Big celebration today - after injuring my knee four weeks ago, despite big rain during the night, today I climbed up the nearby mountain to the badminton terrace where the locals drink tea and do all manner of nice things early in the morning. Knee performed well and despite the wet surfaces, I had a nice hit without throwing myself all around the place. But after about 20 minutes, the rain started, the "serious players" group withdrew under their little tent, or in the case of our group, on to the little veranda in front of General Zheng Cheng Gong's temple where we stared out at the pelting downpour. One of our veterans told me Fujian was the wettest place in China at the moment, even wetter than Guangdong in the rainy season - and the typhoons haven't even started yet. We all agreed it was hard to get the washing dry this past month. I usually hang it on a clothes horse and point a fan at it in the living room. After I was told that today's forecast was for big rain, I huddled under my little umbrella and went home, getting soaked along the way, sloshing through waterfalls on the 384 steps down to street level. But when it's hot, I don't really mind getting wet and I was overjoyed about starting up my favourite Saturday morning exercise again. English »AfrikaansAlbanianArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBengaliBelarusianBulgarianCatalanChinese (Simp)Chinese (Trad)CroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHebrewHindiHungarianIcelandicIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseKannadaKoreanLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalayMalteseNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSerbianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwahiliSwedishTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduVietnameseWelshYiddish Options : History : Help : FeedbackText-to-speech function is limited to 100 charactersWhen I think of heavy rain in Fujian, though, I feel concerned about the mountain communities. Every year the train line seems to be affected by landslides and floods in the rainy season or typhoons and big floating islands of hyacinth are washed out of the Jiulong River and go heading out to sea or wash up on the beaches, along with some dead pigs or goats. I feel apprehensive about the typhoon predictions. The local news always says something like, "This year twelve typhoons will affect Xiamen and four of them will be serious." My apartment windows are very poor quality and rain finds its way in, so I had to invent my own "typhoon protectors" to try to keep the rain out. As an Australian, it's almost taboo to complain about rain because we generally haven't got enough water (except for the big floods). So, I welcome it, I love the luxuriant deep green vegetation, but a little corner of my heart is apprehensive, for in southern China, some people always lose their life in the typhoons.

For the three-day Duan Wu holiday I went to the final part of the golden triangle of South China (not that other one near Burma) that I hadn't visited. I live in Xiamen and have visited Quanzhou and Zhangzhou already (but somehow the golden triangle includes a fourth angle - Jinmen (or Kinmen in the Wade-Giles system) also called Quemoy around the world. Since the decline of hostilities across the Taiwan Strait, rapid progress in exchanges between the traditional culture of this "triangle" have happened. People who share a language (Minnan), architecture, customs and history have been able to have family reunions, cultural exchanges and of course, trade. Because of military control on the front lines between Xiamen and Kinmen, the areas remained undeveloped and untouched (except by bombardment on both sides) for many years. Now that war is very unlikely, the Xiamen side has developed the eastern coastline in ways that are kind of sad because they obliterate the natural granite beauty that was there for years. 5 star hotels and exclusive villa enclaves crowd the foothills now. Kinmen, on the other hand, has nothing like the population of Xiamen though it's roughly the same size but different bow-tie shape. All the four town centres are quite small, the vegetation is thick and green and the customary architecture is being restored to former beauty. Much of that has been knocked down in Xiamen and while a few patches of greenery have been preserved, most of the island is covered in ever higher high-rise. I hope Kinmen can keep its rural and traditional style safe from over-development. It is sobering on both sides of the water to see the museums of the costly struggle that went on for nearly fifty years in this corner of the world, mostly unknown to the west. I should add that Kinmen is just a half hour ferry ride from Xiamen and is visible on most days from Xiamen beaches. Little Kinmen has a propaganda slogan facing Xiamen's own gigantic set of characters and the remains of the broadcasting speakers can still be seen. I once met a woman who was one of the "voices" across the water as each side lured the others to join them, also dropping gifts and leaflets in between artillery shells. Now the shell casings make the best steel cooking knives and are one of Kinmen's chief products. I had circled Little Kinmen on a tour boat with domestic