Walking through my neighbourhood in Central China
Walking through my neighbourhood in Central China
The weather is beautiful, mid-70s, sunny and not too much pollution, so it was a perfect morning for a walk around my neighbourhood, through the local farmer's market and back home on a main road.
There are lots of little hardware stores:
Fresh vegetables and fruit cost a fifth of the price that I would have to pay in Canada. There are veggies here that I had never seen before, and my wife knows how to cook them all - and she does a great job of it. Almost every kind of fruit is grown in China - tropical fruit like oranges, bananas and pineapples in the south, all kinds of melons and apples and pears in the north. And, of course cherries, berries, but blueberries, which are the healthiest for me to eat, are expensive here.
Where I live is a fairly large city, in fact it has more than 3 times the population of my home town of Toronto (which is Canada's biggest city), so there are lots of good department stores selling brand name clothing, but if you want to buy cheap, here is the place for it.
In China young people love to wear T-shirts with English wording, and you will often see T-shirts with misspelled words on them. My theory is that the clothing is ordered from America requiring it to be printed with various phrases and words, and the Chinese manufacturers screw up the English, ship them overseas and then they're refused and returned due to the "Chinglish". Then they go on sale here, but rarely does anyone here realize there are spelling mistakes.
Have to tell you about this one experience when I was sitting on a bus, and a young girl got on and stood right in front of me. She was wearing a T-shirt that was perfectly spelled, but when I saw it my jaw dropped open in shock. It said:
FUCK YOU
FUCK ME
FUCK EVERYBODY
She saw the expression on my face, realized that as a foreigner I could certainly read it, tried to cover it with her arm and moved away. I guess she was one who DID know what she was wearing, but felt relatively safe since not many would have known.
Here are a couple of clothing stores.
Turned the corner and walked past a little cafe.
Got out to the main road. Cars were parked in front of a store - you will notice that they are mostly new, and expensive (BMW, Audi, Buick, etc) and further on my way home I saw a beautiful brand new Jaguar and then the car of my dreams, a Maserati Quadroporte).
Walked past a clinic.
And near my apartment there was a street cobbler. My wife uses him to fix our shoes.
Hope you enjoyed this walk with me.
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What a wonderful walk! This was a VERY interesting walk Buzz. I love all of the colors and the outdoor markets there. Thanks for sharing these pictures, nice job!
A great walk in the neighborhood Buzz. Thank for posting.
Beautiful walk through the area Buzz, couldn't even begin to imagine vendors on the streets of America like you have there they would get robbed blind here.
What a lovely walk with you Buzz. I love all the colors of the city. It has the feel of our "Chinatown" but far more colorful. Love the story about the girl in the T shirt. Kids!
BTW I see you have a nice gift when it comes to photography.
Perrie~
Buzz ,
Very pleasant stroll . I should point out that blueberries are expensive almost everywhere . Have you ever been in the clinic ? Is it one that practices TCM [traditional Chinese Medicine ] ?
One more question : Don't those hardware stores carry tools ?
As for
I may have dated her grandmother back in '64.
I've been looking all over for the "fucking" shirt!
But, more important, your photo essay/documentaries are always outstanding!
Very nice Buzz. Of course, I haven't ever seen that much Tupperware in one place before; not even in a Tupperware store. We have a farmer's market much like that, except that ours is only open on Saturday mornings and we only have about 200 people living in town. The street market there reminds me of pictures I've seen of the ones in New York City back at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
I've not been in that clinic, Petey, but I can see a dentist chair on the main floor. However, the cross on top indicates that it is also a medical clinic. If it has a pharmacy attached to it, the pharmacy will sell both western and traditional medicine.
In those stores, the tools are almost never put outside as they are valuable, often in locked glass-front cabinets.
Thanks, A.Mac. A compliment from you about my photos is a compliment indeed.
The Chinese are great copiers.
Thanks for the tour & the info Buzz ...
Thanks for the tour Buzz, very cool!