One Last Look at our Neighborhood in Xian

For 2012-13 & 2013-14 school years, Paul and I lived on the campus of a university in the middle of Xian - NPU or more formally, Northwestern Polytechnical University. While I am missing so much of what we observed and lived with (much has already been posted in earlier posts), well, other stuff, not so much.  These photos include much of the everyday life that we encountered as we walked the neighborhood and interacted with many of our neighbors.They are from our last few days in Xian.

Life would not be the same if we did not walk through the markets near us. Everything in the food markets were portable, as you can see from the picture below, and was usually gone by noon or earlier.

Eggs were sold in amazing quantities. Although they were sold be weight, i still stuck to the American method and bought a dozen at a time. That was so meager compared to the quantity bought by the regulars.  Besides never being refrigerated the Chinese were fans of an almost unlimited selection of different kinds of eggs. Sizes, shapes and colors made our selection at home seem so limited.  One type touted the fact that they were many, many years old - and I believed it!

Meat was a constant at all markets. Never kept cold and displayed on a variety of surfaces that always gave me pause, but never convinced me to buy. Hmmm.. along with the chickens what could be the little animal on the same tray?

Along with the meat were all kinds of fruits veggies, fish and other goods and services.

These two on bikes are waiting to rent themselves out to replace the screen in your windows. We hired them and all the screens in our apartment got replaced for just pennies.

Snacks were available everywhere and cooked to order.

We have been known to buy breakfast here. It was located just beneath our window and did a booming business in egg roll-ups every morning..

As we have mentioned, we lived next to a grade school. Here are a couple of pictures of the parents waiting for their children to come out for the day. Older grade schoolers went until about 6pm and younger ones were let out anytime between 3 and 4:30.  VERY long days. and that does not include the after hours tutoring.