tourists a few years ago when exchanges were rarer, and saw Chinese burst into tears and call out in some kind of anguish to the Little Kinmen beaches (still littered with anti-landing devices) "Come back, brothers! We love you!" In the golden triangle, the common Minnan culture that was split apart and the ache to be together again is still very strong. The people of Kinmen were also preparing zongzi in a temple together, cleaning up their banners and athletic pairs of young men were rehearsing their lion dances with their paws on, but no costume. It was great to see what goes on under the huge hood and how they get that pugnacious "attitude" in their movements. English »AfrikaansAlbanianArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBengaliBelarusianBulgarianCatalanChinese (Simp)Chinese (Trad)CroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHebrewHindiHungarianIcelandicIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseKannadaKoreanLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalayMalteseNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSerbianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwahiliSwedishTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduVietnameseWelshYiddish Options : History : Help : FeedbackText-to-speech function is limited to 100 characters

When friends asked why I was going to China in the early nineties, I said that I wanted to see the Yangtse River before the Three Gorges Dam changed it forever. It was a kind of symbol of the end of a dreamy view of the orient that had been in my mind since childhood. It conveniently overlooked the cost of millions of lives in getting to that point in time. The divide was between my cute view of China and the nineties realities - between the pandas, the qipao dolls, the dragons and the Qing-style imperial fashions and the emergence of a modern, powerful China out of the dust of the farms, cities and revolutions. I'll never forget my shock at crossing from Hong Kong into Shenzhen in 1993 and seeing the drop in shininess and efficiency. I saw the broken windows, the plastic bags flying around, the heaps of half-finished construction, the dusty roads and bamboo scaffolding holding up flyovers under construction. Twenty years on, I can see the perspective from that time to the way things develop even faster today. This week four new developments were announced in our local English news service that shocked me yet again with how fast China is still changing and all areas of life are fair game.1. There will now be five new RV locations built in the Xiamen district. I remember thinking China would never have caravans on the roads (or camping trips for that matter). Bzzz. Wrong. 2. The fourth new air terminal will be opening up at the end of this year. I only know currently one terminal that handles both domestic and international travel (always late because operating way beyond capacity), so I wondered where on earth were the first three. Some research found that the one I know and use is actually number three. Number two, I guess is emerging from the construction site in front of number three, but number four seems to be beating it to the opening day. Number one? No idea. Most of all, an entirely huge new airport is already starting infrastructure development to be ready around 2017 or so - bigger than the current Beijing airport, largest in the country. Can you imagine how big Beijing's new airport will have to be? There is going to be only ever more and more air travel. Bzzz. Right, this was predicted by sci-fi.3. 400 new taxis will be put on the road to offset the current difficulty in finding one; some are electric and some are for the disabled. The local owners had seemed to have the shortage in their control to keep their earnings up despite public frustration with the situation. In 2000, you only had to stand near a gutter and six taxis would swerve to your side within seconds. In those days taxi drivers were seen as high income earners because hardly anyone could drive and drivers could always get extra work. Bzzz. Outcome unknown. Is 400 enough to keep everyone happy and drive off the black cars?4. Not local news, but China is considering building 13000km high speed rail link to the USA!!!?? Including under the Bering Strait for 200km! Our longest undersea tunnel here is six km long and a bit mentally oppressive to go through; imagine being under the sea for 200km though at 350km per hour it's only a fraction of the journey taking two days. Bzzz. Unbelievable - but science fiction predicted this sort of world too. China will make it come true. They're paying for it. 5. 6 freshmen at Fuzhou University paid 900RMB to redecorate their dorm room in bar style with chandelier and carpets. In 2000, some rural freshmen didn't have the money to buy good food, let alone redecorate! Bzzz. Better lives all round. The real reason I always give for staying a long time in China is that the sheer vitality of the place is infectious. Our Australian headline news seems petty at times (which is so fortunate for the Lucky Country). I wanted to knowingly experience a historical event and I have and I still am. China still amazes me almost every week. I love my own country passionately, but China is addictive.

