Aussie in the Orient

A couple of weekends ago, Phil and I escaped the hustle and bustle of Shanghai and headed for the sleepy little lakeside holiday city of Hong Zhou, population: 3 MILLION PEOPLE! Well, it was still quieter than Shanghai.
It was a nice break, only two hours from Shanghai.
Here is the mandatory photo of me standing in front of the gates to an old Tomb.


On the downside, on arriving back in Shanghai and walking into the driveway for our building we witnessed a man literally throw his wife on to the bonnet of a car and start strangling her. She of course was screaming hysterically (when she was not being choked to the point of suffocation), and a crowd formed to watch the scene. Coming from a society where if anyone tried this in public, every man, and half of the women, in the vicinity would have jumped on him, it was very disturbing to see no-one do anything about this attack. And as outsiders and foreigners, the entire crowd would have turned on us if we had stepped in. Seeing one guy in the crowd on the phone to the police, I decided we needed to walk straight past before I lost my cool completely. Shaking and disgusted, I could only calm down after a long shower. It is terrible to feel so utterly helpless, and ended up being a sad end to a nice weekend.