a nomad’s travel clutter.

We haven’t posted in a while, have been busy (or rather lazy sometimes) and it doesn’t help with the addition of Mimmi. She will be hanging around with us until… tomorrow, when all Janie’s cousin’s tests are over and they can finally be free. Well at least for a few days, before they have to go back to school, or start doing their summer homework. Anyway, there’s a bunch of stuff we have done, we chose some pictures from each occasion and like always we’ll write a few lines below.

This is Nan Chen Shi in the middle of the city. The buildings are built old style, and it’s packed with restaurants and small shops a la market style. We went there on Saturday night to shop last-minute-surprise-present for Mimmi. Julian bought a keps too, the same one that Jay has!!

The next morning Yifubaba (Janie’s uncle-in-law) and Ayimama (Janie’s aunt) took us for a ride around Tai Lake, the big lake in Jiangsu stretching from Suzhou, Nanjing to Wuxi. We passed lots of fruit sellers along the way, mostly selling a red berry fruit called Yang Mei. It’s the right season for it now, so of course we also bought two big buckets of them.

Yang Mei. A little sour but mostly sweet.

After our ride around Tai lake and with the trunk full of Yang Meis and peaches (they are also very famous for Wuxi, and are big and juicy this time of the year) we drove to a restaurant to eat “hot pot” or fondue. Each table has their own electric boiling pot and you just put in all the fresh vegetables and meat in it, when it’s cooked you pick it out and eat with your own mixed sauce. Mmm.

We have also gotten time to do a little shopping… shopping x 70, actually.

Yesterday we went to Li Yuan Park, a big place with many pavillions and small bridges, built few hundred years ago. When we arrived there it was in the middle of the day and were three cars in the parking, the sun was up and it was HOT. We have no choice but to go in, and pose for pictures like this. There were hundreds of beautiful lotuses though!

Mimmi in Li Yuan.

The old houses that once functioned as a place to live, but today is just a museum.

The pavillion you see in the picture is one of the four “season” pavillion (probably the winter one). We had to hide in the summer pavillion because the storm came, and rain poured down. The bright sunny 40 degrees, turned into windy, howling 25 degrees in a few minutes. That’s rainy season for you in Wuxi. It was wonderful sitting in the pavillion watching the rain pouring over the lotus and the storm roaring above. There was even lightening, which scared Mimmi a little bit.

The clouds were also a bit freaky. But nevertheless sooo awesome!

That’s all for today, now it’s one in the afternoon, and we are so tired. Went out in the morning to try and post some postcards, but found out the post office has closed down. Came home and had already sweat like pigs. Anyway, today we think we’ll wait till the sun dips its head before heading out again.

Reply to Em’s “so what’s best about China so far?” question: Well, that it’s hard to give an answer to without being boring. Of course people are nice and so on and so on, but if I shall answer something unexpected it has to be the GREEN RUBBER ICE CREAM! Those were hilarious. It’s like an ice cream that when you lick it, it turns from frozen into a rubberlike substance (jelly we believe) and then it waves/wiggles back and forth on the stick.

Tags: China '05

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