I want to get my teeth cleaned and this requires a visit to the Stomatological Hospital on my road (because I don’t want to pay large dental bills at a foreign hospital). The first thing they need to do even before I can make an appointment is to have a blood test. I can’t see… Read More »
The children in the lane have developed a habit of knocking on my door every day in the summer holidays asking if I want to come out to play. This week I decided to hunt around for the paints and brushes and papers I’d got somewhere in the cupboard. As I was rifling through the… Read More »
I needed some new clothes for a job in the UK for four weeks and I couldn’t put I off any longer. I put on my hat, sun block and sun glasses and took the metro to Nanpu Bridge and to the Sputh Bund fabric market. I walked in the searing heat for 10 minutes… Read More »
They say Yunnan is springtime all year round and certainly when I arrived for my second trip to Dali I was met, on leaving the plane, by a cool breeze and a huge sense of relief. Shanghai is hot and sticky throughout the summer and to be honest, even though it’s a magnificent city it’s… Read More »
I decided to spend my Sunday afternoon by taking a ride down to the river and take a ferry over to Pudong and cycle along the river on the far side. However, I got to The Cool Docks, where I planned to have a coffee and get the ferry, to find The Cool Docks closed… Read More »
I came out of my community to find Nanchang Lu full of lights, staging, cables, equipment trucks and a fair few young people hanging around. I noticed that several empty shops had been fitted out and their appeared to be an actor with a racing bike in th doorway of the hostoric Art Deco building.… Read More »
One of the things we, in the west, can learn from the Chinese is the willingness to make-do and mend our appliances. Once in a while several fixers come with their tables and tools and sit on the pavement outside my community. My neighours bring out their broken objects and for a small fee they… Read More »
I went for a wander today around Suzhou Creek in the vain hope of seeing some dragonboating. I think I was a day too late. Anyway I saw a fantastic Art Deco fire station with a tall look-out tower and then, at the top of Shan’an Xi Bei Lu a huge collection of boxes waiting… Read More »
It’s been happening slowly, you don’t notice it at first and then someone mentions it and you realise that, yes, the kisosk which used to add life to the streets, are being closed. The one near Xiang Yang park was my favourite. It was always busy with people buying drinks and ice-crean and in the… Read More »
I have just noticed that this is my 500th blog post. I would never have thought when I started this project that I would have written so much. It started because a French friend in Nanjing suggested that as so many strange things happened to me, I should start a blog. So I have Pascal… Read More »