Hi Everyone,
 I hope the weather has started to improve back in the UK,we as you know had a terrible time recently with the smog it lasted 10 days and apparently the WHO states that the safety limit is 2.5 microns per cubic metre and during those days it was averaging 505 and one day reached 700,you might as well suck on a exhaust pipe ha-ha.But recently we have had some lovely warm,blue sky days and it is so nice to go for a walk in the parks and see Spring arriving.
 I went and had a look at that old house  the other week which is reputed to be haunted,it was built in 1900 in the colonial style originally to be a church,but became a house instead and was owned by a high ranking official in the Manchurian Government and when the Communists took over in 1949 he fled to Taiwan leaving behind his family and the story goes that one of his concubines was so distraught she hung herself in the house and the legend has it that on stormy nights or full moon nights you can hear her crying. Anyway as i said i had a good look around and took some photos,it is in a bad condition now and they say that at least twice before they tried to demolish it as it is in a prime location,and again legend says the last time it was halted when some workers mysteriously disappeared.So now no one will work on it and the Gov't have gave it a kind of unofficial listed building status.
I had a day out last week with Andy a friend of mine I met over here, he is a photographer and also married to a Chinese woman. We spent the day at the Heaven Temple and Parks,it's a grand place with loads of history where emperors of the past offered Taoist offerings for good harvests for the coming year, it was built in 1420, I think we walked for nearly 5 hours but it was a lovely day, quite warm and it was nice to be taking photos with someone else.I still like visiting old derelict places though,I found a great one the other week it was an abandoned small factory and i got in and wandered around taking some interesting shots,then later thinking if i had a accident in there no one would know,so that was a bit sobering ha-ha.
I have been watching all the news reports on that missing plane from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing I find it incredible that it could just disappear like that,it seems it was deliberately turned around and the transponders were disabled by someone on board ,and what makes it even more personal is that Jun and I were on that same flight last Summer returning from our trip to Indonesia and Malaysia.
I have wrote on other occasions about how many Chinese children seem to be over protected and allowed to have their own way to much creating a kind of me-me culture that gives rise to very self centered competitive people,the Chinese policy of one child probably goes a long way towards explaining it,and I was very much reminded of it again today when one of my young students aged 6 who has two lessons a week with me,was here this morning.At the end of the lesson I usually like to do something different with them just to break up the lesson play a game or something.Today i showed him a small game where a page is covered in dots and the aim is to draw one line each and the one who completes a square takes it with the one with the most squares being the winner.Well I took the first three squares and he burst out crying saying to Jun "billy is winning it's not fair,i feel shame" and after was inconsolable.I said to Jun later that kind of behaviour has to be changed for his own future good.
We will be traveling back to the UK sometime middle of June staying till July then Jun goes back to China and I will stay on for another 2 months or so finishing off decorating and furnishing the house,but we haven't booked the flights yet so its still a bit uncertain on the exact days.