But unlike in other countries where the recycling systems are generally government initiatives, here in China the recycling system has nothing to do with smart local government policies and good management around China’s neighbourhoods.  And if my neighbourhood is anything to go by there isn’t a visible recycling “scheme” at all.  All the so called government policies and education systems for recycling reported on the news some how never even made it to my area!

But although a good recycling system with clearly labeled recycling/waste bins in apartment complexes around Shanghai is what the government said they’ve implemented (complete hogwash) just like the systems in western countries, in reality recycling is driven by the financially needy elderly.

In China, recycling is a money maker (though not much of a money maker!). The system works by offering people a cash rebate for their recycling much like the rebate schemes implemented for the recycling of aluminum cans and glass bottles in many western countries

This rebate scheme has many of China’s elderly scavenging through dirty bins in search of recyclables to exchange for cash . Older men load up bicycle pulled trailers often with the piles of recycling looming dangerously high above there heads.

Some people even go to the lengths of scavenging under the seats on the metro well into the night until the last train ends trying to fill the huge bag they carry, a bag often nearly bigger then the old lady carrying it!

Now in China no one is going to get rich from selling their recycling but for China’s low-class, every little bit they can get counts sparking a competitive if not sometimes catty war over recycling.

In my neighbourhood people chase me for my recycling, literally! I have old ladies shout and rapidly hobble along behind me to get my attention so that they can snatch the recycling out of my hand before I put it down next to the bin and someone else inevitably adds it to their collection.

But I know where my loyalties lie, they lie with the sweet old lady who chats to me everyday.  She is the neighbour that makes me feel like I belong here, that I’m not an intruding alien in this very Chinese neighbourhood. Every time she sees me she lights up, smiles, waves vigorously as we exchange our twice daily Ni Hao’s!  Rain, hail or shine, when I leave for work and come back home at lunchtime she’s there to greet me.

So it’s no surprise that she get’s the first pick of my recycling. If she’s outside when I take the recycling down she’s the one to get it. I give it to her out of everyone in my complex, I give it to her over my next door neighbours because I know she really needs it, she really needs every coin she can get.

It breaks my heart to see her, an old lady scavenging through bins, but that’s what she does.  I see her untying bags of waste in hope there might be some recycling in amongst the muck. She spends all day scavenging through the bins in our complex, in the park across the road, in the bins in the dirty market.

Collecting recycling consumes her entire life!

My friendly neighbour!

And it’s not just her, all over China elderly people scavenge through bins to collect as much recycling as they can and hoard it in their often tiny apartments until the monthly pick up, and all for just a few kuai.

I vividly remember walking the streets in Chengdu with my Dad.  I felt we were being watched and followed by an old lady.  At first I thought it was just curiosity, after all my Dad was the only one on the street with a orange beard and green eyes.  We continued to walk down the street, in the distance I could see a man with a bag overflowing with plastic bottles heading towards a bin.  The old lady quickly overtook us and headed for the very same bin, also carrying a bag full of bottles. She searched through the bin and salvaged only two bottles and quickly put them in her bag as if fearful someone would come along and snatch them from her clutches.

After this short diversion she was back staring at us, staring as the water bottle touched my lips as I quenched my thirst in the disgusting humid heat.  It was at that moment I realised what had been going on, she wanted my water bottle.  I quickly drained the bottle and walked over and handed it to her, a huge smile appeared on her tired, grim face.

♦lllllllllll♦lllllllllll♦

Recycling collection day, today the houses in my neighbouhood will be emptied ready for another month of recycling hoarding. Today is the day when my neighbouhoods army of recyclers are at their most competitive.  Getting down the stairs with an armload of recycling is an an impossible task.  Only three floors down and already I’m being excitedly shouted at in Shanghainese for my recycling.  The recycling guy at that very moment was weighing their months recycling, my pile could add a few more kuai to there months recycling earnings.

