I’m sitting waiting outside a cafe for Lydia to arrive. There are many chairs outside spread over a large area maybe from one end to the other about 30 metres. At the far end there is a group of foreigners and you know through all the background noise of music, cars, other people chatting there is one American voice cutting through all this chatter. She obviously loves the sound of her own voice even if the rest of us don’t, well I really mean me……
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.
I was lying in bed awake before the alarm clock went off this morning, well the radio 4 news to be exact. Big Ben rung out and then it was followed by the dulcet tones from the BBC. So much stupidity coming out of America at the moment, it’s a child having tantrums, but a very dangerous child, a spoilt brat that will do and say anything to get attention. If this Trump baby is not in the spotlight then it’s just not happy and of course his many cronies and leeches around him are taking advantage and using their influence to put the world on the brink of war and maybe they might just get some more orders for the companies that they are invested in. All the companies that feed the American war machine are on high alert with the prospect of fresh conflicts on virgin soil.
America will never change from its direction; I fear that this administration is going to do something really stupid. There are so many in power that help to feed the war machine and without conflict the American economy will go into decline. This selfish attitude, this greed that is inherent in their society will be the downfall of everything we know and to make matters worse their President doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. The righteous rule America and they are no different to any other Islamic fundamentalist organisation hell bent in destroying the infidel. They do not look in the mirror; they only listen to their god and fear mongers. So many things to rant about coming out of America but I don’t have the time or the inclination today…………..
I went for a walk to Stone Lake in the south of the city. I went with Lydia and we decided to meet at Lindun Lu Station but after I told her I had arrived she said that she had told me the wrong station and so I jumped on the metro and travelled the two stops to meet her.
We then used the metro to make our way to Stone Lake and then we would change to a bus for the rest of the journey. After a few minutes on the train I realised that we were going to wrong way, I haven’t done that in a long time.
We arrived at Stone Lake and then headed to the small garden behind where you can go and see the gold Buddha at the top of the hill. The park was not really busy and it was good to get out in the fresh air.
I think this Buddha looks really happy and very fat and he does have a good view of the lake.
We didn’t stay to long because by the time we got there we were both getting hungry and there was no place to get anything to eat. A couple of years ago there was a market and you could buy snacks but it’s long gone.
So we decided to head to the spicy Chongching restaurant and had the numbing spicy beef noodles. After we ate it was around 3pm and so we headed home and then it was time for coffee and of course all was well until the poor crayfish were mutilated and stripped of their appendiges by Sissi’s mother, but that is the other story from today.
Sissi’s friends are staying for a few days and tonight they are cooking. One thing on the menu is crayfish and I told them that I would rather let them go than to eat them. I look at these poor wee critters in the sink having no idea of their fate but at least when they get thrown in the hot pot they will die pretty quickly, it’s not something I want to witness though.
Sissi’s mother comes home half way through the preparations and decides to take control of the cooking of the crayfish. She picks the first one up and rips off its claws and tail and throws it into another bucket to sit for a while as she works her way through the other fifty or so creatures in the sink. I am absolutely shocked and disgusted by the lack of consideration for these creatures. To her they are just food with no feelings, they don’t feel pain they stress just delicious.
I asked them to kill them and then pull them apart but they just laugh at the big sissy foreigner. What’s so fucking wrong doing it this way. My stomach is churning, I am so so angry at what I have just witnessed and I don’t know if I can look at her mother again or the rest of them for that matter. In the market I see them killing chickens and frogs and fish and they kill them swiftly, but to pull a poor animal apart like this when it’s still alive I find utterly repulsive.
I can only hope that they crayfish get the last laugh somehow, maybe they might choke when they eat one, get diarrhoea or food poisoning. I hope Karma pays her back for what she did tonight.
About 45 years ago or so when I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Thin Lizzy and many other wonderful bands of the 70’s I bought an “Ankh”, the Egyptians called it the “The Key of Life”. The origins of this has been debated for years but to me it was known as a “Peace Cross” and any hippy worth their soul had to get one and so I did. I don’t remember where I bought it, but I do know that it is made of Pewter which is quite a soft metal and so the small circle at the top would often break and I’m very lucky that I still have it in my possession and so because of this I decided to get one made from silver.
At the bottom of Moss Street in Paisley there used to be a jewelers and this is where I went with my pewter Ankh and asked them to make me a silver one. After a week I went back to pick it up and to be honest I was a little bit disappointed because it was bigger than the pewter one and I felt that it was too big but I said nothing and stuck it on my neck. I have always enjoyed this simple symbol along with the celtic cross but I chose this basically because it said I was a hippy and it made me cool.
In 2016 I set out on my big adventure and a few weeks before I left I lost by silver Ankh of 40 years or more somewhere on the Brisbane bike path from Fig Tree Pocket to Southbank. When I got back to my car the silver chain was tucked inside my shirt but my Ankh was nowhere to be seen and so I hope whoever found it has taken good care of it and I hope that it will look after them as my Ankh looked after me.
A few weeks ago my gold chain that I got from my mother broke and so I took it to get fixed and at the same time asked how much it would be to have a new Ankh made. I gave them my old pewter original and a week later they presented me with lovely replica in silver and it actually is a replica this time. I’m very happy with the outcome of this and it looks as delicate as the original, my last one had been made that bit bigger and to be honest I always felt that it was always a little too big.
After my Ankh was made in the 70’s I went back to the jewelers some time later and I got another trinket made up and this was very controversial, it was “666” In 1976 the movie called “The Omen” came out and freaked many folk out. Damien was the devils child and he had 666 on his skull. Iron Maiden released an album called “The number of the Beast” in 1982 and so by this time my Devils number had become more mainstream.
When I went to party’s it would sometimes cause a stir for the religious fraternity. Now what I used to find hilarious was that the crucifix wearing individuals were the ones that wanted to kick my head in because I had the devils number around my neck and these are the same folk that preach peace and love and the like on a Sunday. The hypocrisy of religion was on show for all to see and I used to take great delight winding them up, maybe I was the evil one after all. I think my “666” necklace was definitely one of the best conversation starters that I ever had. But this too disappeared shortly after I arrived in Australia in 1988, I have no idea when and where I was when I lost it. One day it was there and then the next thing you know I realised that it was gone. I wonder if anyone ever found it………..
As I strolled around near the Longshan temple in Taipei the other day I came across a few wee surprises. There were many of these old Space Invaders and Tetris machines set up in small shops, what a brilliant idea. It was mainly older members of the community playing them but it was great to see that they still exist in this High Definition, virtual reality, augmented world of today.
Many of these shops big and small around the place and many of them are busy. These pictures was taken very early in the morning and so there was no one trying to get a stuffed toy from the machines. They are open 24 hours and some are unmanned and as I say they are very popular.
A cat taking it easy
You have to be careful that you do not stand too close to the trees in Taipei because it looks like they eat people………………………
Isn’t this bad Karma?
A few candles from the the Longshan Temple
Over the years I have seen many versions of this picture but I think I have finally seen the genesis of the idea that has been exploited by so many over the centuries…………..the truth really is out there and you just have to be lucky enough to find it and who would have thought a trip to Taipei would have brought me this little gem…………………
Last night on the way home, I had something in my head and just couldn’t shift it……
