Rats and other stories...

Thought I'd share with you a couple of China Daily articles I enjoyed this week...

Rat Restaurants
Many restaurants that feature rats enjoy brisk business in Guangzhou. The rat dishes are so popular that diners sometimes have to book in advance for a meal during peak hours. Rat meat can be roasted, braised in soy sauce, stewed or cooked in soup. Every day, several cages of rats are displayed in front of the restaurants to lure diners in. Local residents find rat meat dishes to be both delicious and nutritious and many believe in an old saying, A rat equals three chickens in terms of nutrition.
Mr Tao, who has eaten rat meat for decades said, "Rat meat dishes can help cure baldness and prevent hair from turning grey."

This is not my picture (I got it from another China blog) but thought I'd let you see what the rats are like. This pic was taken in Guangzhou where many of the rat restuarants are found.

I do...NOT!
Luo Cheng, 28, an office worker from Changsha and her fiance Li Gen decided to get married on Dec 18th last year. That morning, Luo gave Li several papers, saying it was their prenuptial agreement.
It read: If the husband has an extra-marital affair, he has to pay 200 000 yuan (£20 000) to the wife.
That was not all. It continued: If the husband's mobile phone is not in service, he should report to the wife immediately and apologise. If the husband does not come home for one night, he should pay 1000 yuan (£100) to the wife. In the case of a quarrel, the husband should always be the one to apologise.

Needless to say, the marriage did not take place and Li walked out of the relationship a couple of days later!

Pandas at last!

Last weekend, while I was in Xi'an I went on a day trip to a panda conservation centre about 100 miles away. Unfortunately, the place was more zoo-like than I was expecting (although the pandas did each have a large, clean, grassy cage. Anyway, I got some okay pics which I can pretend are of pandas in the wild!

May Day celebrations

Last Thursday, I was walking along the main street in town about 8 o'clock in the morning when I saw preparations for a parade. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, I called school to say I wouldn't be coming in and headed home to grab my camera. Once back at the parade area, I started to mingle with the growing crowd as about half a dozen children under 5 were given finishing touches to make-up and costumes.

I worked my way to the front and managed to get quite a few good shots of the kids who by this point were beginning to be placed on platforms held shoulder high by yellow clad men. So far, so good. Then I realised that the smallest children had their legs bound to a metal pole and were being hoisted high above the platform and then immobilised there like a lolly on a stick.
Some of the kids didn't seem to mind too much but one girl in particular looked terrified. The children were dressed to represent characters from a famous Chinese novel written in the 1590s called "Journey to the West" in English. The "west" in this case is India and it's a fictionalised account of a real journey made by a monk around 560AD who travelled to India to get some sacred texts. In the novel he fights monsters and demons, which I'm guessing maybe didn't happen on the original journey...

I was told that this form of the parade wasn't common any more as "lots of parents don't want their children tied to a pole." Instead, many parades use a van with children standing on the roof. Probably marginally more user-friendly than the Danfeng version...

This guy was playing the monk that journeyed to India

The end of the parade had a lot of other performers - singers, drummers and other musicians.