Ramada Plaza Fuzhou

It has been a while.

So, not much has happened since my last blurb.

We have been exploring the city, and trying to meet new people. We went to 'English corner' the other day. It is in the square, held under a statue of a communist leader... Interesting.. The only people that go are Chinese who want to practice their english. We were the only foreigners, which as ...

... October we get 7 days off for national holiday and we are looking into going to Beijing and seeing the Great Wall... But flights seem to be rather expensive, so we may look into taking the 'bullet train'... it travels at around 200km p/h!!! It still takes 19 hours, but by all accounts it is pretty decent.

Today we are going to a Buddist temple, so that should be cool, and generally explore!

That's enough for today, I am bored of writing! :-)

Matt

... Chinese tea house where we sat and drank tea.. it was incredible!! Like, stereotypical China, but so cool!!! Tea is very expensive here, like £70 per half kilo... So, it is a luxury.

Further on in the evening, we went with some other teachers into town to this bar - which was ****ing mental. The Chinese party hard. The drink lots, and play loads of cool games in the bar, from dice ...

... br>
As soon as I get my camera out and batteries charged I will take plenty of pictures!

The food is fantastic, and we have not, yet, had any catastrophies in ordering.... however, in the supermarket they have 'fishtanks' with live fish in - you catch your fish, they bag it (still alive) and you take it home for tea. This was one of the few delights that are on display, but I wont divulge the rest just yet!

Anyway, for today, over-and-out!

Matt

John and Sebastian Cabot sailed back across the North Atlantic with bad news for their patron, King Henry Ⅶ of England.Instead of a short sea route to Japan and India, they had found only rocky, icy coasts.

　　It was as a mere afterthought that they mentioned that they had visited a place near what they called New Found ...

... the end of the line at the gate. Many others arrived after me, no doubt due to the nastily long line outside security. The travel agent had told me that the plane would need to make a stop on the way to Fuzhou but that she wasn't sure where that might be. It turned out to be Nanjing, although I only found out once I was on the plane! Once in Nanjing, I got the airport bus into the city and then when I got off it, there was Robyn. From beginning to end, Robyn took amazing ...

... days I have only seen one policeman ever stopping a car. China gets a lot of beating because of human rights, because of Tibet and all that, but I must really say, they also deserve at least some praise to keep such a huge country up and running in a positive way. In all these big big cities of 5 million people and above, I never felt one minute unsafe. No alley was too dark to walk down, no passage too narrow to be taken in the middle of the night, and you see women walking on the ...

... while I'm sound asleep, some come together in the afternoon. But much stranger than the groups of elderly people dancing in slow-motion are the single ones whom you might encounter walking backwards through a park or shadow-fighting with a fake sword. In the middle of a park at dusk, I can't help but wonder is it Tai Chi or just normal madness, local style. At night I had a nice meal in a chinese restaurant, and after digging out a mountain of chilli ...

Another hot and humid day in China. We caught the bus from Fuzhou ¸£ÖÝ to LangYu ÀÇÓì then took another bus to TangTao ̶ͷ in the morning. From there we walked to our village, Rainbow River village ϼ½­´å. Met up with a relative of ours (SiYung Uncle ˼Ó²®¸¸)had lunch with uncle, visited our old home, where we lived 19 years ago, and lastly visited grandpa and grandma's house (dad's side) on the other side of the town. Uncle told us that all ...

... City Garden. In fact, I found it a bit too sterile and too far removed from the surrounding cultural landscape. This city's Zhongshan Lu (There seems to be one in every Chinese town) is very upmarket and rather boring, with row on row of clothing shops, but I did find a cobbler outside a shop. My sandals had started to come apart with all the rain, and I was quoted one yuan to have a broken strap fixed. Further inspection ...