Daniel Does China

Hong Kong in a nutshell

2008-01-09T04:38:00.001-08:00

Today, I intended to go to a couple of places I knew had big markets so I could buy the last few presents I need to buy. I got slightly sidetracked by the internet in the morning, but I got out, and found the subway station. (Actually, I should say 'metro' station, as the Chinese have the annoying habit of calling underground passageways 'subway's)

In Hong Kong they have these nifty cards, called Octopus Cards, which you put some money on, and then can use anywhere. It is like a super smart card. They accept them at restaurants, convenience stores, and most importantly, the metro and the buses. The absolutely coolest part about them though is that they work via magic.

All you have to do is wave your card past the reader and it reads it. Not like with a laser scanner or something, because it still works when it is inside a wallet. I've been trying to find out how they work, but I'm not 100% sure. One of them said something about induction on it, which kind of makes sense, but is mindblowing nonetheless.

Anyhow, to use the metro, you wave your card when you enter the metro, and then you wave it again when you leave at a different station, and the card knows how far you've gone. This part is also magic.

I went to the first market, a place called "Sham Shui Po", which I'm pretty sure it impossible to pronounce correctly. They have there a marketplace, but it doesn't sell the right sorts of things. They sell useful things there, like computer components, or clothes. I don't think anyone wants jeans from China. So I left that area, and it was back to the metro.

The next place I visited was "Tsim Sha Tsui", which is even harder to pronounce than Sham Shui Po. This place had real stores, as opposed to the street market in Sham Shui Po. Unfortunately, all the stores (and I do mean all of them) seemed to be selling jewelery or watches. Or both. This is an area dominated by East Indian people, and they seem to have a somewhat different approach than Chinese people to pressure sales.

Chinese people (and this is a huge generalization, I know) tend to have their little spiel that they'll run up to you and say, but they don't really engage you. They just say there thing at you, and hope that you'll be interested. I rather like this approach, since at least it is direct.

The East Indian gentlemen I ran into are much different. They'll come up to you and start talking to you, ask you where you're from, how long you're staying in Hong Kong and so on. Then they'll tell you they've got a super deal for you, they'll make you a suit! For cheap! And it'll be done before you get on the plane tomorrow! Amazing! Then you walk away, because WHY WOULD YOU BUY A SUIT ON HOLIDAYS?

I want to be clear that I don't think all East Indian people are this way, or even that it is a significant aspect of their culture. It's just the East Indian people in this one particular section of Hong Kong who are doing this one particular thing do it in this way.

I eventually found a store that was selling the sort of things I was looking for, and was about to go back to the hotel, when I saw a sign pointing to a tourist-y location called the Avenue of Stars that I'd been wanting to go to since I saw a blurb about it on the train. So I followed the signs through the metro station (which turned out to be HUGE. It's the largest underground structure I have ever seen) and eventually came out and found the last sign, which pointed to...a MALL.

Yes, the only way to access the Avenue of Stars is through a mall. Very clever that. I eventually got there, and it was pretty cool. You know the Walk of Fame in Hollywood? It's basically that, except for Hong Kong actors. Of which there are a lot. I saw Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat and Bruce Lee's handprints, among others. They also had some signs about the history of Hong Kong cinema, which I thought was fascinating, and I will probably bore people with when I get home.

Also: the view. The Avenue is actually a walkway built over the ocean, and it had one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Also the sun was shining, and it was in the high twenties, temperature-wise. All in all, a beautiful place.

I sat down to enjoy it for a moment, but only a moment, because another man (also East Indian) approached me. He kept calling me brother, and asked me about where I was from, and how long I was staying in Hong Kong (so far, par for the course).

Then, he told me I was very lucky, and asked me to hold out my right hand, which I did. Then he read my palm. Turns out, I have a long life ahead of me, but I have a somewhat scattershot money line, and my loveline dictates that I will be very generous, but no one will appreciate me. So says my palm.

