A typical day: Evening

It is late August and the heat is easing. It is still hot during the day but the evenings and nights are a little cooler so, as the day closes, the locals congregate in the streets and parks. Mothers and grandmothers sit under the trees watching children playing together while they mind babies, in traditional yellow wicker ‘strollers’ or new plastic buggies shaped like cars complete with bells and steering wheels. Shopkeepers move their chairs out of the heat of the concrete buildings and on to the cooler pavement overseeing their store while drinking tea and eating dinner. The daily card game continues and other groups of men join in as they return from work, while the parks fill with people playing badminton, strolling, exercising, or just relaxing. We wander our local streets and are frequently acknowledged by both our neighbours and people we do not recognise. Occasionally we’re greeted with ‘chī fàn le ma?’ (literally translated as ‘have you eaten? but meaning 'Hello’) and children enjoy practicing their English ‘hello’ with us. The atmosphere, on these pleasant late summer evenings, is relaxed and inclusive.






























The calm does not seem to be disturbed by, to my ears, incessant and very corny music that is piped through the apartment complex for a couple of hours from 5.30. Mushroom shaped speakers are set liberally through the garden beds ensuring ‘surround sound’ and are occasionally used to make public announcements. This un-requested din drowns out the more beautiful music from our resident pianist who practices in an adjoining apartment most afternoons and evenings.

Almost religiously dinner is served at 6.30; if you eat out any later you risk the kitchen running out of rice. Our local Fujian cuisine is fragrant and lightly spiced with chilli. Seasonal vegetables are complemented with chicken or duck, and small amounts of meat, including all the intestinal bits I can’t quite relish. There is abundant sea and river food; fish of all shapes and sizes, mussels, clams, and crustaceans of familiar and unfamiliar varieties cram tanks at the front of restaurants. Coriander abounds and pork is another favoured seasoning, while bowls of salt, sugar and MSG sit close at hand to woks burnt black with use. ‘Stomach food’, rice or noodles, is essential to complete a meal, which is not to be lingered over as there is much to do in the cool of the evening.

By 7.00, or earlier, it is dark and people are preparing to move on. Lads cruise the streets riding large motor bikes with larger sound systems, groups of the elderly, business men, or women with children, drink tea in open air tea ‘gardens’, while youngsters might window-shop or hit the karaoke bars and internet cafes. The network of temples across town regularly fund performances of local opera or, more infrequently, puppet shows. And after an early dinner opportunities to consume snack food are plentiful. Vendors peddle the streets calling out their wares, and mobile barbeques set up grilling skewers of meat, fish, vegetables and tofu seasoned with chilli powder and spices.

Then, almost abruptly at 11pm, a slightly un-nerving silence descends; it is not completely quiet but most of the buzz of human conversation ceases, any opera troupes wind up, the traffic movement slows, and the neighbourhood sleeps.