Mahjong

Again I'm faced with the problem of too many interesting photos to post. I love the concept of Blip's one photo a day but, gees. I tell ya sometimes it's hard.

Anyway, I chose this photo of men playing Mahjong down by the river, as usual. All the good photos are down by the river. If you walk away from the regular part of the river which is at the end of Walking Street then you will find a whole new world. It's a world of leisure and relaxation. This is heavily populated with 'elderly'. I say elderly in quotation marks because to be elderly here is not like back home in Canada. They don't live a sedentary life here. It seems that when you retire, age 55, this is when your life starts. They work so hard for such long days for all their youth. But when they retire, watch out! Now it's party time.

Usually up and out by 4 or 5am for morning street market shopping and exercises and dancing. All around Harbin are 'adult' parks that have exercise machines run on human-power. This photo is of another cool activity. Swimming in the Song Hua River. You can see groups of up to 20 people swimming out into the river. These fellows decided to take a break and play some Mahjong in their speedos. I'll head to the river again today to find some more folks to photograph. I think you all deserve to see grandmas with their legs stretched up on high bars or men hitting trees. Wish me luck.