I was sitting in my downtown Liuzhou home last night, pondering on the nature of nothingness, when there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find two women clutching reams of paper. They tried to look round me to see if there was anyone else in the room – like perhaps a […]
Almost exactly a year after their previous effort, the local authorities are again having a campaign to get Liuzhou drivers to pretend to be rational, intelligent, civilised human beings. It sort of worked, for a bit last, time. Some drivers tended to stop to give way to pedestrians on crossings for all of the month […]
Today, I finally did something I have been planning to do for a couple of years. I deleted all the Liuzhou Laowai website apart from the blog and a couple of small side routes. Should you try to access any page on www.liuzhou.co.uk (other than /wordpress) you should see something like this. I have also […]
Despite sitting on Vietnam’s shoulder, we are strangely unable to source many of the key ingredients for their wonderful cuisine. I’ve never encountered lemongrass or basil, for example in Liuzhou. I grow my own mint, so that’s no problem. I did, about three or four years ago find limes in Bubugao and had a few […]
Anyone actually in Liuzhou last night, the 12th July 2017, can’t have missed the military plane(s) which buzzed the city at low altitude for hours. As I recall, they started late afternoon and went on until well after dark. How many planes were involved, I don’t know. And the image above may well be a […]
I want to say thank you to all those who have contacted me recently regarding my absence, or near absence from blogging here. There are a few reasons for this. Number one is that, for the last few months, I have been in less-than-perfect health. This cumulated in a lengthy hospital stay in June, hence […]
Like so many things, it came out of the blue. I was kind of aware that there was a Chinese holiday this week, but being self-semi-employed I am often a man of leisure and the holidays make little impact on my life. This one is in celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival 端午节 and although […]
For reasons they will probably regret, Liuzhou’s finest fire fighters have taken to posing for beefcake shots. No rationale has been provided. Now, I don’t know about you, but should I ever have need for fire fighters coming round waving their hoses, I prefer them to be more sensibly dressed. In fact, just dressed would […]
I’ve declared war. All over Liuzhou (China) are loads of bollards. These are erected to prevent the more idiotic citizens who have somehow managed to obtain a driving license despite displaying no discernible driving skills from inserting their vehicles into spaces where no sane person would think of so doing. Said bollards are fixed to […]
Never again will I buy a Samsung phone. I am no newcomer to cell phones or mobile phones or whatever you call them. I bought my first mobile phone back in 1988 – a Motorolo brick which weighed the same as well fed baby and was equally shitty. Over the years I have upgraded and […]