Then he informed me that two women are in love with me, but I am only in love with one of them (which was news to me. If whoever these two women are could please identify themselves, that would be super. I don't want to be surprised by a palm reader again). Then he did a very simple mind reading trick, which I messed up by not choosing "rose" when he asked me to name three flowers. (The way the trick works is this: He writes down the word "rose" on a piece of paper, and then gives it to me. Then he asks me for three flower names, which he writes down. Almost every guy in the world, and most women when asked for three flowers will include 'rose' on the list. Then, he asks me to pick one, and if it's rose, he says, "AHA, I guessed right" when I open the piece of paper he gave me. If it's not, then he says I eliminated it and asks me to pick again, until either I pick rose, or it's the only one left, in which case, he claims he read my mind. I however, didn't write Rose, so he couldn't do the trick. So next time he only let me pick two of the things, and supplied the third himself.)

Then he told me that on January 28, 2008, I would get some good news, but ONLY if I was a generous man, and gave him some money for charity. See, he was raising money for a poor family. He was about to pull the same trick as he tried with the flowers on me to make me pick $500 (Hong Kong Dollars) to give to him, when I told him I didn't have any money (which is sort of true) and abruptly walked away. I was rather annoyed that my relaxing sit in the sun was ruined.

Later, as I was reading a sign, another East Indian man approached me, and told me his name was Mr. Yogi, and the man I had spoken to earlier was his student. So, he would read my fortunes much better. He did much the same spiel as the other guy did, except with a much heavier emphasis on my love life. He promised me that within 14 days, my true love (whose name I told him was Sophie, by the way. I used my made up girlfriend on him) would be back with me (I also told him we had broken up, after dating for two years. If he's going to make stuff up for me, I'm going to make stuff up for him). Then he wrote something down on a piece of paper, and said that if he could predict my reactions accurately, I would give him $500. He didn't accept my no money excuse, and offered to take me to an ATM. I told him to read his own fortune, which was obviously not very lucky, and walked away.

You see, I have learned. If someone is trying to swindle you, it is OK to be rude to them. $500 HKD is about $65 CAD (still less than I paid for that damned tea. I travelled halfway across China for less than the price of that tea). There is no way I am paying someone that much to read my fortune, especially when I didn't ask them to. On the upside, I do enjoy watching someone try to swindle me. I knew what was up right away, as soon as he brought up money, but I kept playing along for a while, just for fun. I do wonder if anyone falls for it though. I mean, who gives someone $65 for a magic trick? If he could snare one sucker an hour, he'd be making as much as a mid-range lawyer.

So: con averted! Until I went shopping again later, that is. I went into an extremely sketchy looking shopping area near my hotel, and found a store that was selling DVDs. I was pretty sure that something was up, but it was cheap enough to waste the cash finding out. What you do is write down the numbers of the DVDs you want, pay them, and they give you a number. Then, you wait for 20 minutes, come back and they have your DVDs. If I was thinking clearly, it would have been obvious what the scam was, but I was still surprised when I came back 20 minutes later and their store was GONE. As in, all of their DVD cases and everything just disappeared like they were never there.

I honestly don't understand how that can work for them. I mean, they managed to swindle me out of $5 CAD, but that's not really very much, and they can't very well do that every day or people are going to get angry at them. And they certainly can't do it to everyone, since they could only be open 20 minutes at a time.

However, while I was wandering the 'mall' I was in, looking for some trace of them (I do like to believe the best in people, even after they've taken my money), some other nice young boys showed me the store they were just opening (at 4 pm) which was full of porn. He informed me I would like it very much, and when I told him it wasn't quite what I was looking for (although maybe some people would like Chinese porn as a present), he told me that it actually was. I just left.

All in all, I feel like I went out and experienced Hong Kong (and was the target of a scam not once, not twice, but three times, not including the people who offered to sell me Rolex watches, or the "Opal Exhibition" that is actually a store that they trap you inside of. They have locking gates and everything). A good last day, if ever I saw one.

