Published: 1064 days ago

Category: China, Traveling

Description:

For the past week, I have been back home in China with my family. They live in the city called Hengyang which is in Hunan province. Hunan province is considered to have some of the best cooking in China. Hengyang is one of the oldest cities in China and has a long history, but like lots of places in China, it is growing and changing very quickly. Since I was here two years ago, there are many new buildings and condos. They are building a fancy new bridge across the Xiangjiang river and now all of the buildings on both sides of the river are lit up at night with colorful moving light displays. It is wonderful to walk along the promonade in the evening and look at the buildings glowing in colorful lights. You can see families swimming in the moonlight to keep cool and there are people eating watermelons and playing majong too. There are lots more restaurants now than the last time I was here. I think the weather is a lot like the deep South of USA during the summer… very hot and very humid. No matter what you do, you can’t keep from sweating a lot. In the winter, it can get very cold and icy. Last year, my sister’s water was frozen shut for a whole week! Yes, the weather here is getting more extreme like the rest of the world. Last week, there were big floods in some parts of China, but not where I am.

Tonight, I will get on the night train with my brother, mom, and my neice. We are going to Vietnam for a week to see Hao Long Bay and some other things. I have never been to Vietnam, but I like Vietnamese food, so it will be nice to see it. Maybe I can buy a fancy hat over there.

Can you believe that I didn’t cook anything yet since I left Portland over 10 days ago? But I wanted to tell everyone, that my family was finally able to see my Youtube cooking videos because I brought them on my laptop. In China, they block Youtube and Twitter and all of the other big social networking sites, so they were very exicted for my cooking show success.

China seems to not get many complaints about the censorship because they are clever about the way they do it. You see, like when they blocked Facebook, they just made their own Chinese facebook and they have clones for all the popular sites, even Youtube and since the content is more relavent to who is looking, then no one cares about what they are missing. It’s too bad, but fortunately, my website here is not censored yet… anyway, nothing bad or controversial here.

I will come back to blog here when I can. I use my brother’s old 2002 year computer. It is so old that I can hardly do anything. Even my old Android G1 phone from 2 years ago is better than this computer. I can’t figure out how to make my laptop plug into his internet, so I’m stuck unless I can find someone who knows how to connect the PPPoe modem to my LAN port and who also knows about the Ubuntu operating system. Not many people know what Linux is over here, but when they do, then I think it will take off big. I know that I am sick of Windows. Here is more for you to study ~ http://ubuntu.com

So, I’m making a few movies here and getting some ideas for new recipes and of course sweating a lot, but I won’t have much to post other than text until I get home to Portland.

Ok, here is one more thing. It seems like of all of the cities in China that I have visited, for some reason, my home town has more girls with big breasts. I can’t figure it out. Maybe it’s something in the water. When I go around outside in other cities, people practically trip and fall down, but over here, not many people pay any attention to my shape. I guess they are used to it, so you might say that I’m from “Hooterville” China. LOL

2011/9/17 UPDATE:
It’s September 17, 2011. I’ve been back in China since August 28th and I’ll be staying until July 2012? What??? A whole year??? Yes; almost, but I’ll be working on my videos and checking in online daily as long as my connection continues to work. It’s been quite hot this summer, but the fall weather is finally starting to come. In two weeks, I’ll be going to Zhangjiajie national park in Northwest Hunan province. It’s about a five hour bus ride from my house and it looks like the Grand Canyon only it?s lush and green. The towering rock formations look like they come from the movie Avatar. In fact, James Cameron was there to take pictures and they formed the basis for his movie scenes.. Check out this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246457/China-renames-mountain-Avatar-movie-Avatar-Hallelujah-Mountain.html

More to come.