am not 20 years old anymore and I have a chronic muscle ailment anyway. I'll be better in a day or two, but right now I can't walk or otherwise move without pain.

Oh, and I had an important work document that was due, and since I had hung out at the repair shop all day, I had to stay up half the night to finish my work document.

We all have days like this, huh? It's just one of them days. At least it wasn't raining.

Cinnamon

Yesterday I made a slice of cinnamon toast. I buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled cinnamon and sugar (artificial sweetener, actually), and put it in the oven so the toppings could melt into a bubbly texture.

As I was putting away the bottle of cinnamon spice, I looked at it more carefully and noticed it was not cinnamon, but chili powder. Oops!

The butter wasn't melted yet, so I quickly got a paper towel, scrubbed off the added ingredients, and using the same piece of bread I started over.

So, today I made apple cider. The recipe called for apple juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Whew, I got it right this time!

Better than Charlie Brown's

It may not be the most beautiful tree in the world, but I like it! I guess you're supposed to trim Christmas trees to give them a polished look, but I like the wild, natural God-given look so I left it alone. I really love the red ceramic tree pot. After Christmas, I'm going to try to keep this tree alive on my balcony for future years' use. I will rely on the advice of my American friends in town (one studied horticulture in college) to keep it alive. Of course during Chinese New Year the tree will have to be moved indoors so it won't catch fire from flaming pieces of fireworks that always land on my balcony during that pyrotechnic nightmare of a holiday. I actually have very little confidence in its survival under my care, but I'm going to try.

Let it rain, let it pour!

Mimi got a raincoat in the mail today from my mom and dad. After I took these pictures, I realized I had it on inside out. It's a wee bit snug, but on rainy days this rain-hating diva doggy is going to be dry!

She's really, really thrilled about wearing it, can you tell? The only thing she hates worse than rain is clothing.

But I make her wear clothing sometimes anyway. Here (above) she is being the life of the party, my recent Christmas party, that is. The dog clothes protect people's clothes from getting so much dog hair on them. Except for a few minutes on the sofa with her new friends, Mimi (also known as "The Meems") sat in the rocking chair with that same guy for the entire two-hour party. He has (or had) four dogs growing up. He started to tell us what happened to one of them when he almost started crying, so he decided not to tell us. Fine with me, I don't want to know.

You see, Mimi and clothes just don't get along well. She likes this soft t-shirt material better than some of her other clothing, and it keeps her warm on frigid days, but she can't seem to figure out what the armholes are for. Don't worry, she still has all four of her limbs intact, she's just hiding one of them. This works fine until it's time to get up and walk around. I always have to take her clothes off when I leave the house to run errands to prevent this from happening when I'm not around.

Mimi turns 7 in January. My, how the years fly by!

Party time

It's December, it's cold, it's Christmas time!

I decided an artificial tree was unbearable (this year anyway), so off to the nursery I went a few days ago. Cut pine trees are not available for purchase, but live ones can be bought. So the little old farmer guy on the far edge of town (20 miles away), anticipating the arrival of foreigners like me, had already dug a bunch of pine trees out of the ground and had them ready to take away. I picked the shortest one, bought a red pot to put it in and a little extra dirt, and I was set for Christmas! The tree cost the equivalent of $19 and the pot was $6.39. The round trip taxi ride cost almost as much as the tree.

Some city slicker was at the nursery and jokingly accused the old farmer of hiking up the price because of me being a foreigner. The farmer said, "I did not! Why would I do that? Only foreigners buy these trees in the first place, so the price is the same for all of them!"

(Christians in this country celebrate the spiritual aspect of Christmas, but not the traditional and commercials aspects of it that we are most familiar with. They go to church on Christmas, but they don't put trees in their homes.)

I got my "short" tree home, and found out it is about 8 feet tall. It's perfect. Photos coming some other day.

I am busy making fudge, cookies and Rice Krispy treats for my big blow-out party this weekend. The invitees are all 20-something (and a few 30-something) young professionals who may have never been to a foreigner's home before, or else they have never been to a Christmas party before. They seem pretty enthused at the prospect of coming over. I've invited about 30 of them. If they all come, there won't be room for them. But there will be food for that many. Maybe some of them can stand on the balcony and eat fudge.

