June 7th, 2014:

It stopped raining over 12 hours ago, and a big puddle still remains on the street.

It appears that the city planners did not spend too much time worrying about drainage of rainwater here in Shenyang. After just a brief rainfall, water accumulates on the sidewalks and streets, and takes hours, if not days, to drain off.

Maybe they just don’t get enough rain here to make it worthwhile to worry about drainage. I guess my view of this is colored by my years in Taiwan, with the monsoon and typhoon rains. If they didn’t have good drainage in Taipei, one good rainfall, and the whole city would drown. Maybe that isn’t such a big problem here in the northeast of China.

Or maybe this is just symptomatic of a developing country that still is moving towards modernization.

Of course, they moved to simplified characters here decades ago. However, at some level I think that they recognize that traditional characters project a sense of class.

Whenever I see traditional characters, my soul smiles.

“From Taiwanese dessert experts”

A Chinese person said that I look like Lenin.

The subway here is pretty good, but there are so few lines that it isn’t a very good substitute for personal transportation.

Stations are clean and well-lit

Local wildlife