30 Oct 2010
Greetings all and Happy Halloween..and All Saints Day!
I'm now almost over the jet lag, and ready to get another update together! It was a long trip, but glad to be back home now! The best part of the trip was to see 2 of my sisters and 1 brother-in-law while I was in SC. They drove up from FL and we had a grand day together in Summerville, SC. Such a nice treat. Thank you Trish, Tom and Martha for making that drive!
Patricia Hurley, Martha Caldeo & Sarah Miller...3 of the Tollner girls Oct 2010 in Summerville, SC
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| Patricia & Tom Hurley |
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| Patricia Hurley, Martha Caldeo, Sarah Miller |
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| Patricia Hurley & Sarah Miller |
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| Patricia Hurley & Sarah Miller |
When I got back to Shenyang, the chill was in the air...and with the cool air came the power generators to make the steam heat...and here, most all of the power plants are coal-fired..but the systems don't seem to have a lot of particulate remover for air pollution...this is a picture from our apartment window in the evening...note the black smoke coming from every smokestack. These are power plants in the city...they are everywhere, and unfortunately, so is the pollution...worse in the winter than the summer seems to me.
Shenyang in Autumn when the coal-fired power plants are huffing and puffing
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| Shenyang at dusk in Autum |
Today, Rod and I went into the country to a place called Xi Hu (West Lake). It's a place that is undoubtably gorgeous in the summertime when the water lilies are blooming...but this trip was more about finding the place and seeing the big rice, cabbage, leek and pepper harvesting along the way...it was a spectacle for us!
Rice standing in shocks in the field, with a man stacking the rice in a circle with the rice heads inwards
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| Rice in the field at harvest |
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| A large rice harvest |
Cabbages being cut in the field...looks like all women to me. Reminds me of growing up on a tobacco farm, back-breaking work! Cut, then stacked, then hauled to a "Processing station" where it looked like to me the leaves got stripped, then stacked on the truck ready to go to market.
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| Chinese cabbages being harvested and processed in the field |
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| The family harvest...note the little one's pants has a slit in the back...no pampers here! |
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| Leeks being harvested |
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| Roadside market where some of the harvest is sold |
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| more cabbages than you can imagine |
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| Leeks going to market |
The biggest Cabbage processing center in the world...all outside, all manual. Not a tractor in sight! They loaded up trucks with license plates from all over China.
The biggest open air, along side the road cabbage and leek market...the trucks, wagons, 3-wheel trikes etc were all bulging from the weight. It's hard to tell how many leeks and cabbages changed hands today alone!
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| Corn harvest in Shenyang |
Corn harvest...not sure who is more tired...the man or the donkey
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| Sarah standing in front of the peppers drying on the road |
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| Peppers drying in the road |
The peppers were drying along side the road at Xi Hu. It was quite beautiful actually...like a red carpet. I doubt we could do this in the US!
This is Xi Hu (West Lake). It's a large lake that I'm sure is beautiful with the water lilies blooming in late July & August (now that we know where it is, we'll go next year!). All of the weeds in the lake are the now frozen dead water lily plants. There is a bazillion of them. They harvest the seed pods and sell them. Sometimes we see the empty seedpods in the US in dried flower arrangements.
The Lake was an eerie type of beautiful today with a lone fisherman on the lake.
A look at the catch of the day...lots of minnows or sardines, not sure which, also some eels, small fish, and not sure what all else!
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| Xi Hu Lake in autumn |
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| Catch of the day |
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| Fisherman on Xi Hu lake |
Thats about it for today!
Thanks to all of you who continue to write us emails...they are very important life line...we've been here 7 months now...hard to believe, but true!
Sarah & Rod
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