I went out and bought six small folding chairs and about 50 pounds of groceries today, and carried it all back to my place at the same time by e-bike ... with a wind chill factor right at freezing. Not fun, but definitely not boring -- no no, not my life!

Now if I can just keep Mimi out of the candy until the party is over ... I'm gonna collapse when this party is over. But hopefully it will be worth the trouble as I deepen relationships with local people.

Christmas makes its mark in the Middle Kingdom

                        
Christmas may be just another day in the Middle Kingdom, but it has still made its mark.


This year Christmas is on a Sunday, but when it is on a weekday, the sight of people going to school and work is enough to deflate any westerner's balloon full of traditions.


But shopping malls, restaurants and hotels are decked out in Christmas trees and Santa posters. You may even find a few gifts. But those crowds at the mall are not there to buy gifts, they are just there because it is too cold to stand outside.


Still, on a weekend, it is worse than any Christmas shopping crowd you have EVER seen in America.


Young people think it is fun to celebrate key American holidays, namely Valentine's Day and Christmas. If you invite them to a Christmas party, they'll be ecstatic and probably show up dressed like Santa (they don't know enough about the reindeer or Frosty to go that route, and they sure are clueless about the nativity).


Before Thanksgiving ever arrived, I had bought stockings and decorations. I have a hopeful feeling that it will be a wonderful Christmas this year.

Thanksgiving Day

The sun shone down on this cool, crisp day, making it perfect Thanksgiving weather. I made a tossed salad and eggplant casserole before taking a taxi across town to join my American friends for a Thanksgiving lunch feast. Seventeen of us had deep-fried turkey with all the trimmings. It was a nice day and really felt like Thanksgiving.

On the way back to my place in a taxi, I saw men putting down new sidewalks, and thought what a shame it was that they had to work on Thanksgiving Day. Then I got jolted back to reality. Today's Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. It's not celebrated in the Middle Kingdom. I had a great holiday anyway.

Thanksgiving Holidays of the past

In 1969, I looked out the wide-slat blinds in my bedroom early on Thanksgiving morning in Fort Stockton, Texas, and told my mother, "I wish it would snow." But it was sunny, probably around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, so my mom told me not to get my hopes up.

Imagine her surprise when, a few hours later, the skies opened up and sent a blanket of snow to the west Texas desert. Being with my family that day made for one of the most memorable Thanksgivings ever.

When I was in either junior high or high school, my dad and brothers went deer hunting the day after Thanksgiving, so my mom and I went an hour and a half away to Odessa, Texas, to go shopping at the mall, buy a Christmas tree that we put in the trunk of the car, and eat at Manuel's Mexican food restaurant. That was a really fun day for me too. That was back before people called the day after Thanksgiving "black Friday." We were some of the pioneers who made black Friday black!

I think it was about 1980 when my brother James and I were traveling from our college in central Texas (Brownwood) to our home in West Texas (Pecos) in an ice storm. We had an 8-track tape of the Imperials Christmas album playing in the car as we slowly slid halfway across Texas. It was worth the trip though.

A few years later, I took my grad school friend (from Iowa) from Fort Worth to Pecos, an eight-hour drive. After eight hours of desert, a hypnotized Angelia had figured that in the same length of time it took us to get across Texas, she could have probably gone home to Iowa for Thanksgiving.

Every year is a good one, wherever we may be, whomever we may be with. 

By the way, if anyone needs a good dressing recipe, my mom's is the world's best.

Happy Thanksgiving!

East Nanjing Road, Shanghai

I went to Shanghai by train recently. You have to buy your train tickets in advance to guarantee a seat. Unfortunately, the sunny forecast was replaced by a rainy reality. Never mind. Shanghai's Nanjing East Road, the pedestrian street, makes even the gloomiest day seem bright.

The rain was light. I remember being on Nanjing East Road in 1997 when it was not a pedestrian street. It was a famous shopping street, but it was full of cars. It was also pretty backwards at that time. There was nothing worth buying. Now there's a lot worth buying, but only rich people can afford most of it.

I took my small instamatic camera instead of my better but heavier camera. So these pictures are not all that great. But I didn't want a backache at the end of the day.

At the end of Nanjing East Road lies the Bund, the riverside walkway. The Huangpu is a river that dissects downtown Shanghai from ultra-modern Pudong across the way. I took a ferry from one side to the other. The other ways to get across are by tunnels and vehicle bridges (taxis, buses, personal vehicles and subways).

