Today was a wonderful day: shorts and t-shirts weather (well, whilst playing football anyway!) and it was about 15 degrees in the sun: evidence of global warming maybe -the lake where we go ice skating froze 1 week later this year than last year and unfroze another week early. I am talking about Beijing of course; Xi'an never has beautiful days -just a few 'nice' days.
Xi'an only had 1 real period of rain in 2006; it had 4 in 2005 according to my chinese teacher here -and currently Shaanxi province is in the middle of a serious drought forcing the government to bring in drinking water for many places in the countryside. It means that I feel like a girl using 'moisturizing lotion' and the pollution will probably be awful in the spring with more violent dust storms than usual. Beijing won't be much better (though it has more 'induced rain' -through putting chemicals into the clouds), so it is a good thing that the Olympics are only 16 months away -another few years and even the Chinese government might not be able to stop the dust!
On that note, I heard that half of the new subway lines in Beijing won't be finished in time for the Olympics -proof that there are still some things beyond the means of the all-powerful Chinese government in Beijing. Actually, there are many things beyond their means (corruption, controlling the faraway provinces, enforcing the law....), but I am surprised at this. A real shame, because the traffic continues to get worse. A presentation by GM recently mentioned that the growth in automobiles in the last 5 years has been twice as much as their most ambitious prediction (the GM speaker had a big smile on his face -any environmentalists less so!)
More excitement in Beijing comes from the taxi drivers who have now started learning English (all of them will be tested before the Olympics) and english words are translated into phonetics based on chinese characters. This is hilarious and really hard to understand: I am trying to remember some examples; but imagine someone trying to pronounce Bowel but saying it: Bo-Ah-Le or Bo-Way-Le. Poor guys. I think all foreigners should help them during journeys.
In 1 week's time it is Chinese New Year (so start preparing your hong bao now -red envelopes with money in to give to those younger than you) -so on monday i am going to call our 'train ticket' guy who promises train tickets no matter what... to see if he can live up to his word. This year tickets went on sale a whole month before new year (rather than the usual 4 days!) and still for at least the first 10 days of that period people were lining up at 7am; 90 minutes before the ticket office opens!
Next year is the year of the pig- a year that is supposed to be very lucky (this was the year everyone was getting pregnant so next year they can give birth), so there will be lots more chinese people being born -which means lots more boys than girls as usual.
In case you didn't know 123 boys are born for every 100 girls on average: and in some parts it is more than 150-100. Predictions are that more than 20m males will never be able to get married (unless China gets into divorces and remarriages in a really big way) -now that is going to be a lot of frustrated men (whose mothers will be screaming at them until they die for not having children) which will be yet another social issue for the government, along with the increasing trade in wife-trafficking (a national and international problem throughout SE Asia because of China). It is funny how when there are so many people in a country, that even tiny little inbalances involve millions of people: HIV/AIDS, unemployment, job-hunting graduates, migrant workers... even if it only affects a tiny proportion, it still affects so many people!
1 comment:
Adam, according to our lunar calendar, the year 2005 and 2007 are both 'widow's year'. I have not heard that it is a year for making babies. However, for sure you should not get married that year! That's why my best friend got married in 2006. (Sweat!)
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