Robert S.

I am glad that Candle was here for you. At least your wait was not as long as ours during the 9/11 Black Hole which was the reason CFL got started.

There are some experts here that will have the serious info. Congrats on your fellowship.

Ever since the old cat died China has been getting better

Johnny is 9 now and weighs 85 pounds and is strong as an ox in a tug of war. As far as dangerous things in the envvironment, he learned about ants as soon as he could walk outside, calling them "ant-zi," and soon after I taught him about poison oak and ivy. When we walk in the woods he is my little trailblazer, going around the poison and the thorns. He has been here in Houston since he was 5 and I really want to take him to Alabama this autumn to see the leaves and walk on the hiking trail in the national forest. One of my favorite hobbies is eradicating poison oak and ivy. I buy the special woody brush killer which is much stronger than Roundup and go out and spray it on the bad poison which children might get into.

When my Ping first came to America she kept asking me about different plants and what they were for, most of which of course I said were just weeds. She wished I knew about the mushrooms, but I told her don't even think about trying any of them. I actually knew where there was a patch of wild American ginseng; maybe I should have shown her, but she would have wanted to pull all of them up. She did enjoy learning about some remedies I know and she taught me a couple things her Grandma had taught her. Though we have been divorced for about three years we are still good friends and cooperate on our grandson and she gives me great food about once a week and I give her fruit. The other day she gave me four fried salmon heads, they were fantastic, tasted so very good, especially the eyeballs.

Now Mister Qu is mad at me because I forgot about this post and failed to tell him anything.

Okay, so he has got to be sure and leave on time this time and spend the money to go home to China and then apply for another visa. Right? Or, how does he apply for an extension? To whom? What is the name of that application? C'mon, y'all are experts on this stuff!

Mr. Qu, my little Johnny's other grandfather, Ping's first husband, had been here in Houston for 6 months and when he got ready to go back home to Dalian somehow he had an overstay of one day, Ping says because "the ticket was late, the plane was late," whatever that means. Sorry for asking such a common question, but the shelf-life of my knowledge of visa matters expired many years ago. When the Big Q came back the other day he got nailed at the airport and they only gave him a one month visa instead of the normal six he should have received. Please help and tell if there is anything that can be done about this.

Are there any particular areas near where you live in Jiangsu that are still intact?

I wish I could go to China and see some of the old parts before it is too late.

I am 58 and had to apply for disability because I could not do my medical transcription anymore because I developed trigger finger. My VA doctor told me I had to quit typing or my hands would get like claws. So I quit my job and applied for SSDI and got it. It is only $1022 a month, but what the heck, medical transcription was going downhill anyway, everything being taken over by voice recognition, the computers taking our jobs away from us. I wish I could go to China and just hang out and explore the food, the culture, and the old parts of the country. Even though my Chinese wife divorced me four years ago I'm still interested in China. Shoot, maybe I could get real lucky and a lady would love me for who I am, rather than for being a ticket. I was recently talking with an old guy, a Paki, working as a security guard, and he made a comment that I can't quit thinking about, calling retirement "bonus life." Man, I have been greatly enjoying my bonus, especially with my early retirement, though it is in severe poverty, the time itself is the most valuable thing. This is an enjoyable thread and good luck to the rest of you old farts.

A bright red, rotund vegetable, yeah that's me! Inspired by Fu Lai's post, I was intrigued to find out what my Chinese name was from back in the ancient days of 2001 when I went to Dalian where Ping and I were married. Everyone among her relatives was very kind to me, and I fell in love with her mother, but it seems that Ping's cousin's mother made up a slightly insulting, if accurate, Chinese name for me. Admittedly, I am somewhat round in shape and I do have a redder face and neck than most people, but to call me Radish was not too gratifying for me to find out was my Chinese name when I asked Ping the other day. Later I realized that it was kind of inevitable because the chinafication of my name Robert is pronounced luo-bo-te (which I had to learn to write in Chinese for our marriage certificate), and the name of a radish is luo-bo (different characters) so therefore I was labeled to be a slightly spicy, somewhat underappreciated root vegetable. Oh well, Ping's family name means ginger.......

WWII still lives for me in the sense that my mother pretty much summarizes the whole feeling of that era because she was so steeped in it. Her father was a veteran of WWI and somehow survived the fighting, but then when the second war came he joined up again. That time he was an officer, a journalism guy who went around the South Pacific setting up base newspapers and all kinds of PR activities involving troop morale. After the war he was the convention director for the American Legion. During all this time they lived in Arlington, VA, so my mother was in a war atmosphere her entire early life, then she was surrounded by veterans. I absorbed that whole consciousness of patriotism which was still left over from WWII, but the last of that warlike awareness is quickly fading away. Our "wars" nowadays are optional. When I go to the VA Hospital in Houston I get to talk to a few old WWII vets, but have not yet met any here who were actually dodging bullets, though I have known a few in my life. Those guys you could tell had been to a place inside that the rest of us cannot plumb to that depth.

When are the so-called elections over with? WTF. This is the first time in 11 years that I was seriously thinking about going to China and come to find these restrictions. Makes me angry. Shouldn't the restriction be dropped if you have visited China before? I have a good mind to go in the embassy and ask about it since I'm nearby here in Galveston.

Looking at the embassy website it looks like there are only 3 ways to get a visit visa nowadays, either as a tourist group, by invitation, or if you submit a round trip ticket copy and hotel reservation. What the heck, they are trying to discourage people from visiting?

Hey Eric, glad to see you dropped by. Only a few of us know what a power player you were back in the days of the Black Hole. You were the one who got in touch with Ms. Harty. You even got the direct phone number for the immigration officer who was going to be interviewing my Ping and gave it to me. It was a great contribution to my sanity at that time when I talked to that guy.

I'm glad to see some heavy duty visa discussion here on CFL, even though I can't understand that stuff anymore

China's pollution is damaging their own and the entire world's environment.

Have you had the hot mud treatment?

I never heard it called Chinese parsley, but when Ping first came to America she was surprised that it was so readily available, thinking that it was a Chinese vegetable. I had never really liked it very much until she showed me how good it was in her various soups she made. Especially one cannot imagine fish head soup without cilantro. Check This Out: I just discovered yesterday that cilantro is absolutely brilliant to take a bite of raw while you are eating barbecue......try it!!!

That is unbelievable the way the price has doubled since the last time I checked just a few months ago! The demand cannot have gone up that much and the supply of flights has not decreased so what is going on? Just some fee increases would not make the price twice as much.

I'll be looking forward to hearing more about your awesome complete makeover.

and.....as long as she does not know how to jump on the motorbike and take off you'll probably be all right. hog calling in Berkeley Springs, WV, mighty near Pennsyltucky "within 24 hours she's got her translator out giving me a hard time and crackin' on me..." I caught an unforgettable image from that!

If they have their own camera I would rather let them take the picture than try to deal with it if they did not like the picture I brought along. Andrew, did you bring a picture or did they take the picture there?