Our shower is one of the reasons that we chose our apartment. A common feature of apartments around here, at least the ones that we looked at, is that the shower is not enclosed. There is no divider between the shower and the toilet area, so that when you take a shower the whole floor gets wet. Good for simultaneously taking a shower and taking a crap. Bad for keeping your feet dry. Our shower has a sliding door, and while a little dirty, it does the job. But I noticed today while in the bathroom that there is a lock on our shower door. And it’s on the outside. So theoretically you could lock some one into the shower and they would have no way out. Why would anyone want this feature?

Popularity: 8% [?]

I’m in a internet cafe typing up this short update. This place has the worst smelling bathroom I have been in that doesn’t have visible poop in it. It literally made my eyes water.

We are at our friends family home and will be there until spring festival. After that we will travel to Beijing or back to Nanjing, depending on what we can get tickets for. Spring Fesitvel travel is the worst. I will post more of an update when I have more time.

Wow it smells in here.

Popularity: 9% [?]

After spending a little over 3 months here, its gratifying that we can finally start to order food that actually tastes good. And I don’t mean like I can physically eat it without throwing up, but that actually tastes good. Lately we have been eating a lot of Xinjiang food, from the western province of, uh, Xinjiang. The same place where the delicious lamb on a stick comes from. The have this kick-ass wrap that is diced grilled lamb, onions, carrots, and other vegetables. It’s mind blowing. They also have a dish that roughly translates as “Big Pot Chicken”. It comes in a gigantic mound on a plate and is mostly chicken and potatoes. Also amazing. It’s reassuring that we can now tell people what we want and read at least some of the characters on a menu.

While speaking of eating, I will also speak briefly about the end result of the process. While I have mentioned on this site about the instantaneous pooping that results from eating Chinese meals, this does not happen nearly as much as it used to. People often ask us if we are becoming accustomed to China. Well I think I am, but I know that my bowels are.

And I finally found out the name of my favorite squishy faced white dog. It is Xiao Bai, 小白, literally “small white”. Since it has gotten colder he now wears a yellow dog shirt with a paw print on it.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Bathroom problems continue to take up my valuable time. Time that could be spent crafting stories about cats, watching badminton on TV or, oh yeah, trying to learn Chinese. This time the toilet stopped flushing, and it felt as though the connector between the handle and stopper had come undone. This is a common problem and one that I have encountered and fixed before. So this should be something easily fixed right? I opened the tank and instead of the usual chain that connects these two thing there was a piece of plastic that was roughly the consistency of easter basket fake grass. It had come unhooked so I slipped it over the metal and hooked a bobby pin on the handle. I have to wonder how long this can really hold up. And then I think I will resort to string. Not helping the matter is that the bathroom has smelled like a mixture of rotten vegetables and sewage for the past day.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Three posts in one days is excessive I know, but I found this article on www.worldhum.com about How to Use Squat Toilets that is absolutely amazing. For one, it’s hilarious for those with who find poop related things funny. Its also something that my family tends to ask me about all the time, so hopefully this will answer some questions they have. My favorite lines are below. Enjoy.

In other words, the dirtiness is primarily in your mind, as Potts found out one day on the road. “I think it was when I was traveling through Southeast Asia that I eventually got caught out,” he told me, “and was forced into this mental power situation where I just willed myself to use the water. It was very strange. We’re not culturally conditioned to have that kind of intimacy with our butthole. So I just sort of had to—it’s sort of like riding a bike, or having sex for the first time—I just had to figure out what I was doing. Then, of course, I washed my hands extensively afterwards. But that’s when I realized it’s not that big of a deal.”

Popularity: 4% [?]

When walking down the street you will encounter poop. It is a fact of life, and there is nothing that can be done about. While true in any country, here in China it is a bit different. Every time I see one of those familiar little piles I have to wonder to myself if this is human or animal feces. Parents let and sometimes encourage their children to pee and poop in the street. I have seen this numerous times now and its not just on the side streets, often it is on main roads directly on the sidewalk in view of traffic. One time I saw a women encouraging her child to pee in a Walmart. In a Walmart! This is mostly smaller children, toddler sized, although once a kid that must have been about 5 years old was pooping on a newspaper. The fact that I most surprising to me about all of this is that they don’t try to get out of the way at all, or go in an alley or a less trafficked street. Just directly in front of you, pee and poop. That is why if there is one piece of advice that I can give to someone that is thinking about traveling to China it is this: avoid the puddles.

Popularity: 9% [?]

