Mumma Bear’s Impressions of China

Hi Guys,

It’s Mumma Bear here. I know it has been a very long time since I have posted anything. That is because someone very close to me hogs the computer. I can’t blame him though, because he has an addiction to IT. Every chance he gets he is sitting at it.

There isn’t a lot to tell because that same person tells you all that has been happening. So I will just give you a run down on some of my impressions of China…

The people are so funny in the way they have to have photos of us everywhere we go. Even sitting here while waiting for our car to be fixed there are people here taking pictures. If we stop to make a coffee it is like a major photo shoot. They are, however, very friendly and lovely people, except when they get behind the wheel of a car and they turn into honking monsters. There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as road rules, with cars driving three abreast to overtake each other. That by the way is on a 2 lane road.

The scenery is amazingly beautiful, with almost every few kilometres changing. Yesterday we drove through very green lush hills with no trees anywhere in sight to hills that were almost desert like. They looked a little like sand hills. This was just a little bit of the trip.

The other impression I have of China is the food. Not my favourite thing to eat. Lots of rice and noodles. For some reason I just can’t come at noodles for breakfast! And toast, no such thing around here. In fact very rarely any bread as we know it at all!!! What bread there is seems to be sweet, and I don’t mean like raisin bread, I mean sugar sweet bread. Yuk! There also seems to be a lot of green stuff that are vegetables, just nothing like I have seen before or eaten. I am however getting used to some of it otherwise we might starve. The poor old bum has taken some time to get used to it also!

The other bug bear I have are the toilets. Seeing as I seem to have to use them fairly often I find them very hard to tolerate – the smell leaves a lot to be desired. I also can’t get used to the squat thing. This body doesn’t like getting down that far! Not all of them are like that though there are some good western toilets in the hotels that we have stayed in. There are just so many little differences in this country. Even in the hotels they don’t believe in shower screens and needless to say when you have a shower (if you can get hot water) everything in the bathroom gets wet. The toilet, the floors, the toilet paper (if you are lucky enough to have got some) everything. Lots of fun.

Now that I have had my few whinges, and I don’t mean them to be, I am just trying to show some of the differences to people who have not been here.