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TITLE: PHOTOWALKING
LOCATION: SHOUSHAN (首山)
MISSION: ENJOY A NIGHT OUT
DATE: 2011-10-22
Finally weekend! After a whole day at the office writing on my thesis, I grabbed some dinner and headed downtown. Photowalking in Shoushan is very convenient. There are two avenues 人民街 (The Peoples' Avenue) and 商业街 (Commerce Avenue) forming an "L", and all the interesting stuff are located "inside" the L. Also, by 22:00 everything is closed and the streets are completely empty, severly limiting the photographic opportunities. I started out by having a really good milk-tea outside the Zhengde Mall (正德), after which I walked towards the Small Roundabout (小传盘). This season you will find Chinese cabbage everywhere on the streets. It is dried in the sun and then pickled, making the Northeastern China specialty...ehm... pickled Chinese cabbage (酸菜). Great amounts of cabbage was pickled in the old days to serve as the basic staple come winter, but nowadays everything is imported from the south anyway, so it has become more of a specialty than basic foodstuff. People were dancing tonight as well, this time waltzing. Another example of the importance of a nice car in China: you live in one of the seediest neighbourhoods in Shoushan (picture 5 & 6), but you are driving a brand new white SUW. Last out today is my favourite little shop Xinmiao (鑫淼, the shop on the left, the red sign with big white characters)! Xin is a combination of three 金 (gold), meaning "prosperous", and miao consists of three 水 (water) and means "vast (of a body of water)". When you combine the two I guess you get something like "vast expanse of riches". 鑫 is commonly used in names and is extremely popular in Shoushan; it is almost like the name of every other shop carries this character. I like it because it is a combination of three simple characters into one big character with a ton of strokes, hehe. So naturally, a shop with TWO characters like this must be twice as good as one with only a "xin" (triple gold)! It appears that the store has changed management and name, but left the old sign outside. Oh, well, I got a picture of the name at least.