I've had great experiences with acupuncture and Chinese medicinal herbs over the years and continue to use them when I need to so long as a TCM doctor prescribed them. But one thing that always intrigued me was that everyone in China seemed to have opinions or folk remedies (similar ones, so clearly well known) about hot and cold, times of the year such as "spring rain" which include doing or eating certain things, such as green bean soup or chrysanthemum tea - the list is long. If Chinese people have such long traditions, I wondered why they should ever have anything wrong with their health as they have answers for everything. I asked some friends, and they said, "well, we know it, but we don't always do it." One Chinese friend was suffering from sinus, with constant sneezing and wheezing. He asked a healthy friend who recommended a very old TCM doctor, who advised him to make 葛根（gegen) soup and stop eating fish and meat contaminated with hormones - which eliminates anything not homegrown, leaving him mainly vegetarian now. His sinus improved a lot, so he believes the remedy has worked. "Based on fact!!" He now believes his nose is allergic to the hormones. This is hardly logical to our way of thinking as so many other variables could be involved, but he is unshakable in his conviction, AND happier.What other Chinese remedies have seemed strange or illogical to you, but seem to work anyway?

I actually fudged a bit in my reply about how I'm spending May holiday. I'm spending it on my couch. On May 1, it rained steadily in Xiamen and I went to a first-ever crafts market in a developing "new-old" neighbourhood near where I live. I slipped on a wet concrete down-ramp, landed on my side, and felt my knee ligament sprain. Nobody came to help me up or see if I was okay. I rolled myself over towards a wall and pulled myself up and leaned on the wall feeling frightened and a bit shocked. I knew I'd done damage. I phoned a close friend, but his phone was off. Some friends had a stall so I limped towards their location and was surrounded by concern and assistance. I couldn't feel angry about the lack of help from strangers but wondered what I would have done if I'd been really alone there. We all know this phenomenon of people not wanting to get involved through fear of being blamed for the accident. Much later after I got home, a memory came back of a middle-aged man standing a metre or so from me, watching me intently. I think I smiled at him and he walked away. Maybe he was waiting to see if I'd ask for help.There are many stories of badly hurt accident victims being ignored unconscionably around China and great self-questioning by Chinese about their values and society when this happens. Also stories of "fake" victims seeking to rip off kind people who stop to help and even blame them. I was in a car with Chinese friends once that came upon a child lying on the side of the road in a village - we had seen the child go out there and lie down. The driver carefully went around the child and drove on. Evidently if we stopped, the family would run out and accuse us of hitting the child and demand compensation or create trouble enough to assemble a stand-over mob of neighbours and relatives. It's a risky strategy for the child who could actually be run over, but maybe being seen to lie down is part of the safety strategy. Drivers might stop anyway if they can't get around the child, then they're caught. I also feel sympathy for locals whose once-peaceful villages are now main roads to weekend beauty spots and constantly facing the car barrage and the pollution and dust they cause without getting any benefit from it. A new form of road toll perhaps? Send the kids out to collect. Another non-Chinese colleague of mine fell while running on a Hash in a public area full of tourists and split her chin open. Many people ran to help her, produced band-aids, bandages and offered mobile phones for her to call people. She was surprised by their concern and helpfulness. I know how kind many Chinese people are, yet remain challenged by the risk of helping strangers. There's talk of creating Good Samaritan laws to protect those who give help - at the same time, some helpers do make a situation worse, even if they meant to help. I'm glad nobody tried to pull me up, and maybe once I showed I was somewhat mobile, people thought I was okay. I've heard if you state loudly that you fell down by yourself, people know you take responsibility and will help, but what if you're unconscious? Anyway, I can't get to an orthopedic doctor for four days because of, guess what? The May holidays. So I'm on the couch for now, though I limped off to a bar last night to see a colleague off to hospital in Thailand for cancer surgery. Some things are way more important than my busted knee.

