The beautiful scenery near my home!

Readers, I apologise for the long lapse between posting. Here is one about my home.

I live in the rural area of Benxi and there are definitely pros and cons to living here in the country side. While it is far from the city and difficult to get to work (unless you find a job nearby which is rare), it is a beautiful area to live in with lots of space, un-congested roads and beautiful sceneries.

Just a 10minutes walk from our door step, you will see big stretches of land, some of which are used for farming and other agricultural purpose. A small tributary of a larger river runs through our city and this feeds into a huge reservoir which provides drinking water for the whole region. It also provides food. My dad used to fish here every weekend so that we get fish in our diet as well. And to this day, whenever my brother is back from the city, he will come here to try and catch a fish for our family meal. Whenever someone asks me why I have such big eyes, I will always tell them, "I ate a lot of fish which my dad caught!" Ha ha!

Just a little further in the background, a mountain range provides a beautiful silhouette against the setting sun. This can be even more beautiful on a cloudy day when silver linings form along the edges of the cloud. Now I understand when my english speaking friends in Singapore says, "Every cloud has a silver lining!". A girlfriend I know from DBS just upstairs of where I work in Chai Chee (DBS has since moved out) once explained this phrase to me when I told her I was down and stressed with the huge debt I was responsible for (another post on this later).

The most beautiful time to see these mountains is in winter when they are topped with a fresh cap of snow. Sometimes I just love standing out in the open, breathing in the fresh country air and admiring the beautiful scenery. It clears my mind and has an excellent therapeutic effect on my whole being. I always feel lighter and with more energy after the exercise.

"People say women are hard to please..."

While I work in the city and sometimes I wish the city was nearer, I also sometimes wish my hometown to be the same as always. I would dread to see the day my hometown become fully developed and becomes a concrete city, like Shenyang. People say women are hard to please because they don't know what they want.... and sometimes I have to agree!

My home in China!

Ever wondered what a typical Chinese Migrant life is like in China? Most of us from the country side still farm crops as a main occupation. My parents are both farmers and we live on a piece of land where we built our home. Our homes are not modern in any way. It's made mostly of concrete and has basic amenities by most country's standards. Some areas, such as the toilets are still made from bricks. Here is a picture of the toilets. No modern flushing system for sure.... but it serves its intended purpose well enough.

We don't have hot water or tap water and we have to get our water by manually pumping them from the ground. Ha, you may think this is ancient but recently, I was back home and it is exactly the same as when I left. While China has progressed by leaps and bounds, this is only in the city. The country side is much the same. Can you imagine being without hot water in the winter... and I can assure  you that winter is very, very cold here in Benxi.

We do have a pump system run by a generator but this is only used when we need lots of water in a hurry such as when we need ground water for irrigation. Otherwise, for most day-to-day use, we have to resort to pumping manually.

Is the water clean enough for drinking? For us, yes... but I guess that's because we've been acclimatized to bacteria present in the ground water. We boil the water before drinking them of course and they do taste different from the clean tap water in many developed countries. In fact, they have a rather unpleasant smell sometimes.

Well, I will tell you more about home every now and then... but you can see, we're used to hard work and life can be tough at times.