The south of China has some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. The city of Hong Kong is situated on around a glimmering harbour, with tree covered hills surrounding it, with rivers and lakes not too far off. It is gorgeous. However, I vastly prefer the culture of northern China. I liked the atmosphere, I liked the history, and I much preferred the way people sold things. Although I still like price tags over bargaining. Unless I'm feeling cranky. Then I could bargain up a storm.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about coming home. On the one hand, I'm very excited to see everyone back in PG, and also about being somewhere where everyone speaks proper English (it seems like some sort of impossible paradise that can't ever really exist). I'm also happy to leave a place where I'm constantly unsure. I never know what the proper custom to follow is, or what people actually mean.

On the other hand, I think China has probably been the greatest adventure of my life. I had almost constant excitement. Any time I wanted something interesting, all I had to do was walk out my front door and pick a direction. In addition to that, I feel like I've been completely changed, intellectually. This is not to say that I suddenly think that everything I believed before was wrong. No, quite the opposite. Being faced with a country so different from what I'm used to really laid bare what my basic beliefs really are. And, seeing how things are here, where many many of my core values are violated, made me fairly certain that I'm happy with them.

This is not to say I suddenly think I'm right about everything. This is just my core value system being validated to myself. Pretty important process.

OK, now I have to try and fit all the crap I've got into the bags that I have. I have one carry-on sized bag and three checked-luggage sized bag, and somehow I have to reduce that to two checked-luggage sized bags. I wish I had played more tetris!

This here is the second to last blog post ever for this blog (barring some sort of disaster). I'm going to do one big summing up when I get home, which promises to be epic. Other than that, I'll see most of you in a few days!

(No pictures today, as I forgot to bring my camera. Give me a break, it's the last day. My mind's not on tourism anymore)

A Cross Country Trek

2008-01-08T04:20:00.000-08:00

Hello, noble readers. In the last two days I have traveled over 1400 km in a country where I can only read about half the signs and no one on the trains speak my language. It was pretty epic.

I got up, got all ready to go and was all set for railroading. I wore my big coat, even though it was rather warm in Shanghai that morning, and bound to be even warmer in Guangzhou. However, that coat is huge. I mean absolutely huge. I think you could measure its volume in litres.

I got myself to the correct railway station, (the big cities aren't content with just one railway station) got to the waiting room, and rested. My packsack is very heavy. Carrying it around railway stations is rather tiring.

The way to figure out how to get on a train, when your ticket is in another language, except for some random numbers, is to follow everybody else. So when everyone stands up, you stand up too. When they head for the train, you head for the train too. It works quite well.

I got on the train, found my bunk (I picked the upper bunk on the bunk bed when I bought my ticket, so I could just sit up there and ignore the other people in my room.) and got settled in. As it turns out, the only other person in my berth was a chinese lady who may or may not have spoken any English at all. She only ever spoke Chinese at me.

I spent the whole day (since I was confined to a train) reading and playing games on my computer. A nice day, in other words. Unfortunately, I have this problem when I am on trains in China. I don't know how to get food. There is a dining car, but every time I go into one, everyone just sort of looks at me, and I don't know what to do.

Eventually, since I hadn't eaten for 12 hours, I was hungry enough that I looked up the Chinese word for eat, walked into the dining car, pointed at myself and said it. This was enough, and I got myself some food, which was pretty stellar. Not the food, it was pretty lame. The fact that I was eating was super exciting.

I slept fitfully all night (the train stops, often several times an hour, and every time it does so, it bangs around a bit, blows its whistle and the station sounds a warning bell. ALSO they like to have bright lights in the station). I got to Guangzhou early, and dragged myself out of the station, managed to find a taxi (they were all driving by, empty, in an area where you couldn't access them) and got to the hotel where my luggage was being stored.

