blogons la Chine

J'ai decide de reprendre ce blog en main. Grande initiative, depuis le temps que je le proclame.
J'ai fait un tour sur mon propre blog, et le resultat de cette balade n'est pas rejouissant : mauvais Anglais, photos surexposee et blablatage se succedent... ( soupir ) Il faut vraiment que ca change.
Je ne promets pas de donner des news tous les jours. mais de temps en temps, avec des photos.
Aller, pour la route, quelques photos envoyees par un ami : vous allez decouvrir qu'etre chinois est une toute autre dimension de la definition de l'humanite, la super-humanite ! Voici une illustration de leurs pouvoirs etranges ( partie 1 ) :

La suite :

I have found the right shoe, at last...

Je suis bien arrivee a Pekin, apres une dizaines d'heures d'avion. Et surprise lorsque je me suis reveillee le elndemain matin : Il neigeait!!
Le temps ideal pour faire du tourisme, n'est-ce pas? Entre le froid, le vent et la neige, les nombreuses fois ou il faut enlever ses gants et son bonnet pour ne pas attrapper de chaud/froids, ce n'est pas facile de prendre qlq photos afin de satisfaire votre curiosite, hihi. Surtout que Pekin est si vaste, que l'on passe son temps a prendre des bus et des metros. Les endroits sont si eloignes les uns des autres!
Je crois que je n'ai jamais porte autant de couches de vetements sur moi : collants, doubles chaussettes, deux pantalons, des T-shirts empiles, et deux pulls... Jimmy ressemble a un gros poupon tellement il porte de vetements, et marche comme un pinguoin a cause du pantalon de ski qu'il a enfile par dessus! Je crois que l'on peut dors et deja inscrire mon nom dans le livre des records sous la mention "le nez le plus rouge du monde" tant il est gele. Et, comble de ridicule, j'assortis mon nez avec un bonnet peruvien bleu et blanc deniche au marche pour proteger mes oreilles... je deviens ainsi ambassadrice congelee de mon pays...

Chinese efficiency

Wei Qun [台 Wei Chun] sent me this picture. It is set in Mainland China of course. Where else would a driver carry twice the load and endanger everybody-else's life? Aaaah...(sigh)! China is a wonderful country ! I cannot wait to be there again.

Retour a la mere patrie

Dans les choses passionnantes que j'ai accomplies recemment, j'ai reussi a maitriser les calques et les masques avec photoshop et a prendre des photos avec des effets de vitesse.

Et j'ai une bonne nouvelle pour vous, amis, famille, ce blog va enfin redevenir interessant. En effet, je retourne en Chine. Et cette fois pour un bon moment. Meme si je dis cela a chaque fois, cette fois c'est vrai!
Je me suis abonnee aux "cette fois c'est vrai" ces derniers temps, et je tiens parole. j'ai trouve le pays dans lequel je veux vivre un moment, et le continent sur lequel je veux vivre et travailler, je sais deja ou je vais habiter dans trois ans - esperons qu'ils aient un president un peu moins idiot que Bush a ce moment la, j'ai trouve l'homme de ma vie, le vrai. Maintenant destination Pekin et Shanghai. Prevu pour cette nouvelle annee 2007, des challenges passionnants, des allers-retours Chine-US et de belles photos sur la tete dans les images quand j'ai le temps.

Je vais aller 'experiencer' le capitalisme a la chinoise.
A ce propos, j'aimerai partager cette magnifique description du regime local afin d'apaiser les critiques : la Chine est un " regime socialiste de dictature democratique populaire".

an artist worth knowing

A few days ago, i was sorting my papers and cleaning a bit when i found a postcard i bought at the Ousmane Sow exhibition just before i went to Taiwan.
He sculpts men and women from different African ethnies with a blend of earth, mud, herbs or bronze. the result is amazing. you can see his work at http://www.ousmanesow.com/mac/index.htm

I am back on come to my island

hello!
So many things happened since i have last written on this blog. I traveled, i moved again to France for a while, i made new plans for next year, i fell in love, I ate funny things, i saw french and chinese movies i could not see in Asia, i made new friends, i lost a few, i looked for jobs, i met a few surgeons, i have been massacred by one, i took pictures, good and bad ones, i watched my 2 brothers becoming adult (1) and getting older (the other 1), i puzzled my mum's cat who could not recognize me, i wore cucumber-green trousers and traumatized South-africans and Californians with them, i caught colds and nursed them, i actually set foot in the US, i bathed in the ocean(s), i discovered new drinks with funny tastes, i stuffed myself with doufu, i criticized Americains in front of my boyfriend, i almost became a photoshop expert in 4 days , i got bored in Chinese class in France, i ate real yoghurt and real french baguette again, i made infect chinese food and was complimented for it, i re-learnt chinese simplified caracters, i took more pictures of myself in front of the mirror - to witness the formation of new wrinkles day by day, i missed Taiwan rice everyday, i told stupid jokes that weren't funny because i had forgotten the end, i tried to learn Quebecquois without much success, i got sick eating couscous, i waited for my boxes to arrive by boat anxiously, i slept on the floor because it is good for your back, i lost weight, I became a yoga fan, i forced my friends whom i hadn't seen for more than one year to eat modern cuisine and be very hungry because of the small portions, i neglected my photoblog - but i promise i will post on it again, as soon as betablogger corrects its bugs, and i received many many mails from all my friends that i love so much.

