February 9th: China Day 5 and return to HK

Day 24, 8:30AM: As I usually begin my mornings, I started by waking up. After this I proceeded to stay in our hotel room and chat on Skype with my parents instead of going to Dim Sum for breakfast (not exactly my idea of breakfast food). Finally, we got off to a very, very late start and decided to grab some food quickly before we had to catch our train. By the time we packed and checked out of the hotel, we had about 10 minutes to get our lunch, and it was probably the fastest meal I’ve ever had because naturally, my meal arrived about 5 minutes after everyone else’s. Funny how that works, isn’t it? So next we literally ran to the MTR to get to the train station and ended up getting there in plenty of time.

When we got back to Shenzhen, we walked back to the border and I bought my Star trek DVDs, and also some James Bond movies as well as the Stargate Atlantis episodes. This turned out to be a double edge sword, because I then spent the next two and a half weeks watching 5-6 episodes each day, but that’s a whole other story. So, we then came back across the border to HK, took the train back to UST and I was home. Oh, before we left Shenzhen I was walking down a hallway to use a restroom, and as I was about to enter the door, I suddenly had to duck. The ceiling was about 5’ 9” tall at this point. I guess China just wasn’t designed with me in mind.

This was our view from the window of our hotel

The area right next to our hotel wasn't exactly the nicest.

I enjoyed watching the view fro our window.

This is the first McDonald's in China!

February 8th: China Day 4

Day 23, Sometime after 11AM: I confess, I slept in very late again today. In fact, probably until almost 11:30AM. As you’ll see later, I fixed this problem of sleeping in on my Thailand trip, but that’s another story.

We started out by going to a mall and ate at a Western restaurant which had really bad service, cost too much, and didn’t taste that good. Then we went to another mall and ended up getting lost inside it because it was so big. We also explored the street vendors and eventually went to a bookstore to meet CS and Wai Zin. We ended up spending 2.5 hours in the bookstore while waiting until it was time to leave for our dinner reservations, which was incredibly long. I ended up reading parts of several books and found one book on the feasibility of the gadgets in James Bond movies! So, I ended up buying that book and then read several interesting conspiracy theories in another book about things ranging from JFK, to the Titanic (I hadn’t heard that one before), to the moon landings.

After that we walked a long ways to the Dim Sum place for dinner, where again I didn’t find much food I liked and primarily ate rice. Once we got back to the hotel I went over to the other guy’s room and I had my first experience watching American Idol. Yes, I have never seen the show before and my first time seeing it was in China. It was actually decently interesting to watch and there was a guy who wrote a song that was very catchy, but he couldn’t sing that well and was too over the top. In fact, that song will probably become a huge hit (if any of you watch the show it was the song about brothers forever or something like that).

Next, we went down to rent a Mahjong table in the hotel and it was amazing - the table was automatic!! When the game was over you pushed a button and the center of the table would rise up, you shove all the tiles into it, then it closes and a new set of tiles automatically rises up in front of each person perfectly stacked. I wasn’t actually playing and still don’t know the rules, but that was such a cool table! Oh, and today, everyone stared at me again.

This is me at the Dim Sum restaraunt

February 7th: China Day 3 - At the Zoo

Day 22, 10:45AM: I open my eye to a very dark room. CS is gone and my alarm is ringing for the 7^th time. I manage to pull myself out of bed and turn it off as I realize that it’s already almost 11. The plan was that Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, and Lucas would come and knock on my door at 10:30 and we would go to the zoo. Shoot, they probably knocked and then left without me. So I get up, get ready, and knock on their door, expecting them to be gone and being stuck alone for the day. Knock, Knock. No answer. I listen and don’t hear any noises coming from the room. Great. I slept in too late. Suddenly, much to my surprise Chang Sheng opens the door with a very sleepy look on his face. They were still asleep when I knocked. So, while I waited until 12:30 for them to wake up and get ready I began my blog entry on the first day in China (that really, really, absurdly long entry).

Finally we were ready to go to the zoo, but as usual, the top priority was food (those Singaporeans sure do love to eat!). We went to a restaurant across the street where I almost died. Well, perhaps died is a bit strong, but at least I started to get sick after seeing the menu. In fact, if we hadn’t gone to dinner the previous night where the chicken was served with the head still attached, I would have thrown up while reading this menu. I assure you I’m not joking. This menu was kind enough to have the description with the dish and very nice pictures to the side so you can see exactly what you’re ordering. Yup, that meant I got to see pictures of the pigeon dishes, cut chicken (feet and head included), pig intestine, suckling pig (where they cook a baby pig and it comes to you still looking like a baby pig on your food dish), even foi gras and shark fin soup! So I let them do the food ordering and just focus on not throwing up. They were kind enough to not order anything of those truly bizarre dishes and I ended up eating some pretty good sweet and sour pork and white rice.

We depart the restaurant and our adventure begins! Before going to dinner we talked to the people at the desk of the hotel to ask them how to get to the zoo and they told us to get on the 226 bus. OK, not that hard. So we cross the street to the bus stops when we discover that none of them are stops for the 226 bus. So we did what any intelligent traveler would do – we began to walk around trying to find the bus stop instead of asking for directions. We managed to walk several city blocks searching every bus stop we could see, and we even saw several 226 busses driving and tired to follow them, but we could never figure out where they stopped. We eventually asked locals for directions to the bus stop, but all three people we asked were somewhat rude and wouldn’t help us. So we keep following the bus and wind up right back at the hotel – this was clearly not working. So 45 minutes have passed and we’re no close to finding the stop. We keep following the 226 busses we see driving past us but still can’t find the stop, so we eventually ask a policeman standing on the street and he tells us the stop is about 20 meter away. So what have we learned from this you might ask? Get a map before you go trying to find bus stops.

So here we are at the bus stop after over an hour of searching and we wait for the bus. And we wait. Then we wait some more. This is followed by some more waiting. By now we’re been waiting for 20 minutes now and still no 226 bus, but we’ve seen all the other busses that stop at this place multiple times. In fact, I am going to digress for a moment. The entire time we’ve been in Guangzhou I’ve seen exactly three other white people. Three. So, I thought it was bad in Hong Kong when I’d occasionally get a few stares on the MTR, but this was SO much worse. I’d been able to ignore it and not think about it up until this point, but I noticed something curious while waiting for the bus. Whenever a bus would drive up and stop in front of us I saw most of the people in the bus glance over at me, but only a few would stare. But, the second the bus began pulling away the entire side of the bus would turn their heads in unison and just stare at me as it pulled away. I’m not joking and I’m not exaggerating either – it was pretty creepy. People walking on the other side of the street also watched me as they walked along and any babies walking by would stare even more. The entire time I felt like I was a bacteria in a laboratory under a microscope with someone watching my every move. Pretty awkward to say the least.

So, over 30 minutes have gone by now and still no 226 bus. Just our luck. We decide to wait another 10 minutes and then leave if the bus still hasn’t arrived. So, about 9 minutes go by and we’re about to leave when miraculously the bus arrives. We’re finally off to the zoo!

The bus then took about half an hour of driving through the city before we arrive at a bus depot. A bus depot??? What happened to the zoo? Apparently, our conversation at the hotel had gone something like this (although it was spoken in mandarin):

us: May i know how we can get to the “dong wu yuan” (that means zoo) ?

hotel: Oh, just take bus 221 from the bus stop outside the hotel and you will reach there is about one hour plus.

us: Is there any METRO stations near it?

hotel: no, you can only take a cab or bus.

us: Thanks, just to confirm, this is the one? (while pointing at the places of interest map)

hotel: yes yes.

us: wow… its more simple than we thought!

Turns out that the name of this bus interchange and the zoo are almost identical and so they gave us the wrong directions (you’d think they would have figured out we wanted the zoo based on the fact that we were pointing to the ZOO the whole time on the map). In our first bit of good luck since the day began, there was another bus at the interchange that was leaving right then for the zoo so we hopped on. Unfortunately, this bus took almost an hour to get us to the zoo, but we arrived nevertheless! So, after over two and a half hours of traveling we got to the zoo!

