“You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all…
Anyone that’s every adopted a kid from China has been to Shamian Island in Guangzhou.
I’ve seen many different types of tourism, but nothing every like this…
Shops advertise, “Free Stroller for All Customers.” Baby clothes hang in windows. Portraits of newly formed families are sketched into stone, matted and framed, and painted. Restaurants and shops have as down-home American names as possible: Lucy’s Diner, Bill’s Markets, Suzy’s Portraits. They serve applie pie. The White Swan hotel has a play room for babies.
It’s Sunday. People don’t get their kids until Monday or Tuesday so there are many anxious couples pacing about the quiet streets of the island. The process takes a week or two. Once the parent’s get…
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You know that stuff at the counter that you purchase on a whim? Well, China has shopping malls full of that crap.
The one I’m in has eight floors of it to be exact.
There are key chains, mini-flashlights, stickers, stamps, pens, pins, and mini-play pins, laser lights, bouncy balls, and sticky wall crawlers. This place is paradise for a seven year old.
But just when I thought it was all junk, a store with a life size Venus de Milo. Who cares if it’s made of plastic?
And proof that this place just might have for sale everything that has ever existed – A Wally Szczerbiak plastic figurine in a Boston Celtics uniform. I was at Miami University with Wally. He’s now in the NBA and when he’s…
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Shoes! Shoes! SHOESSSS!!!
If this is an American company, they should fire the person that coined the name.
This 2000-year-old street brought to you by Coca-Cola.
…
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The bottom layer, 15-feet below, is there, but you can’t see it. The Southern Yue kingdom placed loose rock to make a street here 2200 years ago.
Working our way up, the Tang dynasty built-up the road with large cut stones 1400 years ago.
At street-level, present day Guangzhou-nites zip by with their shopping bags from Adiddas and Gioradano. Some of them pause long enough to look through the Plexiglas windows, sponsored by Coca-Cola, and consider the exposed ancient street.
I watch over it all. I’m sitting at the window on the second-floor McDonald’s, relishing my first hamburger in over two months. The fries are pretty nice too. The Coca-Cola isn’t bad either.
I think I’ll get an ice cream cone….
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Found in my hotel rooms medicine cabinet for only $1.50…
MAN LOTION
(Verbatim from the shiny packaging. Oh, and if you are in my aunt’s elementary class, STOP READING. Go draw a hippo.)
“It are according to the different characteristics, cent of the man wash and lady wash.Do you return the iso-WHAT? Take a shower on everyday or the sexual intercourse is in front and back, use it wash the private parts and is the hygiene’s the best choice of your health, at romantic tender feeling of personal status of time make you have peace of mide to have no to worry.”
This is definitely one of the more interesting, and by interesting I mean creepy, places I’ve ever stayed. But that view sure is nice….
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If you lived in Guangzhou, how would you start your day? The choices:
Running backwards in white, see-thru shorts that allow the early morning revelers to see that your black underwear are riding up.
Tai Chi in your pajamas.
Ballroom dancing on the river walk. Who needs a ballroom? Who needs music?
Body thumping – pounding your fists up and down your body. Good morning chest. Good morning bicep. Good morning butt cheeks.
Wiggling. You’re old. You don’t want to move much, but you want to put on a show as if you are active and will live longer than 3 weeks.
Group singing. You are good enough that a strange foreigner pulls out a microphone and records you. You don’t care about him….
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From a Deckers Outdoor executive that was kind enough to meet with me today: