Sunday at the Cottage

The sky is crying, clouds' hands reach from horizon to horizon, the barometer has fallen. It is raining; the kind of rain farmers usually love, steady, and long lasting. I am not so sure about this rain though. After a long cold winter with lots and lots of snow, the fields were wet into June. Last week it rained 3 1/2 inches in one night. Fields and roads were flooded. the drainage ditches were full and fast flowing. After dinner with the Thuerigs last evening, traveling to Wiarton to pick up their daughter and friend from a rock concert at the airport, we saw brown field after brown field left after the water had receded, and other fields still with spots of water in them. We want the Great Lakes to fill up again, and I have been watching water levels in Lake Powell in Utah and Lake Lanier, the water reservoir for Atlanta Ga., they are also rising, dramatically. So what is good for fresh water restoration in many parts of the USA, does have its downside here at Little Pike Bay. The bush is wet, everything that is suppose to be green is deep green.

More tidbits from our trip

We are in the olde person's garden a block from Justin's place. Sun, flowers and fragrance. Casual and smiling after a night's rest and a full breakfast, plus a brisk walk to Justin's. We are overjoyed to be here.

The kitchen in Justin's is modern and spacious. Enough outlets to run the usual appliances, cook the food and wash the dishes. Large refrigerator to pack all the food to be prepared. Unfortunately, neither Justin nor Sherry are much on cooking. Hmmm.

Andre is not quite Rubin's "Reclining Lady" but the living room is spacious, furniture a bit low to the floor for my taste, my needing to struggle to get out of the sofa and chairs, otherwise a young person's modern.

Although the curtains are closed and the skylight has movable cloth shutters, the room is light and airy, the night sky is visible, and the room feels expansive.

Next to the bedroom is partitioned the computer room and an outward looking window. These two rooms plus a large shower and bath make up the second floor. Plenty of room to roam around up here. Hardwood floors, no handrailings to get down the angled staircase though, slippers with traction a must for me.

The night we arrived, we went out for "Chinese" and this is a typical restaurant, on the second floor in the old French concession, a lazy susan in the middle where plates are placed and then spun around to each place setting. There are communal chopsticks to place the food onto your plate, and then there are people willing to share everything.

Our arrival into Shanghai and first stop was the Radisson Hotel, a 5 star affair where the doorman remembered Justin from Justin's stays before finding a place of his own. We were teated to excellent service, a full buffet breakfast, night attendants at the door with greetings no matter what time of night or early morning we came back. A very comfortable experience, all arranged by Justin and Sherry. Andre and Sarah stayed at Justin's and lingered here long enough for Kathy and myself to get ourselves situated in our rooms and then down to walk to Justin's, taxi to restaurants and then back. All this the day we awoken in East lansing at 3:30 AM to catch the Michigan Flyer bus, to catch the plane in Detroit Metro, to catch the plane in Chicago to fly to Shanghai via the north pole, await our health clearance while still seated in Pudong International Airport, lumber through customs with our full compliment of luggage, cab it to the Radisson, etc etc etc. So began our two weeks in China and the Special Administration Region (can you believe it "SARS") Hong Kong, and back again.

Arrangements by Justin and Sherry were outstanding. Thank you so very much.

Thumbnail sketch of China and Hong Kong

"Welcome to the People's Republic of China. We are from the Government and we are here to help you. Before exiting the airplane everyone will under go a health inspection." 6 decades ago, "showers anyone?"

Sarah found a really neat park a block away from Justin's place in the Olde French Concession of Shanghai. The place was full of apparatus and some people doing Tai Chi. Only later on did we find out that this was a place for "old people."

Shanghai has no functioning one way streets. Cross traffic can really be brutal.

Notice there is no sidewalk. Pedestrians co-mingle with traffic. See the pretty decorative traffic signal ignored by one and all? See Rich run. See Kathy run. We made it across the street. Life is really random isn't it?

Electrical connections are a personnel choice. One does not bother with meters and such. Just reach up, and voila, you are connected.

Let's see now; I do this on myself. This part goes over that part; no, that end goes over this end. See Andre, it is really simple to tie a half Windsor.

East meets West, at the Alter! A gathering of a few close friends.

The French built this hospital at the end of the

19th Century. Pretty isn't it? Behind is the hospital

for Communist Party members and others in good

standing with the Government.

The hospital where Sherry's Grandmother was admitted for a fractured femur, for ordinary citizens: a 6 bed room 4 X 5 meters, curtains separating beds, a common toilet, glass windows viewing from the hall, for women of course. The two bed rooms were for men. Room rates very reasonable, 40 Yuan (@ $5.50 US dollars) and for a single, 100 Yuan (@ $ 14.70 US dollars). Sherry's grandmother was responsible for 20% of the bill. I am sure Medicaid would love those rates, I am not so sure our Medicare and Medicaid patients would appreciate being in beds straight out of our Tuberculosis Sanitariums of the 1920's, and expertise to match the era. US doctors might like nurses back in their hats, starched white long dresses, and standing in deference when the doctor entered. Hmmm.