Recycling rebates are paid in weight, the more weight the more money. The question is how much recycling do you need to earn a decent amount of money?

Rumour has it that some people can earn up to 1000RMB a month from recycling but in reality this would be a very rare few, the rare few who owned carts to scavenge large quantities from all over the city.

With the compeditiveness of recycling in over crowded neighbourhoods, for the adverage person they would be lucky to earn even 100RMB a month.

So why do they do it?

For many Chinese elderly living off pitiable pensions with children who can barely afford to support themselves with China’s rising prices and inflation let alone support their elderly parents, every kuai counts. For them 100 RMB could pay for rice and simple vegetables for a month or could mean that they can afford to add meat to their meals, or actually afford to put on the heating in the bitter cold winter!

It is a sad reality that is driving China’s recycling system and yet it is that reality that is doing China good.  It’s cleaning up the country and supporting local communities, better then any government run and government profiting recycling schemes!

There are many great health benefits of Tree Slapping including:

• Stimulating the nerves, you know, when you hit the tree just a bit too hard and injure your hand reminding yourself that you do in fact still have nerves!
• Scratching that annoying itch on your back.
• Loosening up the joints.
• Improve blood circulation.

Besides the obvious health benefits there are other benefits too….

It’s cheap, in fact it costs nothing! You don’t need any fancy Yoga pants or an expensive personal trainer to shout at you telling you to  “STOP BEING A BABY AND SUCK IT UP.” And with the rest of the elderly community out there encouraging you and sharing their own Tree Slapping tips what more could you want!?

There are a few things you need if you want to take up the “Tree Slapping Workout” including:

• A park full of encouraging Tree Slappers.
• A sturdy tree that’s not going to fall over after all the vigorous slapping.
• An alarm to remind you what time to go Tree Slapping so you can get to the best tree before everyone else!

So what are you waiting for, get out there, find yourself a sturdy tree and start slapping away!!!

* Disclaimer: The exercises on the video are recommendations only and are performed at your own risk. Please consult a doctor if necessary before you perform any of the exercises. If you start feeling pain in your hands, feet and upper back from slapping too hard or have the tree fall on you then see a doctor immediately!

Fahrenheit  飛輪海 a cheesy and well loved pop band among Chinese youths shows you just what youth looks (and sounds) like in their song Wo You Wo De Young 我有我的young (I have my youth).

English Translation

Every time my stare meets yours, I show my styles, I have my youth
Just like everyone else, like following the current, just one look and it’s forgotten
Every time my energy controls yours, I show my styles, I have my youth
Just like everyone else, it’s not true, the youth is getting different.

There’s nothing wrong if you protect me, because I am special
When the spring flourishes the flowers, you have to remember my smile
Jiro: There’s nothing wrong if you admire me, because no one is as good as me (Editors Note: Yes Jiro, no one is as good as you!)
When the summer brings back the warmth of my heart, it proves that I’m back

Read the full translation here….

Fahrenheit Recipe for Eternal Youth (Guy’s Only)

1. Spend more time looking in the mirror applying hair product and blow drying your hair then even the most prissy of girls! Hey big hair on guys is trendy is it not?
2. Exercise regularly, do weights, chin ups, running, skipping and boxing but don’t break out in too much of a sweat or god forbid it will shrink your hair!
3. Wear colour’s like white, turquoise and pink because nothing says manly and eternal youth like the pallet a 4 year old wears!
4. Be in a boy band, as simple as that!

Do you love Chinese music? Check out all our “中国 Song Spotlight’s” for some great tunes, entertaining videos and to practice for your next KTV session!

*Disclaimer: This is a tongue in cheek look at China’s culture of not wearing a seat belt, please do not take any of this as actual advice!

Whatever you do, when you get into a taxi or private car in China don’t fasten your seat belt!  Too bad no one told me that before I came to China!

