30 years ago today, the big bash in the square,

Thousands of people were there,

Shouting and chanting give thought a chance,

Change is in the air I feel it in my water,

But after a few weeks the boss was pissed off,

And said Tanks for the memories but you need to go,

They swept in shooting, cleaning, pushing to and fro,

Many fell and then the death knells toll,

The lifeless bodies crushed and broken,

And after 30 years it’s never spoken,

About the day that hope died,

But many people could not believe, many cried,

Now it’s a myth a rumour, a cancer, a tumour,

That’s been cut from the body to keep it healthy,

Keep the sheep in the dark, let them get wealthy,

Will they every know, do they really care,

Now is important, the price has been paid.

On Sunday I went to Lingyenshan with a group of friends and when we all arrived at 9am the clouds were threatening to soak us, in fact at 6am the rain was on. I’ve been here many times before of course but not with such a large group. There were 4 couples with children and the youngest was 6, so I thought this would be a problem because it’s difficult in places……….not the kid the track I mean………..I don’t even know the kid and then again maybe he is a bit difficult. After about an hour the sun came out with a vengeance and so it was time to cover up. Some folk hadn’t even brought a hat which is just bloody stupid really. The walk is good, it has some difficult areas, it’s quite steep and then you have a chance to rest as you go back down hill. However there are a few parts where the loose stones make it like ice and you have to be really careful. A few ended up on their arse, including the adults, but thankfully I stayed on my feet.

I want one of these remote control cars, they are bloody marvelous

.

It took us about 4 hours to do the walk and I’ll be honest I was getting a bit weary by the end of it, I was running out of fuel and I only had a very small lunch and breakfast and I was running on empty. But we all made it safely to the end and when I got home I stuffed me face, had a shower and hit the sack, I think I was sleeping before my head hit the pillow.

This morning I decided to go to Xishan as it is my new motto to explore more. After breakfast I went to the park and then after me shower I headed to Xishan. Its two hours away an unfortunately the bus driver was on the horn shouting at people most of the way. I’m not going to dwell on that, but they are fucking morons.

Xishan was quiet and today I really just wanted to go for a walk and a bit of a recce. I spotted many places selling fruit which I had no interest in. It’s the Pipa that I bought the other day and it really is over rated. The stone in the centre is so big that the amount of fruit you get is very small and the taste is, well for me, so so. A little sweet, a bit citrus. There were a few other things like the fish bladders being dried in the sun, not sure if you eat them or may or maybe they use them as condoms.

I spotted a café and popped in for a look. The coffee was expensive, 30 rmb, but the cup was nice and the coffee was very good. There were about 10 locals drinking tea and were a bit bemused by me I think. A young girl about 7 years old came in with a dog and she spoke with her mother and then she wandered over my way. The dog made a bee line for me and of course I had to say hello. Cookie was a very nice wee dog and he just wanted someone to pat his head and scratch him behind the ears, I can relate to that. The young girl spoke to me telling me that Cookie likes these beef strips and she gave them to me so that I could feed the dog. She just started speaking to me like an old friend and the rest of the room were quite taken by this; none of them could speak English. They brought me some tea over after I had finished my coffee and I even got a refill. A very pleasant half hour sitting there and not what I expected from such a small place. I told the Mother that her daughter’s English was very good and they also complemented me on my Chinese.

There was a loop road that I walked which was about 8 km’s and so I set off to see what I could find. I came across numerous restaurants selling the food they catch from Taihu (Lake Tai), none of it is of interest to me. I’ve eaten most of it before and I find it quite tasteless. I came across a temple on the lakeside. There is an old village that I went to years ago and will go to again, I just forgot where it was and today I did not really have the time or the inclination to go in. The pictures will let you see what my trip was like today and so I will go the noo and have another lazy night after such a long day walking in the sun.

I’d heard that the tram line had been extended from the Suzhou Amusement Park to within a kilometre of Taihu and so I decided today that I would check it out.

When I left home the clouds were abundant and so I wore clothes to suit, however after about two hours they cleared and the sun began to bite a little. It wasn’t too hot but the sun was strong.

