Saturday

Something I noticed on the drive to the Jiāngsū Art Gallery was how many apartment buildings there were in China. I could hear all of the cranes working away on them. I don't know what the deal is with those, but they were super modern and nothing like the traditional Chinese homes we think of. Hmmm.....

Anyway, the Jiāngsū Gallery was like nothing I've seen before. It wasn't exactly bad, but a lot of it was pretty much the same. There were a lot of weird people made out of clay. However, these people were either very skinny or very fat or super tall or super short. It seemed like none of them were actually normal, and I'm sure that none were.

I wandered around for a while before realizing how much the same everything was. I was kind of disappointed; I was expecting a bit more than that I guess. Well, at least it got me talking to people for lack of anything else to do.

The first person I met spoke English and we were soon into a conversation. As soon as it came around I asked about the apartment buildings. For you to get the full picture of this, I'm going to have to give you a bit of background first.

In China, when a child was born, a new room was added onto the already built building for that child. In this way, the house kept growing outward. However, since there are so many people in China, the room ran out.

So, to compensate, China is now building apartment buildings that go up instead of out. Each family will get just as much square footage as they had before, but this produces a new problem. Now, when there are children, new rooms can't be added on, so instead (I think) even more apartment buildings are being put up. Sadly, this means that most traditional homes and the farms that come with them have to be demolished. This means that farmers can no longer farm and what happens after that? A shortage of food?

Anyway, that is the situation that China is in, and it doesn't sound too good to me. So my new friend, Pipoy, and I talked about this and brainstormed ideas for what should have happened or what can be done. Obviously I couldn't do anything there, but maybe I can help when I get back to the States.

All around, this was an interesting day, and I'm sure that tomorrow will be too, what with moving again. The next post I write will be from Xi'an! Until then...