Chopstick violin

Chinese tea

The Chinese love their tea - there are all sorts or varieties in all colours. This man was happily drinking tea in a courtyard tea house - but I can only describe it as some sort of rock tea. Almost like pebbles at the bottom of a fish tank.

Panda souvenirs and Halloween dress-up

Pandas

The pandas at the breeding and research centre in Chengdu were very cute - especially the baby ones although they were flaked out asleep. Tanja ended up with a sleeping panda on her lap on the way back to the hotel. (Max got a new jacket).

Pandas

A couple of little pandas visiting me this weekend!

Trendy Tibetan

Chengdu is quite close to Tibet so it's not unusual to see people in traditional tribal dress wandering the streets. This elderly lady though was lining up at trendy Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo to buy a latest season puffy winter jacket. Thought is was quite amusing.

Chengdu breakfast

Soft doughy balls and quick fried goodness - all on wheels! Haven't tried this yet but the guy does a busy trade every morning when I pass him on the way to work.

Passing the time...

Temporary graffiti. Yesterday I was walking through People's Park in Chengdu and came across a Chinese man writing beautiful old traditional Chinese characters on the ground. Just for fun. He was simply using a specially constructed pipe with a sponge tip on the end. After every couple of characters he would tip some more water from his water bottle down the end of the stick to moisten the sponge. The characters were written so perfectly and it looked beautiful - for no more than a minute and then the water dried up and his art form was gone. A Chinese friend told me he was writing about a Phoenix (bird) coming soon.

China skies

Taken from my hotel room in Chengdu. This is kind of how every day in China looks. Clear blue skies are rare and grey, smoggy, low visibity days are the norm. Sometimes I can't tell where the sun is.

Yummy

Beggars

Beggars - with fancy clothes and bikes. Apparently the chalk writing says something like: "please can we have 90 rmb so we can eat and find a place to stay tonight."

A touch of home

In the back corners of Chengdu, western China, guess what I found?? 2PH honey murcott mandarins! Amazing to think of these little shiny waxed gold nuggets of juicy goodness travelling all the way from winding Selma Road, over the Nogoa River, past the silos at Yamala, (stop for a bit at Comet), all the way to Rocky, probably down to Brisbane, then who knows where - and end up thousands of kms later on the f&v stands at Carrefour market downtown Chengdu. What a blast. Oh, and they were priced at around $8/kilo.

Max

Max and two of his kindy friends. Obviously Max was made to pose for the photo when he was in the middle of doing something very important.

Don't be a duck

While I don't want to always be posting pictures of "funny" Chinese signs, this one did make me chuckle.

It is posted on a pillar at the Chengdu airport and is perhaps part of the nation-wide civility campaign - and seems to imply that if you spit then are you likened unto a duck! I didn't know ducks were spitting animals but perhaps they are.

Of course it could mean something completely different and if I happen to ask a Chinese speaker I will correct the entry!

Wordy sign - Chengdu

"Underpass" would probably have sufficed, but hey that's ok, it gave me a smile this morning.

Spicy Sichuan!

This week finds me in Chengdu, in Sichuan province. The food is known to be spicy - in the supermarket you can buy dried red chillies by the kilo. In the other side of the bin near the lady are numbing peppercorns - another speciality in Sichuan cooking.

National day

China celebrated its national day holidays this week. In a fairly normal display of nationalism, the streets of Shanghai are dressed with hundreds of Chinese flags.

Qingdao - 3

Max checks out a Chinese kids toy, street-side crystal for sale, and more of Qingdao beach. The beach has impressed us - it's not too dissimilar to what we find back home. There are families, joggers, dog walkers and tourists taking photos.

Qingdao - 2

An old German church, strange taxis with three wheels and our beachfront hotel.

Qingdao 1

Qingdao - surprising. We like it! It's clean, quiet, cool and calm. The streetscape is hilly and picturesque, the sea is green and sparkling. Yesterday we visited the Qingdao Guest House, a former German Governor's residence. There was some German settlement here early in the 20th century. We had a great morning with some friends and the kids enjoyed the beach in the afternoon.

Where are we again?

Didn't quite realise how close we are to North Korea here. Qingdao is in the bottom left hand corner of the map below, and the Koreas are just across the ditch.

Starfish

Found a starfish but a leg broke off to Max's dismay.

Qingdao beach

Well so far no algae blooms have blown in. The Qingdao beach is quite good really - despite the hazy sky it's not so different to other beaches in Asia. We have a room on the 22nd floor so our view is quite good.