In Australia where I grew up, wearing a seat belt was drilled into my head from a very young age with public safety campaigns saying “buckle up” all over the TV and radio.  Not to mention the advertisements plastered all over roadside billboards reminding driver’s that if just one of your passenger’s doesn’t wear a seat belt when you’re driving you’ll be slapped with a huge fine.

When I arrived in China just like I had done my whole life, as if an action of reflex the moment I sat in a car I “buckled up” so the last thing I expected to get was this reaction from the driver when I tried to buckle up my seat belt on my first solo Chinese taxi ride….

“BLA, BLA, BLA BLA, BLLLLAAAA!!!”

Was all I heard as the taxi driver started waving his hands around in the air.  Having no clue what he was on about I continued to buckle up my seat belt and again he started waving his hands around and  bla, bla, blaaaaing.

I stared at him blankly, the shouting and waving was unnecessary, I had given him the address in Chinese what else could be the problem?

Finally figuring out that I was clueless as to why he was acting so irate he pointed at my seat belt and uttered ‘No’. No what? I thought, I’m pretty sure it works…so I clipped it in.

He looked at me angrily and again said “No” and un-clipped my seat belt.

I was shocked but finally understood, he didn’t want me to wear my seat belt.

This was not the first time I would come across this in China.  For the first few weeks I continued to put on the seat belt out of habit and was met with the same filthy looks and angry mutterings from taxi driver’s.

Call me a slow learner, but apparently wearing a seat belt in China was just not done nor was it acceptable.

Now I don’t understand this culture of not wearing seat belts, considering how mental the drivers are and how Chinese drivers have a tendency to swerve all over the roads, speeding up at red lights for as far as I can tell just for the fun of it.  Even more fun is apparently speeding up right before the light is about to go red, realising you can’t make it through and then stopping suddenly potentially throwing the passenger’s out the window.  So considering this maybe it would do everyone in China some good to wear seat belts…?

Despite what this sign says, what it's really saying is un-clip your seat belt!

But after living in China for some time now I think I’ve figured out why seat belts are a no, NO. If there is anything I’ve learned about China logic is that often it’s the exact opposite of our own western logic so keeping that in mind I figured if I look at this whole not wearing seat belts thing backwards then maybe I can make sense of it.

So here it is…

Everything that’s wrong with wearing seat belts…

They can give you whiplash…

In the very frequent case that you have to stop suddenly in order to not hit that scooter that appeared out of nowhere wearing, a seat belt is an extreme whiplash hazard.  If everyone had to wear seat belts considering the frequency of the times sudden stopping is necessary on China’s roads everyone would be walking around with a bad case of whiplash, now we wouldn’t want that now would we!

They encourage bad driving…

So your passenger’s are all buckled up safely so now’s the time to put your foot down and start drifting.  Wearing a seatbelt gives the driver the illusion of safety, the illusion that they can drive carelessly and do crazy things like burnouts and drifting around corners.  Wearing seat belts just encourage this kind of bad driving behavior!

They are an omen of bad luck…

If you wear a seat belt you’re asking for something to go wrong because clearly you’re expecting it.  Like all things in China some things are lucky omens and others are bad luck omens, wearing a seat belt is clearly an omen of BAD LUCK because if they were lucky every person in China would be buckling up without hesitation.

They’re an insult to the driver…

When you get in a car with a stranger like a taxi driver they want you to feel like you trust them, trust them to get you from A-B, trust them to not rip you off and trust them with your safety.  So when you go to buckle up your seat belt what kind of message does that send “I think you’re a bad driver and I don’t trust you with my safety” now that doesn’t exactly give them warm fuzzy feelings inside now does it and doesn’t everyone deserve some warm fuzzy feelings!?

So back to the irate ‘bla, bla, blaaaing’ taxi driver.  Through all that confusion and his adamancy that I shouldn’t wear a seat belt maybe it turns out he was doing it just for my safety, because after all maybe wearing a seatbelt in China is far more dangerous then not wearing one!

