Behind the university, a fish pond area
In the background is the back of the university. The little building
had nothing inside except garbage and some burned things. How to use
this page: a) click on a picture to center it (to get around nasty
picture cut in half scrolling) b) press F11
The same day. Some China garbage next to the tree (brightly colored
undefined plastic bits). It appears in the corners, in drifts. In
winter there are lots of interesting shaped trees to go with the white
skies.
Zhuzhou City
Near the school gate. The campus is surrounded by a broken glass-topped
wall except for two gates. They like gated compounds here. You can see
the typical white tile architecture. Also China style shops - open
holes in the first floor of every building. It really gives streets a
different feel - you can see inside all the stores and restaurants.
On the road into the center of town. This is a bicycle rickshaw. I like
his sweater. These guys ride all day yet half the time their bikes are
in terrible condition - squeaking bent wheels, iron handlebars. 12
cents worth of oil or cloth would make a huge difference if you're
pedaling all day. The peasant communal mindset doesn't encourage fixing
things up.
Loading a truck with those huge green packages you see everywhere here.
A choke point on the way to town which attracts lots of vendors.
Same place. In the upper right you can see a guy getting a shave.
A vendor. He was friendly. I'm not sure about the guy in the
background. In China there's no "turtleneck = snob" thing. So to me
everyone looks pretentious during winter. Strangely though, "turtle" is
like "ass" in english - an animal name converted into an insult. So
don't call anybody "turtle-head"!
A little park near there. Wherever you go in Zhuzhou there are parents
and grandparents walking around with their kids. They really bundle the
kids up, too, except for a huge hole in their pants so they can pee
wherever.
A road in town... That's the station up ahead. Most streets are about
this hectic, although usually there isn't quite so much driving on the
wrong side of the road. Some times of day this road converts to
one-way, but nobody's sure when.
The Other Side of the River
An old lady walking around a huge barren construction site, picking up
certain kinds of garbage. Nice new apartments in the background.
A nice older building, with a tree growing through it. Most buildings
in the city are way uglier than this. Out of the city the buildings
look are older and better, and there's less garbage everywhere.
a Hunan red dirt road along the river.
This concrete pond was in the middle of a bunch of vegetable fields. In
the lower left you can see it was built in december, 1981. Supposedly
it's for storing fertilizer.
all along the river there are huge piles of sand, and boats dredging
and sifting. I have heard it's all illegal... nobody's sure.
Chinese construction site. Awesome. Bad fog.
Near my house there is a thin dirt road running between huge fish ponds
on one side and small piles of garbage/houses/fish ponds/bottle sorting
plants on the other side. They recently rebuilt the canal along this
path, which covered the narrow road with a foot of mud that never dried
for a few months. That made it tough for all the bike/motorcycle
porters who go back and forth on it.
Same place as the last picture, but turned 90 degrees right. For some
reason in Zhuzhou all the porters, taxi drivers, and cooks wear suit
jackets all the time. Fleeces are the next level up from there, and
leather jackets are above that. The white rocks were used to rebuild
the canal wall. They'd pick a good sized one, line it up, and push it
off the side of the road to fall onto the half-completed wall.
A kid I bumped into along this path. There were lots of them playing in
the huge piles of sand. Fun! No labor/workplace safety enforcement has
a bright side!
This is the same road, closer to my apartment. Construction attracts a
crowd. They were smashing down those trees with no regard for the power
lines overhead, and of course all the smoking loungers came over to
watch. I saw when they built those pink buildings - first a concrete
& steel frame, then red half broken bricks piled to make walls.
Then those are covered with tiles which stay clean for about a week.
There is almost nothing inside the walls of buildings here... wires and
pipes are added later, stuck onto walls and out windows. Also, more
China garbage.
Two kids. The white piles on the other side are lime, exposed to the
rain.
My students at a christmas party. They all showed up on time (or early)
with hats. They made dumplings, and did the traditional thing of
filling one of them with nothing but pepper. They love to have their
picture taken. From left to right -