I double checked the time of my next train, and the name of my hotel in Hong Kong, so I would be all ready. I took a taxi to the other train station in Guangzhou (it would be entirely too convenient to have both trains I needed at the same station).

Now being the fore-thinking person that I am, I had purchased my ticket online, and needed to pick it up.

The thing with the Guangzhou East train station is that it has 5 floors. Why this is the case, I do not know, but there are. The ticket office was on the second floor. So I went there. I asked where to pick up my tickets, she said the 4th floor. So I went to the 4th floor.

On the 4th floor, they told me to go back to the 2nd floor. I tried to get internet access at that point, to see what the website had to say, but there was no network there. So it was back to the second floor.

I showed the lady there my laptop with the ticket reservation email open (which I had cleverly left open when I was at the hotel.) She explained to me that when you buy a ticket online to go from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, you have to pick it up in....HONG KONG. I was NOT impressed by this.

Still, not a huge deal. Train tickets are only 180 Yuan ( = $25 CAD). So I'd buy a new one. But what's this? They don't take credit card at the station, only cash? Oh, and I don't have enough cash because I was leaving the country and didn't need it anymore? Oh, how WONDERFUL. Luckily (?) for me there was an ATM. It was on the first floor.

Now, it is time to point something out here. I had picked up my luggage from the hotel, so I was now carrying two suitcases and a large packsack. I estimate the total weight of my luggage at 120 pounds. Most of the time, I could drag my suitcases on the ground, so it was only the 40 lb packsack I had to worry about. But as it turns out the only way to get down from the second to the first floor is stairs. So guess who was carrying 120 lbs of luggage down a huge flight of stairs. It was me.

I found the ATM on the first floor, and tried to use my credit card to withdraw cash. But for some unknown reason, they decided to accept only 6 digit pins on this machine. Mine is 4. In order to get that to work, you're supposed to put two 0's after your number. But do you think that worked? No it did not. I tried it over and over again, trying the 0's in different places, and trying double other numbers at the end. But it did not work.

OK, so I would try and get cash back when I bought something then. Ha ha, silly me, NOWHERE in the station takes credit card, except for the Starbucks, and they don't have cash-back. I asked the information lady, and she said there was another ATM downstairs. So, I went into the basement, went to the ATM, typed in my pin number, and it said...I had tried my pin too many times that day on my card. I couldn't use it. If there wasn't a security guard standing right there, I might have kicked that machine. Repeatedly.

Now, this was only my credit card. I could still potentially use my bank card. However, I hadn't called them to let them know I was in China, and I was told that they'll freeze your account if you try to use your card in a foreign country without letting them know first.

So, I need to call them. There were payphones (on the same level even) but you needed some kind of card to use them. So I tried to purchase a card (back up on level 1 and 2). But the only thing I managed to purchase was a cell phone long distance card. This was not on purpose.

Then I remembered I had a cell phone, and maybe magically with a long distance card, it would work. But, because my cell phone has been acting very strangely, I hadn't charged it so it was dead. But I had a power cable. So I tried outlets on the second and fourth floor, but they were both deactivated. I tried asking some stores to use their phone, but I couldn't make a call outside China.

At this point, I sat down amid my luggage and considered my options. They were extremely limited. In fact, for a while, I thought my options might be to find a hotel, call the bank from the hotel, and come to Hong Kong the next day. That would be bad for me though, since I would be paying for two hotels tonight.

My other option was to try my bank card and hope. So it was back to the basement (from the fourth floor). And....it worked! I got my cash, bought my ticket and got on the train. It took me two and a half hours of walking all over that station with my 120 lbs of luggage to get a train ticket that I had already bought. I am distinctly unimpressed with that train station just now.

However, I am now in Hong Kong, in my very tiny hotel room. Very tiny. The main part is about the size of a cubicle, and the bathroom must be about 16 square feet, and that includes a shower. I am, however, very happy to be here. You see, in Hong Kong, just about everyone speaks English. Decent English too, so you can ask for clarification on things, which is not something I could usually do in mainland China.

