Life and Travel in China

In China it is somehow so funny and strange that after a few days off you come to work on Saturday or Sunday! For example, now Thursday and Friday were days off - Dragon Boat Festival. This year, the government decided on days off, usually this holiday was not treated this way. Thursday and Friday - rest, but today, on Sunday, most people went to work. I wonder how employees in Poland would react: "Okay, you have Friday off, but come to work on Sunday!" It's similar after Chinese New Year, 14-20 days off and back to the office on Sunday... strange.

I can check another province and another famous place in China off my list. It's about Guilin, a paradise landscape, unusual hills, wonderful rivers, wonderful rice fields, terraced fields filled with water! Beautiful views, unfortunately the weather was not good. On the first day, a famous cruise on the Lijiang River. Second day - full-day trip to the Yao minority village + terraced fields. We were worried about heavy rain and gray clouds obscuring the view. However, we waited for 20 minutes, together with a friend from France (the whole trip was already going down). I said we couldn't lose hope and prayed for the clouds to clear up a bit! We did it - an extraordinary sight, immediate smiles on our faces. On the last day, the sun appeared and we were able to ride bikes around the beautiful countryside, among rice fields and hills near Yangshuo. I only advise against Impression Guilin (Impression Liu San Jie) - the famous director (Zhang Yimou) made a mistake! Poor light, no script, many people sitting far from the stage made of water. Boring show, no decorations, no idea, no choreography, uninteresting costumes. His performance in Yunnan was more interesting. Maybe other foreigners are fascinated by it, I saw many performances in China and it is just average, but the price is super high - PLN 80 per ticket. There was even a trip from Poland, but I didn't see them getting excited about anything and they commented on it with delight. The return from Guilin was tragic - 4 hours delay of the Shenzhen Ailine plane, rude treatment by the airline staff, quarrels, fights (mainly by me), a big fight - it spoiled our mood. We got back at 4am, we should be there around midnight. Nevertheless, it's an interesting place, I recommend it, we took over 900 photos!

How to block access to Google in China? Just enter the word FREEDOM in the search engine, ha ha! Then the Google website will be blocked for a few or several minutes. And their system will fall apart one day anyway, because FREEDOM is not a word, it is the desire of every person, it is the strongest feeling that every enslaved nation strives for. The Chinese are still intimidated, humble and calm, but at the same time they are young, aware and braver than previous generations. One day they will simply ask about freedom... what will be the consequences? I don't know if our generation will realize this, but it will happen someday.

There are not so many Poles in the world, but you can meet them everywhere. I'm already used to it. Today I met three Poles just like that in a photography store. Not only are there not many foreigners in this area and in this store, but Poles? We talked for a while and everyone went their separate ways (as Poles abroad do, ha ha). And yesterday I was at the car fair, I met old friends from the photo forum, I took 550 photos, it was interesting and fun, a lot of models (but two years ago they were better). The cars are so-so, nothing spectacular, in Shanghai this show is still more important than here!

The mayor of Shenzhen (I even saw him once at a charity event) - he fell foul of some superiors and they arrested him for bribes and corruption. They are also questioning his subordinates. The mayor allegedly wanted to kill himself by swallowing chopsticks - what a comedy! Corruption in China is like a piece of cake for breakfast - it simply has to be there, it's the basis! The fact that someone takes bribes is nothing new here. It's a question of how much it is protected and by whom, and what the arrangement is there. In this case, the arrangement has fallen apart and the media can then throw such a sheep to the fire! The party is supposedly clearing its ranks, everyone is impeccable, and here comes ONE, ONLY scoundrel. Everyone is worth their salt and everyone is stuffing their pockets while their kids are studying abroad or crashing their WRC-style cars on the streets of Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Such people are untouchable! This is the mafia in suits, the government, local government, army, police. Of course, if necessary, they can destroy someone from their ranks, this time it was the mayor of Shenzhen. Now I know why for 10 years they haven't built anything else here except hypermarkets and department stores. They do nothing for the inhabitants of this city of 10 million people. They lined their pockets. The next one from the new system will come, he will do the same, but he will be under an umbrella. Even if the media discovers something, they have no right to write about it, the censor's office sends them a list of what cannot be published on a given day (I wrote about it once). And as usual, the Chinese authorities will write a report on budget expenditure at the end of the year, in the form of four sentences (they did this a year ago).