I have seen it described as Liuzhou’s first explosive failure. Not true. As reported by your intrepid reporter here. On Wednesday 30th, Â they tried to blow up (down) the apartment block by the river – the one at the end of the pedestrian street. After having successfully blown up several Liuzhou buildings such as the […]
Liuzhou's taxi drivers sprang a nice Christmas surprise on the locals by doubling their “fuel surcharge” from ¥1 to ¥2 as of noon, Christmas Day. The surcharge was first introduced in 2006 when it was said to be “temporary”. Nine months ago, Liuzhou's buses dropped their surcharges and most fares reverted to their pre-2006 level. […]
This is a cry for help. I'm baffled. There I was considering my sartorial elegance and my need to divert beer coupons to the local providers of suitable vestments, when I ran across this piece of confusion on that interweb thing. I tend to lean towards the casual (there are those who say I tend […]
Back in the summer, the day after the floods were at their worst, I was contacted by Jonathan Watts, The Guardian's Asia Environment Correspondent who was interested in visiting Liuzhou. He arrived, along with Swiss photographers, Mathias Braschler and Monica Fischer and fellow journalist / interpreter, Chen Shi while I acted as a guide (and […]
Random Picture No. 19 Nineteenth in a series of pictures, taken in Liuzhou, which amuse or interest me. Liuzhou's Soho Bar wins the Barbara Cartland Award for tackiest Christmas decoration of the decade!
Keep moving or be counted. Liuzhou has announced its intention to carry out a census. Of course, they are not just content to count people but want all sorts of statistics – gender, age, ethnicity, education, industry, occupation, migration and mobility, social security, marriage, births, deaths, housing and, in China's favourite phrase “and so on”. […]
Those who were interested in my previous post on Liuzhou’s deep sea river submariner may wish to see more of his marvellous invention and its ignoble failure. Here is a short feature from Liuzhou Television showing his submarine and its disastrous maiden sinking in detail.
For several years, Liuzhou has held a Christmas Party for the local foreigners. For foreigners, read 'westerners'. Of course, being part of China's government structure, Liuzhou Foreign Affairs Office cannot possibly be seen to support the celebration of pagan superstitions such as Christmas, so the party has always been organised by a group known […]
Random Picture No. 18 – I'm Dreaming of a Purple Christmas Eighteenth in a series of pictures, taken in Liuzhou, which amuse or interest me.
I'm going to be more careful than usual as I wander the streets of Liuzhou. Liuzhou's major automobile manufacturer, SGMW (Shanghai General Motors Wuling), has announced that they are recalling 5,068 of their Wuling Sunshine and Wuling Hongtu minivans as their brakes are defective. This “can result in a longer distance to fully stop the […]