Shanghai is probably my favorite city in the whole world. I could spend weeks there and never run out of things to do. 

Fall in Bamboo Forest

 A tree-lined bus stop area.

Falling leaves along the bike path.

I'm back from my trip to Thailand. I'm clearly allergic to that country, as I catch a cold 9 out of 10 times that I go there.


Anyway, I didn't want to be gone long from Bamboo Forest, because fall is the most beautiful time of year here. I looooooovvvvve it.


There's a Christian bookstore at a government-sanctioned church here, and they sell Bibles, calendars, and a few little tidbits (nothing extravagant like Christian bookstores in America). I went to get a calendar today. A lady who appeared to be in her 60s stopped me to chat. She wanted to know if all Americans were Christians, because that's what she'd heard. "No," I told her, "some are and some are not." I told her how I had made my decision to follow Christ when I was young, but it is each person's decision and some don't make it for Christ. She was shocked to know that all Americans were not believers. I guess that in the same way we think all Israeli citizens are Jews and all Saudi Arabians are Muslims and all Tibetans are Buddhists, she thought all Americans were Christian.


Today was not the first time I had heard that question. Many people here think that way. You know, they watch the movies that come out of Hollywood (face it, most are not very "clean" at all) and think that's how Americans/Christians live their lives. They think we call ourselves followers of Christ and live like the devil. No wonder some are not very interested in hearing the Message. Oh, I try to tell them that most of us don't live like it shows in the movies, but they don't really believe it. So, though sometimes I fail, I try my best to be living proof in their midst.

A stroll in a Chinese garden

I took some time to visit a garden last week. This man posed for me. I like his green shoe laces, his cap and the fact that it looks like he is wearing pink flowers on his hat (they are actually in the background).

Reading a newspaper, listening to the melodies of the chirping birds.

Twisted branches add to the ancient feeling of the traditional garden.

Rocks, water, flowers, greenery and traditional structures are all elements of a traditional Chinese garden.

The garden is just beautiful. I could sit there for hours (if my schedule allowed, and it does not).

I guess she doesn't need to fill this up with water very often. It's huge!

Young and old alike find solitude and peace in the beautiful gardens, enjoying the elements that God has created.

The laid-back life

Here are some scenes from Bamboo Forest. The main part of town is modern, but if you get out of downtown a few blocks, you see the laid-back lifestyle of the Middle Kingdom in all its glory.

I love these cute little stores that line the roads around town. (Most cities in the Middle Kingdom have these kind of streetside stores.)

More road construction scenes

This is one of the main roads in town. It is like this on both sides of the road, with two small lanes of traffic delicately balanced in the middle of the mess.

They are putting in pipes. I think it is related to the subway construction in some way. 

Above and below are scenes from the main east-west artery through town. Shops along the subway construction route have been hidden from view by metal barriers for almost four years, so most have gone out of business. When the barriers come down, I won't recognize the city. I have no idea what lurks behind those metal shields.

Again, this is the main artery through town. The part in the middle is under construction. But tomorrow, it may be the outer parts of the road that are under construction. From one day to the next I never know what the detours will be. It changes quite often.

You can't tell much in this photo, but it is a big gaping hole in the street. I presume it will be a subway entrance area, as it is several stories deep.

My Neighborhood

The two buildings on the right are in my apartment complex. My apartment complex is huge, and exists on both sides of the canal (has several bridges).

Here's another view of my apartment complex. I live in one of the shorter buildings (eleven stories high).

In the little paved alleyway in my neighborhood, there are little shops like this one that sell house shoes, vinegar, soy sauce, eggs, rice, drinks, etc.

Here's a little barber shop. The guy getting his haircut saw me taking his picture (from his view in the mirror).

Here's the paved alleyway. My apartment entrance is on the left, past the building. The guy who sits along the sidewalk sells eggs. 

I like my neighborhood. The apartment complex is modern and nice. The surroundings are old-fashioned and quaint. If I go out the front gate, I can be at a park whether I turn left or right. The alleyway runs between two of the main roads in town, making it convenient to transportation. I am near the center of town, so I can travel in any direction and see interesting things. As far as I know, there are only two other foreigners who live in my part of town, but I never ever see them. There are THOUSANDS of foreigners in this city, but they all live in one of two districts that cater to foreigners. If I am going to live overseas, I prefer to mix with the locals rather than live in one of those foreigner districts, as long as it is practical to do so (and so far it is). I am thankful for my housing situation.

