The sun has come out and the temperature has soared, today is 34 C which is a little unpleasant, although the humidity is not too bad. I went to Stone Lake on Wednesday to see my friend Rita who is always looking for new challenges in life and over the course of the last 6 months she has had many personal challenges to face. But it was good to see that she could still smile. The sun was shining as we sat in the cafe which overlooks the lake. It’s about 15 kms from home and so it’s usually two buses to get there. I was well covered up due to the clear blue skies and the hot sun but nonetheless I decided to walk back from Stone Lake instead of taking the bus.

I stopped for lunch and then began my stroll home. This is where I started my tracking app. I wandered through the old streets that make up the south of the city. Not too much development here yet but that might change some day soon. In China when you buy a house you do not own the land, you can only lease the land and apartment for 77 years and so this allows the government to come in and repossess the land or house and demolish it if they so desire and the occupants do not have a leg to stand on. So in many parts of China this ruling is obviously being used for development purposes. The property prices are staggering in China and they are increasing at a rapid rate, they are not afraid of the property bubble here. My apartment has been here for around 15 years or so and it is currently priced at around 60.000 RMB a square metre and they are saying that this will increase year on year. In fact 100.000 RMB does not seem too unrealistic by the end of next year. My apartment is 170 square metres.

I noticed that I seemed to be following the bus route as I zig zagged my way across the city, turn left and then right. I went down one street that had so many fruit shops and the fruit was way cheaper than my neighbourhood and so I bought two kilos of “Ugly Oranges” which are very tasty especially if you have them with yoghurt, raisins and almonds, even on their own they are tasty, but that added weight made the journey that bit more difficult. I didn’t think that 2Kg would make much difference, but in this heat it was. The sweat started to pour off me and the back of my shirt was soaked. I put my bag on my front and this swapping from my front to my back continued all the way home. As soon as I was too wet I changed to dry off me shirt and so on.

As I continued across town my phone beeps at me as I enter a new area. Your not only on Candid camera in China but you are also at the mercy of text messages. Everyday I receive many many messages and I usually pay no attention to them, one because they are in Chinese and secondly they are usually a message like this,

This of course is a very crude translation via the phone,

Sweep the black and evil, online gaming environment, keep the peace! Please participate, supervise and try, and truly fight the war of a in order to clear the evil. Suzhou Industrial Park sweep black anti-evil, telephone: Sweep office: 0512-65235212; Public security Bureau: 110; Jian ‘ an Committee: 123888 (“Umbrella” and corruption). “Office of the leading group for the special struggle to sweep black and evil in Suzhou Industrial Park

There is a bit of a crackdown in the city at the moment, the rumour going around is that the Boss is coming to Suzhou for a visit later in the year. A friend was telling me last week that it is no longer allowed for a female masseuse to give a male a massage and vice versa. apparently other things may happen or be expected. All the dodgy KTV bars or karaoke bars have also been cleaned up. No more going for a song and getting your leg over as you sing “I did it my way” All over the city there are red banners promoting operation “Clean the place up and kill Evil”. They hang on the front of factories and bridges and even on the fences of our complex. I don’t pay any attention because I can not read Chinese and so I was completely oblivious to what’s going on and so I was surprised when I heard. They are trying to crack down on organised crime, the gambling, prostitution and the loan sharks that prey on the poor. China has the same problems as many other countries but the way the deal with it is a little different. In the old part of town I’ve often seen the well-heeled gangster types driving the Black Range Rover with tinted windows. They dress in black to look good with the car, but I think it’s to make them look thinner because they are usually a little bit overweight, not fat bastards just overweight. The gold chain adorning the neck and the very large gold knuckle dusters are all part of the image. It could be any country really, they all seem to shop at the same store.

I made it home from Stone lake after walking for nearly 4 hours and I was very happy to be home. I could have gone further but I was glad to take the weight off and just sit on the couch and relax. After consuming an “Ugly Orange” my body started to complain a little and so I decided to go for an early night and listen to Radio 4 and to try to steer away from anything Brexit related.

I slept like a log and after breakfast thought to myself that I was having a day off from the park and so the very long lazy morning kicked in. I went out for lunch and then I had to go to class in the south of the city, quite close in fact to Stone lake. The metro is really quite cold now, they really cranked up the air conditioning. I waited on the platform at my usual spot because I need to change a few stations down the line and this door leaves me in front of the escalator. The train arrives and the door opens and I am greeted with the most overpowering smell of sweat, I stopped breathing it was so bad. Imagine a hundred pairs of sweaty socks, the sweat so liquid that it hangs in the air and condenses on you as you stay longer in the carriage, it was foul. I think there must have been someone in here that was extra smelly because even when the train is full it’s not like this.

I survived the metro and made it to my class. I got back out of the metro station around 8.30 that evening on my return home. The temperature is perfect. The park is full of people. Some are the old ladies doing their square dancing, maybe 200. There is a group of 4 old dears doing Tai Chi. A few more have their legs hanging over the top rail of the fence, a popular past time here. Dogs are being walked, some folk are jogging, some jogging with dogs. Lovers, friends, commuters and of course the Phone Zombies walking aimlessly faces all a glow because the phones are about 2 inches from their noses.

I exit the other side of the park, having taken the centre path through the small amphitheatre and over the wooden bridge towards the East Gate and then onto the fruit shop. I need more bananas, I have none at home. It’s after 9pm by the time I get home and I unwind a bit and then it’s time to retire but first I will upload some of the pictures I took when I visited the Silk Museum at the beginning of the week. It was OK, I wasn’t too interested in it if I’m honest but I had gone with a few folk and so I took a few snaps of the place. I think the entrance is quite spectacular where you will find the Silk Goddess presiding. The wall is a graphical history of silk. The best thing I saw here was this amazing giant loom and of course the entrance hall.

A quick addition, I think I’ve said before that Sissi runs an Airbnb house and so the guy staying this week is from India and works for the Bank of Scotland in Mumbai. I never knew we had a bank there.