Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
6 Things I Learned from China
October 26, 2006, 4:35 am
Sichuan == Szechuan
I never made the connection until I got home and read the wiki. I thought the province name sounded the same, but they weren’t spell the same. Szechuan is a type of popular Chinese cuisines in North America that do have hot food. Sichuan is also known for their hot food. So I thought there were two areas in China that sounded the same, that served spicy food. Hmm..
And yes, food was spicy there. A lot of times, restaurants don’t understand what "no spice" means. Even the stir-fried bok choy was spicy. We tried KFC for lunch once (the chain is very popular in the parts of China we were in for some reason, more so than McDonald’s), and even the bucket meal chickens have kick. They also had red-bean egg tarts, that was good.
Speaking of chains, I think there was a Starbucks at every international airport we went to…
There’s Brand name Squatting toilets
One of the things I hate most about Eastern Asia are the toilets. As far as I’m concerned, a society is not civilized if they still pee into holes in the ground, and don’t provide toilet paper. It’s "cleaner"?? How is being that close to the wet ground, potentially wetting your pants, and having your face *this* close to your business considered "clean"?
But anyways, apparently Mike has a dream brand of toilets too, Toto. It’s a Japanese company that makes the uber fancy computerized toilets that does everything from warming the seat to cleaning you so you don’t have to. I think he fell in love after seeing/using them at Google. I first saw them on my Japan trip, but just can’t bring myself to use the water spray feature. Strangely, both my mom and Mike were particularly amused by it. And yes, Toto makes squatters. I used one!
Road lanes are but suggestions
And I thought driving in Hong Kong is bad, but when I went back to HK after China, the HK drivers were practically tame in comparison! The drivers in Chengdu are very skillful in their driving, squeezing in spaces with mere inches of room. At stop lights, cars line up five in a row, rushing to see who can squeeze into the two lanes on the other side. Long left turn line? No problem, just cut right in at the front of the queue. I’ve seen two cars pass a truck at the same time, one on either side, on a *single* lane road. A slow car hogging the fast lane, do you flash them? No, you tailgate and lean on your horn until they move, or you cut in front of another car to go around them.
And they drive like this on *mountain* roads! They pass on *bends* on single lane roads, honking to let the other side know you’re coming. I swear, we nearly had a head-on collision on these roads when this weak little green car insisted on passing this tour bus but lack the power to do so, and it just struggles along in our lane, and I’m still in awed that all three of us managed to squeeze by side-by-side on a total of two lanes. I haven’t decided if the driver of the green car was just that good to know that we would all fit, or if he was just too stupid to slam on the brakes and try to get back into his own lane behind the bus. Though I’d imagine any North American driver would have swerved right off into the shoulder if they were in that situation, instead of merely slowing down, moving over to the right a bit, and hope for the best.
Labour is cheap
There are people at the nature areas whose job all day is to sweep leaves… off the road. And off the walking trails. They also pick up garbage, which is fine I guess, but sweep up leaves? In a forest? In the fall? The ultimate in grunt work.
Their leaf sweeping brooms are also pretty versatile, they use to sweep snow too. I recall my dad doing that before on our driveway…
It was also a bit disturbing about how all the workers at restaurants, hotels, stores, etc, are all young. Like in their late teens and twenties. Shouldn’t they be in school or something? But they just have so many people to choose from, and if you are old (say, 35+), say hello to retirement! The hostess on the airlines are even more extreme. Each one (male and female) is tall and beautiful. Then we look at the ones on Air Canada, old, heavy and grumpy. What a contrast.
Scooters can carry anything
It seems the quality of life’s been steadily improving since I was there in 98. Most of the bikes I see on the road there now are electric or hybrid. And there’s still a lot of them. Though I suppose they are pretty cheap. The low end ones that’s like a regular bicycle with a tiny motor is around 900Y (~$125 cdn), and the European scooter-like types are around 2000Y (~$285). Compared to say, 3000Y+ for the Motorola Krzr, aka Razr 2.0. (not that impressed with the phone, btw, too much blue and chrome)
And the things they can carry on those scooters: A giant box that fits snuggly in the area in front of the seat where your legs normally go, so you have to drive around with your knees around the level of your ears. The entire carcass of freshly butchered pigs can fit in the back, little legs touching the road on every tight turn. With a giant knife stuck in the chest cavity, presumably so that passerby’s can randomly wave down the transporter and hack off pieces to take home.
And did I mention that nobody wears helmets? Be afraid.
There’s a Walmart in Chengdu
We didn’t go though, since it wasn’t nearby, only saw the sign. We did visit an Asian-equivalent of it though, called Auchan. In fact, we did most of our souvenir shopping there, as the prices were slightly lower, and they had a lot of choices. I was particularly amused by the fresh seafood section, in which the customer nets their own fish to give to the fish cleaners.
Shopping in China is even worse than shopping in Hong Kong it seems. Why are people in Southern China so tiny?? I had to get 2XL clothes… Sigh.
Tagged: Travels
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