Photo descriptions, part 3, and other goings on

Before I get to the last installment of photo descriptions, I have some news: we have a cleaning lady.

It's weird. It's inexpensive. It's gaudy. It's fabulous.

As odd as it felt to have someone sloshing through my house with a bucket and 3 rags, it felt nice to have some time to relax with HD without thinking about how late I'd be up cleaning that night. This city is just too damn dirty. We're used to Portland, our lovely clean-every-2-weeks-and-you're-good city. But here - 3 to 4 days and your house needs an overhaul. It's impossible to keep up with, what with 2 kids we like to hand with, grad school (not me this time!), never-ending planning, cooking, laundry, etc., etc.

So there it is. A cleaning lady. Once a week. Cool.

And now for the moment you've not been waiting for...more photos! I'm going to keep it short(er). In case you have yet to open the photos in another window, here's where they are.

Last time, I left off discussing Christmas lights, and Christmas lights they have. Though here, I would rather call them winter decorations. They are up from December through February, for Chinese New Year. Though, many more are usually added in the weeks leading up to the New Year. The picture here with the trees shows the extent to which things are decorated. It's not uncommon to happen upon entire courtyards filled with trees like these.

Speaking of trees, those are trees in the truck, and in the next shot, trees being put in with the help of a crane. I've been told that the trees are sold by landowners to middle men. The middle men sell to the government. The government "plants" them, attaches an IV of nutrients, and replaces it 2-5 years later when it dies. Nice cycle. I'd love to go into detail about how this is so wrong, but I promised short. Maybe another time.

Everything is carried on shoulders or backs, except children, who are just carried in arms.

A Chongqing street sweeper. Though unconfirmed, my colleagues and I hypothesize that the large number of people here sweeping roads and sidewalks is a way to employ the 10 million people who have moved here in the past decade. With all the resettlement from the Three Gorges Dam(n), Chongqing suddenly had millions of farmers in a city with no jobs or skills. Thus, street sweepers. I must say, they are good. We traveled to Chengdu, another Southwestern town, and PB falling to her knees caused 5 pants changes in 2 days. Street sweepers? Nope.

Hot pot, the local delicacy. A bubbling bowl of broth, oil, chili oil, and sichuan peppercorns, with meats and veggies for dipping. It's the Sichuan fondue. Pull out your steaming lotus root (picture 2), dip in sesame oil with soy sauce and garlic, and enjoy with beer. I could eat this every day.

China toilets are horrible, disgusting, porcelain holes in the ground. We fondly refer to them as squat pots. I loathe these things. This one was at the restaurant where we had hot pot. It was a bonus having the red rubber mat, however. It minimize the slip-factor from the spray.

The last few photos are from a park near our house with an unmoving lake, complete with floating trash. There is an obelisk resembling the Washington monument at end, and a partial Roman amphitheatre at the other. In between, lots and lots of bird poop.

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There it is - mountains of words to follow a simple photo essay. Thanks for sticking around.