Simply China - I

This entry is a hodge-podge of photos that don't fit into a theme but are interesting, at least interesting to the author.  

A banana protector.  Amazingly it works very well.  Maybe they have these
in America but this guy hasn't seen one...or be caught using one.

We visited a Pearl market where they allowed us to select a fresh water pearl.
Each of us made a guess at how many pearls were in the one we selected.  Baba won with '8' in one oyster!

Yangmei in a Hutong kitchen.  A hutong is the community-housing in China.
She looks very comfortable with that pot.

The boys in a taxi.  With 7 of us in Beijing we had to get two taxis everywhere.
No seatbelts in the majority of the taxis...

Caomei.  This is what they do when there is nothing on TV.
There are some benefits of having only 12 channels!

Grandma in our dining room.  Those are moon cakes on the table and cheap beer.
That liter bottle is about 50 cents.

The moon cakes are a little like a fruit cake but there are all types of flavors.
These were a company gift.

Yugege loves his local hat.

Local teenager posing stylishly in her Chinese garb on the great wall.
She flashed the peace sign  afterward, which would have also been a fun photo...