Tomorrow I am going shopping for the last of the presents I am bringing back, and the day after I am out of here! My plane leaves at 2 in the afternoon, and arrives in Vancouver at 9 am the same day. How crazy is that?

Oh, and my mom posted a comment about it, but I'm guessing not everyone checks those repeatedly to see if they're updated; My flight gets in to PG at about 2pm. My parents are picking me up from the airport, and taking me to their place for dinner. After dinner (about 6:00-6:30) I will be back at my apartment. The following day, barring a major case of jet lag, I'll be at school.

Here are some pictures from Shanghai. It's back to Picasa, because Hong Kong is outside the great firewall, so I can access my own pictures.

Boooooring

2008-01-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Imagine the most uneventful day of your life. Now imagine you are in Shanghai. Then you have a pretty good idea of what my day today was like.

I was woken up this morning by someone who spoke Chinese at me. I have no idea why they were calling me, or what they wanted, but they did wake me up at 6:30, and that makes them not my friend.

I got out of bed, got ready to go and took a taxi over to where I was supposed to meet the tour guide. When I got there (there being a very nice hotel lobby), there was no tour guide. When I waited for over an hour, there was no tour guide. Indeed the only tour guide looking person didn't speak English and was rather annoyed with me for keeping on pestering him.

Anyhow, I took a taxi BACK to my hotel, and proceeded to do nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I found a Pizza Hut, where the waitress spoke English, and I just about cried I was so happy. This is the first time I've gone into a restaurant and they spoke any English. Also, I had PIZZA.

Other than that, I laid around, played games, watched TV, and chatted on MSN. I also found that I am near a historical site, some guy named Shangcheng's former residence, but I couldn't find any information about him, so I decided against visiting it.

I'm a little cheesed off about the lack of a tour guide. I still don't know what happened, because the company that organized my tour just sort of coordinates everything, and no one person knows anything except how to get me to the next person. So I am still trying to track down the specific tour agency that was supposed to take me around Shanghai today.

Tomorrow morning, I am embarking on a very long train journey. By the time I am done, it will be afternoon on the following day, I'll be in Hong Kong, and I'll have my suitcases back. So, the chances of me updating my blog tomorrow are exactly zero, since I will be hurtling across the countryside for most of the day.

One last thing about Shanghai though. It has by far the best traffic of any city I've been to so far. People still drive like maniacs, but there is a method to it. And they've implemented some clever systems to keep it under control. At some intersections they've actually got people who stand at the crosswalk and won't let people by until the walk light has turned. They also keep cars from randomly driving through the sidewalk when there are pedestrians on it, which happens a lot here.

I'm pretty excited. Except for picking up my luggage, which promises to be somewhat hairy, everything is all roses between me and coming home. I've got the day on the train, two days in Hong Kong and a day on a plane, and I'll be back in PG.

No pictures today. I have some, but I'll upload them next post. They're not terribly thrilling, since I didn't exactly go anywhere.

Shanghello

2008-01-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a tip: don't go walking in barefeet along the railroads in China. Aside from the fact that you'll get run over by a train, turns out that the toilet is not so much a toilet as it is a pipe to underneath the train. So, the railway tracks are covered in human waste. How gross is that? You're welcome.

I arrived in Shanghai today, and Shanghai is very tall. There have been tall buildings, very very tall buildings in every city, but Shanghai really takes the cake. In other places, there is a mix of tall and not tall. In Shanghai, it is a forest of buildings. It really looks like a forest, except instead of trees, there are nicely spaced buildings everywhere.

It's not something I talk about a whole lot, because in PG, it's not an issue, but I really don't like being in tall buildings. The second I'm above about the third floor, I become convinced the building is going to fall over. It's not a reasonable thing, I'm well aware, since buildings really don't fall over very often/at all, but this sort of thing isn't usually very reasonable. So, I'm slightly on edge all the time I'm here. Unless I'm on the ground. Then I am not at all concerned about buildings falling on me.

