A peaceful life in Xiamen

I have not been doing much, but wanted to post some things and keep in touch.

I am living in Xiamen, on the south east coast of China. For China this city is paradise. Good weather, pretty clean air (almost blue sky). The city is as clean as Tokyo. Sidewalks everywhere. Parks. Flowers.

It is so quiet and peaceful here, like a big country town, and it took me two days to figure out why. There are no motorcycles!! No roaring, smoking motorcycles, darting everywhere, driving around the cars, on the sidewalks, against the traffic, through the red lights that they have had everywhere else I have been on this trip. There are very few two wheelers here and they are either manual or electric. What a difference this makes.

There is even a large pedestrian only area downtown near the river.

I have a big and OK hotel room.

Acres and acres of breakfast.

But no internet. I am behind the great firewall of china that stops all foreign news and so I have no connection to outside China news of any kind. But I do have a little window that my smart wife set up for me that I can open now and then, which I will use to send this post. But I am really cut off.

So, if I were young and single I would go for rollicking Vietnam. But the quiet life here is fine for now. I have been here three days and have not seen another westerner. There is no English anywhere, unless things like this count.

99 percent of the people respond in a friendly way. They are just so serious. One interesting thing is that the little children who I presume are learning English in school like to say hello and good morning to me.

Some pictures:

My morning staple: bread with red bean paste.