Jinshitan

After "English Corner" (Conversation club) duty on Sunday, we decided we would stretch our legs a bit and walk around town. We left Susan's Pizza, which is a Western style restaurant run by a woman married to a former teacher - and the location for "English Corner"- and headed into the heart of Jinshitan.


Every time we walk around the town, I am struck by the fact that HEY, I LIVE IN CHINA!!! Even though things are often familiar, and we have settled down into a pretty comfortable routine, everyday something will jump out at you as being so... so ... Chinese.


For whatever reason, this walk was one long Chinese experience after another. Whether it was the dozens of little kids playing on the streets with their plastic guns and cute little mullet haircuts, the crazy mechanized and non-mechanized vehicles that are everywhere, the dumplings at the market, the huge, decaying tenement buildings, the bbqs on the side of the road selling kebabs and skewered silk worms, the trucks going by with loads of seaweed and five or six fishermen and women perched on top, or the incredible amount of cranes and construction going on everywhere, we were being made very aware of where we were.

Just one of the many weird and wonderful conveyances in Jinshitan.

Pretty typical building in Jinshitan.

Lots of new apartments going in for the summer tourists to  rent.

Someone lost a rooster....

Still decorations for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year)