Worst Kept Secrets

This probably isn’t going to be very interesting for anyone but family, but Chris and I went for a walk and took some pictures of our neighborhood. I was waving my camera around and indiscriminantly clicking, so some of them are a little blurry, but here are the highlights.

Here’s our building. I guess it doesn’t look like much on the outside (ok, ok, it looks like a slum), but unfortunately, China seems to place a higher priority on function rather than form, except for the parks, which are freaking gorgeous:

Also, most buildings in China have cages on the windows on the lower floors to protect against theft, which I’m not sure is as big of an issue as the bars and occasional rigged lines covered in jagged broken glass might indicate. Inside is really modern and clean, swear.

Next door, a new complex has just come up, and people have only recently started moving in. It’s fancy, with walls and guards and a security gate. We have a really nice view of our rich neighbors out of our balcony windows, and we’ve been watching the construction and cleanup going on as a substitute for tv.

If you walk a little further into the residential neighborhood, you’ll come to this palacial-looking public toilet:

And this completely incomprehensible business sign for a ritzy-looking establishment that does snacks, massage, and aroma therapy:

When the weather’s nice, people come outside. The roundabout near our street has been packed with senior citizens visiting and enjoying the gorgeous fall weather we’ve been having. People sit around, play cards or chess, talk, play with their dogs, or munch on street food. When I was in the US this summer, I kept feeling vaguely uneasy at how deserted all the sidewalks seemed to be. I kept wondering where everybody was.

I really wish that picture had turned out, because it would have been a really good one. Near our house, there’s a row of playground equipment that I assumed was for kids, but gets more use from the elderly. Older Chinese people take care of themselves - you’ll see them out in open areas doing tai chi, playing on see saws and swing sets, or walking around backwards to target one muscle or another (it looks FREAKY, incidentally).

Here are some other housing pictures:

And here’s some stuff from Ninghai Lu/Hankou Xi Lu, which are very near to our school, and where most of our needs get met.

Here’s one of the DVD shops, which mysteriously disappeared for a couple of weeks. We found out from a Chinese friend this weekend that there’s been some kind of “politeness contest” going on in China (or maybe just Jiangsu?), which involved cleaning up DVD shops and street food vendors. I couldn’t find any references to this online, but thankfully the DVD shops are open again.

Very near here, there’s the Exotic Foods store, which in the bizarro world I live in, means things like pasta, whiskey, canned beans, chocolate, olive oil, and cereal.

We’ve bought a lot of whiskey from this store, and for just a little extra, you can get these ridiculous gift sets that come with fancy bags that people dig out of the trash to take home, souvenir glasses which are overrunning our kitchen cupboard, and upscale packaging:

This is just down the street from the market, where we get veggies and meat:

There are also soooo many little food stalls, clothing shops, and tiny little hodgepodge places that sell stuff like shoelaces and power strips scattered around:

Anyway, that’s pretty much what my daily life looks like. We’re enjoying a week off for National Day, planning to go to Shanghai tomorrow to finally do something in Shanghai that doesn’t involve rushing to the airport. Most of our friends are out of town, so we’re getting into some highly anticipated time in.

The full flickr set is here, if you’re interested.