Back in the Saddle Again

Last week I went with the whole 4th grade class on school camp. I may post some other pictures later, but for right now I am going to go with just a couple. One of the camp activities was horse riding. I wasn't going to bother riding one, but not all the kids in my group wanted to, so we ended up with some extra time.

The horses, and their handlers, were from Mongolia. Ghengis Kahn and his warriors rode these Steppe Horses across Asia. Therefore, they are obviously tough little guys (the men and the horses), but the emphasis there is on little.

At first, the guy tried to hand-hold me on this, and even tried to help me get on. Fortunately, I was quickly able to convince him that I knew what I was doing, and he turned me loose and left me alone. I didn't have much time, so I just took one quick spin around the track. Still, at least I can say I did it.

As I said, these horses are tough little guys. Here, for size comparison, is me back in Arizona on one of our full-size American Quarterhorses (Emily is in the picture with me).

Now here I am on the Mongolian horse. I chose the biggest of the ones they had. Cute little feller, ain't he? Lee says I look like I'm riding a child's bicycle.

How Inconvenient

Our Internet was just down for four days again. This was the third time, and hopefully now it is finally fixed for real. For the time being, the teenage-looking repair guy ran a new wire out of the service box, which means that the wall jacks don't work, and we have no home telephone. That is OK for the time being, as we tell everyone to use our cellphones anyway (because the line quality is so bad).

It is all a reminder that, when it comes down to it, Internet is one of the few things we really can't live without. We need it to communicate, to manage our finances, to do schoolwork, and to not feel like we've lost all contact with Western Civilization.

No Internet makes Don go craaaaaazy....

Monday Miscellany

I don't know if I've been busy physically this week, but I've sure felt brain busy. I have a couple interesting incidents to retell, but for now I'm just going with my weekly pictures. This time, however, they do have a theme:




Workers have been dredging the canal north of apartment. Much of the mud has been used to build these wattle and earth dams so they can drain a section of the canal, which is probably a step in the construction of the shopping center next door. The barge in the second photo has been plying the water for weeks. The engine looks like it is from the early Industrial Revolution, and the captain's wheel looks like something left over from the Opium Wars.


Construction workers building an apartment block that already looks old before it is even finished.

Several years ago, there was a book titled I'm OK, You're Not (the title was adapted from a warm fuzzy book in the '70s, I'm OK, You're OK). The point of the later book was that, when surveyed, many Americans said that neighborhoods were in decline, and schools were bad across America. However, the same people consistently said "but not my neighborhood, and not our schools". In other words, the problem was always somewhere else.

I find myself pondering that phenomena here, when I try to tell myself that our own apartment block is surely built better than all these other ones that I see under construction. I'm absolutely sure that this building won't come down in an earthquake.....




A work site north of Suzhou. Out of this endless pile of rocks, pairs of workers were moving them one by one by hand, with only a chain and a length of bamboo. In the second photo, I liked the little forest of tea jugs in the break area.

Monday Miscellany

Weekly random images


The Lion's Grove Garden, a labyrinth of stone paths, tunnels, and bridges.





The Jade Belt Bridge (or Precious Belt Bridge), a stately 9th century Song Dynasty bridge along the Grand Canal that would be a lot more interesting if it were still in the country, rather than within an industrial area. I rode my bicycle out to in on a Saturday morning with H.K., a Korean friend from our LDS branch.




Wildcat dumping along a canal north of Suzhou Industrial Park




Found out by the trashcans in front of our building. The ugliest chair, and I mean ever...

I offered to rescue this chair for our friend Elvina, whose landlord supplied her living room with cheap wicker patio furniture, and doesn't see a problem with that. Citing how uncomfortable the furniture is, Elvina (who is Chinese American and speaks Mandarin) asked for a new couch. The landlord said "there is only one of you, so just stack the cushions". I've been teasing her that she isn't allowed to have friends over or date. Still, she refused my helpful offer, so maybe I'll have to go visit it the chair again in the wildcat dumping area from above.

