Things that really wouldn't fly in Canada

It's been way too long since I've updated this blog and so much has happened since then. I have so many little China observations and anecdotes, so I apologize in advance for the randomness of this post.

First of all, there are some things you would experience only in China. I'm not even sure if this is normal in China or if I just have all the luck. The last time Anita and I went to pick up drycleaning at the small shop in Manjitan, we were calmly and politely (or should I say Canadianly) conducting our business when a man walked in to drop off some clothes. He budged in front of us (a common occurance here. With so many people, it's truly survival of the fittest in China. You have to fight to be seen and heard). He started talking loudly with the store clerk, completely ignoring the fact that we were in conversation with her. He picked up his drycleaning and then proceeded to quickly strip down out of his pants. Now this store is really tiny, so I tried to avert my eyes, but this dude was really in our personal space. When you go into a store, you simply don't expect to see someone from the opposite sex take off his clothes right in front of you. He gave his dirty pants to the cleaner, put on a pair of clean ones and walked out as if he did this every day. Can you imagine if this happened in Canada? I could sue for harassment.

I still can't get over the way people drive here. I would never dare to drive a vehicle on the roads, although I am getting used to the honking (which really means "I'm here - get out of the way and fast!"). Last time I rode a taxi, the driver pulled up onto the sidewalk (even though people were walking there) in order to get in front of a couple cars to make a right turn. I rode in another taxi that was flying through the traffic, changing lanes continually and honking non-stop. He even cut off a police car with its sirens blaring. Can you imagine this happening in Canada?

The view I have from my office window is constantly changing. There's a new commercial centre popping up across the street and I've never seen anything get built so quickly. Just a couple weeks ago they were dropping huge, flat, round rocks to create holes in the ground for the foundation. Now they're building the actual buildings and at least one floor gets added every two days. I wish I had taken time-lapse photos of the construction. The guys out there are like lemmings. They're crawling all over the place, working 24-hours a day. There's a good 100 guys out there right now, each efficiently doing his task at hand. Labour is cheap in China, so construction happens at record pace. I wonder how stable it can be, however, if it gets built so quickly. Just the other day, one of our students was playing around downstairs and bounced a basketball off the wall once. The plaster crumbled on contact and now there's a huge hole in the wall. I can't imagine what would happen to our buildings if an earthquake hit here.

This afternoon our club, the Maple Leaf Angels, visited an home for children whose parents are in prison. We played games and sang songs with the kids and then make cookies together. It was a lot of fun and it felt good to do something in the community. We're hoping to raise enough money by selling newspapers at lunch time to buy the kids winter shoes.