Dao Xiang despite its light and happy musical arrangement explores a side of life many Chinese don’t want to think about, hardship.  It’s a song about hope, persistence, patience, dreams, being grateful and cherishing everything you do have!

It’s a song that really hits the root of one of the failings of Chinese culture, a belief that if you choose the right number’s you will be lucky,  a belief that if you throw more money at 财神 Cái Shén the ‘God of Wealth’ he will throw more money back at you and the belief that happiness lies in a pool of money.

While so many Chinese get carried away with the ideas of luck and buying happiness they miss seeing the fundamentals of happiness right before their eyes, contentedness and the love for your family. Dao Xiang is a reminder to never take things for granted and to always be grateful no matter how tough your life may seem!

Do you love Chinese music? Check out all our “中国 Song Spotlight’s” for some great tunes, entertaining videos and to practice for your next KTV session!

He was handsome, talented, he could play guitar and he could sing songs that would sent ripples to the depths of my soul.  His eye’s gazed deeply into mine in a way that said I will take care of you, I will love you with every fiber of my being.

His name was Wang Lee Hom 王力宏 and he was the guy to take my Chinese guy crush virginity away from me with one song and a long gaze.

You see I may have lived in China for 2 years but in all that time I’ve never even come close to dating a Chinese guy. No Chinese guys even want to ask me out!

Apparently many of us foreign girls can be quite intimidating with our independent, wild spirits and crazy dance moves that don’t involve continuously pointing our finger’s in the air like we’re pointing out how amazing that chandelier is in the Chinese nightclub. Apparently strong willed foreign girls are not someone you want to take home to Mama (Mum) and Baba (Dad) over Chinese New Year unless of course Mama and Baba are very open minded so It takes a very special Chinese guy to even have the desire to ask a foreign girl out!

Now I know what some of you were probably thinking… “Yeah sure Sasha they don’t ask you out, excuses, excuses, but in reality your just like those stereotypical foreign girls in China who refuse to date Chinese guys because simply they are  Chinese.”

Well I’ll have you know it’s not like that at all! Sure it’s true for many foreign girls and they will very openly talk about their non-desire to date a Chinese guy but I’m not one of them.

I’m not against dating a Chinese guy if given the opportunity and as I said to one of my 16 year male old students who asked me…

“Teacher, do you want Chinese boyfriend?”

Taken aback and not entirely sure whether that was his way of asking out his teacher I promptly responded…

“I’ll date anyone who’s kind, outgoing, funny, cute and can dance regardless of nationality”

And that statement was 100% true, I’m not against dating a Chinese guy if he meets the criteria, obviously I just haven’t yet met any that meet the criteria!…

And then there he was, Wang Lee Hom, and boy did he meet the criteria! It was just too bad that we were locking eyes through the KTV screen!

Big City, Small Love 大城小愛 the song that started it all!…

Like all my “love’s at first sight’s” I met Wang Lee Hom through a music video and since the moment I heard his sweet voice I have been obsessed with him like a 16 year old Chinese school girl.

Now not exactly obsessed like actually stalking him for real or any of that madness, but stalking him on facebook and any advertising poster or billboard with his picture on it, oh I’ve got that covered!

But it doesn’t stop at billboards, it extends to listening to his songs on repeat while riding the metro to work each morning.

It extends to learning the lyrics to his songs in a language I don’t even speak well.

It extends to picking up a brochure for a phone I don’t need nor ever intend to buy just because it has a picture of him on the cover.

It extends to walking into that shop just because it was playing his song.

It extends to talking to every Chinese person I can about Wang Lee Hom whether it’s pointing out to the street side DVD sales vendor that that shop next door is playing a Wang Lee Hom song or telling the lady at the Sony Ericsson shop selling the phone I don’t even need that I like Wang Lee Hom.

Luckily for me randomly mentioning Wang Lee Hom always goes down a treat because as it seems every women and girl in China is in love with Wang Lee Hom! In fact I get quite a bit of street cred from my Chinese roomie and other Chinese friends for being a Lee Hom lover!

