Little apples

I don't really care that much for what's hot and what's not in the Chinese pop charts, but recently one particular song is almost impossible to avoid.

For several months now not one day has passed by where one didn't hear that song somewhere - in a radio at the little food stall, as music video on TV screens in restaurants or electronic appliances stores, out of speakers in front of hot pot and BBQ joints or fashion stores, and of course on dancefllors in bars and clubs.

Not one day.

And as I've been to places allover the country in the last couple of weeks I can say - it applies for the whole country - be it the prosperous provinces on the east coast, be it Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Gansu, or the tibetan outskirts of southwestern Sichuan and Yunnan - it's everywhere.

Reminds a little bit of the "Gangnam Style" hype a while ago.

Therefore hereby I wanna give the chance to share my mixture of amusement and ear pain that song gives me after hearing it on a daily basis for a while now.

The "Chopstick brothers" with "Little apple" (Link from Youtube):

There is no bad weather, just wrong clothing.

What I admire the Chinese here in the Northeast for is their ability to brave the coldness of winter and still get to work the same way they do in summer - on their scooters. Regardless of streets being icy and snowy, and even with temperatures down to -20° C . Especially the migrant workers, who often have to get their tools with them to work and therefore neither can use public transport nor afford a car or even a cab ride.

Although I'm luckily not under this economic pressure every now and then I'm in the mood to go by scooter - if there's no ice or snow (what can happen in a dry climate like here, with sometimes weeks of no rain or snow fall) and temperatures are not tooooo low - around -10° C a 10 km-ride is bearable.

 If you wear the right outfit, that is. In the picture above you can see mine - a mixture of skiing trip and polar expedition. And benath still your regular work outfit, naturally.

above: salopettes
middle left: winter boots thickly lined, at best wear two pairs of socks beneath
middle center: lined cap russian style, below that ski googles
middle right: face mask "bank robber style"
below left: woolen gloves, worn beneath....
below center: ski gloves
and both pair of gloves in a third pair (below right), which I call "boxing gloves".

Basically a big lined sac with 2 openings and 2 laces to strap one end to the handlebar, and to put your hands into the other.  Offers additional protection for the most vulnerable spot, one's hands.

I haven't seen them anywhere else but here in Northeast China yet, but here everybody scooting in winter has a pair attached to their handlebar. Every year when winter is coming you can buy them virtually everywhere on the streets for 20 RMB, about 2,5 €.

Et voila, one is good to go. But even under all this layers, the weak point kept to be the freezing and after more than half an hour awfully hurting fingers. Can't do this every day, not if temperatures are below -10.

Life is rough, so you gotta be tough. And I'm not as tough as Chinese migrant workers. But their life's also way rougher.

And if someone's wondering why no helmet - well, we don't take kindly to people wearing helmets around here......

Just kidding - just barely anybody wears them in China - traffic safety is still an issue people are not yet very aware of. And when in Rome....

We take your money with a smile.

You can criticise China and especially it´s government institutions for a lot of things:

authoritarian rule, violation of human rights ,intransparency, corruption, inefficency, abuse of power, overboarding bureaucracy.... you name it.

But at least that government and it´s tax authorities say thank you when they deduct the individual income tax from your salary.

The picture below shows the lower section of my tax slip:

What makes China's tax bureau kind of a benchmark for the one or another national tax bureau out there - friendliness and multilingualism - that´s something at least the German tax authority is not really famous for......

How Chinese jog.

Without spoiling to much - they come uniformed and in rather large numbers.....

On the move.

This weekend, throughout the country the semester break starts and the students all over China start swarming back into their hometowns to be with their families for a couple of weeks.

 It´s like a smaller "Spring Festival", where normally half of China`s population is somehow on the move, mainly from bigger metropolitan areas to smaller home towns to visit old friend and mostly family. During semster break it`s "just" students, but their number has risen to almost 30.000.000 in the last ten years.

As a student in China, you don`t really have a choice where to live and stay during the semester - normally you get assigned a dormitory room  on campus that you have to share with other students - one at least, if you´re lucky, but mostly with three, five or even seven others. Even if your family lives in the city where you study, you have to live in a dorm on campus. Needless to say that all student dorms are seperated by gender and get locked and the electricity gets switched off at around 11 pm.

With almost all students living on campus, universities become small towns, surrounded by a wall, surrounded by a bigger city. A city in a city.

And if this city`s student inhabitants all want to leave at the same time, the campus infrastructure reaches its limits. So China postal services for example had to set up stalls on campus and work extra shifts to get all student`s mail and luggage checked in - still students had to line up in long queues:

Although one has to admit that Chinese almost never travel light - I sometimes have a feeling there`s a nation-wide three-bag-check-in-minimum:

As domestic flight services in China increase, it opens up a new possibility for students to get home conveniently and quickly. Domestic airlines know about their potential new customers and some of them, in this picture China Southern Air, even offer check-in on campus and try to attract new customers with raffling free tickets:

Under the bridge.

During summer, Chinese love to do stuff outside in the streets, parks, squares - or in this case even beneath a road overpass near our home. Wherever there`s enough space for a bigger bunch of people, because Chinese also like to do this stuff in a group, the bigger, the more, the better. And there has to be room for potential spectators,too.

It´s really one of the things I love about China - the social life is far more public and open. Whenever you walk, drive or ride through the city, at each corner you`ll find a group of Chinese playing, practicing or performing something. And to find out what you often have to get through a ring of spectators to find out. Makes moving through the city very interesting and exciting.

Well, what is that Chinese do in the streets? Or under the bridge?

For example:



traditional folk fan dance:

including live performed music to dance to:

 Don`t like fan dance? No problem - just cross a road and choose something else.

