How to stay dry.

Typically, I’m not a big fan of rain. You get wet walking places. Puddles crop up everywhere, so if you aren’t paying attention, you end up with a soaking wet shoe (and they take forever to dry). Visibility is reduced so driving places takes longer. Humidity makes my hair extra frizzy. You get the idea.

But, in China, the rain offers me significant entertainment. Picture a city where the majority of people either use public transportation or ride a bike/mo-ped places. Now picture it’s raining. I’m guessing in the your head, people are either wet or inside somewhere… but in China, they’re still outside and mostly dry. How can that be? Generations of adaptation is my guess.

It rained pretty steadily all day yesterday. Next time it rains, I’m keeping my camera out and ready. I don’t know how many mo-peds I saw with 2, even 3 people (they’re small here) under one rain poncho with just their feet sticking out. There were tons of people riding bikes, steering with one hand and holding an umbrella with the other. The street cleaners had on their raincoats with their pointy, bamboo hats.

But, my favorite was a guy riding a bike wearing chem lab splash goggles with one of those umbrella hats… the ones that are yellow, red and blue and have the ring that fits like a head band, then the umbrella part sits an inch or two above your head… and he had rigged up a pseudo windshield. It looked like one of those foldable polyester things that you put in your car window to keep the heat out in the summer that you twist up and it folds into a circle, with a hold cut in it that was covered with a page protector, then the whole thing was rubber banded to the front of his bike. I couldn’t stop laughing. I really wish I had my camera ready for that one.

If nothing else, there’s some good people watching in this country.