But it looks like I’m in with a lot of competition if I’m ever to win Wang Lee Hom’s heart 心, only over 600 million other women  to compete with and that doesn’t even take into account his Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Japanese fans etc.

Finger’s crossed he gives me brownie points for singing his songs at KTV even if I don’t understand a word I’m singing!

P.S. I apologize in advance if I bombard you with Lee Hom songs in the weekly  “中国 Song Spotlight”

Who’s you’re favourite Chinese, Taiwanese or Hong Kong singer?

Forget about Chinese being one of the most difficult languages to learn, forget about the frustration of the tones, forget about the 3 million different character’s for a word with the same pinyin spelling and tone (ok 3 million a slight over exaggeration!) and forget about accidentally calling someones Mum a horse, because apparently the Chinese language is taking over the world!

“In this whole world, all is learning the Chinese language…In this whole world all is speaking Chinese.”

Now I’m not sure how it is I’m not already fluent in Chinese when apparently the whole world has been speaking it, where on earth have I been, living under a rock!

But all that aside the important message from this song is how language can bring together different cultures, how no matter what skin colour, or where you come from, even if you don’t speak another persons language you can always learn it!

The whole world may not speak Chinese, hell, the whole world doesn’t even speak English but there’s no doubt about it that with China’s rising status in the world, having a grasp of the Chinese language can only ever be an advantage!

Do you love Chinese music? Check out all our “中国 Song Spotlight’s” for some great tunes, entertaining videos and to practice for your next KTV session!

Then of course there’s the not so charming side, the commercial side, the main drag lined with tacky souvenir shops, Suzhou embroidery shops selling the same generic embroidery as the store two doors down and any other piece of generic China wide merchandise imaginable.

Now Shan Tang Street could certainly never claim to be as quaint and charming as other surrounding water towns such as Zhouzhuang, Wuzhen or Xitang and with it lacking in multiple winding canals it could hardly claim to be a water town at all.  That being said this street has its charms and in winter when the tourist crowds that plague Suzhou during the spring and summer have all but dissipated you will have this area peaceful, quiet and all to yourself besides the few locals out on an afternoon stroll or playing a game of mahjong beside the canal.

One of the most charming and unique things about a stroll along this street is the soundtrack that plays in the background.  From every point along the street not far in the distance the sweet if not haunting and sometimes shrill notes of the famous  Kun and Suzhou operas as well as the ancient Ping Tan story telling and ballad singing can be heard.

On a short stretch along the canal your eyes are grabbed by the bright lanterns that line the canal side. More intricate and unique then the traditional rounded red lanterns these lanterns display beautifully detailed images of Chinese beauties from time gone by.

Only so much of this street can be seen by foot for along much of the canal the houses butt up right against the waters edge. The only way to truly see the full extent of this street that stretches far beyond the tourist strip and to the residential homes of locals who’s houses remain un-tainted by tourism is to ride up the canal to Tiger Hill in one of the many tourist boats.

Like most water towns Shan Tang Street is at its most spectacular when the sun dips below the horizon and like the night turns on the stars the lanterns that line the canals illuminate in a beautiful display of rich, bright colour that shimmer as stunning reflections on the canals waters.

To experience Shan Tang Street from dawn till dusk stay in the Royal Garden Inn located at a quiet end of the street near Tongguiqiao.  This charming little inn retains its old world architecture from the outside with spacious rooms and fantastic modern amenities on the inside.

I stepped into a building, then another one and another as you just tend to do going about your daily life and every single time without fail I had an instant desire to want to strip off my clothes down to my underwear.  WHY? Because every single building is just so damn HOT!

You see the people of Shanghai seems to be allergic to feeling comfortable temperature wise. In spring when it’s a pleasant 24 degrees they’re still rugged up wearing puffa jackets, in summer when it is sweltering hot instead of having the air conditioning set at a nice pleasant temperature it has to be blowing a freezing gale inside making you regret putting your puffa jacket away so early. And winter, well if you like me thought it would be a nice break from sweating like a pig then how wrong you were because in Shanghai apparently even in winter you MUST sweat!

