Biking along the canals - a weekend Dutch activity

Summer is leaving and it has been a long time not writing anything again here. Life in the Netherlands seem to have reached to a stage of balance and peace. I more and more value the weekend, after stressful working days. It is the time you really want to totally relax, not thinking of anything relating to the work.

We are here on this orange journey for two years. Another family who came together with us left back to US last week. In these past two years, we regularly get together and gossip on things we like or dislike about this country, mostly using US as the reference point. Now they are gone, sold their bikes here and plan to buy a car back there, a life style quite different, but will have to adapt to soon. It is a little sad feeling for us, kind of leaving alone . We do not seem to have somewhere that we really belong to, that is not so good feeling while you feel you are getting older.

As the last gathering to see them off, we planned to go to a bike ride together. They have a long to-do list before they leave and a short time left to do all of them. So we will together do one item on the list, a bike ride from Gouda to the west. The weather forecast showed that the weekend would have rain, however the Saturday rain lasted only during the early morning. So we decided to make the decision on Sunday morning, after checking the radar forecast. It turned out there were only sporadic rain clouds around, and there won't be rain longer than 10 minutes. So we decided to go. True, it rained several times during our bike ride, and each time no longer than 10 minutes.

The bike ride was along the canal, and we finally reached the town called Schoonhoven. When you are here for longer, you feel many places are similar. They look like each other, with similar buildings, but you can not describe each building well, they are together to form the image in your mind. Maybe that is the beauty of European towns and cities. I later found out this is a city famous for its silversmith.

Last weekend, we two again had a bike ride along the polders between Delft and Schiedam. My Dutch colleague heard this and commented: you two are real Dutch now. We both enjoy this kind of outdoor activity. It is also amazing to see, biking for leisure is not common among other social groups here. We were the only non-White, when we were sitting in a busy cafe along the canal in a quite Sunday afternoon.

The image is a painting of Gouda from here.

Social responsibility of Dutch elderlies

A good citizen should be a responsible citizen, with responsibility to act. Being foreigners not yet able to master the Dutch language, two small stories happened recently did annoy us from the beginning. While thinking back now, we have to appreciate the proactive roles these Dutch people practice in their daily life. Since both cases happened with Dutch elders, I am careful in making even bigger generalizations here.

Story 1:
Mr. Awaraa is very careful with his stuff. He like to carefully watch his belongings, finding any trace of abnormalities and fix them in time. His stuff can be as big as a car, and as small as his cellphone.

Living here, we have several bikes. One weekend we decided to walk to the town center market around the lunch time. On the way out, I was going to throw a bag of trash, so he was waiting for me outside on the street side. My bike brake those days made some strange sounds, so he started checking out my bike which was parked not far away from the door. He was carefully looking at the front and back brakes.

Within two minutes I returned from throwing the trash and saw he was talking with someone who sit on his bike in front of our parked bike, on the street. He should be at least 60+ years old. He spoke in Dutch. I saw Mr. Aawaraa went forward saying, sorry we do not speak Dutch. He didn't speak English either. He pointed to our parked bike, again said something. Neither of us understood. We got the word "fiet", which means bike in Dutch. Then he put his hand in his ear, posing like calling, and we caught up a word again, "Polite". It means "police"!

My goodness, he is going to call police! What? THIS IS MY BIKE! I later thought that actually I could have said that also in Dutch: Dit is mijn fiet! Anyway, i guess the MY in English is so close to MIJN in Dutch. Ht just got on his bike and left. I guess he must have understood what we meant. He left both of there, for the rest of the day self-criticizing ourselves: do we really look like bike thefts?

Story 2:
One day I didn't park my bike in the station so I was walking back home from the train station. Mr. Aawaraa was a little behind for he had to get his bike. I walked on the pedestrian path on one of the one way street, and noticed he was coming, and biked also onto the pedestrian path.

This part was what I later heard from him: An old man with a bike was opening his door and ready to push his bike inside. He saw Mr. Awaraa coming biking, so he decided to back up his bike and blocked his way. Mr. Awaraa was forced to get out his bike. And then, lessons: (at the beginning in Dutch, and then turned to English when Awaraa said he didn't understand Dutch) Do you know kids are playing on this street? if you hit them, you will have to pay a lot.

Well, he is right. Mr. Awaraa tried to explain, making excuses of his wife. But later we both felt, that old man was right.

PS: The picture is an award winning cartoon from International Cartoon Exhibition - "21st Century- Humanity in Nature", and the link is here.

Homeless in the Netherlands

Living in this country for more than a year, I have been wondering about whether there are homeless people. Maybe because of the small town I live in, I rarely meet anybody asking for money, or sitting lonely in a street corner. This is a big contrast comparing to my first day experience in a midwest city in the United State, in which I only later realized that she was asking for money. I was not sure about whether I totally understood what that lady was talking about. She just stopped me and started talking, and then looking at her arms, kept talking, and then said something about 'changes'. It was in the campus, and I only have big money in my pocket which I didn't want to give out. She might not be homeless, but she was poor. In those cold Colorado winter mornings when I had chances to go to Downtown Denver, I really saw homeless people occupying each heating manholes, sleeping through the freezing nights.

I haven't had any experience of being asked for money after coming to the Netherlands. We somehow credit this to the strong welfare systems here. In the city of Rotterdam, it seems that poor people are more visible. It is just a feeling that they are not dressed clean, and they look like hanging around in the streets. Are there really homeless people in the Netherlands? This has been a question for us for quite a while. A news today from RNW kind of solved my problem. This is the video:

Anthurium plantation in the world's biggest flower export country

I used to wonder what are those big patches of land around some small towns in the Netherlands. Like this image on the right which I cut from a screen print of a google map of the Westland area. They look like big factories, different from the green grass land. There are so many of them... Now I know, they are huge green houses: they are the plantation for all sorts of flowers, vegetables, all year round. They create the best possible man-made environment for the growth of these vegetations - a mass production factory at an amazing scale. Following the previous post about the flower auction, I will write about the flower plantation in some greenhouses like these. The one we visited is called Rijnplant.

