To the north of us is a busy business district. To the south is "The Bund," with lots of tourist attractions and the tallest buildings in China. To the west is the French Concession, where many expats live and there are lots of international restaurants. And in the middle of all that is where we live - a relatively non-cosmopolitan area just outside Tongji University. No tall business buildings - not much of anything taller than seven stories. LOTS of bicycles and narrow(er) streets - and lots of electric motorbikes sneaking up on you quietly. You have to always be on your guard. They share the sidewalks with pedestrians and bicycles and seem to use the streets, too. No place is safe! Immediately around us are no major shopping stores or high priced clothing. All small (some 6 feet wide), local shops. Very reasonable prices - unless you want milk. No clue we live in the heart of a big city!
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| As we walked out of our apartment one day, we noticed a "watch cat" on a nearby roof. Notice the laundry poles sticking out of the windows of the next building. |
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| This is our street. The blue sign "Tongji Guest House" is where we turn in to our apartment complex. The "Fry Hut" in front attracts college students fairly late into the night to eat sandwiches and sweet potato fries. One time some English-speaking German students recommended the peanut butter / egg / corn / cheese grilled sandwich to us. So John had to try it. It was "okay." |
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| Around the corner is the fruit market. It's easy to dash there and get pomelos, dragon fruit, jujubes (a type of date with the texture of an apple), mandarin oranges, persimmons, interesting melons, etc. as well as apples, bananas and grapes. |
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| Next to the fruit market is the baozi (a filled steamed bun) store (at the red sign). There is a long line most mornings that we have to make our way through to walk down the sidewalk - unless we take the back path. More on that later. |
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| The hardware store next door seems to be having a sale - the last few days they've had a loud speaker yelling at us in Chinese as we walk past. We're anxious to see what all these open-front stores do in the winter. |
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| This is across the street from the main entrance to our university. At the Metro (subway) station is a large collection of rental bicycles. There are lots of these rental bikes, each company using a different color and phone app to rent them. OFO is yellow, Mobike is orange, etc. |
Rental bikes are big business here. What is different from other places we've seen is that there are not "stations" to rent them from and return them to. If you want to know more, check the link: Merging China's bicycle startups
Now we'll return to our apartment the "back way." We use this route when the back gate is open, morning, noon, and night during commute times.
It's a wonderful, quiet walk away from the street and *most* of the bikes and scooters.
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| Today we see a grandpa and grandson investigating something intriguing. We see lots of grandparents taking care of children while the parents work. |
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| There is a pigeon cote along the way. |
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| Someone grew squash and it climbed the tree. We were surprised to look up one day and see all these hanging from the branches |
Finally, for some news of the week, both Kathy and John were judges at the 16th annual English Star Speech Competition for the university. This is a competition of the students' English skills in prepared and impromptu speeches. Fifteen contestants were judged with the top four going on to a city-wide competition in December, which then feeds into province and China level competitions. Kathy was asked to give an impromptu speech for 5 minutes while the judges tallied the scores!
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