The warm weather brought everyone out onto the streets this weekend. Even my neighbours have started taking their early morning tea sitting in our lane. I had a disgusting cold but forced myself out of the house and down to Laoximen to explore the lanes in the old town.
I had to put a marker on my phone to show me wjere I had parked my bicycle as I find it impossible to navigate back to it after I’ve been poking around for a couple of hours. 
Every lane had a canopy of brightly coloured clothes waving like prayer flags in the warm breeze – a perfect drying day. Of course there were women chopping, washing and cooking vegetables in every alley but there were also people just sitting out with tea and chatting to their neighbours.
In the winter it’s possible not to see your neaighbours for weeks on end as people try not to spend much time outside. So spring brings a welcome improvement in sociability.
I met an old man who was just finishing making a rustic table fro off cuts of wood. He told me he was going to use it to stand a plant on. He laughed when I said it looks good. But he was happy enough to hold it up for this picture
Two elderly neighboursmade me sit down and have a rest with them and asked me all the usual questions. I have good pretty fed up of giving the same answer multiple times eve
ry day for the last 8 years. Never mind, I smiled and gave them again.
At one place I met a man who ws waiting for a lady to put new elastic in some trousers for him and he asked me whether I was So
viet! My God I have heard t all now. Perhaps it was because I had a red jacket on. Who knows but it made me laugh.
Then there was the little old lady in blue who was very friendly and was sitting next to a pile of broad bean husks. She explained that she kept them, dried them in the sun and then crumbled them and sued them as fertiliser on her plants.
And it clearly works because her plants were very healthy. She was happy to pose there for a photo with her bamboo washing prodder in her hand.
Maybe it was the weather but everyone was so cheerful and enjoying hangin
g out with their family and neighbours. I could have spent many hours there.
As it was I walked around for a couple of hours and then my cold got the better of me and I had to go home for a lie down. But spring is here – everyone is tlaking about it and there is a real change in mood in the city.