China Experiences

      by Paco

They are very into Christmas around here, but I don't think they know much about the Jesus story. I just wish I had my camera when, on Christmas day, Li and I went into town to buy her a new cell phone. Here we were in one of the zillions of cell phone stores they have around here sitting at a table with Li checking out some phones and we are being helped by three Chinese wearing Santa caps, one in full Santa outfit!

They are also into Valentines, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and of course New Year which they do twice. Being Chinese the commercial aspect of these is not lost on them. We may have found a reasonably priced house in old town yesterday. Quite difficult to do. We have to wait to hear back from the French owner. We live very Chinese style now sharing kitchen and bath with other tenants in a 3 story concrete building. I rented an extra room on the top floor with a view of mountains, lake and river. Unfortunately that view is soon to be obscured by several 20 story buildings that are going up in the construction frenzy that is new China.

I must admit that while living "Chinese style" with the Chinese is good for me, I long for that rare and rather un-Chinese commodity called privacy. And I also long for a sit down toilet. Westerners are not natural squatters. Once calculated how many hours they have squatted by the time they are grown - based on an estimate of toilet time. I think it's in the thousands. We can't compete. It's also very hard to read in that position. With that thought I leave you. Happy year of the mouse.

Paco