Garden Windows

 Here are some beautiful windows in some ancient gardens.

KFC Nostalgia

Lately I have been hanging out at KFC more than usual, because it brings back lots of good memories of good times in the Middle Kingdom.


I suppose you are aghast at the news that KFC holds a special place in anyone's heart. But you should know that KFC in Asia is a zillion times better than KFC in America, not only in my opinion, but in the opinions of other Americans who travel here also. It is extremely clean, modern, efficient and clean (I said that twice on purpose). The food selection is somewhat different than in America, and I generally like it. But it is less the food, more the ambience, that makes KFC's in China memorable.


KFC is a sign of a modern city. When I ask someone about a city in China, and I'm trying to find out how developed it is, the first question I ask is if it has KFC and how many. Because KFC is always the first to go in to a developing city (followed MANY years later by McDonalds and/or Pizza Hut). Any city with a KFC is a pretty okay city. Any city with all three is a city to be reckoned with.


When I lived in Bedrock, I almost fainted in shock when I saw the first KFC go up many years ago. In a city of a couple of million people, all we could eat was Chinese food until then. KFC was far too expensive for the average person to go to, so only the wealthy people in town would go there. Fashionable moms would take their children to the play area. Wealthy and educated people who wanted to show they were internationally minded would go there to meet others like them. I can't even count how many acquaintances and friends I made at a KFC. It was exciting, fun and clean!


Sometimes I would go there 2-3 times a week. If I worried about the effects of fried chicken on my  heart health, I just drank coffee. It was my home away from home.


I miss those days, when everything was new and exciting. I still like to go to KFC, to remember the old times, but these days most people are too sophisticated to walk over to a foreigner to start a conversation. So I am happy to sip my citrus tea (pictured above) and reminisce.

Leader of the pack

There is a vicious dog in the neighborhood. She is not very big, but she is mean, baring her teeth and growling like she wants to kill someone. I think Mimi and I are on her menu.


Unfortunately, we ran across the little brown mutt yesterday. She came running over a hill and was MAD, about to take a bite out of one of us. I swooped Mimi into my arms to protect her, kind of like this:

(Apparently this is common behavior for dog owners. It looks somewhat less silly when I do it though, because Mimi's no bigger than a baby.)


With Mimi slung over my shoulder like a burping baby, and loaded with all the information that I saw on National Geographic's "Dog Whisperer" TV show this past Sunday, I stood my ground, pointed my finger at the mean brown dog, and in my best teacher's voice told that dog to cut it out and go home.


After a minute or two of this, the dog tucked her mean teeth back inside her mouth and seemed to calm down, but didn't go away. My goal was to send that dog packing, back to her home (her unattentive master lives in my apartment complex). I was going to win this battle.


I continued wagging my index finger at her, telling her in English to go away and leave us alone, when all of a sudden a Chinese man, a neighbor, walked up with the most incredulous look on his face. He looked at the mean dog, then he looked at me and said, "She understands English???!!"


It felt like I had cotton in my ears, because surely he didn't just ask that. He knew the mean brown dog was not my dog and that we were having an unfriendly standoff.


"Huh?" I asked.


"Does that dog know English?" he wanted to know.


All sorts of inappropriate answers swam through my mind. 'Yes, I hold a weekend class for all the dogs in the neighborhood.' Or maybe some response like, 'Yes, dogs are bilingual, didn't you know?'


But I didn't want to make him feel bad, because he was dead serious. He was probably also feeling really defeated, thinking these dogs knew more English than his own child. So I broke it to him gently and explained that the neighbor's dog doesn't know English, only knows my meaning by my tone of voice. 


He nodded like he kind of understood, but as he walked away, I think he still thought I had taught English to the dogs in the neighborhood. I'm pretty sure he was wondering why I would bother to stand there and talk to the dog in English if the dog didn't understand English anyway. He found the whole scenario rather perplexing. I guess they don't talk to dogs in this country.


After the neighbor had gone, I pointed to the mean dog, told her one more time to go home, and she tucked her tail and went back home over the hill.


National Geographic will probably be calling soon.


