Views from our balcony windows include…

…a dozen of persimmon trees bearing fruits. We’ve seen the fruits turn from green to yellow to orange since we moved here.

The balcony faces a high school campus with the persimmon trees…

… that’s is beyond a wall.

And across the campus and a street, I can see people getting on and off  buses every day, when I don’t have to commute to my office.

Things like big-footed modern-day barbarians and this time "lost Amazon tribe" are around in media reports. I don’t believe they are true or completely true even though they might appear in "mainstream" media outlets or are re-run in other equally "authoritative" ones.

We have to develop a sense of humor and have our own judgment when being inundated by  information. I had no proof they were just cooked up. But, the picture didn’t look to me more real than Hollywood movies. Also, I don’t believe there are any areas where non-barbarian humans cannot reach on Earth, especially where there are trees in the Amazon and where there are more than 90-percent-naked tribesmen.

Here is what we now know about the photo now - it’s a hoax and it’s half-truth. The tribe has been known from 1910.

I’d had a very cool and comfortable summer with my wife in Guiyang, Guizhou province back in late July and almost the whole of August. She studies medicine there, as I said in my previous posts.

I went to Guiyang and joined her for summer vacation. She and I went on lots of day-trips around the city and to several very scenic and refreshing spots in the province. They included newly built apartments nestled in valleys or perched on hillsides, or beside city parks; Tianhetan Park and Qianling Park, two city forest parks within easy reach from downtown Guiyang; an ancient village Qingyan (Black Rocks); and Huangguoshu Waterfalls (reportedly the biggest in Asia), Qixingqiao (Seven-Star Bridge, a naturally grown stone bridge over a dry ravine), and Doupotang (a tail leader scene of TV drama The Journey to the West, a pilgrimage story featuring Monkey King, was shot here), all outside of Guiyang City.

Enjoy the photos I took there!

More potos….

Here are more photos from the trip…

More photos to come…

By titling this post “coriander in a flowerpot” and uploading the above photos, I don’t mean that I will only write about the spicy plant I like very much as garnish and vegetables eaten raw. Lots of thoughts are crowding on me now. And I don’t know where I can begin to write about them.

First, the house. By “house”, I mean the place that houses my home and that I can call my own. I’d like to guess that the houses in China are the most expensive property around the world. Take residential houses in Beijing for example. Even if you buy one of them, it’s difficult for you to call it your own, because what you actually buy is the ownership of the house and the “right” to use the piece of land above which the house is located. This means that you do not buy the ownership of the land below your new acquisition.

Chinese laws say that land is owned by the State and you pay rent to have your house built over the piece of the land. For residential purposes, the land above which your house exists is rented (perhaps, jointly with others) to you in a 70-year lease agreement. And it will be the job of the State to decide whether or not you can have your lease renewed. When this lease expires and you fail to have the lease renewed, the State has the right to take your house away, for free.

This is only a small part of the story. Considering the short history of the People’s Republic (1949- ), no one have actually seen houses build after the founding of this State standing in a place for 70 years. As it is, most of them are dismantled to make space for new property projects before they live to be that old. So, these questions crop up in my mind. What if the house you buy is torn down, say, in 40 years from now? Will you be compensated for the rent you’ve paid to use the piece of land in the 70-year lease agreement? If yes, how much? I didn’t check the newly passed Property Law at the recently concluded National People’s Congress and don’t know if the law provides answers to my questions.

Again, the above is only a small part of the whole story. In Beijing, even if you don’t buy the land that comes with your house, the money you pay to own your house is not any less than the amount another guy, who works and earns in a comparable foreign city where land can be privately owned, would pay for a house that comes with the ownership of the piece of land above which it exists. And, of course, I’m comparing you and the other house buyer in the foreign city in terms of income/property price ratios.

Second, … …

I will pick up where I leave off when I feel like it. Please wait, if I may say so.

More photos to come…

Now let me continue with my newly found seven-year’s itch I feel about my work. Last night, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d been working as translator for seven years. As I write this post, I also recall that I kept my last job for three years. I now realize they are the legendary three-year and seven-year itches though they are mostly associated with marriage in my reading. Perhaps, the itches might apply in a much wider area than marriage. As time goes on, people are becoming more and more discontented with themselves and everything and everyone around them. Then, they at least want a break from them.

I quit my last job and that saved me from the first itch that broke out last year.

But now, in the seven-year itch, I find myself getting totally stuck between what I want to do, what I can do and what I should do. I want to be a simultaneous interpreter or do some other kind of work. But, I can now do nothing better than just translating in front of a computer screen. And I don’t know what I should do to earn more than enough to cover everything.

My family needs a home. My wife and I will plan our kid in a few years. And with the kid comes the caring and schooling bills. Currently, I’m not covered by social security network and I have good reasons to worry about my pension and have to figure out how I will be able to support myself in my retirement years. My wife still studies medicine and worries about where she can get a good job. My mom and dad are sharing my dad’s pension. And my wife’s mom and dad are better off: they each have a pension.

Moms and dads say they don’t need our support now and instead want to help us buy a home and babysit the little one. But, we want to pay for everything on our own and don’t want to use their money they would otherwise use to support themselves.

I hope that I can figure everything out in the shortest possible time.

Look down from my apartment’s window

The air-conditioner outside of my apartment’s window

The apartment building opposite mine

This is me with the Beijing Olympics mascots in the background. (Oct. 3, 2006)

With no specific plans for the National Day holiday, my wife and I made a foray to the Tian’anmen Square at night on Oct. 3, the third day of China’s weeklong holiday.

I hadn’t expected there would be so many people thronging and roaming around the Square and the place was a virtual huge night market. For what didn’t those people stay away from a throng at night? For fun. But what they actually experienced might be of frustration just like my wife and I did — there are too many people to make walks there enjoyable.

Thronging people at the Tian’anmen Square on the night (Oct. 3, 2006).

A small replica of the giant Three Gorges Dam at the Tian’anmen Square (Oct. 3, 2006).

*The first president of China was Yüan Shih-k’ai. (20100107)