Photo Adventures with Curiosity and Learning


November 18, 2006: To Jinan and George

What an adventure. Ellen and I flew from Singapore to Guangzhou, then another China Southern flight from Guangzhou to Jinan. There at the airport were George and Patty - big big smiles in a sea of people. George immediately was attacked by taxi drivers - engaging him in reverse bargaining. His friend Matthew had given us some idea of the cost of a taxi from the Jinan airport to the Industrial Arts College - and it seemed that everytime George opened his mouth, the price increased. But his speacking - wow - nothing short of amazing. We finally settled on a taxi driver, George was the target of someone throwing something at him and finally we escaped. Then about halfway to Jinan, we discovered that not only did the taxi driver not know where we were going but friends that he telephoned also did not know.

Once in Jinan, George recognized a street and then with his cerebral GPS sytem, successfully navigated until we were at the college, our room and Matthew. Then we went to Jenny's for lunch.

Here is the main building of the Industrial Arts College

nov 18 0008 industrial art

Breakfast on the street

nov 18 0010 breakfast

with tables designed for short people

nov 18 0021 short people

The girls at the next table demonstrated the proper way to eat bing (spelled incorrectly - but George will fix that)

nov 18 0022 learning example

Then we starting our adventure - down the street

nov 18 0026 morning street

past markets

nov 18 0028 street market

and markets

nov 18 0033 street market

and a guy preparing fired chicken

nov 18 0035 fried chicken

and a bit of stir frying

nov 18 0037 cooking

fresh vegetables

nov 18 0040 market

Then one of our many cultural discoveries: a walk / don't walk sign and a bike / don't bike sign. Green = walk / bike

nov 18 0044 walk bike

and Red = don't walk / don't bike

nov 18 0046 dont walk

a hazy street - with multimodal transport

nov 18 0047 haze street

another example of don't bike / don't walk

nov 18 0048 dont walk

and for those that don't want to walk - a taxi stop

nov 18 0050 taxi stand

We arrived at Jenny's cafe - a sort of western cafe - across the street form Mickey-Ds

nov 18 0051 street mickey d

After lunch - sure enough - I found some building in progress

nov 18 0066 work

Another example of creative transport - and some foot doctoring

nov 18 0068 transport

Then a group of guys playing Mahjong

nov 18 0070 mahjong

And later in the afternoon - the Jinan Bus Station - for our trip to Liaocheng

nov 18 0072 kfc busstation

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C. Frank Starmer

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