Dealing with clueless landlords is something that will get its own post sometime, after I collect a few more stories.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

I try to avoid posting twice in one day, but oh well... I took this out of a bus window in downtown Suzhou. It is an advertisement for an apartment complex (or possibly a hotel), that is currently under construction somewhere. As usual, click for a larger image.




Why only big men? Why only fifty of them? Is fifty the total limit, or do we have to apply in groups of fifty? Is it big as in large, or big as in important? Is it like being a ten-cow wife? How big must a man be? Am I big enough? If I continue to lose weight in China, will I lose my qualification?

Safety First

Last week I posted photos of the guy spidermanning the outside of a high rise apartment building installing an air conditioner. That is just the tip of the iceberg. There are lot of really good ways to hurt yourself in China. Uneven stairs, random holes, protruding metal... they are everywhere. On the one hand, it is refreshing to see a place that obviously hasn't succumbed to the American legal culture of litigation and paranoia. On the other hand, I'm not looking forward to the day that I forget to look for the sharp end of the parking shelter down by the shopping center that is exactly at the height of my forehead. When it happens, I'll try to have my camera on me, so I can give you a good posting about Chinese hospitals.

So here are three hypothetical scenarios for how you could really get hurt around here. OSHA was invented for a reason.


Let's say you are driving your car, which you are so proud of, down to Rainbow Walk to watch the fireworks on National Day. You feel very lucky to have found a parking space on the sidewalk. In your excitement, you jump out of the door without looking down. Hopefully you have a date with you, because otherwise it might be hours before anyone realizes that you are missing. (Low photo quality on this one, I only had my cell phone with me).

Let's suppose you are a city that is going places in the New China economy, and there is lots of construction that needs to get done quickly. Still, you can't afford to close all the roads, or commerce will be adversely affected. Solution? Just let the people and the machines live happily together.

So, you are a young communist-capitalist, out with your friends in your new Buick, which you have proudly decorated with pictures of Mickey Mouse. You are driving down the road, listening to decadent Western music, at a reasonable and prudent 150 km/hr. Just make sure you pay attention to any hazards near the road, or in it...

A note:

I'm sure that some people would look at that last photo and think it was photoshopped. It is very real. I took it about a quarter mile down the road from the previous picture. Obviously the locals know that it is a construction zone, because there is virtually no traffic midday on a Saturday. Still, there are no barriers, and no signs. The roadbed has been moved, but it seems that they have finished the road before going back to move the utility pole.

The picture invites a "man, those people are stupid" sort of ridicule that I want to distance myself from. If the hell-bent ambition for progress leads to weirdness like this, it is also what gave me a job here. I keep reading posts on news forums calling the Chinese "our enemies". Can't the regular people at least get paved roads and cholera-free tap water before they have to be the bad guys? This country is being very good to me, and that is why it is the only photograph that I have marked with a copyright note. I'm really hoping to never see it on another website used to the purpose of mocking the Chinese.

Monday Miscellany

A weekly post of random photographs with no unifying story. Click for larger images on any of them.



The kids on the first day of school. Allyne now has a uniform too, but it is a white shirt with navy slacks or skirt.


John and I were the first in the family to ride a city bus. Some are nice and new, but the ones that run the 53 route, which we can use to get to the Auchan grocery store, are real rust buckets.



I couldn't get good photos because the light was failing, but this character is installing an air conditioner on the fifth floor. Safety First, right?




Lee has made some really nice posts of Chinese gardens. Here is another aspect. All of the little buildings have names, and some are very elaborate flowery names taken from Chinese poetry. This one especially cracked me up, and it makes me think of the poem (mercifully cited only by name) in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: An Ode To The Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Mid-Summer Morning

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

My weekly post of creative uses for English in China.

One of the big reasons I wanted to move the family overseas in the first place was that we seemed to be settled into ruts in which we never did activities outside the house. Part of that was because Phoenix is so hot, but I can't use that as my whole excuse. Our lifestyle was just too sedentary, and I didn't know what to do about it. It felt that every day was a race from the time we woke up until we went to bed, and a lot of things that should be happening just were not.