We took the overnight train to Tunxi, and took a bus to Huangshan. After making our way up the mountain we were completely worn out so we thought we would get a hotel room, take shower, and have a bit of a rest. We made our way through the thick mist and after going to a few different hotels found they were all hideously overpriced and also completely booked. At that point we met up with the Americans from Nanjing University and a guy who own a beef restaurant 15 minutes from our apartment that we had met on the bus to the mountain. They had found a suite for 7 people at one of the hotels and thought that maybe they could squeeze us in. Luckily we found them or else we had to try to find something on the bottom of the mountain (I’m assuming equally difficult). So we made our way to check in and paid 120 RMB, way too much for what it was.
The room had four bunk beds in it. The beds, and I am completely serious here, were plywood with a sheet on top. There was a thin mat under the sheet, but it may as well of not been there as it did not to help cushion. The pillow and blanket were visibly dirty. I looked under the pillow case and it had those black spots that fabric gets when it is wet and moldy. The smell in the room was something that I couldn’t quite place. It was musty and moldy but in a way that was more pungent and strong then any way that I have experienced. And everything was damp. The bathroom was outside and was a trough that water occasionally ran through. It was also full of gigantic bugs, and one of the Americans said she saw a hairy spider in the women’s bathroom. Of course there was no shower. Suprisingly there was a TV in that room, considering the lack of any other amenities. We did manage to get some sleep, although sometimes the smell in the room would wake me up like a punch in the face. We were so tired that I think we could have slept anywhere, and it was not too bad if you tried not to think of the many different types of bugs that could be crawling on you.
The next day instead of hiking down the other side of the mountain we took the cable car down and caught a bus back into Tunxi. We wandered a around for a while and after checking a few hotels that were full we followed this lady to her sister’s hotel and got a room there. It is amazing how much your idea of clean can change in a trip. This place actually had a bathroom with a shower! And mattresses! Never mind that everything seemed damp, there were burn/water damage marks everywhere , a gigantic puddle around the toilet and a cigarette butt on the floor We both took showers as quickly as possible. I smelled worse then I can ever remembering smelling. Then we went and got some food and felt totally refreshed. We passed out easily that night, as we were exhausted. Then Jenn woke up at midnight as she heard something on the table. We turned the light on and saw a rat had eaten one of my scallion flat breads I had bought for breakfast. Then Jenn saw a cockroach. We could hear the rat gnawing on something in the wall the rest of the night. Needless to say that we did not sleep much. We bought train tickets in the morning and had an interesting 10 hour train ride back.
So overall it was a great trip; we met a ton of interesting people and the mountain was amazing. But like so many experiences I have had here so far it was something awesome tempered by something terrible.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Ratty has visited our apartment two more times in the last few days. The first time I saw him he was rummaging around in a plastic bag that was filled with other plastic bags (he looked real wet). The second time we came back home and he had chewed through the lid on our peanut butter and made a gigantic mess. I thought that the hole in the bathroom had been completely filled but he had made a small space to fit through, slightly smaller than a quarter. So i took everything out and rebuilt the entire rat defense system; glass cups, glass ashtray, many things stacked upon other things.

Please Ratty, leave us alone!

Popularity: 19% [?]

The ongoing story of Ratty (Jenn’s affectionate nickname for the most likely multiple rats that are trying to infiltrate our apartment):

I noticed that in the bathroom today the sewage smell was even stronger than usual. After a few bathroom trips my hope that it would go away on its own disappeared as the oder only seemed to be getting stronger. So I looked underneath the sink and saw that Ratty had not only chewed through all the tape and plastic that i had put over the hole but had also gnawed a small hole in the bottle of floor cleaner I had placed on top, causing that to leak all over the floor. My new solution to to the rat invasion is as follows:

1.Jam an old steel wool dish cleaning pad in the hole
2. Cover that with a layer of packing tape
3.Cover that with multiple layers of saren wrap
4. Put on top of that a glass caning jar filled with water which was let here by the previous tenant

My aim is two fold; to both stop Ratty and stop the smell. Hopefully this solves the problem.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Greetings!

This is the first post on the newly created redkemp. Through this i will be documenting my travels throughout China and observations. This post has been delayed while i have been searching for a suitable weather information plugin for the site. I finally installed weather icon and it seems to be working fine. Its to the right on the side bar, and its set so you can see the local weather in Nanjing. I will be searching around for more fancy addons to make this a site all nice and shiny.
One interesting item of note; last night i heard a rustling around in the kitchen and found a rat rummaging through our garbage. I picked up the garbage can (chopstick style with two brooms) and set it outside. The rat had come up through our bathroom sink drain, which is just a hole that goes into the sewer line. I had covered it with tape and searan wrap, as it was making the whole apartment smell like sewage uncovered (a fairly common smell here). This was before the rat situation, and it seems like something a little stronger is called for. My dad said that i should use tin foil because apparently they don’t like to chew on the metal. Hopefully that works as I really don’t need to catch a case of plague. That is all sorts of bad news.

Thats all for now, 再见！

Popularity: 3% [?]