I want to add my voice to the calls for China to change holiday arrangements for the general population. The golden weeks were perfect for marking culturally important days, ensuring workers got reasonable numbers of holidays and promoting a national spirit .... BUT .... after the coming of the cars and private travel (synonymous with the growth of the middle class and access to money for travel) the traditionally favoured destinations like Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Sanya, Wuxi, Yangshuo, Guilin, Xi'an, Hangzhou etc etc became incredibly overcrowded. On one National Day, Xiamen's tiny Gulangyu Island recorded the most people in one spot in all of China (over 100000). This year, I think that honour went to Jiuzhaigou where hundreds of tourists were stranded for many hours and couldn't even return to their accommodation. The beautiful places are being ruined by overcrowding. The holiday experience cannot possibly be enjoyable when you are crushed to a pulp getting onto a ferry to visit a beautiful little island and you can hardly walk when you get off. Arguments and irritations increase, even fights and murder (it happened here). Rip-offs, scams, and stand-over tactics are used to extract people's cash in restaurants and street carts, not to mention the pickpockets. Cheng guan and vendors get into serious fights - it's not pretty. The litter is huge and tour bus, car and people traffic jams abound. We know where not to go in our city during those weeks (most foreigners leave the country, and many Chinese do too and head for the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam). I feel sorry for the tourists - I don't know if they enjoyed their holiday at all. It would be so much better if the cultural holidays were reduced to a single day on that day and employers could let employees take their holidays at a time of their choosing, spread across the year. Spring Festival/Chinese New Year of course, has to remain as it is the one time everyone wants to be together. National Day at Gulangyu Is,Xiamen

On Saturday and Sunday mornings I climb up about 400 steps to a lovely stone terrace on a mountainside overlooking the sea and play badminton with the mainly retired people who go there most mornings to drink tea, have a hit and enjoy the early hours. If ever anyone wanted to see how idyllic Chinese society can be, this is the place. Because the path is crooked as it climbs, I pass various expressions of local culture set in a park of blossoming bauhinias, old established trees of many kinds, plus hedges, stone steps, granite outcrops and winding pathways. Few tourists are up and about at 6.30am so it's all locals and on the weekends, kids and working people join in. I pass by a Buddhist temple with deep chanting entwining its prayer with the incense and paper money smoke into the sky, then by a group playing flute music to do taiji quan, another with their swords swishing, the modernists are playing Michael Jackson and sashaying around a dance floor, yet other groups play majiang and then I reach "my" terrace, laid out in front of a small temple in honour of a local hero. My fellow players are already setting up or into the action depending how quickly I got out of bed - I really appreciate their greetings and acceptance into their number.A large fake stone has a door where the badminton nets and posts are stored, plus a few tables and chairs and the regular groups set up their spots for tea-making, sharing snacks and just chatting. The serious players are diving, smashing and trying to win - no doubt they have a draw that they follow, while the rest share half courts and just play for the fun and fitness of it. The laughter constantly floats out across the trees, the marathon trainee does his circuits, the black and white border collie tries endlessly to herd the shuttlecock into one side of the court without ever trying to grab it, (he somehow doesn't get in the players' way) and the tea drinking and peanut cracking goes on, not to mention the smoking (my least favourite aspect of the scene). The dance music vies with the traditional recordings in the middle distance, and everywhere, the laughter. I never played badminton until I came to China, but now I find there's nothing more satisfying than whacking the shuttlecock with all my strength high, high into the sky where the pigeon flocks flash by, and beyond the trees, the sea.

