Outside Shanghai - Travelling
This is me. I'm still very skinny, I still need a haircut and I'm still loving China, so I guess not much has changed since you all last saw me, except I'm staying in China for another year.This picture was taken last weekend, when I was invited to join one of my friends Kitty for a weekend away in a small town about 2 hours west of Shanghai (it's called ZhouZhaung). Not only was this extremely relaxing, but also a reminder that for many Chinese, life is very different to those near the centre of Beijing and Shanghai.
While this town is turning more touristy, we went to another smaller village that had almost no foreigners, meaning the experience was far more Chinese and far more authentic. The town and the smaller village have a lot of old buildings, lots of bridges and is nicknames 'the Venice of China' as it has numerous canals and waterways, which makes the whole location really beautiful and very peaceful.
For George and Eddie, I have a nice little story from that should remind them of when we were growing up... While walking through this small village in China, Kitty noticed a stall of Ocarinas! An ocarina is a small, egg-shaped, musical instrument that you blow into, kind of similiar to a flute, see the photo below.
George and Eddie should remember an old story called 'the Legend of Zelda' that we were all addicted to. There was one specific game which had the subtitle "the Ocarina of Time", where the hero found a magical ocarina, where a certain song would send the hero back in time, play a magical spell, or call his faithful horse to him. Well many years later I have now learnt that an ocarina is originally from China, and courtesy of a birthday present, I now am the proud owner of my own ocarina!
Another small story is my small friendship with this Chinese 6 year old from this village (see photo below). I was taking a photo of one of the shops, and this little girl looked up from behind the shop counter, smiled at me and asked me a question (in Chinese)...
In the next minute or two, we managed to have a basic conversation in Chinese, where we discussed whether we had eaten lunch yet, whether she was busy that day, and I found out her name was something like ZhiYueYue. After saying goodbye, this one minute conversation gave me a big smile for the rest of the afternoon, after one year in China I can finally have a one minute basic conversation with a 6 year old! Hmmm... after writing that, it doesn't seem so impressive does it?!
There's a lot of street food in China, and this old lady and her granddaughter are a typical example, selling a type of pancake and boiled eggs to any interested passer-by.
Talking of street food, the Shanghai region has a greater quantity and variety of fresh fruit than Beijing. This girl is pealing a pineapple for us - one of my favourite fruits of the moment, however it's going off season now in China so it's harder to get :-(
This smaller village seemed much more real and relaxed than the centre of Shanghai, as shown by this local happily spending his afternoon fishing in the local lake.
Life here is more basic, with locals using a simple outdoor hairdressers instead of a fancy Korean one that washes your hair, massages you and then cuts your hair. We saw numerous locals washing their clothes in the local lake, meaning the water is much cleaner than most of the rest of China.
We also saw lots of cute and nice things that just made us smile, including the small dog that happily slept on the street the whole afternoon, and this old lady just wandering slowly down the alleys and local shops.