Basically, flowers auctioned include two kinds of flowers: cut flowers and pot flowers. This factory I visited is specialized in one special kind of Anthurium, mostly in pots. The picture on the right shows you the scale of flower plantation, it covers several hectares. The whole plantation is so much controlled that you will have to be surprised by its careful management, and advanced technology.

Entering the plantation greenhouse, we were asked to wear a cover on our shoes - because our feet might bringing in some bacteria into the field. (It was not the most strict, since later when we visited a tomato plantation and packaging factory, a full covered clothes and hat were required.) All flowers are spread out on the ground, evenly distributed to get enough light from the top. There are sophisticated equipment developed to measure the interior environment, tempreture, moisture, lighting, tempreture on the leaves surface. Intensive researches have found out the perfect environment for the growing of Anthurium. So the continuous monitoring, data collected every 15 minutes and sent to a control center through internet, will inform the instant adjustment decisions. Remote control across countries is also possible. Rijnplant has collaborated with Wagningen University and a private technology firm to develop this sophisticated monitoring system. Their investment on technology is currently paid off - since the sales of this monitoring machine is also bringing back a good revenue for their business.

The breeding of this Anthurium is also an interesting story. They used to use the seeds from the flower to grow new plant. It is not perfect since the next generation anthurium might bring in some different color flowers. Now they are using the colon technology. All anthurium flowers are breed from a cut piece of leaf. In some special lab, leaves are cut into small piece, and each piece will grow into a small plant. This way, the new generation can be guaranteed to be identical to the plant leaf that produced them. Amazing!

What is the most unbelievable, is the sorting process after flowers are ready to go to the market. Some flower buyers have certain criteria for the flowers they want to buy, something like the minimum breadth and height of the plant, minimum number of flowers in each pot. It used to be a job of human beings, very tedious. Now they developed a WPS sorting system. All pots are put in a blue color holder. Underneath the holder, there is a computer chip, which gives this pot an identity. After putting into the holder, all pots will go through a camera room, where a top view and a side view picture will be taken, and some data will be calculated. As a result, the characteristics of each flower pot are recorded. After the camera room, all flowers pots are lined up on tracks. They first waited in rows of tracks. Later these pots are literaly walking and being directed to different directions according to the different chracteristics. At the junction, the machine can recognize according to the chip under the holder, whether this pot is qualified or not. Then it will decide whether to push this pot aside, or let it keep going... ... Because of the adoption of this system, the labor on this sorting process reduced from 60 persons to 30 persons.

There are too many interesting things about growing these flowers. The heating systems spread all over the green house. In the gloomy winter when sun light is not sufficient, artificial lights will turn on. I got to know that roses need the light the most, and we saw several glowing greenhouse in that afternoon when sky turned cloudy. The ground of the green house is not even, and where the pots stay are a few centimeters low. Water mixed with necessary nutrition is directed and filled in this sunken locations. The water was then sucked up into the pots. There are certain equipment monitoring the insects population in the greenhouse, indicating the time for action.

The profit of the greenhouse is not necessary from growing flowers. Most of them get a big part of profit from generating electricity and feeding back into the national grid. The green house itself always has its own generator, burning gas to supply all necessary energy. However, when the interior need is less than what it can generate, the government would buy back the extra electricity to the national grid at a pretty good price. So there were stories like one tomato grower's last year's profit includes a bigger share from selling the electricity than selling tomato. To some extent this is a big subsidy these green house growers are benefiting from.

It is getting too long, and I still feel there are more to share... ... until the next post then.

Flower auction in the Netherlands

Many know about Holland being the world number one flower export country, few might have really witnessed the scale of its flower industry. Due to some work reasons, I went with a group of Indonesian civil servants to visit the largest flower auction site, Flora Holland, in Naaldwijk, westland, a place not far from Delft. Since the auction happens early in the morning from 6-8am, the taxi came to ring my door at 5 o'clock in the morning. The morning traffic hasn't started yet, so the whole group reached our destination at 6:30am, half an hour before the time we planned. This place is already busy working, lots of people are working in their offices. I might have to think about whether I would like to work everyday starting from 5 in the morning...

Looking inside the building, the big interior part is bigger than a stadium, full of flower carts, with both cut flowers, and pot flowers. These cut flowers were put right straight up with bottom of their stems soaked in the water. They were just auctioned, and ready to be shipped to different part of the world. In this big stadium space, these carts with flower boxes are moving constantly. The track on the floor direct them going into different queues, and waiting for the next step.

The auction rooms is just around the corner. All flower carts have gone through these auction rooms. In the process of auction, flowers are randomly picked up and shown to the buyers on the audience seats. Actually, many more bidding happens outside of this room, through the internet. However, the arrangement of shipping should start from this building. On the buyers' table, there are buttons to be pressed for bidding. On the front wall those big clocks, and other series of information board, show all information about the flower, quality, quantity, growers' name, as the flower cart passing the front of the auction room. Everything happens in a blink. It is hard for me to read all those information on the wall. Our tour guide also decided to give up explaining further - you do not need to learn that in detail. What I learned, roses worth more if the stems are long. The one meter long stem roses can be expensive. Flowers are evaluated with A, and B quality levels. Those flowers in buds are much better than those already bloom. I remember a colleague told me, those second level flowers usually goes to the domestic market in Holland. People in the Netherlands do not mind not perfect flowers, as long as they can pay at a much discounted price.

The flower auction is managed totally from growers' transition. If a grower wants to join in the corporation, it means that he/she has to commit that all his/her flower produced would be sold in the auction. 2.5% of the transaction money would be kept for the maintenance of the place. The use of the cart and boxes involves separate rental charges. On the buyers' side, they might need to rent space around before the shipping is arranged. Everyday the transaction is around 5 millions euro, while the winter time is relatively slow.