It was a bit of an adventure because I had no idea where I would end up and I do like to explore. The tram is very good and I noticed that the driver seems to use gestures throughout the journey, but not the kind of gestures that I would use when driving. Mind you they were two finger gestures, but more the kind you would see if a priest was blessing someone rather than to tell someone you didn’t quite agree with what they had done or said. Before moving from the station he would use his right hand and point up to the left and then move his hand horizontally and then back again and the train would move. Sometimes he swept his hand above the main screen on the dash; mind you maybe he was just playing some kind of game to relieve the monotony of the job or maybe its witchcraft. On the way the tram’s bell would ring very loudly when we were going around a tight bend at an intersection and after a wee while I was getting ready to stick them somewhere. There’s always noise in China, you can’t just sit back and enjoy the view and relax in the bus or the tram for that matter. There is always a safety message or a notification of a destination and it seems continuous but I guess if this is what you have grown up with you are none the wiser.

We passed many places of interest and so over the coming weeks I shall do some more exploring of this area which is a good thing because I have been rather bored lately and so this will at least wet my appetite for a while. I’ll be out this way again on Sunday because I’m going for a walk with some of the students that I teach; they have invited me out for a hike at Lingyenshan.

At the terminus I emerged into a semi rural area, there was an old lady with a two seat electric taxi asking if I wanted a lift into town and I politely refused, maybe next time I said. I turned right and headed for the lake Taihu, which was less than 1 km from the shiny new train station. There was a small harbour, filthy and full of different boats. Some were house boats and others looked like small runabouts, but not anything that looked like a large fishing boat. The water was a lovely green colour and there were many old folk scooping up this green ooze, possibly algae and pouring it into buckets, not sure what they will use this for, but it was good to see them try to clean the lake a little. By this time the sun was beginning to bite and I wished that I had me bigger hat and long troos on. There didn’t seem anywhere else near here worth looking at, unless you were driving of course because I think it would be a lovely scenic relaxing drive as there was very little traffic. At the bus stop I looked to see where the bus was going to and it was due in 10 mins and so it seemed to go around the small peninsula and return to a point no more than 1 km from my current position, so on I went.

It was nice to sit on the bus as we drove around the lake, the driver even switched off the running commentary for the safety info, I like this driver. It looks like a great place to cycle, the roads are quiet and there is a dedicated bike path following the lake. I would live in a place like this if I could have a normal life in China and what I mean by that is; having my own house and car and the money to do so. There are so many places to live to make life more enjoyable but in my current situation this is just not possible to attain.

We arrived back in civilisation at the bus station. We have arrived at the Suzhou Embroidery Town, which I had been too many moons ago but had no ideas where it was exactly. I didn’t explore the town because it was getting a little late in the afternoon and it was time to head home but I will come back here again now that I know where it is.

The journey home was not bad. It took about 2 hours to get back and when I got back I was absolutely knackered. After some food and an hour of mindless TV I retired for the evening, my body feeling that I had run a marathon.

As I write this on the computer I am also trying to access some information from my Google drive on line and it looks like the Chinese firewall is being beefed up this week due to the 30^th anniversary of a party that took place in Beijing where as we know many people were killed. No one seems to know the real number, but they say it could run into thousands. A few people I have met here know about it but many others do not. It’s not a subject I bring up but when I get to know someone and the opportunity arises then sometimes I will ask the question. A good friend of mine who is a staunch supporter of the government told me that I was completely wrong about this and I was getting confused with a battle that took place many years earlier during the Mao years and so I let her tell me and thanked her for correcting me. Another friend was telling me the other day that one of her friends was at University at that time in Beijing and she saw nothing and she knows that this is just western propaganda. But I wonder if it really matters because many people here don’t really care what Mao did and they dismiss the deaths that took place to something that had to happen to get them to this point today where they can use the high speed trains and the convenience of the cashless society. Life is good now for many Chinese and so the price that was paid all those years ago is worth it and so we should not dwell on the past

I just had a thought, maybe the train driver is a Freemason…………..