This Great Work

 Right next to the Jiu Hua temple is Dongpo Park. This was an added bonus of our day excursion as we didn't know it was there.   It was a wonderful little park and thankfully very shaded because it was so hot. What we did there: Explored rock formations Watched pictures being taken then took a few ourselves Visited the 'Pavilion of Expressing Feelings to Moon' and gave our regards to the moon the best we knew how....  Visited the Ink Stone Washing Pool: These are poems written on stone circa 1080 AD by Su Shi and preserved in stone overlooking a small secluded pool.  Google doesn't work especially well in China.  Not because it doesn't work, but because it's not available for the Chinese to use it, so the availability of information of local attractions is very limited.  From what I can tell this man, Su Shi, traveled China and made a couple of stops in Changzhou and wrote these poems.  They don't translate well to English, but they must be really grand in C

 One Saturday our adventures took us to the Jiu Hua Temple.  We took the train, and even transferred to a different line to get there, thanks to Tom's good research and ability to read quite a few characters. After getting off the train we had a nice little walk in an older part of town.  I find these parts of our adventure just as interesting as the destination.  We walked along a river and up a little road with small alleys that led to homes. There was a public toilet along the way.  We explored.  They were squatters, of course, but there were no doors, and the partitions were only about 4 feet high.  You had to step up to get into all of them. The only difference between the handicap accessible one is that it had a bar to grab.   Also along the way we saw: After arriving and finding someone to talk to, Tom asked if it was okay to take pictures and they really welcomed it.  We wandered around for a bit looking at the intricacies of the detail in their worship places.  We happened

We're going to make this as clear as possible, so that even you can do it: Step 1:  Open up your WeChat group chat for Room 2402 Building A to a message from Landlady--I did you a favor by already translating it for you: (Side note:  Tina is paid by LL to help her with her foreign customers.) Here is the rest of the *translated* conversation: Tina Tu:  Okay, let me see how I can pay you, huh? LL:  Mmmmmm Stella: I don't know. Tina Tu:  It's okay it's done. Jacky:  (I didn't know he was on this group chat??) Well, I confirmed this with Tom, Tom will link the water, electricity and coal together to his Alipay, later by Tom himself.  The landlord paid this time, I'll pay the landlord. Jacky:  Thanks Tina, the landlord for helping.  The cost I direct WeChat to you? In addition, how to open the invoice of hydropower coal? Jacky: Tina, do you know that electricity, water and coal costs can open a company? Tina: You can. Tina: You can apply for electronic invoices onli

Like I said in my other traffic post , vehicles here are fascinating--and their drivers, passengers and cargo are even more so.  One of my favorite things I have seen I didn't get a picture of. I saw a mom and a young child on a pink scooter.  They were sitting back to back with the little girl sitting cross legged in a meditation pose, eyes closed while her mom zipped around the streets.  It seriously was one of the cutest things I have seen. And that brings up one issue with doing a photo journal on traffic....it is moving.... always moving and when you see something cool, by the time you pull out your phone and get the camera up, it's gone.  Or it's super blurry, or cut off by another vehicle.....  So what you see here is only half of it!  To break up my gazillion pictures of vehicles, this post is going to focus only on scooters and related vehicles-- 3 wheels or less.   Here we go: (In no particular order....I'm way behind on things I want to record and it takes to