What is interesting to know is about the growers and buyers' dynamics. Growers need to make their credibility high. There is a system that evaluates their credit history. Growers with a higher credibility can sell their products at a higher price. Although in this auction place, growers do not literally meet with buyers, it is true that if your flowers do not show up often, your previous buyers might forget you. So what growers do, is to plant their flowers at different time so that they can collect almost every day. Big growers can make selling everyday in the auction hall possible.

I will have a series of stories about the flower plantation, tomato plantation, and tomato packaging, for my last week's trip. Stay tuned.

Living in the Netherlands without knowing Dutch

It has been more than a year since we moved to the Netherlands. I still remember those days last year this time we were walking around towns to look for signs of "Te Huur (For rent)". Once in a while, we got the interest to study the language, and for a while, we stopped learning, and all those we learned was slowly forgotten later. When you got the interest again, most of the things have to be learnt from the beginning again. We even paid for a computer software, Rossetta Stone, to learn the language. However, since Mr. Aawarra's boss paid for the cost of the software, we are not self--disciplined enough to being persistant in learning either.

So why not learning? My excuse most of the time when talking with people is that, most of the Dutch speaks English well. It is true. Almost everyboy you met on the streets, a shop, secretaries, doctors, all speaks good English. As long as you ask, you most of the time get your answers. Ture, there was once, we tried to ask the direction on the street to an old couple, we had trouble communicating. We tried hard to explain, still failed to get their answers. The frustration we found of not knowing the language is, we are some of the time excluded from knowing about what is happening. Once we passed by a synagogue, a group of people were listening to one person talking. We stopped, and not wanting to disturb them. So we didn't ask questions, and we didn't know what happened that time.

It is true that Dutch is not that difficult for English speakers to learn at all. It shares many similar workds, at least similar pronounciation. You could easily guess some of them if you pay attention. But I have to say that this country is not that English friendly country. Many website has both English and Dutch webpages. However, the information behind those clicks are highly varied. The Dutch website information are much more comprehensive and complete than the English version. It is not only in the website, but also in some service platforms, things like the train ticket machine in stations. You have to know Dutch to buy some certain kind of ticket.
I got to know this when I consulted a colleague about how to get the cheapest train tickets for a months' travel between two cities, which is like a train monthly ticket. She told me the name of the ticket she bought on NS ticket machine, and I only found the information in the dutch version of the website. Then I browsed through the website and there are quite a lot of information lack in the English website. It is really a disvantage of living in a country without knowing their language.

In your work environment, it might be also a frustration when others talking in Dutch around you. It is the most often instances that you feel yourself being excluded. Mr. Aawarra sometimes during the lunch time felt he was only physically present there, since his colleagues talking in Dutch. He can tolerate it well since he has been used to this kind of situations. After I worked, I started feeling a little discomfort when others came to talk with my officemate in Dutch. It is a feeling that you were kept out of knowing something, although this is already a very English friendly environment. The good part of this is, you got less disturbed by an unknown discussion while you are working on something important. You tend to be staying focused on your work.

The picture is from here. Dames means ladies, and heren means gentlemen. For lage, and Grote, try to think some similar English words.

What is a Dutch bike?

When living in US, a colleague used to bike back and forth to office every day. His home is 11 miles away, and he has a nice racing bike, and a full set of equipment for biking: helmet, speed indicator, shoes. Everyday seeing him coming and leaving the office, I all the time felt impressed. He bikes along the highway.

Recently I met a lady in her 30s, told me that she bikes everyday 20 kilometer to her office! It took her around 45 minutes one way. I am sure she doesn't use helmet, not even a racing bike. She said she had a strong bike and strong legs, that way she doesn't need to do any other sports at all. Since she already bikes 200 kilometers every week.

I like the idea of biking in the Netherlands. A big advantage of this country is that, since most of the land were reclaimed from water, the ground is rather flat. It is good for biking because there is not much uphill or downhills. However, the wind in the winter time can be rather harsh that you still need bike with gears to bike in the wind. We like this country that save so much energy in daily commute. Come and see, you will be surprised to find out that kids start biking alone maybe from 3 or 4 years old.

Here a good bike has nothing to do with mountain bikes. A good bike always relates to strong frames with back seats to carry load, normal width wheel for city biking, possibilities to add one, two or three small seats for kids in one bike. The chain is always covered, and wheels with mud-guard secured for rainy days. In US we used to have strips to bind the bottom of the right leg pant so that you clothes won't got winded into the chains. I have never seen another single person doing the same as I do. Also, there is few people using helmet. Only those people who bikes as exercise sometimes use helmets.

Another interesting attachment to the bike is its lights, front and back. It is automatically generated by your biking, through letting a motor touching the inner side of the bike frame. It generates the light as you bike, and stops lighting as you stop. To carrying load, the backwheel of the bike are most of the time covered with bags on two sides. It is enough to carry home enough supplies for two three days. Here you shop a lot more often since your home frig is smaller, faster since the stores are closer, and greener since you bike.

Hydrological hypothesis in Netherlands' planning culture

It has been a busy month and I didn't get time to blog. Coming here today I just realized that in the passing month i just wrote on the first day of the May, and then today is the last day of the May. Almost one year after coming to this orange country, I have recently thought several times that I am slowly appreciating more and more about this tiny country, a place that I call home now. Especially when you travel to some where outside, you will deeply feel what has been missing and what is going wrong in different places.

Once we took the train to the Northern end of the Netherlands, we saw the wide open Eems canal, which is bordering with Germany, it reminds us that we have been missing open water for a while. Back in the US, our most favorable place in Rhode Island was the Colt State park, which is surrounded by the water body close to the sea. Another time I traveled to the middle-northern part of the UK, I suddenly realized that I have been missing moutains in my life in the Netherlands. It is such a flat country that you can only expect some hundred meter above sea level altitude close to the German border.

