Tom |
An irregular blog.
The previous post is Gulang Yu (April 30).
The next post is Xiamen Train Station (May 01).
I also have a photo gallery that I'm not sure what to do with.
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I’ve paid for an hour at a large internet shop filled with rows of Chinese men playing online games and watching movies. Earlier I took lunch in a Macdonald’s. The ten foot wide store front belied a cavernous underground space packed very densely with family and other customers. China must have different fire codes regarding capacity.
Everyone has been very friendly, and I’m excited that my Chinese is survive-on-able.
I’ve already forgotten a lot of the details I should be journaling. The way Gulangyu and the Xiamen skyline lights up at night. The holiday crowds and street vendors selling fruit, meat on a stick, and trinkets. The thickly accented “hello! come in!” shopkeepers use to draw my attention. Xiamen is beautiful, and densly urban, and historical, and there’s the heavy shipping traffic just offshore — I recommend it to anyone looking for a vacation spot in China :).
I haven’t been eating enough, not today at any rate, but I’m doing what I didn’t get done on my way out of Tokyo — errands. I mailed off a DVD of pictures to home (this required taking a bus to electric city and finding a computer shop that had the requisite hardware). I bought a bar of soap. I have yet to find a notebook so I will have at least one thing to do on the long train ride to Jiujiang. I think it’s a twenty hour journey.
I also successfully used a public water closet today. I was loathe to set down my backpack on the floor, though the loathing was offset by the strong chlorine stench.
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Perhaps you'd like to read something ?
I just read this about some people’s experience in china, would be interested in hearing you compare/contrast to what they’ve seen.
— peter royal May 1, 08:47 AM #Your Chinese is so good that it does not have a strong chlorine stench.
— Katie May 1, 10:15 PM #I think this is the part of the journal where we never hear from Tom ever again. Sad really. Well I bet he took down a lot of kung fu thugs before they overwhelmed him with numbers.
“Put concisely, stillness is present in motion, and motion is present in stillness.�
P.S. Heya Pete! Hope things are good.
— Chris H May 4, 10:04 PM #I live… again!
— Tom May 7, 05:02 AM #