You can see the "Dongwuyuan" in the name

The zoo was huge, just like any American zoo I’ve been to. We bought out tickets and went in, deciding to come back to the safari and try and see the tiger show first. When I said that the zoo was huge, I meant it. It took us almost 15 minutes of close to running speeds to arrive at the show just after it started, including running through the crowds for the last couple hundred meters.

*If the video does not show on facebook, please go to the actual blog page to see it.

The tiger show was really cool and there are some videos for you. After the tiger show we saw an elephant show, pandas, animals from Australia, and then headed back to the safari.

Pandas!!!!

Drunken Panda!

Koalas!

Baby Hippo!

Baby White Tigers!!! I really liked these guys.

To our immense disappointment, when we arrived the safari was closed when we got back there. So, it was dusk at this point and we began wondering around the zoo to see as many animals as we could before they kicked us out. We ended up wondering further into the zoo until it was very dark as we tried to find an exit. After walking along a path to the exit for about 20 minutes a golf kart thing came by to drive us, which we were happy about and had been waiting for one to pick us up for the past half hour. So, it starts to drive and gets about 200 meters before it turns sharply and stops. We’re at the exit. Ok, so our ride wasn’t quite as much fun as we hoped. We then exited and crammed onto a bus to take us to the metro station and went back to the hotel. Oh, and the entire ride back took about 20 minutes by subway.

For dinner we found a KFC (much to my happiness) and had dinner. Although the popcorn chicken there didn’t taste as good as in the US, I did learn that if you just point to picture menus you can always order the food you want. We then returned to our hotel rooms and watched a Hong Kong movie on TV which was really good. After the movie they asked me if I wanted to go to a club or bar with them. Now, as you know I don’t drink and I’m amazingly awkward if you try to get me to dance, coupled with the fact that I feel like the only white guy in the entire city. In the end, I decided that I would regret it if I didn’t go with them and we left. We just sort of wondered down the street and looked in a couple of clubs, which were amazingly loud and smoky. One in particular I couldn’t hear the guy next to me screaming in my ear and I was coughing because there was so much smoke. All in all a very interesting experience and I’m quite glad I went and got to see what the nightlife was like. After that little adventure we went to McDonald’s for a snack where we had a good discussion about American politics and conspiracy theories. Our conversation continued back in their room where we ventured onto diseases, Chinese medicine, more conspiracy theories, UFOs, technology, ext.

So, my third day in china came to an end, and, most importantly, I learned to be extra careful when asking for directions in other languages.

February 6th: China Day 2 + Haircut

Day 21, 7:30AM: After my “experience” the previous night, I woke up in the spa very tired, but ready to leave. We left the spa and grabbed some breakfast before buying our train tickets for the trip to Guangzhou. The first thing to catch my attention was that our train ticket had no barcode. Instead, it actually had a RFID chip embedded in the paper so you just waved it over the machine and it let you in. That was really cool.

The train itself looked like an modern train, it was electrically powered and traveled at about 200 kph. I enjoyed sitting in my window seat listening to my iPod and reflecting on my experience the day before and contemplating life in general (I seem to do it a lot). It was interesting to see how the transition from city to rural landscape, complete with farming and straw houses in some areas next to giant freeways. China is certainly a land of contrasts. The other interesting thing was that I decided to actually start drawing up the schematics for my crazy invention I’m going to try and build next summer and it felt good to finally get something on paper after thinking about it for so many years.


Ri Huang, CS, Chang Sheng, me, and Lucas by the train

When we arrived in Guangzhou we took the subway from the train station directly to our hotel, once again using RFID chips for our tickets. It really surprised me how all the forms of transportation in Asia seem to use RFID chips, yet I’ve never seen them in use in the US. Perhaps this is because I rarely take public transportation in the US. Nevertheless, we arrived at our hotel and got checked in – into our rooms on the 18th floor that is. I rarely stay on floors that high up because my mother hates heights so when traveling with my family we are always on a very low floor, but I enjoyed the view that our room offered. I found it fascinating to look out and see the contrasts of China. Right next to our hotel were very tightly packed houses of sorts in what looked like an old and poor part of town, but right next to it were skyscrapers. I will include pictures of this in a later post. Two things in particular caught my eye, however. First, everywhere on the horizon I looked I could see construction cranes of new skyscrapers being raised. Second, the smog was pretty bad, not that I was terribly surprised by it.

