One of my readers suggested I post other pictures of my journey in China in addition to the ones on Chinese food. I thought this was a great idea. The point of this blog isn't just Chinese cuisine, but Chinese culture in general as viewed through me. I had some extra time today so here are some pictures I thought you'd like. Enjoy!

This was the view from my window yesterday morning at about 7AM. The city I live in, Zhuji,  has  somewhat of an air pollution problem. Overall, China's air is very poor, but compared to others, Zhuji is normal. Most days it is not too bad, but some days I wake up and it looks like an apocalypse outside. The air clears up my mid-day. This problem is real and should be a bigger concern to the government, in my opinion.

This photo was taken today, right outside my apartment on campus. It is of a woman driving a small metal cart with an over sized (to say the least) haul of cardboard and garbage. Not pictured is her daughter sitting in her lap! This is a common site in China, but it blows my mind every time I see it. It is such a tiny little cart carrying such a huge top heavy load. I don't understand how they don't tip over. Maybe they do? Comical and baffling.

This was the view from my hotel room in Fuzhou. The apartments you see are very typical in China. If you zoom in you can see the metal cages on all the windows, which they use to dry their clothes. Fuzhou is located across the water from Taiwan and is a somewhat tropical city, hence the palm trees.

This is pedestrian street in Xiamen. We stopped by a small restaurant to eat seafood. Nothing special just normal China.

The story behind this photo is very funny. Me and my other foreign teacher friends were late getting to our train back to Zhuji so we had to get on the first car on the train even though our seats were 6 or 7 cars down. The car we got onto was PACKED. Each seat had 2 people, the walkway was full of standing passengers and if you look on the left side of the picture you can see a guy sitting on top of a seat! We had to make our way through these people in order to get to our car, oh and we all had our luggage to haul as well. We ended up having to walk over people, crushing their toes while they yelled at us in Chinese. Needless to say we made it.

This menu perfectly captures the mis-translations on Chinese to English menus. This one was from an "authentic" western steak house in Zhuji.