In China and beyond, a person might be regarded as a banana or an egg - yellow on the outside but white on the inside (Chinese appearance, western values), or white on the outside but yellow on the inside (western appearance, Chinese values). For a Chinese person to be labelled as a banana is insulting, like being a traitor to one's culture as Chineseness is based largely on external appearance. It's really tough on ABCs (American Born Chinese) as everyone expects them to be able to speak Chinese, despite not having been born in China. They can experience some negativity when they don't answer strangers' questions. On the other hand, if I speak just two or three words of Chinese, I receive buckets of praise - the less I say, the more I'm admired generally, as the more I continue to say, the more my shortcomings are revealed. The only ace I hold is that many local people really do want to know about where I come from and how China compares, so they are really interested in what I have to say. On the other hand, I want to understand how they talk about their lives and current issues but I struggle to keep up. I've spent all my time in China both loving and resenting that famous Canadian, Mark Rowswell (Da Shan) for his amazing Chinese skills and wondered if even he is regarded as a complete egg - too special! I think it will be very painful for China to become broadly multicultural and with present policies will take a long time. Non-Asian people don't easily receive the right to permanent residency in China. They haven't any ghettoes; though expat areas appear, they are rarely monocultural and also frequented by middle-class locals. Permanent foreign residents have to be "outstanding aliens". I know I'm equating long-term temporary Chinese residency and Chinese sympathies (a true Chinese egg could appear in a very short time of living in China), but I do presume staying long-term in China goes along with enjoying and appreciating Chinese culture. I have met a few foreigners who do nothing but complain, yet continue to live in China for several years. They are a bit cringe-worthy and I guess we'd have to call them vanilla ice creams or something equally cold and white, though they could be black too. What has no trace of yellow anywhere? Many local friends regard me as an egg because of my warm regard for them and China generally, but I'm still on the outer and a temporary resident even though my skills have been in demand for the last fourteen years. Is there another nickname for the warm-hearted, long-term partly-fluent temporary resident? Scrambled egg? Mashed banana? Rice and corn zhou? No matter what, people will always be asking me where I come from and to be honest, that's my question when I meet other non-Asians too. There's little chance that anyone who looks different is actually Chinese.

In the nineties, trains were king. They went everywhere, ran on time and ranged from being merely stressful to utterly terrifying to get on. First you had to get a ticket and that alone was monumental. If you didn't have Chinese friends to help you out, you faced an arduous queue and the very real possibility of there being 'none left'. Sp many danwei had bought blocks of tickets for their members that the motley public didn't have many left to get. They could be sold out before the actual opening of sales. Fortunately, I realized that the system of guanxi was really quite good, because everyone I knew, had some. People worked hard to build up guanxi in all the right places: tickets, banks, hotels, police, government offices of all persuasions and while some might think of it as a kind of corruption, it was more of a social security system, so long as everyone had a chance to do it. There were obligations between parties and someone could be tracked down to get train tickets when I needed them - the guanxi safety net. So that was the merely stressful part.As a teacher, I was usually travelling in peak holidays, like everyone else and usually with a band of my students who looked after me as if I was a precious piece of porcelain. Their stress levels rose before boarding was announced. A door opened, a muffled roar emerged from the waiting people, a sturdy woman on a small stand blew a whistle and called the train number and a huge crowd flung itself towards her and fought its way by the door getting their tickets punched somehow or other, arms everywhere, swept along. My students and I clung together like sardines and once through the door, ran like rabbits looking for the carriage number where another scrum formed to get by the carriage guards. Once I said, "We've got numbers on our tickets, we've GOT seats. Why run?" They had no answer at first, but then said, "Somebody might have a fake ticket and get your seat first." My response was that we'd call the conductor because our tickets were real. "No, just get there first, he might be big," was the conclusion. Fighting into the carriage was the really scary part because some people were trying to get out. I felt like I was being pulled to pieces, my backpack somehow wedged between people getting off and my arm being pulled forward and my heart going thump, thump, thump as I expected to land on the tracks. Train trip stories could fill a book of horror stories - but they also were filled with wonderful experiences of talking, sharing, watching the land go by and trying