Miss May of Momo Bar

May works at Momo Bar, a local shop selling milk tea, coffee, and assorted beverages. The shop is also the closest available purveyor of French fries. Try eating endless bowls of rice: The fat content of fries ceases to matter.

May is a firecracker like many Hunan girls – who are known for both their beauty and temperament as fiery as their province’s cuisine. A visit to Momo Bar is an almost daily activity. Bar is a misnomer – there is no bar. The shop is small storefront with chairs outside. Closed for Chinese New Year I spent ten days Momo and May-less.

I recently learned May is from Chenzhou, Hunan Province, a stone-throw from where Mrs. Stevo was raised. You can’t say much about Chenzhou: It’s small by Chinese standards, only 600,000 residents. I’ve spent some time in the city but haven’t really explored. A few years back I missed meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao who arrived in Chenzhou after the city was ravaged by a summer flood, a day earlier than me .

Milk tea, for the uninitiated, is an interesting beverage made of tea and milk, served hot or cold. Some may have tried the similar bubble tea, available in some areas of North America. I’m sure Paddy has a had a milk tea or two in Hong Kong. Daily Bubble Tea, from the island of Taiwan, is a blog not a beverage. You can’t drink it but it’s certain worth a visit.

I shot this with my repaired Canon 40D, on-the-sly with a Phottix Hero Live View Remote. While the Canon is fixed the same cannot be said for my main computer. It died last weekend. My 22″ monitor is idle (and probably lonely). This old laptop is tired. If the photo appears really strange (color-wise) please blame the aging laptop monitor, not yours truly.

Once in a while I head out after dark with my camera. It’s not the best for night shots. Noise, those evil digital Tribbles, worm their way among my beloved pixels. You can minimize noise with post processing software, but images tend to end up “soft.”

The gate of my community, (Da Men as I say to the taxi drivers) is one of the largest residential gates in China. Every location in China has a claim to fame. Example: Each town has a famous foods which is hawked by savvy restaurateurs. The Guangming district in Shenzhen is famous for fried young pigeon. People come from all over to partake of the delicacy. I’ve eaten it: It’s tasty, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get it. Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, is famous for Chou Doufu – or stinky tofu. I’ve eaten that too. It’s doesn’t taste as bad as it smells. No famous food in my area – just a very big gate.

But I digress. No, my camera isn’t great for low-light shots. The above is a reflection of the Big Gate in the fountain just inside said gate.

Mates for life. We could learn from fowl. Shenzhen, PRC, October 17, 2007.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Is there running water in the Chinese countryside?

Ya, you run to get it.

For all the progress China has made, many rural homes have no piped water. Consider, above, ye old pump house, from a farming village in Hunan Province, China. Pumping your water is still the norm.

My part-time apartment is not quite as rustic. There’s running water, but no hot water. I’m not complaining: Life, as always, is an adventure.

A good fortune may forbode a bad luck, which may in turn disguise a good fortune.
Chinese Proverb

A village wall in a rural Chinese village in Hunan Province.

You see a lot of overloaded motorcycles and scooters in China (all of Asia for that matter). Each morning fresh vegetables (and pig carcasses) are delivered to local markets. The food in China is fresh – as in watching your fish being filleted before you take it home fresh.

How much stuff can get packed on two wheels? Only The Fates know.  Carrie at My Several Worlds has some photos of in her archive of vehicles of burden in Asia.

Scooters are cheap in China. Not cheap enough that everyone rides one, but cheap enough that the emerging middle class can purchase one to tool around on. I’m not sure why. Most housing estates come complete with a smorgasbord of markets and shops. The public transit system in Shenzhen, China, is one of the best in the nation. Scooter-ownership, and the problems that entails, seem superfluous.

Josh at Far West China recently purchased a motorcycle. I’m occasionally tempted to do the same, but the fact motorcycles are illegal in Shenzhen, China, holds me back. Yes, I could buy one, but only ride it around the estate.