From Grits to Chopsticks

In most places, not much changes in two months.  But this is China, and it’s pretty amazing what can happen in such a short period of time.  We normally walk past this thriving village behind our apartment:

Here’s what that village looks like now:

Even though the children here don’t have very much, they always seem to enjoy playing in front of their apartment buildings:

Those apartments and kids are now gone (but the demolition crew was careful to spare the bamboo):

The shops on this village street used to be quite busy:

The shops are now empty and will probably be gone next week: 

This  business had a “Grand Opening” just a few months ago.  I even thought that we might stop in and look at their athletic shoes in the Spring:

It doesn’t look like we’ll be shopping here now:

We also discovered another change when we called to have our empty water bottle replaced (we use about 5 gallons of drinking quality water each week).  The phone went unanswered for two days, so I went down to check it out:

Fortunately, I had a student find the new location and get the service restarted.

We also had a new neighbor move into our apartment complex.  We haven’t actually seen him, but we hear him about a thousand times a day.  You can click here to listen to the New Neighbor.  Someone needs to tell this guy not to start announcing the sunrise until after 5:30AM…