Follow me to a trip to China

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Friends! I am a born and raised Chinese living in the US since 2007. I've become quite fond of the many lovely people on BYC and I thought perhaps some of you are interested in my 2-month long trip back home. This will be from the perspective of a native who have become more and more of a foreigner for her homeland. I am also hoping to take pictures of random village chickens!

I am flying tomorrow and I don't know how often I will be updating. It will be the first time for me to be away from my chickens. I will really really miss them and of course my husband too. :-(

I took pictures of them today.

Wendy (alpha)

Poopy (2nd in command?)

Inky (skittish, only willing to give me a butt, but the best)

Tina (not really sure about her order) but poor Tina laid a lash egg today :-(. I am convinced though that I will see her again.

Honey

Light

Foxy

Meimei

 

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At Doha Hamad Airport. What's with these Asians know how to build an airport.

Local time is 1055pm. KFC is open though . No laughing, I have to tell you that KFC is much more successful and tasty in Asia. Pricewise, if you divide it by 3.5, you get us dollars.

 

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Went to my breakfast place. Happy to see the owners again. They are a couple.

Literally street food.

I had pork dumplings (left, wrapped in a soup dumpling fashion), and wonton soup with seaweed.

Vinegar for dipping. It was delicious!!! Really hit the spot.


Random picture of cars parked on the street. The neighborhood was not built for cars.

 

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June 16th, I took pictures of Shaoxing while I visited my cousin.

When I talked to other Chinese of my age, who are from other parts of China, I realized that I am from a privileged region. My town is relatively rich and I never had to worry about being hungry.

Shaoxing itself is a lovely touristy ish town. It likes to call itself "the Venice of the East". It doesn't sound too appropriate to me.

There are many canals through the city. There used to be much more but got filled up for building. Boat used to be the main mean of transportation.

I'd love to have tea here

Kitty

this is one of my favorite bridges. Its old and functional.

recycling

A Jesuit church?

More pictures

 

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This is a chicken post.

My husband, who is taking care of all the chooks, told me that Light, his favorite chicken ever, just tidbitted to him!!

He said she found a bug, really did the tidbit thing, looking at him. He told light that she can have it. Then she happily ate it.

This is her first time doing that.

 

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My hometown has lots of waterways and canals. People love do to their laundry in rivers. The local government has tried very hard to stop it but they had to give it up in the end.

Yesterday I went to see my friend who is a pharmacist in the Chinese medicine hospital in town. Even in the Chinese medicine hospital, they mostly use western medicine and modern equipment. They just have a big department of traditional medicine.

They recently built this very nice garden in the courtyard of the hospital.

Tomorrow I'm going to Beijing. Stay tuned.

 

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I hope you found your family in good health and happy to see you !

Do you speak Mandarin there ? Does it come back to you easily ?

When was the last time you visited and did you find many changes ? We heard a lot here on the media about how COVID changed things in China, wondering what your thoughts are on this !

Yes my parents are doing well. Thank you.

We speak a dialect here that is hard to understand by nonlocals. Starting my generation, the school emphasizes on speaking mandarin. I remember learning mandarin around 7. But in the long run, I become more expressive in mandarin.

My parents barely speak enough mandarin to travel to other parts of China.

I speak to my parents somewhat regularly so I get my dialect practiced. But I definitely find myself rusty at times such that I have to inject mandarin here and there. I also forgot lots of idioms.

I was last here in 2019 summer. I want to explore the change here too. So far I see my parents neighborhood are a lot more developed. I asked the breakfast place how is their business. The wife said it is still rough even though life has been normal for a while. I know from multiple friends that the economy is very bad and college students are having a hard time finding a job.

 

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So I got a pair of socks, eye mask, tooth brush, toothpaste for my flight. Very interesting.

 

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do you mean in the airport as part of security, or done by the airline actually as you board the plane?

The latter, done by the airline as you board the plane. However, as I board, I avoided the face scanning machine (an ipad) and was ready to make some effort of non-compliance without making a scene. Surprisingly I was let go.

 

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This was me taking the airport shuttle bus to my hometown. You can see the face scanning machine on the right. I was scanned as i check in. I have to submit to full digital totalitarian in China. :-(

The bus ride was 70 minutes.

A view on the bus