There is the saying: The God made the world, and Dutch made the Netherlands. 41.5 square kilometer, which is only one fourth of the size of the New York state, and total population fewer than the Beijing Municipality. Much of this country is below sea level and thus dependent on engineering works. Two days ago, on 28 of May, it was the 75 years anniversary of the Afsluitdijk. It was on 28th May 1932 that in the presence of Queen Wilhelmina the final gap was closed between the Zuiderzee (Southern sea) and the Wadden Sea / North Sea. The south side of the Afsluitdijk was named IJsselmeer . Finally the province North-Holland was connected to the province Friesland. Many of the often weak dykes around the lake were less of a risk during storms, like the great storm of 1916.

In terms of the planning culture in this country, people always like to put forward a 'hydrological hypothesis': since the dutch have had to wrestle their country from the sea and protect it against flooding ever since, they have learned to put common good above their own individual interests. In this way, Dutch respect experts. Dutch planners thus are able to shield from direct political interference. Dutch planners have made good use of being the professionals, and come up with convincing fomulations of developmental challenges and how to deal with them.

The biggest achievement of this planning effort is the maintainence of the polycentric ring of towns and cities called the Randstad, (see the picture) around a 'green heart' of relatively open land. Three major cities around the Randstad are Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. This planning concept has held the suburban sprawl at bay, by chanelling growth to existing uban areas and only in the last resort developing a limited number of well defined green field sites.

Biking trails are the great place to enjoy your time. Only in cities it is parallel with slow moving vehicles. In most places these trails are part of the green. Trails sometimes parrallel to the highway for a while, but always with full partitions. If you can imagine biking along a eight lane express way with cars driving at more than 50 miles per hour, you would appreciate how much Dutch have appreciate in their city planning.

April 30th Queen's Day celebration

Queen's Day celebrates the birthday of the former Queen Juliana and is one of the largest, most vibrant celebrations in the Dutch calendar. Flags fly, music pumps and millions take to the streets for a national holiday. It was our first time seeing so many more people packing in the narrow Delft streets.

The current Queen Beatrix decided to maintain the holiday her mother set, and the festivities have become an integral part of the national culture. Every city and town in the country transforms itself into a fairground: bright orange pendants wave in the wind; town choirs welcome the day; all shops are shut and all trade is unregulated - the streets become an open-air market as attics are emptied for hidden treasures to sell.

That is the greatest idea: any person can set up your own stalls to sell things. As a tradition, most family will excite their kids to participate, and give the income to kids. So you will see lots of business were owned and managed by little ones. They are really not great stuffs at all. We all felt that in US you can collect much better stuff from around the trash cans :-) but on the other hand, it does show different attitude of people towards things. Americans like to renew their stuff much more often, or maybe they have to move more often. In a world when environmental concern is spreading around, Dutch people have a much smaller footprint in the world than Americans from the beginning.

Check it out:


On a slightly different note. I watched a program recently called Human Footprint. It says a two years old born in the western world have a bigger footprint on earth than a person's whole life footprint who live in Somalia - just because of the diapers consumed in those two years!

Flowers blooming in the field

It is the best time of the spring to take a train ride along the west of the Netherlands. On the way between Leiden and Harlem, you can see big field of flowers, red, yellow, purple, white, ... ... big patches of color spread out.

We were enjoying this beautiful scene a few times recently. Yesterday it was the warmest day lately, and we took the train to Amsterdam to visit a colleague for Lunch. Two young ladies sitting across the corridor besides us were reading tour guides for Amsterdam. They spoke some eastern European language that we do not understand, but I could recognize the Amsterdam map in their hands. They read to each other, and discuss sometimes, very concentrated. Sunday travelers are mostly for fun.

Mr. and Mrs. Aawara started discussing what are the funs of traveling in today's world when you mostly know everything that you would expect from the travel guides all over you. You know which hotel to live in, which train, at what time you need to take. You even know that you are going to try a special local food, with picture on the web. The only surprise left of the fun of travel is the exact feeling over there, which almost all surprises are removed before your trip. I am hesitating to plan trips too much in details.

Passing Leiden, flower fields started to appear in both side windows. I looked around, and pointing to Mr. Aawara views appeared in different windows, and noticing those two ladies were still focused on their research on touring Amsterdam. I looked at them and turned back saying, "look they are missing the most beautiful scene of the flower land." The guy sitting opposite to us heard me, and also laughed. He seemed to be a Dutch person since we heard him calling in Dutch.

After a while, suddenly he stood up, and leaned his body towards the other side of the corridor, and tried to interrupt those two ladies by touching one of them shoulder, "look outside!"

It was great. I thought I should have done this earlier.

When the train passed a highway ramp, he pointed to us, this is the way to Keukenhof. We smiled and told him that we went there last weekend. He told us that his wife worked there, at the gate. So I can't stop asking my question about the flower field: why do they let so many flowers bloom in the field rather than sell to the market?

Here is the answer: the profit of this flower business is not only on flowers. The most amount of profit is from selling bulbs. Bulbs are harvested after the blooming season and can be sold all year around. Do you know this? How come I haven't thought about this before. Here are some new knowledge about this topic:

The Netherlands' climate provides nearly perfect conditions for spring-flowering bulb production. Holland is protected by its proximity to the ocean and to the North Sea and by being 5 to 10 feet below sea level. Its winters are moderate and its springs are long and cool with almost constant rainfall, giving the bulbs the best chance for an optimal growing season. If there is too much or too little rain, an amazing, complicated engineering system involving the ditches, canals, and dikes can raise or lower the water table when needed. The soil in the western part of the country, where most of the bulbs are grown, is almost pure beach sand amended with organic compost, which provides excellent drainage for the bulbs and allows for easy, clean, mechanical digging.

This small country has focused on making the most of every inch of ground and developing specialized machinery to increase productivity. There are more than a thousand producers of spring bulbs in a relatively small area in Holland, which facilitates cooperation among growers in sharing equipment and swapping land for crop rotation instead of using chemicals. Also, because of the large numbers of people involved in the industry, much of the culture and the local activities center around spring-flowering bulbs and their flowers.