sandy models

A few week-ends ago, my aspirin-colour self and three golden-skin friends went to the bai sha wan, an -almost- white sand beach. The weather was great except that a strong wind was blowing the sand on our skin (free exfoliation) and the sand was boiling hot. I had never bathed in such warm water , i must have spent half of the time in the ocean -anyway, it was impossible to shai taiyang because of the wind, we would have ended up with strange sand-pattern tans. Swallowing so much sand makes one thirsty, so Josh and I went to get more water from the car, and were stopped on our way by a group of people. They were taking pictures of a car ( a kind of giant burgundy motor-insect) for a magazine. they made us pose in and in front of the car and promised to give us the pictures and send us a copy of the magazine. here is one of the pictures:

you must have noticed that "my English is no" lately ;)

jiufen - village

Jiufen - view

Jiufen

Last week-end i went to Jiufen, as my lonely planet said " it is the first place foreigners who live in taiwan bring their families".

As my family would not take the trouble to come to an island nobody knows could exist in this part of Asia - i am sure they are still convinced i am in Thailand...no, just joking..quoique! I convinced Patty it was worth going. And off we went. Forty minutes by train and a taxi ride later we were there, ready to explore.

What a disappointement when we discovered the only attraction was a shopping street with stone beads, food and T-shirts "been there done that".... well, we tried every type of food : herb cakes, taro cakes, honey cakes, chili oil marinated fried fish, Thai crisps and of course my favorite stinky doufu. we also saw a weird creature for sale ( remember Yehliu...two new animal discoveries in 8 days. ) It was a kind of sea animal, with a shell. I have checked on the internet, and apparently it is a "Calcinus Tibicen". Check this link for more info : http://www.recif.be/article/hermit.htm . For a hundred yuan you could take one home in a small plastic bowl. I struggled not to adopt one and bring it back to France. But then i thought that it would probably not survive the week when i will not be in Taipei, or the length of the flight home. And what about passing the customs...hum, i guess i cannot prove it had got all its shots and i do not think you can get them an identification tatoo or chip like cats and dogs. So i did not adopt any.

I also took pictures of things people thought weren't worth taking a picture of, doors, windows, streets, while the average taiwanese tourists took pictures of themselves in front of the scenery, their friends in front of the scenery, themselves and their friends in front of the scenery...with fingers in the shape of a "V" and a bright smile. the scenery was indeed beautiful. ( please can someone tell me if i can use "indeed" in the middle of a sentence? thanks)

The sun was really hot so we had a cup of tea and guazi in a small traditional house with a view on the port and the mountains. Soooo relaxing.

I almost adopted one...I would have called it Albert or Hortense, a "cool" name like those

Yehliu photos

Today I went to Yehliu

Yehliu is a port town at the very North of Taiwan. I chose my day, the sun was hot and bright...maybe too bright for my camera though. i had a hard time playing with the contre-jour.
It was full of tourists, and every body took the same photos, posing beside the "queen's head" or in front of the ocean. So people waited in procession to take pictures, they queued up, as usual, very polite and patient!
It was so hot today, and the rock formations at yehliu were the perfect place to get roasted by the cruel sun. And roasted and sweaty i was... ( see picture) Summer is the period when i shed skin... it peels off because i am sun-burnt!

The scenery is amazing there. There is a huge yellow cliff with bizarre-shaped rocks and holes and cracks on the ground. it is exactly how i would have imagined the moon looked like if we had not sent people there to see how it really looks like. ( hum... i really feel like a 3-year old when i spaek english like that! hahaha!)

The yellow of the earth is matched by the green of tropical plants and the blue of the sea.

people usually stay on the path and just go on the site to take pictures. But i climbed two hills to the observatory, where i enjoyed the silence and the view. It is such a treat to be able to enjoy the silence, far from the permanent noises of Taipei! it was all flowers and bird songs up there. And it must be the butterflies' reproduction season, because there were so many. I even saw two huge black ones -as big as my hand- i tried to take pictures of them, but when they got close i got scared, so i wasn't really successful! they are really impressing. I also discovered a new kind of animal/insect/sea..food? it is called "sea cockroach" in chinese 海蟑螂. little kids are scared of them, scream and run away when they see one, and sea cockroaches are scared of little kids, move their antennas and "run" away when they get close! So they end up chasing each other when they were trying to avoid each other..

Pictures of the beautiful Yehliu natural park in the next post.

retour en arrière 3bis : photos

Retour en arrière 3 : juming museum

En avril, je suis allée au musée de Juming (prononcer djü minegue.) Ce brave Monsieur Juming, artiste de renom 60naire maintenant, a réunit un bon nombre de ses oeuvres, des sculptures, dans un musée qui s'étend sur des hectares avec des expositions permanentes en plein air. Il est célèbre pour sa série "taichi":
















Il faisait incroyablement beau ce jour-là, quelle chance ! Nous sommes allés là-bas en bus, à partir du musée d'art contemporain. Taiwan n'est pas très grande; donc nous y sommes arrivés tôt.

Les jardins étaient très sympas. Si sympathiques, que nous avons décidés de faire une sieste sur un îlot artificiel au ,ilieu d'un bassin...jusqu'à ce qu'un garde ne vienne nous en déloger, à grand renfort de gesticulations.

Allez, quelques photos de l'art de M. Juming dans un prochain post. Photos par Anthony.

Retour en arrière 2 : les photos promises

Tout ça, c'est ce que je vois de mon rooftop. C'est sympa, (sauf l'autoroute, j'en conviens...) non?