One of the things that became emblematic of that to me was the fact that I had never actually taught my son to ride a bike. I always felt really guilty about it. So two weeks ago, I bought this bicycle for him. He is getting better by the day, although I'm still not willing to take him out on the streets. The bike was still wrapped in packing material when we bought it, so it wasn't until later that we got a chance to read all the Novelity English.



Click for larger images.

Emmelle is the brand name, so that makes sense at least. Beyond that, there are so many questions: Is the bike especially likely to fall down? or are you supposed to FEEL IT? The name could refer to Aeolus, a minor Greek god of wind, but why would someone put that much work into researching a mythical name without proofreading any of the other English? I guess feeling the wind is better than breaking it. "Ripals" are obviously "rivals", but are you competing with them for things to be "novel" as in new? Or perhaps for notoriety?

I'm so confused.

Tiger Hill

This is the second half of the same outing from Thursday. Tiger hill is a large park of hillside gardens. It is topped off by a 1000 year old pagoda, which leans. Suzhou already dubs itself the "Venice of the East" because of all its canals. So I guess this the "Pisa of the East". It really is a nice area, and it also has the best tourist trap shops I've seen so far.

Two views of the pagoda at Tiger Hill

The family

The saddest little broken down slope-backed horse I've ever seen

Day trip to Taihu

We have the week off from work and school for Chinese National Day. Although we have been here for over six weeks, we had only done local sightseeing. Yesterday we took our first real outing. We hired a local driver and he took us out to Taihu. the "hu" means lake, and Taihu, which is west of Suzhou, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in China. The following satellite image shows the location.


Taihu is the large lake at center left. The river is the Yangtze. There are four large cities visible in the image. Shanghai east at the far right. Suzhou is just east of the lake. Wuxi is at the northern edge of the lake. Changzhou is northwest of the lake at the corner of the image. The large island is Xi shan, or West Hill. The end of the large peninsula is Dong shan, or East Hill. We went to Xi shan, which is linked to the mainland by a series of causeways. It includes some nice resorts, and a pleasant little town that is obviously off the beaten path for foreign tourists (I didn't see a single westerner all day).

The following images are from that morning.


A cave we visited. It was kind of fun, but not especially spectacular. There are some additional caves west of the lake that are said to be much cooler (one has a waterfall, and in another you traverse an underground lake by ferry). Initially, I planned for yesterday's outing to go to those caves, but it proved to be too much of a logistical challenge, so I will work on it for another time.


John in a little pocket of rock off of the trail. Just outside of the picture to the right are the Chinese girls who thought this scene was very, very funny.



Lee and Allyne near the summit of the hill over the cave.



The second level within the pagoda. I think the guy here wanted to sell me my fortune.


A view from the summit.


Two views of the lake from another area of the island. The sky was very clear for the first half of this week, but the usual haze was back. Still, it was all very pleasant, it just doesn't photograph as well.


Two more images from the same general area. I should have kept track of the names of all these places.



Lunch. An interesting experience. Our driver recommended this little place. In the cities, most restaurants have picture menus to help out the foreigners. Here, the lady just took me out back to show me what they could cook for us. Everything was local, and most was right out of the lake. I chose a fish, a chicken, and I pointed to various vegetables. I specifically did not point to the little freshwater shrimp, but we got them anyway. Just because I pointed didn't mean I knew what they were going to do to them, so as each dish came out, we had no idea what it would actually be.

All in all, we had way too much food, but I've learned that ordering way too much food is a cultural characteristic here. Everything was good, even the scrambled eggs with little eel-like critters mixed in. The only thing I didn't like at all were the little shrimp. It isn't that they are staring back, it is that they were too much work for too little reward. The chicken was cooked in an oily broth, with only the innards missing. Everything else, including head and feet, were there with it.

Don't worry, if you come visit us, we won't feed you this way. Tomorrow I will post on the afternoon portion of this outing.