However, I still have one more question that I am not very clear. For those flower land, would it be better to be able to sell flower and bulb at the same season? Is this the optimal choice for the growers, or cutting flowers earlier would affect the growing of the bulbs?

Picture is from here.

Spring at Keukenhof

Nowhere else in the world are the flowers and olours of the spring as glorious as at Keukenhof. This is what we have been expecting the spring in the Netherlands in our first year here. Dutch friends also told us, that is some place anyone who came to the Netherlands at the right time should go visit, since it only opens around two months in the Spring time in a year.

Weather forecast told it was going to be a mostly sunny day. We decided to take route that not everyone would take to the park: only by train. From the map, it shows that the distance to the closest train station is around five kilometers. It should be a pleasant walk for us in a beautiful spring day. We got off the train at the station called Hillegom. The only problem is that some part of the roads here in the countryside are not pedestrian friendly. They still have bike paths, but not the sidewalks. What is the most exciting part, is that we were passing by those tulip lands with colorful patches of flower lands! That is all my fascination about tulips in my heart, and it came true.

Inside the park, flowers were nothing spectacular. They planted well in organized small piece of land carved out from grass land, with detailed name tags around it. Too many kinds of them to name and to remember. There are also sculptures scattered in the park.

The most enjoyable scene for us, was people's enthusiastic of picture taking. It is claimed to be the most photographed place in the world, definitely true. Almost at any spot, people are shooting, with all kinds of big or small cameras. We soon get our interest of taking pictures of those who take pictures. It is a lot more fun, to see, and everything there are in pictures.

Another interesting scene for us, was some people dressed in traditional Dutch costumes. It is quite eye catching in the park. We talked with a three ladies who seemed to come to the park together. They were volunteers to walk around in the park, with their grandma's old dresses. I really love this idea, it adds a lot more fun in the park. I even saw a family with kids, and with a small pulling cart. You somehow feel that is a movie scene, but it is real there. That is fun for everyone else, who keep asking them to take pictures with.

Being the most touristy place, it has the problems of being crowded. Being in the Europe, toilets are not free even with 13.5 euro entrance fee. For me, I wouldn't think it is necessary to come to the Netherlands just for this park. There are more pictures here.

Connection with China - Delft Blauw

When we were planning to move to Delft, a Dutch-American friend told us about cities in the Netherlands, and Delft was special for its famous porcelain. After we came, I noticed the tourist stores selling all kinds of blue and white color porcelain products. I was wondering, it was so similar to Chinese Qing Hua Ci - Blue Flower Porcelain. However, I didn't question much further.

The past weekend was a Museum weekend, and most of the museums in the Netherlands are free to the public. We took the opportunity and visited several museums at Delft. In the Prinsenhof museum, I was really amazed to find out the origin of the Delft Blauw. There were several ancient porcelain containers, it depicted Chinese figures: with special ancient style costumes. It must be either from China, or imitated Chinese porcelain. It also displays some colored porcelain products that were claimed to learn from Japanese porcelains.

I then went on to check the history of Delft Blauw. Delft was famous earlier for its brewery. Later, due to the water quality decrease in the city, many breweries had to close. After that, ceramics was developed fast since potteries imported from abroad were very popular. Delft became synonymous with ceramics - ceramics have been produced in this city for many centuries. In many Dutch households you will find a bowl or a vase with a hand-painted motif.

In the 1600’s the beautiful white and blue Chinese porcelain came to Europe, with the Dutch East India Company. It soon gained major popularity and Dutch potters started to imitate the technique. At this time porcelain was an unknown material in the Netherlands. The potters aimed to copy the Oriental products with local clay, and they were successful. It became so popular that it turned into serious competition for the local potters. In order to save their trade, they imitated the porcelain and created Delftware. Although the Delftware potters liked to use the word ’porceleyn’ for the product they produced, this was technically incorrect. Porcelain is made from porcelain clay (kaolin), whilst Delftware is made from a clay mixture that is covered with a tin glaze after it has come out of the kiln.

Although sometimes I question whether those Delft blauw souvenirs sold in the market were actually made in China, I have to agree that the varieties and functions of these porcelain products are developed quite differently in the Netherlands. Blue tiles on the wall are very special in Dutch culture, which was absent in China. Similarly in both places, the plates decorated with blue paintings are very common. However, the display of plates in shelves might be more as a western culture, in which stories and real life scenes cover the full plate, still in contemporary times. Maybe it is necessary to visit Jingdezhen again, to really think about their differences.

A belated marriage as a 50th birthday gift

During the weekend I called home and talked with my nephew who is 24 years old this year. I asked about his girlfriend, and asked whether they were planning to get married. He said, 'we both felt that marriage is only a piece of paper. Maybe when we decided to have a kid, we might get married for that'. Okay, I agree. When I was in China, I seemed to agree that the legal marriage certificate is the most important sign for a married couple. When Mr. and Mrs. Aawara got married, a social wedding was regarded as much more important than the certificate. Your relatives and friends recognize you as a couple only if they witness the wedding.

Different countries have different culture. Here in the Netherlands, marriage seems to be even more treated as 'a piece of paper'. When we just came here, Mr. Aawara's office-mate told him that 'his girlfriend is pregnant, and he is going to take parental leave'. We were both shocked to hear. A friend's brother didn't like to get married although his kid is in high school. The lady wanted, but was ok to live without a certificate with him. Recently she had her 50th birthday, and he gave her the marriage vow as the birthday gift! They were both very happy. I have heard before that 50th birthday is very important for Dutch people.

All these are due to the partnership law in 1997. In the Netherlands, Once marriage stops being about binding mothers and fathers together for the sake of the children they create, the need to get married gradually disappears. Some argued that this was due to the successful campaign for same-sex marriage, in which they tried to differentiate marriage from parenthood. This also led to the spike in Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrates, which I don't feel it makes sense to calculate any more in the Dutch context. Convince the public that marriage is not about parenthood, and increasingly parents simply stop getting married. Being registered as partners in the city hall, you have the full range of benefit that the legal married couple have: welfare benefit and tax breaks as well.

