Instant fun
(Images from L-R: Post café, Ying and I, man in pyjamas as Instant photographs: Suzhou, China)
On a trip to Ping Jiang Lu on my final day in China (this time) we ended up buying an instamatic camera. I have been looking for a replacement for some time for an old camera, and this is the one I have been searching for. We christened it by taking a few images of our day out together. It was unfortunate that on the third image, the man wearing pyjamas moved almost out of shot before I could capture him. This is completely normal in China; so many people, men and women, wear their nightwear out to the shops, inclusive of slippers. It is generally very funny and I’d like to do the same if I can eventually get hold of some suitable Chinese style nightwear.
The other two shots were taken in a Ping Jiang Lu café where we whiled away a half-hour. It was a ‘postcard’ café, meaning that one wall was a sea of pigeon-holes, each containing a tight stack of cards ready to post. For a small fee, the staff of the café will keep your postcard until a date of your choosing (in a dated pigeon-hole) and then post it for you so it arrives at it’s destination at a particular time. You can see these dated boxes in the first two images. We held back this time, but it would be a lo of fun to test the system one day. It was also pleasing to discover a few places in Suzhou that were more inspiring than the general utilitarian cafes and themed restaurants, it was really fresh and felt more foreign, yet more homely than anywhere else we already discovered.
– Today Rosie is starting to draw again in Glasgow, Scotland –
Wearing pyjamas out to the shops or market is nothing unusual in Singapore too. If you go to the wet market (local market) in Singapore,
You may find people wearing pyjamas doing their shopping, especial
women. Oh, don’t expect the sexy nightwear. The reason I suppose
is that they consider the pyjamas as casual wear at home. However, not all the Singaporeans do that.