I had today completely off once I made it to my hotel (where I am on the 12th floor). After the fiasco in Beijing, I decided I didn't really want to try and find things on my own, so I went for a bit of a wander around my hotel, but I didn't find much very exciting. I'm in a very downtown-y kind of downtown, the same sort of downtown you might find in Vancouver, except that the things they sell have Chinese on them. I guess it really is quite like Vancouver.

I found a bookstore, which I was hoping would have some books in English. They did not. They did however have a rather extensive DVD collection, some of which were in English. I saw a movie called DOA (Dead Or Alive) which is based on one of the silliest video games of all time. I had heard about this movie being made, and then nothing more, so I ASSUMED someone came to their senses and canceled it. But no, it was made, and when I found it for about $2 CAD, I could not pass it up.

The point of DOA (the video game) is scantily clad women. Oh yes, and there is fighting as well. But mostly the women. It's the only fighting game to come out with a sequel that was Extreme Beach Volleyball (I am not making this up).

Turns out the movie managed to have all of this (including the beach volleyball). It also managed to have a lame plot, bad acting and cheesy dialog. Even the fight scenes (which you'd think would be the whole point) were obvious rip offs of other movies. My point here is that it was exactly what I thought it was going to be (and if you've played DOA, you should know exactly what it's going to be) and that made it great. If you feel like watching a silly, silly movie, watch this one.

I also watched The Holiday, which came out last year or something like that. It was pretty OK. I've also been watching some of a show called "Life" on my dad's recommendation, and it turns out to be fantastic. If you're the sort of person who gets cable, and likes good TV shows, check it out. It is on NBC. But that's enough about TV & movies.

I've had a very relaxing day, which is good, because I did not sleep so well on the train, and I am rather tired. The only problem is the sink is talking to me. Not with words, but with gurgling. It's a little disconcerting. I'm hoping the water settles or whatever.

Tomorrow I am going on a city tour, so I'll know all about why Shanghai is the most populous city in China (or so people keep claiming). For now, I will leave you with a snippet from my hotel's guest directory:

"Dear guests:

Warmly welcome to Shanghai Bailemen Hotel.

Our hotel is three star hotel. The hotel's motto is 'The Hotel you come in, the happier you feel' . We wish you to make a good impression and have a good time to stay with us in our hotel.

This book will introduce you all the hotel's faculties and services we provided. Please contact with us according to the list if you need any help. You can feel much more comfortable and get better service from our hotel.

All of the staff wish you have pleasant stay in the Shanghai Bailemen hotel. We look forward to entertaining you and your friends again in the near future."

It makes you wonder why they even bother. At least they had a spellchecker.

Windows Live Spaces

Xi'antastic!

2008-01-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

My hotel in Xi'an = very noisy. I am basically in the middle of town, and apparently, there is a constant party. Also my bed was very hard. But I was so exhausted from my pair of super intense days that I had no trouble sleeping allllll night.

This morning we started by going to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a big, old Buddhist temple. There is quite a story behind how it got there. During the Tang Dynasty, the Emperor sent out a monk to learn about Buddhism. So, this monk wandered around southern Asia for 17 years, spending most of that time in India. He eventually came back to Xi'an, bringing with him 300 Buddhist scrolls, and singlehandedly founded Buddhism in China.

In India, a particular sect of Buddhists were very hungry one day, and they asked the Buddha to give them some food. At that moment, a goose flying overhead dropped dead in their midst. They declared it a miracle and then decided never to eat meat again. Then they built a pagoda on the spot where the goose fell and called it "Wild Goose Pagoda."

When the Chinese monk came back to China, he decided he wanted to emulate this, so he got the emperor to build him his own Wild Goose Pagoda. This was 1400 years ago, and it is still standing. Sometime later, they made another Wild Goose Pagoda, which was smaller, so they differentiate them based on size, hence "Big Wild Goose Pagoda." And it is very big. Seven stories and over 30 m tall, it's pretty impressive, considering how old it is.

