7:29 AM, Nov 19, 2006

A week has passed. Didn’t get his answer to my email, not sure if he received it or not.
Went to Hankou to meet Sanshu in the bus terminal. The whole city was soaked in a grey fog who suffocates the already depressing concretes. The buildings here are mostly old. Everything are peeling or cracking. The streets seem to be abandoned by the city, leaving garbage everywhere and sewage running. People are wearing dark coloured clothes, walking without smile. There was a man sitting behind me on the bus who kept on sneezing and spitting. The whole process of spitting from the gargle of the throat till the final spat on the ground make me sick in the stomach. I may inhales the whole amount of second hand smoke I had for a whole two years in Canada. I cannot live here anymore. Everything makes my skin crawl because of its filth and raw.
Took some pictures, hoping to keep record of this trip. Why am I still complaining about my own life when most of the residents here are still living to survive? I saw some of them trying so hard to dress fashionable, some care for their children with great expectations for their future, some are dating, some are content. They will all go back to their run down apartment buildings with dusty cement stairs, grease covered kitchen, tacky decorated living room, and one small washroom without hot water. They will push their descendants to study so hard so as to go to univerisity, so that they can get a better live than their parents. Then they may be laid off, may retire as planned. While the discussion I have with Dave is when to get a house and when to take a trip to Cuba. It makes me sad to watch.