Wednesday, July 19, 2006

People Are Strange

More tales of the weird and the wonderful from China:

Middle-aged women doing step-aerobics on the steps of the Bank of China building. A shop that sells nothing but shoes for very small children stays open until 10.30 at night seven days of the week. Surprisingly, custom is scarce. KFC playing a muzak melodied Chinese language version of Jingle Bells on a Monday evening in mid-July. A dog refuses to piss in a bush so its owner spends thirty seconds waving her finger in its face before smacking its bottom twice. (I wonder if the one child policy has had some strange psychological effect on broody Chinese women.)

Xiaoshan itself remains almost iredeemably dull. Yesterday I noticed a student-made poster in one of the classrooms on the city's tourist attractions: many cars, some KFCs, many tall buildings, many people...

Book early to avoid disappointment.

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