Every winter morning before I leave for work I make sure to check the temperature so that I can wear an appropriately warm outfit. With some mornings as cold as -2 degrees that means wearing at least 5 layers of clothing but the moment I step into the metro station I immediately regret wearing so many clothes.

Every time I walk into the metro station I’m hit by an overwhelming wave of heat from the heaters that I’m sure are turned up to the maximum temperature. 10 minutes later when I exit the metro station back into -2 degrees I’m so shocked by the extreme change in temperature that my China cough riddled lungs can’t help but cough and splutter all over the sidewalk.

But it’s not just the metro stations that have the temperature ramped up, it seems that every building across the city from shopping malls to hotels have decided to prolong the hot 30 degree summer within their walls.

The fancy hotel that played host to my family on their Christmas trip to Shanghai had to have the most extreme heating I’ve come across in any building in Shanghai. In fact it was so hot that after just a few minutes of walking through the lobby and up 10 floors in the lift I was sweating, SWEATING IN WINTER after less then 5 minutes and I didn’t even do anything strenuous!

According to the thermostat on the wall the temperature was set at 30 degrees.  My poor family were melting so much so that they turned off the heating in their room all together, after all on the 10th floor it couldn’t get that cold!

But apparently the Chinese AYI couldn’t handle cleaning the room in less then 30 degrees so upon every return to their room they were back to roasting in a 30 degree oven.

Since when was 30 degrees ever a comfortable temperature!

Why can’t Shanghai just set the thermostats to comfortable temperatures, why must it always be to the extreme! What’s wrong with comfortably warm or comfortably cool? Why must the air conditioning be turned up so high in summer that I need to rug up and why must the heating be so high in winter that I want to jump into an icy lake!

Shanghai PLEASE, turn down your heating, save some energy and stop making me sweat so unnaturally in winter!

Growing up in the US Lee Hom longed to get back to his motherland, back to the culture of his ancestors, back to the place that truly felt like his home and eventually he did.  Now he’s one of the most adored artists in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong not to mention loved by a few Chinese pop music enthusiast foreign girls!

English Translation

The far east has a river (jiang)
Its name is the Long River (Chang Jiang)
The far east has a river (he)
Is name is the Yellow River (Huang He)

The ancient Orient has a dragon
Its name is China (Zhong Guo)
The ancient Orient has a group of people
They are all descendants of the dragon

I grew up underneath this huge dragon’s feet
After growing up, I am a descendant of the dragon
Black eyes, black hair, yellow skin
Forever, forever, a descendant of the dragon

Full Translation…

But this song goes far beyond paying homage to China. It goes on to tell the story of his parents immigration to the US.  It tells the tale of their courage to leave behind their homeland Taiwan in search of opportunity in America, to build a life from scratch “No money, no job, no speak no English.” No only did they conquer the language barrier but they made something great of themselves, built a prosperous life for their family that gave Wang Lee Hom the opportunities to nurture his musical talents that led to his future of pop stardom!

English Rap

Now here’s a story that’ll make you cry
Straight from Taiwan they came
Just a girl and a homeboy in love
No money, no job, no speak no English
Nobody gonna give ‘em the time of day
In a city so cold they made a wish
And then they had the strength to graduate with honors
And borrowed fifty just to consummate a marriage
Under GOD, who never left their side
Gave their children pride
Raise your voices high
Love will never die
Never die……

Long De Chuan Ren, it’s not just another sappy love song, it tells a compelling story that I’m sure so many immigrants can relate to and on top of that it’s a good tune to dance and sing to!

Do you love Chinese music? Check out all our “中国 Song Spotlight’s” for some great tunes, entertaining videos and to practice for your next KTV session!