When we first moved in this current apartment, our landlady asked me, are you bf-gf, or couples. I hurriedly said, 'we are married'. And I also added, ' you live together without getting married?' Why not? Many people are like this in the Netherlands. Now thinking back, my questions was really not a question here in the Netherlands.

Since I mentioned a little about the same-sex marriage, really I haven't noticed any gay/lesbian couples here. I remember in US, people would like to announce their existences, by either putting a rainbow sticked on their car bumper, or raising a rainbow flag out of their windows. I have seen their signs many times in Providence, where the city mayor was a gay. I remember that in Denver there was a gaylord street where they liked to live. There is a 'King-sooper' grocery was called 'Queen-sooper' since you could see lots of gay couples there. However in the Netherlands, I haven't noticed any sign. I asked my Dutch friends, she said you know it exists if you know them personally. They are just part of everyone. Since their rights are protected well, there is no need to show up. Netherlands was the first country that legalized same-sex marriage in 2001.

The picture is from here.

Censorship not only in China

We recently invited a Dutch couple with their 13 years old daughter home for a Sunday lunch. After eating, we let the girl watch the recent Oscar Cartoon Ratatoulli, and four of us had a nice talk. If you haven't seen this, I would suggest you watch it, if you also like cooking like me.

One thing struck me during the conversation was a story they told us when we were talking about the recent anti-Muslim film made by far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders. Mr. told us that several years ago, there was an affair happened in between two politicians found out by some people. I tried to Google this story, but couldn't find it. What is interesting to me is what happened next: Media came in, and later decided to cover it!

This doesn't sound right to me to happen in a country like the Netherlands. Isn't this self-censorship? I do not know what went on that time, and there might be some logic in that situation. I do feel that a free media is so important in preventing bad things happen in the society. Certainly I am for the social censorship that stops things like pornography in the media. But for political reasons, trying to hide things will always lead more troubles in later time.

This is also very true in our daily life. Be relaxed and open, hiding can take away a lot of unnecessary trouble in your daily life. My impression of my Chinese friends circle, is that many people being secretive. It lacks some degree of openness that make me feel free to interact with. In terms of this, I found similarities among Dutch people. I should try to attract some dutch audience to my blog, so that I can have some debate on this. If you feel that I am similarly secretive, let me know, and ask me what you want to know :-)

To make this post a little longer, here are some sentences of Chinese interpreted by a western blogger, quite right and interesting. (You can find even more in the link, and i just copy a few here.) It deserves some reflections.

1) You're a foreigner, you wouldn't understand

I'm Chinese and I don't understand either, but I'm not going to admit it

2) Because China has 5000 years of history

A) Because I can't think of a better reason right now
B) ..... Just because

3) Things are different here

I know that it's messed-up, but I'm too stubborn to admit it

4) In China people think.....

In China the government tells us to think.....

5) Do you have a Chinese girlfriend?

My cousin is ugly but of childbearing age

6) Tibet is an integral part of China

A) I can name you the leaders of every Chinese dynasty for the last 5000 years, but not one incarnation of the Dali-Lama
B) If you can have outposts all over the world, why shouldn't we.

7) Taiwan is an integral part of China

They said it on CCTV1, so it must be true

8) The situation in China is much better than it used to be

A) The situation in Beijing and Shanghai is much better than it used to be
B) .... unless you're a farmer

Carrots in the color of Dutch Royal Family, House of Orange

Today I was reading an article on BBC news Scientists unveil 'supercarrot' saying that scientists in the US have created a genetically-engineered carrot that provides extra calcium. It was interesting until this line came into my eye:

The orange colour we know is the result of Dutch cultivation in the 17th Century, when patriotic growers turned a vegetable which was then purple into the colour of the national flag.

Isn't this amazing? I didn't know that carrot's orange color could also have anything to do with the Dutch. Then I did a search online. It turned out that carrot has a quite a long history.

The noble carrot has long been known as an orange vegetable thanks to patriotic Dutch growers who bred the vegetable to make it less bitter than the yellow varieties, and then it was adopted it as the Royal vegetable in honour of the House of Orange. Carrots were originally purple or red, with a thin root. The species did not turn orange until the 1500's when Dutch agricultural scientists and growers used a mutant yellow carrot seed from North Africa to develop a carrot in the colour of the House of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family. In an attempt to "nationalize" the country's favourite vegetable they began experiments on improving the pale yellow versions by cross breeding them with red varieties. These varieties contain beta carotene to produce orange-coloured roots This was developed to become the dominant species across the world - wonderful, sweet orange.

It is such an interesting finding to me. I remember carrots in my hometown used to be more yellowish and taste a little different. Now we consume quite a lot of carrot to make carrot juice every day, thanks to our Korean friend's healthy diet advice. I didn't know that I was in the birthplace of the orange carrot.

Another interesting finding reading the history of carrots is about the baby carrots. I have been wondering why US have so many baby carrots that I had never seen when I was in China. It was actually manufactured baby carrots. The process was invented in the late 1980's by Mike Yurosek, a California farmer, as a way of making use of carrots which are too twisted or knobbly for sale as full-size carrots. Yurosek was unhappy at having to discard as much as 400 tonnes of carrots a day because of their imperfections. He was able to find an industrial green bean cutter, which cut his carrots into 5 cm lengths, and by placing these lengths into an industrial potato peeler, he created the baby carrot. It turns out to be a great business success and today in the Disney World, burgers come two ways: either with fries or baby carrots. And 80% of carrots sales in US market are baby carrots, can you believe that?

Bike to exercise and/or bike to commute

Accidentally I came across Chris Fox Payne's comics. He has been the illustrator for the Readers Digest magazine's back cover. He has been focusing on a slice of modern American life. I like his provocative comics that make you think. Please go to his gallery to have a complete view of his work in Readers Digest. It is worthwhile to look carefully, and ponder upon.

