September 03 2011
Finally taking a weekend off from our
full-tilt life. I think we took a weekend off several months ago in NYC
and since then we have been on the go throughout months in Australia and now
for a month in China. Today is five weeks since arriving on a Saturday morning
at 2 am. We were so excited arriving in Dalian and meeting our new boss and
entering our new home for the next couple of years. Since then we have had few
stopping moments. It is after 8 on a Saturday morning and Narda
is still asleep. I was up, as usual, before six. Every other weekend we have
been off to Dalian or Kai Fa Qu on the school’s shopping
bus. During the week? Well we work and after school we
are off to Kai Fa Qu on the
shopping bus or riding our new bikes to the Jinshitan market, or walking to Golden
Pebble Beach in the morning before school. It is not just us,
half of the teachers are where we are too. Last night we walked the
five-minutes over to the Blueberry Farm. The food is really very good there. It
came out to be about $12 USD for Narda and I with about seven dishes, about one vegetarian. The
eggplant and sweet potato are my favourites.
The exciting new news is that we have found out what a big project going up across the road from us is. We have been watching a few French-type buildings go up and it does look like southern France. This is across from the large development called ‘Chateau de Burgundy’ which I spoke about in my previous blog http://blog.neuage.info/?p=34 it is a winery that will be selling wine from the new Golden Pebble Beach Grape Valley vineyards, just a bike ride away. This will surely make the school day end that much more pleasant. Actually we found an Aussie pub, The Jinshitan Kangaroo Bar, (read about it on the Dalian Expat Page) a fifteen minute walk away on Jinshi Road at Jinshi square near Discovery Kingdom and the sprawling over the top Yosemite housing area for the Intel and other wealthy non-teacher types. Yes there is a Disney-like-theme-park just down the road along the beach from us. Narda and I will pop in someday when we need a break from whatever it is we would need a break from.
According to a blurb I found online about the Yosemite
development; “The resort area is located approximately 40km away from the
Dalian central city. Tourist attractions already established at the Golden
Pebble Beach include: Golden Pebble Golf Club (on the top ten best in the world
list), Golden Rock Park, Waxwork Museum, China Martial Arts Hall, Mao Zedong
Badge Exhibition Hall, Model Art School, and the International Hunting Club”.
Oh yes there is a hunting club nearby – between the constant fireworks, the 24
hour a day building across the road and the hunting club nearby this gets to be
quite the noisy place. It is a different noise than New York City – I have
gotten use to it, though I do wake suddenly when a
lot of fireworks are set off. There is a university – an art school, a
technology college (this is China’s Silicon Valley) and a fashion school –
nearby and those students love their firecrackers. Another piece on Yosemite
says “The “Oriental Yosemite” is the biggest comprehensive tourism project in the
Golden Pebble Beach State Tourism Resort. It is created by the Dalian Luneng Realty Co., Ltd. with 15 billion Yuan investment. A
few days ago, another two projects were started. They are the Golden Pebble
Commerce Centre and the Golden Pebble Ocean Hot Spring.” 15
billion Yuan is 2,349,580,000 USD, so it is nice to know they are spending some
money on housing in our neighbourhood.. There is a bigger project than Yosemite nearby and I will
put that into a video I am doing of this area soonish.
Other news: I got a soy milk maker for my birthday – and even though the instructions are in Chinese somehow I got the thing to make me a cup of milk from a cup of soybeans – seems like quite an effort but I know it is not going to have lots of other stuff in it. Another item to add to my tofu site at http://tofu.neuage.us It was more than thirty years ago when I started making soy milk and from that, tofu for eight years, in Adelaide and now I am in China with my little soy milk maker all these years later. Tonight I am bringing tofu burgers to our neighbour’s birthday bash.
School is great – I will have some news about stuff regarding that in a couple of days. I am writing up on my educational blog http://neuage.us/edu/blog.html later today or tomorrow or sometime soon.
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Life is so different here at Campus Village. We seem to have lots of instant parties. Someone’s birthday and we swarm – beer is so cheap (though I am told not very good) here. Tonight it is actually a planned party, and I am making tofu burgers – seems I am stuck in my ideas of anything new. I never lived in a college dorm but I am told life in them is similar to this; a cross between a college dorm and a timeshare apartment. It seems we are on a permanent holiday.