After the Pagoda, we went to the site of a 6000 year old village, which they call the Bampo village, because they found it in a region called Bampo. They have actually built a museum around the excavation of the village, so we could see everything as it lay in the ground, which was pretty nifty. There was the main living section, which consisted largely of mud houses with straw roofs, and was completely surrounded by a moat (the ancient Chinese loves them some moats). Then there was the burial section, where they had dug up a bunch of graves, which you could look into. I found this exceptionally creepy.

After the Bampo Village, it was lunch and then on to the Terra Cotta Warriors, which is the entire reason anyone goes to Xi'an. in 1974, a farmer was digging a well in his field, when he discovered a clay head. He very cleverly reported it to the authorities, and they bought his field and dug up the pieces of over 6000 clay warriors.

You see, in addition to uniting China and building the Great Wall, the first emperor of China decided he wanted to be safe in the afterlife as well, so he ordered the construction of a Terra Cotta (which means clay, basically) army. Each soldier in the army is unique, and each one was painted. Archaeologists suspect that there are more sites of Terra Cotta Warriors, since these ones are 1.5 km away from his tomb, in just one direction. (I'm not so sure the emperor wanted to be protected in the afterlife. I think he just wanted a better Warhammer army than Pharaoh Ramses.)

He had 700 000 people working on the Terra Cotta Warriors for 37 years. The people were not too impressed about this, because despite the fact that he united China, he was a bit of a jerk, so after he died, the peasants started revolting, and one of the things they did was break into the Terra Cotta Warriors hall, break them, and set them on fire. I'm not sure how smart setting clay on fire was, but they did manage to burn most of the paint off and wreck the structural supports so that the cavern collapsed. Thus, when they found the warriors they were in many pieces. They have been slowly re-assembling them for the last 30 years.

The emperor was a pretty paranoid guy though. His tomb was very Indiana Jones. There were automatic arrows, big pits and a moat of mercury. THEN, just to make sure no one could figure out how to get into his tomb, he had the people who designed it buried in it as well, long before they were dead. (The Chinese were big on burying other people in their tombs. The Empresses, Concubines and numerous servents were often buried right along with the emperor, regardless of how dead they were at the time.) To this day, no one has been able to get in, and it is still under a mound of dirt.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are pretty impressive though. If I were a ghost, I wouldn't want to try and get through.

I found out something very interesting about China today also. I had always assumed that, like Russia, religion was against the law. It is possible that this was the case during Mao's rule, but it is not anymore. People are free to worship whatever they like, which explains the presence of a Mosque and a Buddhist temple, both of which are still active. Hooray for not being quite as oppressive as I thought, China.

I had a pretty good time in Xi'an, although it was very short. I was in Xi'an for like 36 hours. If you think history is interesting (like me) I would recommend going to Xi'an over anywhere else in China, because although Beijing has relics dating back hundreds of years, Xi'an has thousands of years of history, which is actually pretty tough for me to wrap my head around.

The city itself isn't so thrilling, for the reaons I mentioned in the last post. My tour guide, who I spent a lot of time with, as she picked me up from the train station took me on a private tour, then the next day led my group tour, and then brought me back to the train station, was very nice. Chinese people tend to think I am very young (like 17, or in one case 15), so I think she was being protective of me. Also, I am a pretty excellent student, because I always look interested and ask questions. As such, I often notice teachers (and in this case tour guides) lecturing directly at me. This tour guide (whose name was Sophie) did that a lot. So when she asked me if I liked the city, she was so earnest and so sincere about how great the city was, I couldn't exactly say, "Well, it's sort of old and dingy." But it is.

