Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

Living a Feng-Shui Masters Dream

You spend too much time with her!
Sometimes I think you love her more than me!
If you take her out and don’t come shopping, boy, there ain’t any for you tonight!
It’s bound to happen, one day I’ll meet a girl who will come between my peddles and I.

Until then…As summer approaches the fields begin their constant change.

After returning from Wuyishan in the early afternoon my plan was to kick back with a couple of DVD’s and take a rest but after saying goodbye to Lisa and placing foot upon the first flight of stairs I couldn’t help but take a quick peek beneath them to make sure she was alright.

There she was…my wanton gleaming black beauty.
I raced upstairs, threw my pack on the floor and was soon racing out of the school gate.

Now that the warmer weather has engulfed us and shared its deliciously warm bosoms, each day as I ride, around me farmers are ploughing fields either by hand or beast. Today as I rode I felt a surge of excitement at how lucky I was to really be here in China living my dream. I remember growing up (yeah right!) watching documentaries and reading as many books as possible that had photos of Asia. Around me today and this evening there was so much going on and in every direction I turned my head was a real life version of a picture or documentary from my past.

There was so much life and colour, so many picturesque moments!
So many moments for me to capture…a frozen moment in time!

The farmers/villagers banding together to work the fields but unlike in most workplaces here there are no phones or computers, nor is there a boss to dictate your working day. Here everyone has the task of entertaining themselves. Whilst riding the only thing that breaks the silence between villages is that of the villagers themselves laughing and chirping happily away as they live a life that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years.

The fields themselves are once again coming back to life and will soon be pregnant ready to give birth to a new harvest that will help feed over one billion people. Though I am already in the mountains, in the distance there are always larger and more mysterious mountains setting a scene like that of an old Chinese scroll or painting.

They send their silent calls along the gentle breeze that caresses my skin.
Yet sadly remain too far away for me to reach.
Some things are better left mysterious.

Thoughtfully placed at the foot of many of these mountains are the villages that link all of my rides together and welcoming my arrival at most is a small gathering of puppies who joyfully race around yapping and nipping at my peddles until I stop to play with them. We and chase each other around the small setting they call home, all of us like mad children in a country play ground.

Out here it really is like living in a Feng-Shui Masters dream.

Feng-Shui - Relations to the surrounding nature, the influence of the landscape on the beauty of the buildings and the happiness of the inhabitants. The art of living in harmony with the land, and deriving the greatest benefit, peace and prosperity from being in the right place at the right time, which of course is the great beauty and setting of so many farms, houses and villages throughout China.

China has eight hundred thousand villages and one person out of seven on the globe is living in a Chinese rural settlement and many of them have offered me a 'Helllooow’.

Over the past six and a half years all of the above has become my ‘normal life’ but today, like on many occasions, life was jumping at me telling me NOT to take it all for granted and maybe never to allow it to become 'too normal'. Believe me, I still find it hard to comprehend how such a vision and life could become so normal and nor do I want it to.

Picture an elderly woman carrying two buckets of water set upon a bamboo shoulder stick. She is walking through a small village or along a dirt track, surrounding her are fields and in these fields are villagers with traditional cone shaped bamboo hats on either picking or planting. In the fields you can't see most of the farmers but you can see their hats poking above the green blanket of life. The rice fields are like muddy ponds, some of them have the male farmer walking behind his beast or some other crazy machine from yesteryear readying it for its next crop and other fields have the women walking barefoot through mud that is nearing their knees.

In their hands are rice plants or shoots (I have no idea of the correct term).

As they walk they throw the shoots into the mud like a dart and where it lands it stays sticking half in and half out. As they walk along they leave trails of rice plants that end in a perfect line. This then creates the beautiful pictures you can see in my travelblog each summer along with those we see in our travel brochures back home.

I was captivated by these same pictures throughout my childhood.

It was these moments captured and frozen in time that opened my hearts yearning to travel these lands. I was again awed eleven years ago when I first placed foot upon the huge Asian continent and made my way through its lush fields and for most these pictures are how we view Asia.

For me six and a half years ago I chose to change my life completely to make it my home.

I now eat at many of the same market places with the farmers and also teach their children. I share a beer with them as they relax after a hard day’s work. I have been invited to countless of their family homes to share the food they raise and grow in the fields outside their warm doorstep.

Some choose the hustle and bustle of a city to live, work or teach in but I always choose a small dusty, yet warm township that is surrounded by the 'real' moments in time that I was captivated by as a child.

This has become my life and a normal day.
This is exactly what I choose to be my ‘real life and job’.
For those who believe I need to go home for this…enjoy your day.

Beers N Noodles toya....shane

Three Simple Days in the Life of Me – Day 1 (Saturday, 16th April)
Three Simple Days in the Life of Me – Day 2 (Sunday, 17th April)
Three Simple Days in the Life of Me – Day 3 (Monday, 18th April)

PS: Yo Stephen Tonkin, all of these frozen moments were captured on the good old Nokia phone camera. It always amazes me at what it can do, yet it still remains the same phone camera that has taken around 40,000 photos and for those that are wondering, every photo on my blog from the beginning of 2007 until my Winter Break in 2011. Oh Nokia, just give me a zoom lens and I'll be the happiest man alive! For those with a big screen, shurdup! Hahahaha! Yesterdays Wuyishan moments were captured on the new Fujifilm camera and yes I finally got to take it for a long walk...yeah yeah yeah!

This beers for you mate!
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The soundtrack to this entry was by Lita Ford
The album was ‘Lita’
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