t’s been a while since I updated, I imagine a few of you are going cold turkey by now what what, I was a bit poorly for the second half of last week you see, wasn’t feeling particularly creative or vocal, thought I’d give it a rest you see.

So, anyway, I don’t have a great deal to report on, but I’ve just about had it with the lunches we get at our place.

Every day we order food from the same Lanzhou Lamien place in the nearby town, it’s the only place that will deliver apparently, and we eat the same food every single day for lunch (something with rice, the noodles don’t deliver well), most days I have one or two spoonfuls and then just throw the rest away. Today, however, I was determined not to eat it. So, when they came around taking orders at 11am I announced that I would rather not have any lunch at all than eat from that place again!

It was all very grand and I was quite chuffed with myself until about 1pm when I was starving and had to ask around for someone to drive me into the nearby town to buy some food. They insisted on dropping me off at KFC but I was determined to find something better and walked off in the opposite direction as I exited the car, leaving the driver confused and shaking his head.

To cut a long story short I found sod all, I ended up ordering at some chicken place where I was served a plate of cold chicken dripping with blood/bone marrow and fried rice. I quickly gave up and just bought myself a Magnum and Cornetto from the shop next door.

Anyway, normally I just visit the high street (a soulless stretch of banks, stationery shops and dire restaurants) but seeing as it was a nice day I went for a walk round the backstreets and discovered a whole community I didn’t know existed. Here are some pics:

Just off the main high street, an entire community dedicated to the distribution of tat.

A bit further in, much older buildings and a wholesale food market (enormous sacks of rice etc).

The edge – this bridge of agricultural engineers pretty much marks the threshold between town and countryside, I dared step no further (and it was getting a bit late).

Sunning the duvets – there’s a law in China that says you have to hang your duvet outside on every single day of sunshine, fortunately this only happens four or five times a year.