Living in Guangzhou had many advantages, and one of the biggest was the cheap availability of food. As the centre of Cantonese cuisine, Guangzhou (previously called Canton) is more than well placed to provide some tasty treats. My brief experience with Northern food revealed a somewhat stodgy bread-based diet and combined with my return to London I discovered that I missed real Guangzhou Dim Sum.
Next week sees the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Rat, and with it millions of Chinese will celebrating with their families. The rat symbolises wealth and prosperity to the Chinese, and I'm hoping this is a good sign as by the end of the month I will be moving to London to restart Life 2.0.
My feelings about this are mixed. In many respects I'm looking forward to having access to all the modern goodness that I'm used to, but in others I'm expecting severe culture-shock as I rejoin the familiar rat-race (pun intended). Like many Chinese at this time of the year I shall be catching up with family (although hopefully not hampered by extreme weather conditions). Following that I'll be faced with the rather more difficult prospect of finding employment and a place to live.
Seeing as the internet is ideally built for self-promotion I thought I may as well mention that if anyone happens to be in the position of needing a full-time London-based developer then please do get in touch. There's some more details about my skills here, and it should be noted that I can do other things besides PHP/WordPress. Pimp-mode over.
I'm cold. Very cold. For the past two weeks China has been experiencing the worst winter in fifty years. Much of the country has been covered in snow. Living in the relatively warmer climates of Southern China you would expect winter to be a mild affair. Last year it was, but this year the temperatures have dropped to around 4 degrees (daytime). Now this isn't such a low number when compared to other parts of the country, but the important factor is that the South is completely unprepared for such weather. For example, the building I live in has absolutely no insulation, the windows have gaps along the edges, the door leading to the balcony is an interior door, and there is no heating of any kind. The building itself is made of concrete and this only seems to intensify the exterior temperature. I can safely say that this is the coldest winter I've ever experienced - cold, damp, and miserable. Prague seems balmy in comparison.
After two years in China I finally managed to do something I've been planning to do for a long time, namely visit Beijing. As Southern China is such a very long way from the North, Christmas seemed as good a time as any, and after some last-minute clicking I had a flight and hotel booked to see me through the Christmas period.
Not only is Beijing geographically distant from Guangzhou, it's also different in most other respects. The people look different, they behave different, they eat different, and they speak different. It would be easy to convince yourself you are in a different country entirely.
Recently I've been trying to find examples of good modern Chinese music. It's been a hard search. Most Chinese music appears to be made entirely for the karaoke market. The reason for this is probably one of simple economies - the karaoke market in China is huge. Almost everyone takes part in it, both men and women, young and old. Karaoke centres are vast buildings with hundreds of private rooms where people go to sing on all manner of occasions - with friends, lovers, even on business.
TV is also full of karaoke-style shows. At any moment of the day it is likely that somewhere there is a TV station in China broadcasting amateur singing. It's taken very seriously, with big competitions and major prizes. Often a popular karaoke singer will go on to start a successful pop career. It even goes deep inside the state with CCTV7 broadcasting the unintentionally funny army karaoke show (or at least, that's my interpretation of it).
Theme: Guangzhou