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 […]
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 […]