China- 2nd week, still busy

Pandas: The world's foremost Panda research and breeding program is in a rather large park/nature preserve on the outskirts of Chengdu. We arrived at a time of day that they were very active, and got to see them stand up to catch some apple pieces. They were extremely cute and adorable, but since they are considered to be China’s national treasure, I didn’t sneak one home. Check out: Panda.org.CN

Picasso: On the same day as the Pandas, we arrived back to the city early enough to catch a Picasso exhibit at the Szechuan Art Museum. I’m not really sure whether we were seeing original Picasso work from his sketchbooks, or whether they were signed reprductions. What little non-Chinese captions there were under each picture were in French, so I didn’t get to fully understand how this sample of his work fit into a bigger context. But, it was fun to see, and definitely was Picasso.


Bunnies: How cute is that? A whole “herd” of pet shop (I hope !) bunnies going for a motorbike ride.
Just another example of creative transportation methods. By the way, I think this picture seems apropos here as well:


Here's another example of creative transportation. This was a guy hauling sheets of drywall to work on another apartment in the complex. However, he brought them there on the back of a 3-wheeled bicycle.


Scott: Another day, a former student of Adam’s came over to ask if he or Lisa would edit the English translation of his graduation speech. I took a stab at it which was rather interesting, since

“Hereon, please allow me to be the delegate of the paterfamilias and give congratulations to our children”

was probably more fluid when expressed as,

“Please allow me to speak on behalf of the families represented here and offer congratulations to our students….

Scott was thrilled to have me rewrite it so it would sound correct to a native English speaker. And I was glad to have another Chinese friend. He came to dinner with us on another day and it was fun getting to know him better. He is studying Accounting at Chengdu University, so he was interested in my career as an auditor.


Old Buildings: Our friends, Jackie & Cindy, took us to show the old neighborhood where he had grown up. Although it was getting dark, it was interesting to understand the various types of buildings here in context with the various governmental changes over the last 100 years or so. The older street (below) was typicall before 1949. Then, after the revolution, the Soviets came in and built the first “housing projects” like the one shown on the right that Jackie had grown up in. With some economic reforms in the late 70’s and 80’s, the next generation of housing came into being (on the left), and finally the big building in the back (along with apartment building like the one Lisa and Adam live in) are more typical of recent construction (mid 1990’s through present). I found it interesting that patches of these different types of housing are all over the city, but it’s sad that the charm of the old houses is rapidly disappearing.

Courtyard: Off of the old street below, was a small courtyard in an apartment complex. It was sort of a neat refuge from the clutter and busy-ness of the city all around it.

Old Street: Street In Jackie’s old neighborhood, one of the old streets was being torn up to make it more tourist-oriented, and I’m glad we got to see it before the charm disappered. In one of the piles of construction debris, Adam and Jackie found some pieces of old “eaves tiles” that I was thrilled to get. The are ceramic tiles I enjoyed seeing them adorning the tops of courtyard walls all around the city, so it’s really fun to have a neat paperweight with a gargoyle face on it. Here is an excerpt about them from “Things Chinese” by Du Feibao & Du Bai:

Eaves tiles are small accessories in classical Chinese architecture fixed at the end of rafters for decoration and for shielding the eaves from wind and rain. Eaves tiles emerged as a culture in their own light during the Zhou dynasty (11th century –771 BC) and reached their zenith during the Qin and Han (221BC-220AD) In the intervening years, they underwent the transition form a half-round design to a cylindrical design, and from plain surface to decorative patterns, from intaglio to bas-relief carvings, from lifelike imagery to abstraction, and from patterns to inscriptions, until they became an art that involved language, literature, aesthetics, calligraphy, carving, decoration, and architecture, with themes that ran the gamut from nature and ecology to mythology, totems, history, places, names, mausoleums, place names, auspicious phrases, folklore, and family names. Together, the eaves tiles from a history book that reflect vividly the natural scenery, humanities and political science and economics. The Beijing Museum of Ancient Ceramic Civilization is billed as the nation’s first exhibition center of ancient eaves tiles: it collection of more than 400 eaves tiles has no lack of rare and valuable pieces of art.

Window Washers: No harness, no net. Just a board to sit on hung from a rope, with a bucket and squeegee. China doesn’t have their own version of OSHA yet, I guess.

Mao Statue: I didn’t get a overwhelming sense of oppressive government and communist statues and slogans all over the city. In fact, I was surprised how few Chinese flags I saw. However, this is the main statue of Mao in downtown Chengdu and I'm doing my best to do the "Mao wave".

Phone Number: Here's my phone number, with a similar area code, on the side of a public restroom. Coincidental ? I hope so. Actually, it was an ad for an lumber company.

Shoe Shine Lady: This just seemed like a fun picture as she worked on my shoes for 2 Yuan (24 cents). She was amazed at Adam being with Lisa and was beside herself wondering how Adam was able to marry a “rich” foreigner.


Haircut & “Dry Shampoo” : I got to have a “dry shampoo", which consists of a scalp massage and shampoo while being seated in a barber chair. I don’t know why they don’t wash people’s hair this way in the US. Rather than having to lay back against a hard sink edge, the stylist just took some shampoo and a little water and worked it into a lather and worked it around till it was a big sudsy pile. Then she massaged my scalp, next and shoulders with great skill. Sue at Susie’s Scissors in Lewiston- are you getting this ? Afterwards she cut my hair, and it turned out great. Cost for the shampoo, massage, and haircut ? 20 Yuan ($2.50). I can’t afford NOT to go to China again (grin).


Coming Soon... Pictures of Beijing and The Great Wall