How about a little dance with little drums?

Or no Chinese folky dance at all? No problem.

What about ordinary, good old-fashioned aerobics?

Rope jumping?

Or no sports at all? How about a game of cards or Chinese chess with dozens of spectators commenting your every move?

There are  plenty more activities. And I haven`t even started on the food stalls yet. But I hope it´s enough for starters to get the picture - in summer, in China fun is open air.

Snow doesn`t bother us....

About ten days ago snow fell for the first time this.... well, it`s not even winter yet, so this fall, and temperatures dropped below zero during daytime. 

That`s about one month earlier than I´m used to, but we knew before that winter in Shenyang was supposed to start early.It did. 

I realized that especially Shenyang car owners didn`t seem to care as I haven`t seen a single car with snow tires yet.  Although I must admit at least the streets get cleared pretty quickly here, they even use heavy machinery like power shovels, which imho is pretty rare as you seldom see big machines on construction sites in China - with it`s huge workforce here it`s often cheaper to use manual laborers. But not for removing snow from the streets,no.

For clearing the sidewalks of course.

 Anyway,last tuesday we were on our way through the city by car when again heavy snow fall started. About five minutes later traffic was jammed because several cars were stuck. Enough time for a little chat about that topic with the two Chinese sitting with me in the car:

They: "It´s like that every winter. It snows, and the traffic gets jammed immediately.

 

Me:  "Do you have special tires for winter here?"

(didn´t know what snow tire meant in Chinese)

They: "Yes we have."

Me: "Do you have to use them?"

They: "Yes, you are obliged to use them". But very,very few people do that."

Me: "I guess there are no controls by the police? And no fines?"

They: "No."

Me: "Does this car have snow tires?"

They: "No."

Me: "Will you get tires this winter?"

They: "Probably not."

After having not moved for over an hour we turned around - we had missed the appointment anyway. Inbetween the driver had blamed everything and everyone for being responsible that the traffic was jammed. Except the fact that nobody had prepared for winter....

Well, I missed an appointment but learned about Chinese mentality - and like most things, also not caring about winter having started can have a good side. One day later I was strolling through a park to take some pictures when I encountered this group of dancers. Dancing couples in a park are quite common in China, but those people here had to clear loads of snow before having enough space for their pirouettes.

I accidently made a short video instead of a picture, but for this occasion that`s even better to show the liveliness and vitality of this Shenyangers, I guess. Since two days the snow is melting as it got a tiny little bit warmer again. The dancers probably won`t mind.....

Sea intestines, anyone?

Last week we went out with about a dozen of my girlfirend`s Chinese co-workers for dinner and karaoke. The latter will be a story for itself here anytime soon, today it`s all about the advantages of eating out with locals. Firstly, of course, there`s the opportunity to train your language skills - although Chinese working for international companies are able to speak English (and some even German) more or less fluently, with a ratio of two Germans to a dozen Chinese eventually a lot of Chinese was spoken and had to (at least tried to) be understood. Or not.

Anyway, secondly, there`s the chance to try dishes you so far didn`t know of, couldn`t read on the menu, that didn`t look appealing or until then you did not dare to order. But the Chinese do.

In China, when it comes to eating animals, there are no boundaries like "too cute" or "too disgusting" that would hinder them to increase their menu variety. Personally, I find that very consistent - once you`ve decided for yourself that eating animals is o.k., be it as an individual or a society, why not eat all of them. Although when going out by ourselves we mostly stick with our western socialization of ordering beef, chicken, pork, sometimes fish. 

In bigger restaurants like the one we went with our Chinese friends it is often usual that the big variety of seafood is displayed in big basins to choose from. And honestly, who of us would have ordered those little fellas in the middle of the lowermost row in the picture on the right? (click on pictures to enlarge them) Well, I wouldn`t, besides the fact that apart from being displayed in Chinese restaurants I haven`t seen them anywhere else before. But they definitely look like they`re called in Chinese - 海肠 (hǎicháng), the word-by-word translation would be "sea intestines" or "sea sausage", as the character 肠 (cháng) can mean both, intestines or sausage. Yeah, let`s you sometimes think twice before ordering something having this character in it`s name. For the fellas on the picture in my opinion "intestines" fits better. For increased disgust imagine them moving like worms, as that`s what they did in this basket.

Well, one of the Chinese obviously considered them looking tasty enough to order. To make a long story short, of course we tried them - to learn that they don`t taste as disgusting as they look - rather "harmless",with no real distinctive taste. But pretty tough to chew, though, having a stringy consistency like a rubberband. Definitely won`t become one of my favourites........

Harvest time

 For a couple of weeks now the streets and sidewalks of Shenyang are almost literally paved with vegetables. It`s harvest season for the most common  produce in China, 白菜 (baicai), Chinese cabbage, or white cabbage, as the Chinese call it themselves. Every day you see trucks loaded with cabbage or leek like the ones on the pictures on street crossings or in front of main gates of residential complexes, selling their load directly from the truck beds. And pretty cheap, too - you pay around 3 Mao for a cabbage, which is about 3,5 Eurocents nowadays.

 People often buy them in dozens or even more to lay them out in the open to dry (called "shai" 晒 ) . And obviously don`t fear theft, as they put them everywhere, in house floors, in backyards, on porches, on the sidewalks, in front of their shops, on roofs, or, as the last picture shows, even on statues. But who would steal cabbage even in China worth nearly nothing anyway?

Most of the cabbage will turn into delicious kimchi during the coming winter. After all, we´re still only about 250 km east of the Korean border.....

A Trojan horse...

In China, they put meat in everything - even a sausage into a sweet waffle on a stick. Much to my girlfriends chagrin.