An interesting country... (Marcus)

Indeed it is. On a daily basis as we move through our daily life away from life, we are constantly observing what is a culture that continues to remain so completely different to our own. At first when I was told that it could take absolutely years to understand culture - I thought, pfft, sure, a month or two here and we could already tell you what it's all about - but the more we think about it, the more we see of it, the harder it really is to understand.

There are just so many elements to the culture as a whole that work so differently to the western culture we're used to back home.

We were out to dinner last night and talking about the 30 million or so males who would not be able to find wives due to the female shortage as a result of the one child policy. Yes, female shortage. What are these people supposed to do? How do these men who cant find partners live when they are too old to work? Courtney said in addition to this, a huge number of Chinese women are also heading overseas and marrying foreigners, because of course it gives much greater opportunities than can be found easily back home.

The problem with China is there's so many Chinese. I think increasingly the country is going to find itself encountering larger and larger issues directly related to over-population. How can the country continue to feed such a massive number of people when it's building over all its farming land? How is it going to sustain it's populace when it's polluting it's waters so badly and already in the northern half of the country there are already water shortages?

One thing is clear in China, and that the people are all based around family. When a couple marries it is to have a child. The child is born and the parents go to work. The grandparents then look after the child. When the child is old enough to have its own kid, those parents then work whilst the now grandparents look after the kid. And it goes around and around and around in a huge circle of community. Often it seems large numbers of families are grouped together in communities.

So what happens when someone cannot marry and cannot have kids? He will have no-one to support him when he grows older and too frail to work. Does he link up with another family somehow - or more realistically, does he die completely miserable, living in extreme poverty. We see instances of extreme poverty all around us. As we have said before, the beggars are never in your face, but they also look weathered and about as poor as you can get. It really makes me feel sorry for these people. We give the odd beggar a few coins and they appreciate it, but you cant help everyone. Like the time we saw this poor old man hobbling across the road on a lame leg. He only had one half-sized crutch and the way he moved looked terrible. He obviously couldn't afford a second one. Sometimes you feel so helpless.

But beyond that, the place is just an eye-opener on a daily basis. As we deal with our own day to day issues - particularly of late with the weather, we are always observing the Chinese go about their daily lives. We're always finding things that both interest and amuse us. How can these people who have seemingly zero organizational ability somehow tear out a bamboo garden then replace it within a day or two with an intricate garden boxed in with a handmade fence? It just doesn't make sense sometimes. Somehow there's organizational layers buried beneath what appears to be chaos.

The building site next door is a good example. These buildings go up at an almost alarming rate. On top of the roof would have to be easily 20 workers. They seem to do nothing more than work on the top of whatever the structure is currently up. As the building increases in height, so to do these workers remain on the roof, building from above. Like all Chinese workers, there's seemingly ten times as many as needs be there, but like ants, they all have their roles.

I could go on and on and on about the things we see; and? I probably will, but for now I leave it at this, there's mosquitoes to kill. Thank god the weather has cooled in the last day or so at least - today was hot but right now it's quite pleasant. Really not looking forward to Summer, which is now a mere few weeks away.