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 A quick plug for the Gallery Section of this blog. As well as various sets of wedding photos (Well, I did get married three times last year!), there are photos from my Asian travels and some fine examples of Chinglish. Click here to check them all out.  I saw this advert for a new brand of noodles at a bus stop the other day. "Delicious?" - yep, "Yummy?" - nice, "Temptation?" - fair enough, "Shannon?" - errrr, sorry?? As in the Irish river?? What??
 Halloween is back upon us and, as ever, our school goes a bit crazy for it - you can forget the usual discipline levels! All the staff and many of the students dress up in costumes and academic work goes out the window in favour of scary games and activities. This year's theme is Superheroes, although it was chosen after I had decided on my costume, so I've still gone with "diver eaten by shark"! It got quite a few screams over the weekend, plus a few belly laughs. Not a bad combination, I guess!   This was the scene as I passed a building site on my way to a Chinese lesson the other day. A worker was balanced on top of a concrete post, hammering away at the section underneath him with a pickaxe. It felt like some sort of cartoon joke - did he perhaps expect to float in the air as the column crumbled beneath him? Meanwhile, his foreman watched on unconcerned, perhaps wondering why a foreigner was taking a photo of such an everyday event. Health and Safety anyone?
I saw an interesting list of 250 commonly misspelt (mispelled? misspellt?) words the other day. Test your word knowledge by choosing the correct spelling for each below:
 (ɐ) ǝɹɐ sɹǝʍsuɐ ʇɔǝɹɹoɔ ǝɥʇ llɐ
 Averaging over a hundred unique visitors a day still makes me gulp, but 350 on a single day last week is bonkers. I don't think I even know that many people! If you have yet to sign the Guestbook, please do!
 Spotted this new sign today. It looked OK at first glance...
 One of the four places where Ava and I had our 2-day "professional wedding photoshoot" a year ago was Guandu's Old Town. After having some pictures taken with the local senior citizens at one of the temples there [see above], we promised to return later with some prints for them. I've felt guilty ever since as, although we made the copies, we never went back to pass them over. So, with a free day on my hands today and Ava in Shenzhen on business, I made the 3-bus, 1½ hour journey back to Guandu to track the oldies down and fulfil the promise. Unfortunately, the rear of the temple is now locked up and there were no OAPs in sight. The monk couldn't help, but an incense seller outside recognised two men in the photos and promised to pass them all on for me. A quick bowl of noodles, a takeaway of some local speciality Guandu Baba (pancake things) for Ma-in-Law and it was back to the buses for the trip home. Mission accomplished!   Yesterday was Ma-in-law's birthday (although she didn't seem to know it - she says the date changes with the lunar cycle?) and, by coincidence, Ava and I had been invited to have some home-cooked western food at our friends' (Peter and Judy) house. So we took Ma-in-Law along. The "roast beef and trimmings" dinner was delicious, as was the "3 fruit crumble" dessert. Ma-in-Law coped with the cutlery and the non-spicy flavours and we ended the evening with Consequences [see below] and simplified Pictionary, which she found quite amusing! She only ever plays Mahjong usually, so a light-hearted and gambling-free game was quite an eye-opener for her, I think.  (Check out Peter and Judy's blog by clicking here)
 Anti-Japanese feeling is still running strong here (though not as bad as it was a few weeks ago). I saw these signs for sale last week. They reflect the ones that the British used to nail to the gates of public parks in Hong Kong decades ago about, "No dogs or Chinese allowed", though at least we used to spell the English right! And I'm not sure we are supposed to hate the Koreans too (or should that be "Coreans"?).
 Five workers, five hours, £500 and we now live in a prison!
After a number of recent burglaries in our neighborhood - one ending in a murder - we decided to bite the bullet and install security bars on all our windows. We should now be safe from thieves, but in all sorts of trouble if there is a fire near the front door! We also arranged for the workmen to add some extra bars to the rail of our stairs (to stop any toddlers slipping through) and repair our kitchen door which has become impossible to close or lock. All in all, a good half-days work. Something which definitely needed doing but which we had put off for some time.  There is an interesting article on the BBC website, featuring a photographer who has travelled around China convincing people to be photographed outside their houses along with all their worldly possessions. There's a real mix of photos from herdsman outside their yurt tents who own next to nothing, through to fairly rich Beijing residents with flat screen TV and computer games. Click here to see the whole article.
