Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Tianjin

A little while back i went to Tianjin for work. We spent two days there and visited two current vendors and five potential ones. My company just bought a van and we have a driver to take us around in comfort. I am enjoying this part of my job, largely because i get to see vast stretches of China outside of the main cities. This is a really big and beautiful country. Here are some of the things i saw.

Maybe this isn't so strange; i've never lived in Nebraska, so it's possible this is the way people actually transport cattle.


But i'm positive this is not how they transport recycling back home. It's like a horrible porcupine of trash. A trashcupine?


This is also strange to me, but on some level it must be perfectly logical. That is corn you see this man hoe-ing. They remove the corn from the husk and let it dry in the sun. On the shoulders of every road. Sometimes making four lane roads only two lanes. They literally put it wherever a vehicle is not presently parked. Clearly this is not for human consumption (please let it not be for human consumption) so that means it's for farm animals.

Here you see a very important traffic sign, "House and Tree". Thank you, forward thinking Chinese, for the warning about the presence of lodging and foliage in the area. This is particularly helpful, as the sign itself appears to be under attack from one of these menaces, with another one lurking in the distance. Run, save yourselves! Seriously though, no one in our car was able to tell me what this sign means.


People don't have dryers in China. Also, um, they put their lettuce and vegetables on the sidewalk.

This was just a nice picture. Notice how evenly spaced all the trees are along the side of this road in the country. Surely they were all placed there. And China keeps it's people employed.


~Kev

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The house/tree is the symbol for a youth hostel - ah memories of travels across europe/canada in my youth...

Don't know if it is the same in China, but that's my guess.

Anonymous said...

thats a 'village sign', usu be placed where its not easy to find the village/town nearby/along the road.

ps: and now u know i know ur blog.

Kevin Reitz said...

Thanks Casey, one of my friends at work confirmed your story.
~Kev

Jenny said...

Regarding food stuffs on the ground... I heard a story, not long after the melamine-in-dogfood story, that documented tea production facilities in Ch1na, where they used vehicle exhaust (or rather the intent was to use the heat of the exhaust) to dry out the tea leaves. They drove vehicles over rows of tea leaves. Not surprisingly, tea leaves dried this way had many bad things (including lead) on them. Ew.

Steven Spinner said...

Hey Kev -- great blog, I am interested in knowing more about the reaction you've seen in china about new pres obama. Keep grooovvvin baby