not to go to the toilets or even think about them. I realize that I haven't been on a train for a very long time because now, so many people fly. Strangely, the trains and long distance buses seem more plentiful than ever too. My conclusion is that migrant workers are more numerous as the coastal areas develop fastest. Every year, spring festival is the largest human movement on the planet and I have heard that the ongoing permanent movement from rural to coastal areas constitutes the largest human migration in history as China globalizes. In the nineties, I think I took only two flights in two years and airports were practically deserted. Now the planes in my city land every couple of minutes. You can watch one plane take off, then one lands, the next one is descending behind it, and behind that the light of another is lining up, over and over and over. China's middle class fills the waiting lounges. I haven't been on the high speed train yet because I'm too busy flying. As for long distance buses, they can be the latest and shiniest between big cities, but if you go out into the back blocks, they start to deteriorate in quality very quickly, as do the roads. You go back ten years in time for every ten kilometres (or less) you are from a major highway and the buses that go that route match up in dinginess with the final destination's remoteness. The changes to long distance travelling between major cities across China are mind-blowing whether you consider planes, trains, buses or private cars (even high tech bicycles). One thing I don't see much of are really good motor bikes - don't even mention the gazillions of smaller ones or scooters that have taken the place of bicycles. I mean like 1100cc Hondas or Kawasaki bikes with full leathered and helmeted riders - but I don't live in Beijing or Shanghai. As for getting tickets, you can get them online, or line up in nice stations, and I haven't used guanxi for a very long time. People have money now instead, at least on the coastal belts.

I bought a really great Phillips vacuum cleaner a couple of years ago from a major electrics shop you can find all over China. There's nothing wrong with it, yet, but I soon realised that eventually the filters would wear out and need replacing, so I thought I'd better get some before the model was outdated and hard to find. I went back to the shop, only to find they were totally uninterested in helping me to do this. I asked them what their view of after-sales service actually was and they acted like they were deaf. To get rid of me, a saleswoman went off and brought me back a label from a Phillips shaver that had a Shanghai address on it and told me to go there. This was a dedicated electrical appliance chain, a big one with half a dozen big outlets in this small city alone. Clearly all they want to do is sell stuff, not support their products once the money has been paid. I won't be going back there. I also bought a Midea water machine that filters, heats and chills water, this time from a supermarket. The fan on the chilling side failed pretty quickly, so I went back to the supermarket and they referred me to a local Midea repair and parts supplier (where I also get new filters from every year.) A repairman came to my home and fixed the machine. It didn't last long either, but who needs chilled water anyway? The machine is still going fine apart from that. I bought a Lenovo laptop from a local "electronic city" shop (dozens of private small companies vying for customers in one building) and one night in the middle of a Skype conversation messages starting arriving saying my hard drive was soon going to die and I should back everything up. I thought I'd been hacked and was being lured to send all my info to a nefarious site who would suck my bank accounts dry, so I ignored it. A week later, my hard drive died - ONE day before expiry of the warranty period. I went back to electronic city to find the shop and those first people had gone and their replacements, even though the same brand, were not taking responsibility; but they did tell me where Lenovo had their customer service centre. There was a problem because the first people did not give me a real fa piao, just something that resembled one. It seemed they would not honour the warranty, but as I sat and waited and suggested that I clearly bought the laptop on that certain date and their records could easily verify it, they finally agreed to repair it, which they did. It seemed they were doing me a favour rather than supporting their product and serving consumers. OK, three examples on the topic of consumer rights - China is improving a lot, but still has some way to go. If you buy Chinese products, luck is on your side because most of them have local customer service centres or recommended repairers. If you buy international brands like my first example, you are dependent on whichever centres that company has set up (it seems to me). I believe that good consumer protection should require any shop that sells an appliance to provide the parts or else get them in when consumers need them, rather than send the consumer around the country. Maybe I should have inquired about it first and not bought an appliance that didn't have a local service centre, but that still requires the consumer to look after themselves (buyer beware) rather than shops being of service to consumers.