Keeping the plants warm in China

I've written before about the method used to preserve plants during winter. By early December many of the trees are painted white - I was told to keep the trees warm, but I think it is just part of a process. Perhaps there is some fungicide or similar in the white "paint", which is applied before the trees are wrapped in rope.

You can see in the photo above that some of the trees are wrapped in rope. In the fore ground are some trees wrapped in hessian. It is quite curious, but it obviously works as come spring when the coverings are removed the plants spring into life.

A picture with many stories

It was Sunday December 28th - cold and wet miserable day in downtown Shaoxing. We'd stopped to watch part of the wedding procession that was in progress but had stopped - they'd "lost" the bride's car.

In the background you can see the brass band on the back of the small truck. It is tradition in Shaoxing for this little band of merriment to play while leading the procession of 6 - 8 prettily decorated vehicles around the city. Rain or Shine - it doesn't matter. Of course you can see it was raining and the musicians had their uniforms protected by an assortment of waterproof garments.

They were stopped out the front of McDonalds, waiting for the bride's car. They were playing "Oh, Susannah, oh, don't you wait for me....." and my friends and I stopped to take a photo, and the band played on and soon we "dancing and singing with the music" much to the amusement of the ladies on cleaning duty in the street.

My friend from Shanghai was not familiar with the wedding tradition and she was fascinated. The muso's kept playing, we took photos and danced and the cleaning trio thought we were all quite amusing.

Moments later, more vehicles appeared - the bride looking very beautiful in her very un-Chinese weddng gown, and vehicle with the photographer standing up with his head and shoulders through the opening in the roof of the car continuing to take the movie of the events.

This wedding procedure is traditional Shaoxing at its best.

More laughs in my Chinese adventure.

Food drying in the streets

Out in the streets in the midst of all the human and other traffic, and dust and pollution are rows of foods drying. We saw fish, chickens, ducks, pieces of pork and other meats, sausages. We saw people making the sausages with big bowls of meat (it looked like pork, and soy sauce) and they used parts of plastic bottles as their funnel, and at one place we saw a woman on the footpath cleaning out pig intestines which are used for the skin of the sausages.

Quite an array of fish - obviously cleaned and opened up - some of the fish and chicken were held open with small wooden skewers.

Hanging out in the street to dry - rather strange sight to us!

Vegetables are drying too. These were on a bridge over a canal on a busy street - hard to tell how much dust and other foreign matter they would collect. Dogs, cars, carts, and spitting men pass this spot continuously.

In the village the sausage shop had rows and rows of product drying.

Drying sausages - almost like a curtain near the canal.