This piece was cut from August 2007 issue which was named as 'alternative fuel'. With a gas station as the background: a huge SUV was pumping the gas from the tank, at a price well above three dollars per gallon; a biking lady is also taking a break to get something to drink- regaining some energy to continue biking.

The interpretation of the comic becomes interesting. Positive readers would like to think this might be promoting the use of bike, as a contrast to automobiles which needs to consume increasingly costly gas. However, looking through his other comics, it doesn't seem to be so sophisticated. As the title is alternative fuel, I feel it actually is more around the drink in this lady's hand. The blue color drink reminds me of the energy drink Gatorade. It is supposed to be a special drink for people doing exercise, rather than plain water, it is scientifically designed and works better than water to your body than plain water.

This brings me to think about the use of bike in US. Just look at the design of bikes in US, it is mainly for exercising. Bikes in the Netherlands are much more sturdy for commute uses: higher handles for sitting straight so that you can look at the front; strong frames to take loads including bags and kids; chain guard to prevent your pants getting dirty; dynamo attaching the front wheel to generate lights, both front and back, for biking at night; etc., etc.

In US, bikes are far away from being used as vehicles to replace automobiles. Even in the most bike friendly city Boulder Colorado, the design of the bike paths are mostly for the purpose of recreation rather than encouraging used as a commute replacement. Bikes rarely have back seats for carrying some load. My experience of biking for groceries in US was always with a heavy backpack. Later a friend gave me her bike Rosy with a front basket on it, which was so unusual. However, the basket was not strong enough to balance a one-gallon milk bottle in it. We even shipped a lying idle bike from US and found it was a bad decision. Bikes here in the Netherlands are more like those in China. Truly, bikes for commute are quite different from bikes for exercising.

It is not easy to change a city as well as people's life style into a bike friendly place, since life is so different: you go shopping more frequent since your bike wouldn't carry that much for a whole week's need; your frig can be smaller since you shop more often; shops should stay close to where you live so that you can easily reach by bikes; the city is friendly for bikes so that people on bikes are safe... ... It is too hard to imagine any US cities could someday adopt the Dutch model of living.

Back to Payne's comic, readers are allowed to have multiple interpretations. To be more pessimistic, I would think it more relates to the energy drink as an alternative fuel to the exercising athletes, rather than promoting the use of the alternative fuel powered bikes to replace the SUV. However, it is a great contrast to put them together to make people think of something.

Sinterklaas with his zwarte piet, a need of color change

Last Saturday at 2:30pm, it was the arrival of Sinterklaas, what Dutch also call Sint Nicholas. It is holiday mainly for kids. Finally I got to know that this Sinterklaas is the origin of Santa Claus in North America. It was celebrated by Dutch immigrants in the place which used to be 'New Amsterdam' in 17th century and is later called the New York City. Slowly, Sinterklaas in US merged together with the Christmas day. In its real hometown, it is still celebrated on Saint Nicholas' eve, Dec. 5th. He is a real person back in the 4th Century: a Bishop in Turkey named St. Nicholas became widely known for his good deed with poor children in Europe. He has been depicted as a tall, dignified man with big white beard, dressed in red vestments carrying a Bishop's golden crook, and riding on a white horse. He also carries a big book with all the children's names in it, which states whether they have been good or naughty in the past year.

Sintterklaas has his helpers, called 'zwarte piet' in dutch, which means 'black piet'. He was St. Nicholas' African servant. In the history, St. Nicholas carried a Birch switch used to punish children who were naughty and Zwarte Piet was said to put bad children in his sack or would leave them a lump of coal in their shoes instead of treats. Nowadays, they are more welcomed as expected gifts from Sinterklaas, and black piet is more like a joker.

Of course, the meaning of black always gives racial connotations. There are a substantive share of black population were from Dutch colonies in Suriname and Morocco. It should be a quite sensitive issue for them. We talked with our land ladies about this, and she totally agreed. When her kids were in school, she would not let them go to this kind of festivals, unless some more liberal schools would like to present some pink or blue piet.

Later it comes a more political correct explanation for the zwarte piet: Piet's face is said to be "black from soot" (as Pete has to climb down chimneys to deliver his gifts to kids). Nevertheless, the tradition has been accused of being racist, and attempts have been made to introduce Gekleurde Pieten (Coloured Piet), who are coloured blue, red, etc., instead of black. According to Wikipedia, this phenomenon of "Coloured Piet" was introduced nationally in 2006. The explanation given for this was that "Sinterklaas passed through a rainbow with his boat.

Now when I look through pictures I took that day, I really couldn't find any ethnically black kids in this event. We saw quiet a lot of kids trying to paint their faces black, wearing black stocks. Some even, were trying to cover their hair with black wig, very curly short hair styles. It is interesting to see how this festival will go as more and more immigrants are part of the society. How long can they tolerate the existence of black piet, and when will all piet become colorful?

You get a job as long as you have a degree

For a person like me who is desperately looking for a job at the moment, I would feel so much grateful if employers can tell me that this is true: you will have job as long as you have a degree, no matter what subject. Unfortunately, this was not from any employer, but from a Romanian girl I recently got to know and had some chat with. She should be in her twenties, coming from Romania four years ago, in the name of love, and now lives with her boyfriend in the Netherlands.

The love story was quite romantic. One of her friends asked her for company to come to the Netherlands attending another friend's wedding. She met her current BF in their wedding. Since then she decided to live here although in the past four years she also spent around two years time back in Romania with her Mom. Her family used to live in Spain. Her father passed away because of an accident when she was 10 years old, then her Mom decided to go back to Romania, their home country. A foreign trip four years ago led her meet with her current BF, who was from Turkey. Her BF has a business of marble trading from Turkey, but not in good shape. He also drives a truck, and has been here for ten years.

