Yesterday at noon, I noticed that my cell phone was no longer working as nature intended. I had no service. Attempting to call anyone resulted in a voice message telling me that my service had been suspended but gave no reason. I headed to the China Mobile office where I was told I needed to […]
I am fairly certain the owners of this shop in the underground mall beneath the city centre have no idea what this means. Supreme! I am especially glad the designer was too stoned to spell “Every Day” correctly. Still, I’ve seen worse over the years. The girl walking along the street with the T-shirt proclaiming […]
For as long as I’ve been in Liuzhou, and probably far longer, there has been a public convenience at the northern end of what is now the city centre pedestrian street. Years ago it was a notorious “cottage“, but it was demolished and rebuilt a few years back. Over the last month or so, they […]
This sign has just appeared very near my home. It is an advertisement for a leech shop. Not a medically qualified clinic or anything. Just a leech cure quackery. The “medicinal” use of leeches, which usually did more harm than good, all but died out in the west in the 19th century. It was revived […]
Things are bad. My local supermarket has taken to playing the deliberately awful version of “Love is All Around” sung by Bill Nighy as the character Billy Mack in the movie “Love, Actually“. I’m boycotting the place until they realise Christmas is over, which may be around next August, if things go as usual. Just […]
Having alluded to this in my last post, I suppose I ought to explain more. I guessed a local had set it up. A few weeks back, as I was returning home from work (the curse of the drinking classes*) I spotted this at the entrance to the neighbourhood semi-compound where I live. I guessed […]
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 […]