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[xwarrior]

[Raoul F. Duke]

Another outstanding contribution! Thanks, xwarrior.

Oh, if only more members had a camera and an imagination, and knew how to use them...

[AMonk]

  Thanks you for sharing

[becster79]

Ahhhh....I miss Baoji  .

I have a coffee shop just metres from my home that also does simple meals. Whenever I go there I always tend to end up buying the rice noodle dish because it ALWAYS takes me back to Baoji. I remember the AWESOME market across the road from the old Baoji Uni A & S.

Best. Market. Ever.

Ridiculous prices (good) on fruit & veg (loved buying bagfuls of strawberries!), lots of fantastic outdoor undercover hole in the wall eateries....and a couple of Muslim guys making the BEST naan bread ever. I loved watching them make it (they were so amused that I would care) and leave with a bag full. Ssssoooo delish!

[xwarrior]

Ahhhh....I miss Baoji  .

So do I!!! I moved to Hangzhou at the beginning of this semester to get out of a dumb job situation ... and I could not face another winter in Baoji. It is taking some time to get used to a big city environment.

Looking through my photos brought back fond memories of the people of Baoji - open, honest and, after they know you are not a tourist, welcoming.

My favourite meal in Baoji (where a heaped plate of noodles cost RMB3) was stir fried lamb - it cost RMB10. You sure cannot find cheap meals like that in the area I am living in Hangzhou.
 

 

[Jedi Smurf]

There are some absolutely amazing photos in this collection! Thanks so much for sharing. 

[Granny Mae]

Thanks xwarrior! I really appreciate seeing China through your eyes.   What is going on with the ladies in the last picture?  Another question, why are some folk wearing masks; smog or germs?

[xwarrior]

Thanks xwarrior! I really appreciate seeing China through your eyes.   What is going on with the ladies in the last picture?  Another question, why are some folk wearing masks; smog or germs?

1. The girl on the chair is having her shoes cleaned. Up to 20 women clean shoes for a living - most sit on stools at the bus stop in front of the railway station. The standard charge is RMB2.

Shoe cleaners seem to abound in some cities and can not be found in others. It is a real industry in Zhanjiang where not only are there many women and men working in the streets but there are also shops dedicated to cleaning shoes. Zhaoqing had only one woman - she biked around the city to her her favourite spots - but she seems to have found another trade.

2. The 4 women are street sweepers and wear masks for a lot of the day because of the dusty conditions - Baoji is located in the 'dustbowl' of northwest China.

The ones in the ones in the photo are actually 'highway' sweepers. They are members of a unit that sweep a 7 kilometre stretch of 8 lanes every day. The road has to be kept clean because it is used by leaders en route to the many government and m*l*tary buildings in this zone of the city. 
   

[kitano]

great pics again!

I am still hatching a plan to use these pics in gallery format I haven't forgotten

[psd4fan]

The one with the cops makes me think of the Village People. 

[The Local Dialect]

Great pics. I like the sullen coffee girl the best.

[Granny Mae]

Thanks xwarrior. I wonder why they don't use the mechanical street sweepers we use here; I reckon those folk would have a boring and dangerous job.

[xwarrior]

Boring? Yes. Repetitive? Yes.

They are a part of an arrmy, that must number in the millions, that go out every day and sweep streets in China. I think that most of the streets in China get swept every day. Our countries may have machines to do the job but they also have a lot of unemployed people.

A few years ago I greeted a street sweeper in Zhanjiang and she replied in perfect English. After a few minutes conversation I discovered that as a small girl she had become interested in English as a language.

Family circumstances forced her to leave school when she was 12yrs old but she continued to study English through any means she could find, including listening to the BBC on an old radio. Now in her 40's she still listened to English language broadcasts every day.

I was the first foreigner she had had a chance to talk to in English. Whenever I stopped to have a chat with her a small crowd would soon gather and you could hear the murmurs of amazement.  

[Granny Mae]

Thanks xwarrior. I was talking about the highway sweepers when I was talking about dangerous. Can you imagine the faces on some of our "jailbirds" or unemployed folk if we asked them to sweep highways or streets for that matter.