It's 11 am, about 30°C in the shade and the humidity is something like 70%. Already sweating I venture onto our balcony, pulling clothes out of our washing machine I am aware of the other women, often grandmothers, in the surrounding apartments finishing their laundry too. Many hand wash using large stone laundry tubs that are standard on apartment balconies, vigorously scrubbing the washing against a stone or timber washboard. We hang our laundry on metal poles and winch them up to the balcony ceiling, while across town others hang theirs in the dusty courtyards or laneways. I soon hear the children straggling home for lunch and I know it is about 11.30. They are dressed in an odd assortment of colours and patterns that constitutes Chinese fashion, maybe a back pack and the uniform red triangular scarf tied at the neck. They have been let out from school for a 2 to 2 and a half hour lunch break, longer in the hight of summer.
Joining them are adults with small bags of vegetables, and possibly raw meat, picked up on the way home from work, or maybe ‘grandpa’ who has been sent out to get a few last minute provisions from the local market or street barrows.
Chinese children have no concept of anything other than a cooked meal in the middle of the day, and are shocked by talk of an Australian cold lunch of sandwiches and fruit. The midday meal, eaten as early as 11.30, but not much later than 12.30 or 1.00, might be congee (rice porridge) and oil sticks (deep fried batter batons) with wok cooked chicken and vegetables on the side. It will not include dessert as this is practically non-existent other than fruit at the end of a banquet. But children are often seen leaving school with jellied candies, drinks or ice creams, as well as savoury snacks, purchased at small stalls, frequently set up in people’s ground floor front windows, by the school gates. 
After lunch the adults might enjoy a cigarette, still a popular habit here, or have a nap on a day bed; a timber based bed with just a thin straw or bamboo mat for padding, ideally in a separate room to the main bedroom. If they are too far from home, or working for a company that doesn’t provide a long enough lunch break, the Chinese will sleep anywhere; on the pavement, in a park, at their desk or even on the back of a parked motorbike.
Finally, as the heat of the day subsides, the city wakes up, the streets fill with traffic again, the children return to school and adults to work, until the next meal time; dinner at 6.30 sharp.