This blog is not really about all that is above. It is about the wedding we went to last Sunday. Our first Chinese wedding. Aside of leaving Sunday morning on the ‘shopping bus’ to Dalian at 7.30 Am when all we wanted was a big sleep in we were most entertained. The groom was one of our IT staff. The first part was having a toast in the couple’s house. Marriage in China is a long drawn out event. They were actually married two months earlier, but the presentation or whatever it is – like coming of age or something was last Sunday. First of course was the fireworks – I will start my video off with that, which I hope to post tonight in between parties – after all we have that dorm-type of life with stuff always happening in our building. The teachers all live in this building, and the administration and couples with children live in the next resort like building. We have two floors of living, then the lobby and a restaurant and in the basement, the gym and recreation room. Like all couples here we have a two-bedroom apartment, so when you come to visit we can put you up; single people either get a one-bedroom apartment or a loft. People tend to not like the lofts; they are two-story with an open floor plan. I think if I was single I won’t mind, especially if it was in Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, New York City or wherever there was a city. We are out in the country, about an hour from Dalian or half an hour to Kai Fa Qu which is a city-suburb and fifteen minutes from Jinshitan but Jinshitan is not really an expat type of area. There are about 16 apartments per floor here at Campus Village and I think only a couple of them are empty. There is a guest apartment for when one of us need a place to put visitors – in-laws and people like that (down the hall and not in our apartment – just kidding mum/dad). There is a huge shopping mall being built not far away so that could make shopping easier though we prefer to go to the local Jinshitan market and haggle for already cheap as can be fruit and veggies. Then before long there will be the new city they are building, supposed to rival Hong Kong they say. There is a model of it which we keep meaning to slot in time to go see that is really quite impressive. With the new city there will be the new China movie industry headquarters. They have been building the infrastructures for years with huge freeways (everything done in China is huge) and lots of land clearing including the leveling of three large hills that I spoke of a few blogs ago. It will rise up between Kai Fa Qu and where we live here at Golden Pebble Beach. There will be a world-class yacht arena too. I think we are mid-way through a ten-year plan for that.
After the
fireworks the groom comes in then the bride all dressed in drag (no not New
York City drag) but wifey just married drag (OK so
that could be NYC too). Then lots of stuff is said in Chinese. There is a table
with bowls of fruit and a plate of cigarettes – they love their cigarettes
here. And some stuff is drunk. Then a little boy jumps up and down on the
couple’s bed – this is too bring good luck and a male child, then they throw
nuts on the bed, not sure why, but perhaps that too is in hopes of a male… then
flowers are tossed on the bed and
well us males from the school kept our hands to our self, and then the couple
closes the bedroom door for a while and us male teachers as well as most of the
female all have our thoughts and try to keep them in check. The parents have a
bedroom too as the trip here is that the parents get together and buy a new
apartment for the couple and I think when they get old one set of them gets to
live with the kids. Not sure how that works out, perhaps they throw dice or arm
wrestle to see which couple gets to do the old age thing with the couple. It
all seems quite awkward with this one kid policy they have in China.
At some point we
all take off the slippers that were given us when we entered the apartment and
head out to the bus and go to the reception. The reception was in a huge
banquet hall with about eight people per table. I end up with about four other
couples from our school and we just were plain silly. The beer was flowing and
so was something that was about 60-proof, and it was only ten in the morning.
There was lots of food and of course a plate of cigarettes on the round thing
that the Chinese love to put on tables and that us
westerns just spin around. I guess I broke the silly barrier when they put the
lone chicken head on the plate on the revolving table and I stuck a cigarette
in its mouth and sent it for a bit of a spin. It is in the video – you’ll love
it. I also like the part where the bride-chick comes around and puts a
chocolate or a cigarette in each person’s mouth (though she missed the
chicken). That too is in the video. Overall we were there for several hours and
got home late in the afternoon wishing we had another day to the weekend.
Today, Saturday,
Narda went off to Kai Fa
Qu shopping and I had a day home puttering around.
She came back with a printer/scanner, lots of food and bags of stuff. It is
still hot here though I think it will cool down soon.
Narda will be writing in her blog tomorrow, forgot what but I know she
has said a few times of the past couple of days, “I am going to write about
that in my blog”, so don’t miss that at http://blog.narda.us
Next Thursday I
am off to Shanghai for a few days for an IT conference and Narda
is taking a four hour drive with several of the women here to some really cool
city north of here for a few days. It is a long weekend, with Monday some sort
of national holiday. A lot of the people are going north to Dandong where the China-North Korea Friendship Bridge
is.
I really wanted to go but couldn’t fit it. It is only a couple of hours away so
Narda and I will go up in the near future for a
weekend. And that is all from here for today.
My soymilk maker
Dalian is
made up of six distinct districts
Liaoning
Dalian is one
of China’s five municipalities directly under the central leadership.
Its goal is to
become the international shipping center of Northeast Asia by 2010.
China’s Silicon
Valle
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