Hanging Out

For all its high speed trains and new construction, a large part of China is still a very farm-based country.  Walking around our campus, it's very easy to see how even our fairly citified part of town still maintains a connection to its agricultural roots.  Now is the springtime harvest of all things green-like, and everywhere you look, big bunches of leafy things are hanging out to dry, to be put into earthenware crocks for pao cai - pickled vegetables.



They're everywhere - outside of window ledges, on banisters, clothes lines, clothes hangers, and trees.  Makes the campus look a bit Doctor Suessian, no?

 

 

Also hanging out on top of the - I don't know the exact word for these - "newspaper reading kiosks", maybe?  - which are themselves a relic of an earlier time when posting the Party newspaper behind glass was the only form of information that people got about goings on elsewhere.



And then there were these huge strips of seaweed all stretched out the other day.  Don't know what the story is behind those, as we're quite far away from the nearest ocean last time I checked.  Bet they'll end up being pretty tasty, regardless.