Back in the 1960s, the "four big things" which every Chinese family aspired to own were a bicycle, a wristwatch, a radio and a sewing machine. By the 1990s the dreams had moved on to things like televisions, fridges, cell phones and computers. Now it's more like cars, ipads, foreign holidays and smart phones. How times change.  Our good friends Peter and Judy visited for a meal (by Ma) yesterday evening and a jam sponge cake (by Judy). Dorta watched how it was made [see photo] and we are fully expecting imminent gateaus and pavlovas from her. Peter and Judy are just in Kunming for a few months this time, though they have been regulars here for some years before. AND they brought me five curly-wurlies from the UK ...woohoo! Welcome here any time, chaps!! (Check out Peter and Judy's blog by clicking here)
 Seriously though, you would think a huge company like China Mobile would be able to spell their own country's name right, wouldn't you?
 This weekend marks the end of the "Golden Week" in China. The Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday are close enough this year for most people to take a whole week off work - something of a rarity here. Road toll gates are free and people head for the sights or to visit distant family members. Students also have a week off school, but must work the previous and following weekend to "make up" lessons. So not really a holiday for them, or their teachers. In fact, barely a holiday for anyone [see photo above].
 With the recent arrival of two British guys to our foreign teachers' team at work, we now have a mini-league on the whiteboard, since between us we support Liverpool, West Brom, Arsenal, and Everton. And the timing of this has been excellent for me, as Everton are standing proudly in second place in the Premiership at the moment, with the other three teams in their wake. Quite an achievement for my lowly team.
 We returned back to Kunming today from our trip to TongHai. We've been eating way too much food, thanks largely to YangPing's generosity. A Dai minority meal, a Hui (Muslim) minority meal, this meat and vegetable stew [see photo left] in a special copperware pot and a "3 dishes speciality" meal at a famous restaurant en route home [see photo right] - the three dishes being chicken, fish and goat. Also, Yang Ping's maid cooked us a lovely meal at her villa, and not just us, but 10 of her shopping mall employees too. So we've all returned a little bit fatter and a little less fitter. One place we didn't try in TongHai, though, was this fast food joint selling "HAMBUGERS". Without the "r", it didn't seem that appealing!   The hotel where we are staying is great except for one bizarre aspect. As you can see from the photo, the bathroom has a glass wall! There is a curtain, but it is on the bedroom side! So people can look in on you as you use the facilities. Why oh why??  We took in another free movie today. Whilst the others watched an American action flick, Ava and I took AiRan (CAL's daughter) to a Chinese cartoon movie. It was dire, and Ava and I struggled to stay awake. As you can see from the photo, we were the only people in the cinema. At one point I got up and ran a lap up and down the aisles just to wake myself up. AiRan seemed to enjoy it though. TongHai is proving something of a Mecca for Chinglish. Check out this shop sign and see if you can work out the intended meaning...   Ava and I are having a few days holiday in a town called TongHai with our good friends Catherine and her family (CAL) and a mutual friend Yang Ping who has business interests in TongHai. It's a pretty town, with many old areas surviving and a distinctly "countryside" feel. We had a bit of a fright on the way down, however, when an oncoming truck lost control on a slippery road and slid backwards, at speed, onto our side of the road, coming within 2-3 inches of the car Ava was travelling in. I was in the car behind, watching it all happen as if in slow motion. Thankfully nobody was hurt, although it was a bit of a shock.  Yang Ping showed us the centre of town, with old and new buildings on cobbled streets. And she was, of course, keen to show us the newly opened shopping mall which she owns! Seven stories high and including a multiplex cinema. Did we want to watch a couple of movies for free? Sure! With free popcorn and coke? Why not? Good friend to have! The movies were great, but I had to bite my tongue on seeing the large advertising hoarding along the road. Yang Ping asked me if the English was correct - she'd translated it by computer. Rather embarrassed, I did at least offer to check any future slogans for her!   Ava has been eating/drinking this stuff recently - one of the few things she can keep down. "Starch" being misspelled as "Sharch" is amusing, but "Lotus" as "Louts" makes for great Chinglish. That's the way to get rid of the vandals and rioters - grind them up and eat them!
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 About the authorPaul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and updates this blog about his life there every other day. Past blog entries
November 2018
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