David's Big Adventure in China

Here is a link to an article you might find interesting about Chinese mistresses referred to here as ernais which directly translated means second breast. Because there is such a gap here between rich and poor it’s easy for a successful business man to support a mistress. http://www.echinacities.com/china-media/all-aboard-the-concubine-express-a-look-inside-shenzhens.html

You almost never see police here issuing speeding or traffic tickets to drivers. They use traffic cameras to issue tickets and apparently they issue a lot of them. They assign the tickets to the registered owner of the car and they don’t send you the tickets. People have to go to the traffic police department or check online to find out about their tickets. You are assigned points against your license similar to in the states based on how many tickets you have. If you have too many points then you can ask family or friends who don’t have too many points to go to the traffic department and tell them that they were driving the car on some of those days thus assigning those tickets to them.

I just renewed my resident/work visa. Apparently the visa office did something wrong last year which made my renewal this year much more difficult. If you remember, last year I was the first foreigner to get that type of visa from that county and that probably contributed to their error. This year I had to get a document from a government office in Dahua where our pig farms are located, then I had to get my medical exam, then I had to go to Macau and get a Z visa which allowed me 1 entry to mainland China, and then I had to go to Hechi to get my resident/work visa. It took many documents and official chops (seals) to get all that done and the whole process took more than a month but I’m glad it’s done.

When we arrived back in Nanning from Hechi it was about 11:00 p.m. and we experienced what often happens at bus stations, train stations and airports in China. There are lots of taxi’s there waiting but none of them want to take you unless you’re going far or agree to pay them much more than the metered price. We had to agree to pay 30 rmb for a trip that would have been less than 20 if we had used the meter. Of course, by western standards that’s not a lot of money but it makes me crazy that the taxi drivers are allowed to do that and we have to fight with them to get them to take you.

I recently had some back trouble so I went to the local traditional Chinese medicine hospital for some treatment. The first doctor I saw suggested an MRI at a cost of about $70 but after doing a little research I decided that wasn’t necessary so I went back and saw a different doctor about getting acupuncture. I had 5 treatments over 6 days and was much better after the treatments. The treatments included cupping, acupuncture and what they call moxibustion which is the burning of some herb near the affected area. The cost was about $70 for all 5 treatments combined. You can see a couple pics by clicking the pictures link on the right.

Until next time….