Feeling adventurous, we journey out into the streets to grab some lunch. We ate at a nearby street café because most of the stores were closed due to the New Year. After walking around for a bit more CS said he wanted to get a haircut, so Ri Huang, CS, Deborah, and I went to find a haircut place near the hotel while Wai Zin, Chang Sheng, and Lucas went and did something else (I know, how descriptive of me). We found a place literally next to the hotel that looked really nice and decided to try it. This was the start of my next ‘experience.”

First off, ask yourself: “If I were in another country where they don’t speak any languages I know, how easy would it be to get a haircut?” Let me give you a hint, it’s pretty hard. But, I just successfully got through a spa where no one spoke English, so a haircut shouldn’t be that hard, right? Wrong. You have to communicate a lot of information to the person who is cutting your hair, when getting a massage they just do it, there’s no need for communication. So, it begins when they take you in the back and wash your hair. This part was weird for me. Remember how I said I don’t like other people touching me? Now I have a random guy washing my hair for me, it was slightly awkward to say the least. So I managed to get through it easily enough, although I felt bad that I couldn’t talk to him. At one point I did hear him ask Deborah where I was from and I heard her say ‘American’ in Chinese, so I could tell I was rusty, but there was hope for me yet. After washing my hair (very thoroughly I might add) they sat me in the chair to get my hair cut. This is where the troubles began. First, they offer you a beverage while your hair is being cut, which I said I didn’t want, and they weren’t quite sure what to do about that.

Then, I saw a group of 4 of them standing and looking at me talking amongst themselves, presumably trying to figure out what to do with me. CS to the rescues! He came over and was able to translate what I wanted done with my hair. I will spare the details of the next 45 minutes while the guy cut my hair, but he kept leaving and not returning for several minutes at a time and he couldn’t ask me what I wanted done. This only compounded the problem that I like my hair short, but my hair was already shorter than everyone else’s in the salon. So in the end, I looked like David Beckham. Yes, not my normal haircut, but I’m guessing it was one of the few hairstyles the guy knew. After he was done cutting, they then wash your hair again, which was just as weird as the first time. In total, 68 RMB (about 10 USD). Yeah, everything is cheap in China.

So, this was my second experience in a very short time period where I felt very bad about how much I was paying for the service I was getting. I don’t like other people doing things like that for me and I feel very guilty knowing how little they get paid. The other things I noticed was how dependant I was on my friends for everything here because so few people speak English. Also, I haven’t used my Chinese in 2 years, so I’m beyond rusty. Not to mention I had trouble learning it the first time around.

After our haircuts we went to a different part of town and walked around, the highlight of which was when we were walking outside a mall and there was a musical fountain, the sort where they time the water effects to music. Much to my surprise, they were playing “The Final Countdown” which I had first heard about two weeks ago. That surprised me a bit, but I thought it was kind of cool. After that came New Years dinner!

For the faint of stomach, it might not be a good idea to be eating food while reading this because I am about to describe the culinary items that shocked me during dinner. I knew it would be outside my comfort zone when we walked in the restaurant and the front is lined with fish tanks. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the fish in the tanks are your seafood. In Asia they display the live fish for you to see so that you know your seafood is fresh. We then went upstairs and actually had a semi-private room for our dinner. So, the first surprise awaiting me during dinner was the first dish to come out: pig leg. They take most of the meat off the leg, but include the leg (mostly bones at this point) on the dish so you can get all of the meat out of the hard to reach areas. When they set down the plate and there was literally a pig’s foot on it, I had to subdue the gag reflex for the next several minutes. Once I finally got used to it my next shock arrived: our chicken. We had ordered half a chicken as one of the plates and indeed out came half a chicken – complete with half a head. Yes, half a head. Insert gag reflex here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So, it looked as though someone had taken a chicken and cut it in half with a saw, then cooked it, cut it up a bit, and served it. I must admit, I came close to throwing up when they set down the chicken plate and Ri Huang saw them setting it down and tried to cover it up so I couldn’t see it (I appreciated his attempt) but it was too late. He must have seen the expression on my face and kept telling me to look away but the damage was done. After the chicken, the unagi (fried eel) didn’t bother me as much as it usually does and the goose didn’t either. Here are some pictures of our meal.




