So far, the only window I've really had is through the hotel restaurant staff. The manager is a 25year old woman with fairly decent English, and after chatting to her for a bit we've become mates of a sort, though we don't exactly have much chance to hang out. I can't say "do you want to watch a dvd or something", seeing as fraternising with the customers is an unwritten no-no. However, by chance today I passed up the chance to go to the city with the Takeya crew, and at lunch she said she was going to the local mall, for nothing in particular. She didn't complain to my tagging along, so we caught the hotel bus into town.
Strolling through the streets can hardly be called "strolling", with people walking all over broken footpaths, cars doing what cars do here - which is more beeping than driving - and construction zones all over the show, with no real barrier between construction and pedestrians. All in all you feel like you're very much in a living and breathing society, just with a lot of coughing and wheezing along the way. And all this in 30 seconds from the bus to the mall.
The mall itself could only be referred to using words like "grandeur", with a massive circular space in the centre that extended through 6 floors to the ceiling, which was coated in upside-down umbrellas. I think it was art, but they may have been there to catch any leakages in the roof.
This caption has nothing to do with the above picture.
Throat-warbler mangrove.
I didn't really buy anything outstanding at the mall, but I did decide to go food shopping. At first this was nothing special - some Snickers, pestachios, fruit jellies (classic China there). But then we passed the produce, and the durians caught my eye.
Durians: Prickly pears of stench.
I've never had one, but Vivian (the restaurant girl) said they tasted good, but smelt something fierce. Later on her godfather was to refer to the smell as "like the shit of a cat". He wasn't wrong. Like strong cheese and onions. A smell I can't term as bad, but intense, and something you'd expect from a really heavy hot dog rather than a fruit. Still, it tasted good, though I had to chuck most of it because my room was lacking oxygen. I recommend the tasting part, just don't invite a man carrying a durian into your home.
We were gonna hit some shoe stores in the everlasting quest to find shoes in Asia that fit me, but the rain came down on a colossal scale, the streets were flashflooded and a state of emergency was called. Well, not quite, but it certainly felt like I'd finally experienced "monsoon season". China doesn't really give the image of a country prepared for large amounts of rain, which is surprising considering how much there is. You think they'd get wise and plan for it.
People shelter in the mall entranceway from precipitating chaos.
But then again, you think New Zealanders would get wise that it gets cold in the winter, and properly seal and double glaze the windows. We're all a bunch of slackers.
I watched El Laberinto del Fauno ('Pan's Labyrinth') last night, a Spanish movie by impressive director Guillermo del Toro. It was great, though I'm slightly unsure what the target audience is. Maybe it's people like me, who like a good genre-mixer, aren't afraid of blood, especially if it's original. Would be best described as a gruesome fairy tale. All I can say is, I freakin love Español. Learning lots of Chinese here, but I'd rather be speaking Spanish. It's such a fun language to speak - maybe its because I feel the need to say every word of it as an impression of Bela Lugosi.
Dinner time.
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