_______
Footnotes:
1. The photo is random. I don't know the person or the dog in the photo.
2. Mimi understands basic commands in both English and Chinese, because she hears them all the time. She doesn't speak any languages though, thanks be to the Creator. :-)
3. I would call animal control on this dog and owner, but the dog looks like she just had pups, so that would be mean of me to call her in right now. She was mean way before she ever had pups though, so it is not just the protective instinct kicking in.
4. Living overseas is pretty doggone interesting.

Sweater weather

A week of holidays

It's the national day holidays this week (October 1-7). It's like the 4th of July without the cookouts and heat. It's a week in which everyone gets off work at the exact same time. Next to Chinese New Year, it's the biggest travel week of the year.

No fan of the fan

The dog days of summer have ended, so to save electricity, I ran the fan at night instead of the air-conditioner. All my local friends say to never sleep with a fan on, because it will cause colds. But in America I slept with a fan on me all the time and never got a cold. So it just doesn't make sense that it could happen in one country and not another.


But every single time I try to disprove this "fan will make you sick" theory in Asia, I only prove them to be correct. I slept with a fan on me last weekend and now I have a bad cold. They may have to tear down another forest to replace all the tissues I've used in the past week.


I don't understand the fan thing, but I believe it. I'm done with sleeping with a fan on me. In Asia anyway.

Sweet little mutt 'o mine

 

Top: What a beauty!

Bottom: She's either

A: sniffing the air

B: doing neck exercises

C: being a snobby dog

Your guess is as good as mine! This dog has a mind of her own.

Note to those who could care less about my dog: My parents have met Mimi and like her quite a bit, so these pictures are for them. Other people post pictures of their children, I post pictures of my dog. Check back again soon and if you're lucky, maybe I'll have something you like better.

Gonna dig me a hole and crawl into it

Imagine, traffic so atrociously crowded that cars cannot reasonably get through town. The solution? Build a subway system to alleviate traffic! But during the 4 years of construction, the already crowded traffic will be detoured down 2-lane roads and make transportation even a bigger nightmare than it was before a "solution" was hit upon.

Sadly, this is the main road through Bamboo Forest. It has been torn up. And just about every road in town either looks like this or is a crowded detour road for cars trying to avoid the construction.

I have been in Bamboo Forest for three years now, and it has pretty much looked like this the whole time I have been living here -- in fact, it is getting worse! Getting across town is almost impossible. Trauma comes to those who try. It seems it will never end. Someday, presumably, we'll have a lovely subway system and all the annoyance will fade into our memories. But for now, we have chaos, mayhem and short-circuited nerves.

This is another view of the main road.

Will it ever end? 

Have passport, will travel

I am in Hong Kong for about a week. My visa has to be renewed, and I had to come here to get it done. I turned over my passport two hours after I arrived in town, and now all I have to do is sit around for a week for it to come back to me. I took a few days to roam around Hong Kong, but it is not really vacation (I have a lot of work to do that I can do on my computer). I used to live here, so I have visited old friends, done some sightseeing, and such as that. 


Since May, I have traveled in five different countries. Twenty-somethings think that's fun. I'm not in my 20's, so, you know, I find it half exhausting and half fun. :-) Hong Kong is definitely the best place in the world to have to wait around for a week though!

Stuff you don't see every day...

...unless you live in Hong Kong.

How about a cup of sun tea on a hot day? Be sure to flavor it with dead bees overnight.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but besides the fact that the worship of false gods is distasteful to me anyway, it seems rather irreverent to light one's joss sticks with a blow torch.  

I think this is a painting of the false god, painted on the door to a temple. Looks like some cartoon character. You don't scare me!!!!

You've probably seen incense sticks before. In China they often burn them in public restrooms in an attempt to eradicate the bad smell. Yep, incense is burned in temples and restrooms. There's something really weird about that. But I digress. The above picture is of coiled incense that's hung from the ceiling.

Coffins for sale. Yep, right next to a repair shop, next to the bee tea shop, right in the middle of everything. So if you go out to the convenience store to buy a coke and a bag of M&M's, be sure to pick up a coffin on your way home.

I can understand if the guy played a flute or guitar, 'cause it is really popular in the Chinese world to play your music in public ... but why would a person carry such a heavy instrument to the train station to play it? Would you carry your grand piano to the station to play it? 

These are the mysteries of the Middle Kingdom.