The bowl is the eel


The pig claw is the front dish




Goose




Sweet and Sour Pork, finally a dish i can eat!


Potatoe


These ones reminded me of pill bugs.



So, towards the end of the meal I was lucky enough to be introduced to a Singaporean custom that I think I’ll adopt for my own use when I get back to the US. It began when Chang Sheng and Lucas wanted to order a beer and did so. The waiter obliged by pouring the bottle into 7 small glasses for each of us. At this point I’m thinking ‘not again.’ I’ve been told by other people that beer tastes bad, and I was none too eager to try it. But once again I found myself in a situation where everyone else had their cups in the hand raised up at the table and figured ‘why not?’ So, with great reluctance I raised my glass. At this point I was expecting us to simply toast and get it over with. I was wrong. I’m not entirely clear on the tradition, but it involved standing up, toasting our glass, and yelling “Yamseng” as loud as we could. So, we’re standing there and they instructed me on what to say so it started out loud, and by the time we were done we were shouting at the top of our lungs “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMSENG!” Yelling that one word lasted over a minute. After that everyone else drank their beer as I sat there waiting to try mine and none too eager enthusiastic. So, once again for your viewing pleasure is my first taste of beer.


The Beckham hairstyle is quite apparent in this video.

Yeah, as you can guess from my expression, it tasted really bad. I do not enjoy the taste of alcohol (even though I’ve only had very small amounts). By the time I was done tasting it, everyone else at the table had already finished theirs (including the girls). Honestly, I was slightly embarrassed at this but it tasted DISGUSTING! After a couple minutes I decided to brace myself and right as CS and Wai Zin were telling me not to worry about it (they saw me just staring at my glass) I downed it in about three gulps. It was indeed as bad as I thought it would be.

After our dinner we went to Teemall, which used to be the largest mall in China and to none other than the arcade! The arcade was enormous! It was so big I even got lost inside it a few times. We hung out there are a while and I tried a tank simulator where you sit in a chair that’s on hydraulics and it shakes you around as you move up and down terrain and get hit by enemy fire.







After walking around the mall until 10PM we headed back to the hotel. When we got back I was looking forward to sleep after such a short night yesterday, but this was the Chinese New Year – certainly no time for sleep! Instead we went across the river in front of our hotel to a giant festival. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, but there were probably hundreds of thousands of people packed into the street for over a mile with shops lining the center. The atmosphere was vibrant and festive unlike anything I’ve ever been in before. The one nice thing about having me in their group was that I was about a head taller than most other people there, which meant I could spot people if we got separated and they could easily find me in the seas of people.


Can you see me?


Yeah, i stick out that much...


This gives you a small sense of the crows that were there to celebrate. imagine this going on for over a mile!!!






Oh, I forgot to mention that it was COLD again!!! Yes, lucky me it was freezing. Not as bad as Hong Kong had been, but I was still shivering with my jacket on. The unfortunate part of the festival is that the mile we walked was away from our hotel, meaning that we either had to take a taxi back or walk the one and a half miles. I opted to walk back with Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, and Lucas and it was actually quite fun walking back, but still very cold. The most surprising thing to happen on the way back was when we were walking in an underground tunnel to cross the street and some guy was throwing those Cherry Bomb (the ones that make a loud sound when you throw them on the ground) at the homeless people trying to sleep in there. Being inside the tunnel it was extremely loud and my ears were ringing. As I walked up the stairs on the other side he threw one at my feet and I lost hearing in both ears for the next minute or so.

All in all, it was an interesting day, and I managed to keep this down to 4.5 pages single spaced. W00t!