I asked her when she planed to get married. She is not ready. They have a cat at home, and she takes care of most of the housework. Her BF thinks she doesn't need to work, but she is not happy about it. In the Netherlands, partnership is legally protected, and many people just chose to live together rather than having a marriage registration. Maybe it is still not too late for her to realize that she needs a degree. She is now taking a Dutch language course, and hope to take some college entrance exam next year. She was surprised to know that I already had a diploma, although she didn't know what is a Ph.D. I tried to explain that it was the highest degree you could get, anyway. She then looked at me, and said, 'then it should be very easy to find a job!'.
'But my major is not popular.'
'no, no matter what subject, as long as you have a diploma.'
I smiled, and didn't know what to follow. She was serious, and made plans to talk with her BF and her friends about me. I couldn't say too much to discourage her warm-hearted, but really ignorant according to me, HELP.

Romania, a country in my childhood was China's communist friend. More in memory, was its gymnastic athletes winning gold medal in Olympic games. I remember maybe it was 1992, that Chinese athletes did also well and the TV broadcast had quite a lot gymnastic programs. I met another student from Romania in US, but never had close contact. Now it comes to this young lady, it gave me a concrete connection with this country.

She smokes a lot. It was a torture for me to stay in an coffee with her for an hour. Well, she had already 10 years of smoking history. Then the time she started smoking must be in her teens. In my mind there formed a picture of a teenager girl smoking and working, going to some private school during the weekend at relatively cheap cost (500 euro per year), dropping off from school, running away from home with a guy met in her trip. Quite a story, life can be so colorful. She offered me her experience that make me thinking, things that I have never experienced. She is happy, optimistic, and enthusiastic about her future. She feels the Netherlands is a great country, would like to pay for people to go to study, and much better pay relative to the amount of work (according to one of her friends' experience). It is still much better than Romania, you can not expect studying for free over there.

I am wondering whether it is because I know too much of the world, comparing to her, it also takes away the kind of happiness she own, and I would term it as ignorant. I don't want to point her out. I would like to see her having an happy and optimistic attitude towards her future.

Why do Dutch fear?

This is a question we can't understand very well. In such an affluent country with very low crime rate, why do people fear?

Proofs of fear:

1. When we were about to buy a bike, we first thought about buying a good one, maybe around 600 euro. Everyone we talked to said no. Your bike will get stolen if it is so good. Never buy a good bike. Mr. Awaara's colleague spends one euro per night for bike parking in a secured garage, that is more than 300 euro per year, can buy a pretty good bike.

2. Our land lady couple went to Suriname for three weeks' vacation and asked a friend to come to check her apartment once in a while. Once we saw the light downstairs were on, so we went to turned it off. Later we found out, that was what that friend did. She turned the light on, and later came back to turned them off. It created the feeling that there were people living and they were at home.

3. We once lost one set of our home key, and we called the police in the meantime asking for suggestions on possible reasons. The police suggested that we should get our lock changed, since you never know whether some person were trying to be evil. This made us extremely cautious in the following week, fearing someone would follow us home and find out where we live. The end of that week when there was not much hope of getting the lost key back, we finally changed the lock.

4. Maybe because of all these fears rendered, I also got frustrated sometimes. Mr. Awaara had an office trip and told me that would end after dinner around 8:00pm. I started getting panic around 10:30pm after I couldn't connect to his cellphone. The call just ended after several rings, and a sentence of unknown dutch. (He was very wrong in not trying to call me, he agreed.) For the first time in my life, I called the police number 112. The police told me that I could go to the police station to file a missing person report if I like... ... Thank God, he came back after the midnight.

Counter proof:

1. The first day here when I was lost with the taxi driver in the town and Mr. Awaara was looking for me around the train station, he met a policeman on bike. He comforted him, if the driver couldn't find the place, he should come back here. It is a small town.

2. When we forgot our key and knocked our neighbor's door, asking whether they would let us get in from their balcony, they were very helpful.

Little evidence:

Most people have lost bikes experiences. Our housing rental agent said he lost five during the time he was here. He is around late 20s. I asked how. He explained that he sometimes forgot where he parked his bike, and when he remembered and went to look for, it was gone. ... well, not very much convincing evidence that worth fearing if you are a little more careful.

Maybe my proof were not that valid, but I really don't like people behave like that. Or maybe we should say, that was not fear, that was just pre-cautious. That makes me feel better.

Ps. The painting on the top right is by Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch 'the screaming', a famous painting about fear.

Van Gogh and colors

The last post reminded me of Vincent van Gogh, the post-impressionist painter the whole world know. I remember several years ago I have read his biography translated in Chinese. Before that, I knew him only about his famous paintings. It was so sad to know that his life was full of poverty and sickness. His paintings were sold at the most expensive prices after his death, while in his life time once around 1881 he had only six hot meals within eight months since he could not afford.

During the time he painted this, he lived in lodgings, supported by his devoted brother Theo, who regularly sent him money from his own small salary. In keeping with his humanitarian outlook he painted peasants and workers. Of this Potato eaters, he wrote to Theo: `I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamp-light have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and how they have honestly earned their food'. Around this time his painting was full of moralistic flavor of social realism, a reproduction of what was seen. It is very different from his later work in Paris where he was obsessed by the symbolic and expressive values of colors. Paintings were dark and heavy around this time, and few people would like to pay for them.

Most memories about van Gogh's painting are about his boldness in using colors. The van Gogh museum in Amsterdam made his name in big size characters in the bright orange color, the color of his country. I somehow always feel the connection between the bright colors and European culture has its root in van Gogh's painting. You might feel a little bit of this in the Swedish furniture store IKEA. When you are in this piece of land, you will be amazed by the color, the most bright yellow, orange, blue or green, can suddenly jump into your eyes. People told me it might be because of the gloomy weather. The bright colors can bring some excitement when they feel depressed because of the weather. Our internet router is in orange color, with a red color cable line. I had a little while to adjust all these color changes in life. Now I am very happy to wear my orange color fleece jacket which we all felt it was too bright when in US.