We see a great many interesting things, all of them different from what we see back "home". There are some really big differences, like the big Buddha, but then there are zillions of little everyday things that don't remind us of home.
The Grand Canal through Wuxi is only one street away from our apartment block, and we love to go and just watch the traffic up and down. Its just like the street, with lanes of traffic in both directions, and impatient vehicles wanting to overtake others, except so much quieter. Nothing to hear except the deep thrumming of the engines and the splashing of water.
In this picture, the boat on the left is heading towards us, but the wheelhouse is at the stern and because of the large load the driver can barely see where he is going. The person on the bow is responsible for waving a hand - usually holding a flag - to indicate to the man at the wheel where he needs to steer. With lots of bridges of various sizes to navigate under as well as other vessels to avoid, the lady on the bow is kept pretty busy.
Its a fascinating scene to watch, and it makes an interesting picture. (We have a large number of photos of the grand canal in our collection!) But this one is of particular interest to me because of the background. I worry about the washing hanging out of the apartment windows.
When I travel through a city with tall apartment blocks - and there are one or two of those in China! - I find myself looking up in fascination at the washing hanging way above my head. I think it takes a certain amount of nerve to be able to dangle your clothing out there like that, especially big things like blankets.
Our bedroom opens onto an enclosed balcony, with sliding windows at floor level and above, and a set of hanging poles that can be lowered and raised with a rope on a pulley. It's great, I feel totally safe - and so does my washing. Unfortuately, we are discovering that Wuxi's weather is very humid more often than not, and sometimes I do wish that we also had some outside hanging poles like most of the other apartments around here.
This is part of the view from my kitchen window - its always interesting! This is a fairly clear day, so someone has decided to use the trees in the courtyard for a temporary clothesline. At least this is within the apartment complex. On fine days the city streets in some parts of town are so full of washing lines that its harder than usual to walk down the pavements. Some people make use of road-side bushes and shrubs to air their bedding on. When we stayed in Qingdao last winter our hotel room overlooked an intersection which had a large roundabout. A thoughtful city administration had filled the roundabout with exercise equipment, which was well used by health-conscious city-dwellers every morning. And then on fine days the whole roundabout sprouted washing lines and wet washing. Can you imagine doing that in Australia?
I read in the news a few weeks ago that in Hong Kong there are now laundry police to stop people doing that, and they will confiscate washing hanging in public places. It seems a pity, there is something very Chinese about hanging washing all over the place.
The streets can be rather dirty, and the air may often be polluted, but the people here are generally meticulously clean. I love watching (from my kitchen) as they hang their washing. First you have to go out on your balcony and wipe everything down. The hanging poles themselves get very dusty, and the windows and window-ledges can leave dirty smudges on your clothes. Each balcony has black wrought-iron bars up to waist high, and if you hang washing outside on rails then the clothes will doubtless blow back and come into contact with this railing, and so this also needs to be carefully wiped down before you can start dangling clothes out there. There are a quite a few minutes of good, hard work to be done getting the area ready. And, if - as many still do - you wash your clothes by hand, washing day is all in all quite a busy time. I have nothing but admiration for the women who live here and who are so careful and neat.
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