Notice line 8. This hospital is for Communist Party dignitaries and those in Party favor. Everything is available for those who know someone. There is yet another or third tier of medical care, for foreigners, they have suites. In yet another facility, on the grounds.

All of this inexpensive care is available of course because? costs are low. Just look at the the Staff Parking lot. No, I am not kidding. This is the price for China's Universal Health Care. The gentleman is ZiPing, Sherry's dad. His father at one time was a dignitary in the "Exclusive Medical Care" hospital while his mother is in the 6 bed regular full view Chinese people's unit.

The picture is taken from the window of the Magnetic Elevated Bullet Train of Shanghai's suburbs 30 miles out. We are traveling 430 KPH, about 265 mph.

This is Johnston Street in Hong Kong. Double decker tolleys and double decker buses. The streets are orderly, traffic flows according to the directions intended and signed, only they drive on the wrong side of the street. A legacy of the British, both the orderliness of the traffic flow but also of the side of the road traveled. No one is perfect.

A boutique shop in the Time's Square district and shopping center. Very high end (read no bargains) stores with prices to match.

Entrance to a Taoist Temple. Not surprising, no prohibitions on cigarette smoking. The coils inside the front door are incense, 30 day messages to one's ancestors. How about that, honoring your elders, never heard of such a thing.

Just plain home on the sea. Not the government issue, 100 stories high-rise clustered together like pencils in a cup holder, 600 sq feet, open, no partitions, toilet and shower reminiscent of the one in "Rudy", counter top stove, you provide your own refrigerator. 35% of Hong Kong people live like this. Of course, in honoring your elders, mom and dad live with you, all in bunk bed style; 5 to 6 persons to a suite. No clothes dryer, you hang you clothes out to dry in the 100% humidity. Everybody is doing it. No wonder some people choose to live on a junk.

Hong Kong has a night laser light show: 8:00 PM to 8:13 PM, 43 buildings. One goes to Kowloon, Mainland China to look at the island of Hong Kong lit up.

If you were wondering where people without cars, who rely on public transportation, and where refrigeration and storage are limited, shop for their food as there are no grocery stores or such around each cluster of pencil holder high-rises, there are local cluster day and night markets. People buy just enough groceries for each day/night. No refrigeration? No problem. You cook and eat what you got from the market that morning or night. Here hangs all sorts of choice cuts: liver, heart, pancreas, stomach, esophagus, testicles, ears, legs, hoofs, intestine, pork bellies, etc. Some pig or chicken or duck or goose heads, some brains, eyeballs, you name it, it's yours.

Definitely Organic. Just ask.

For freshness, just come to the jumping fish market, for live fish, shrimp, lobster, clams, oysters, shell fish etc all jumping on, and sometimes off the table, no worries, pick them off the ground and put them onto the table again. You want a dozen?

Do you know what kind of beans you want to buy? Nuts? Roasted whatever? Shopping is for the determined.

Now this is my kind of place. I can identify what smoked fowl I am getting, duck, goose, chicken, pigeon (large and small), and then there are some game birds, tiny ones whose whole roasted body fits on a swizzle stick: one bite and then pick your teeth with the stick's pointed end.

Flowers, orchids, and fragrant? up close? oh boy: The Kowloon New Territories flower market. You really can't smell the flower fragrance from a little bit away since there are competing odors of fish, fowl, and the butchered four legged meat markets just next door.

Further out in the New Territories, that portion of the Greater Hong Kong attached to the main land, hence, really The People's Republic of China, there is a secular holiday celebrating a poet who threw himself into the piranha fish infested waters in protest of corrupt government. Today, there are Dragon Boat races, all through the Special Administration Region of Hong Kong. This one in Tai Po, a 45 minute bus ride from Hong Kong Island. The once sleepy fishing village has given way to the industrial might of China. Alas, the waters are polluted and no more oysters or pearls can be found. The races go on though.

I am dipping my toe in the South China Sea off the island of Lamma, a trip recommended by Bec, and much appreciated. The island hosts coal fired power plants that supply all of Hong Kong's electrical power. 2 liters of beer in the noon day sun later, politics and government intrusion into one's life; ie, presumption of guilt instead of innocents, I could go on and on of course but won't since it does not seem to be as important as those issues seemed just a little while ago. The people are very nice. They are not angry with one another when they speak in an animated fashion, its just that Chinese language is a tonal language: Mandarin has 4 tones and Cantonese (Hong Kong and there is only a 10% overlap with Mandarin) has 6 tones. Mainland China is rapidly emerging from a 50 year civil war and 50 years of ruralification (backward looking) under Chairman Mao into the 21st Century; its just that the people have not come that far nor as rapidly and can be a bit rough around the edges. Its like in this country bringing an isolated Appalachian Mountain person into a big city and expecting etiquette and appreciation of fine Vietnamese French cuisine. Ain't going to happen over night. Hong Kong on the other hand, is a very crowded modern 21st Century city, energetic, and industrious. Fun to be in, for a while. Hectic to live there on a long term basis. Glad to be wandering home.