Anyhow, I got to the train station, managed to get on my train and found my spot. I held out hope that no one else was going to be in my little berth area, but three Chinese men came in. They were fairly loud, they smoked and they were playing some kind of card game. I watched them play for over an hour, and I'm pretty sure I've got the rules, so when I get back, I intend to play it with some people. I THOUGHT once we all went to sleep, they would cease to be annoying, but one of them snored incredibly loudly. It was second only to Dr. Chen in terms of volume and general annoyingness. But I was so tired I went back to sleep pretty quick.

Now, on to Shanghai!

Windows Live Spaces

My impending return

2008-01-04T02:05:00.001-08:00

I'm currently sitting in the hotel's internet cafe with the guide
waiting for me, so I don't have much time. I am leaving on the train
for Shanghai tonight, so no blog post tonight.

Several people have asked me when I get back, and the answer is: the
evening of the 10th. Unless my plane is delayed, I ought to be home
around 5 pm that night, full of stories and presents. How very
exciting, ya?

Xi'an to you too!

2008-01-03T05:53:00.000-08:00

Xi'an: pronounced shee-YAN.

If you haven't read my previous post, Shanghaied in Beijing (which you probably haven't unless you're up very early in the morning), I would do so right now. In fact, if you're a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I've got here two monster posts in a row, I'd read the other one and not this one. If you read on blog post this year, make it that one. It's pretty stellar.

So, at the end of my last post, I was on the train headed for Xi'an from Beijing. It was a fairly uneventful trip. I was asleep for almost all of it (the trip is about 10 hours long). Or rather, I was trying to be asleep, but wouldn't you know that sleeping on a tiny bunk with all your stuff on a moving, rather loud train makes it difficult to sleep. So I was in and out all night. It was sort of sad, because it was very dark, so I couldn't exactly see the countryside.

I got to Xi'an rather exhausted, as I had had a pretty intense day the day before, but when I met my tour guide, it was hop to it. We were going on a tour of the city. I had only a few minutes to grab some breakfast, and then there I was, running around Xi'an.

A bit about Xi'an, since no one has probably heard of it. I hadn't. Xi'an itself has been inhabited for 6000 years, many of those years, it was the capital of China. There has been human~ish civilization in Xi'an for over a million years. I find this quite incredible. Indeed, the museum I visited claimed that the Yellow River was the cradle of civilization, not the Tigris and Euphrates like we usually hear.

China has an absolutely fascinating history. From about 4000 BC until about 1000 BC, China was a bunch of warring city states. This was about the time when the Egyptians were kicking butt. China is a big place, so there was room for lots of Warlords. In 1000 BC or so, the Zhou dynasty became very powerful, so China became a bunch of city states who didn't mess with the Zhou.

After the Zhou dynasty fell apart, this Qin (pronounced Chin) guy came along and thought it might be nice to unite China. Having the most sophisticated military technology, he did so, and became the first emperor of China. (This is what the movie 'Hero' is about). Not only did he unite China for the first time, but he began the construction of the Great Wall, and it is his tomb that has the Terra Cotta Warriors. My tour guide called them "miracles" but I don't think I'd go so far. They are very impressive though.

Anyways, after him there were a bunch of other dynasties, with China occasionally splitting into two or three kingdoms. But one dynasty in particular bears mention. The Tang Dynasty came to power just as the Romans were falling (not that these were related). The Tang dynasty built on the work of the dynasty before them and created the Silk Road, which connected Xi'an with India, the Middle East and Constantinople. Yes, centuries before Marco Polo was even born, the Chinese were trading with Constantinople (which is at the point where Turkey meets Greece). It kind of diminishes his accomplishment, I think.

After the museum (which I found exceptionally fascinating, but I'm not sure enough of my facts to relate everything here), we went to something I thought my tour guide was calling "The Great Mask" but was in fact "The Great Mosque". Xi'an has a very large Muslim population, and they built themselves a nice Mosque, which is very cool because it incorporates both Arabic and Chinese style in it. I took some neat pictures.

Following the Mosque, we visited the City Wall. The City wall was built in the same era as the Forbidden City. It encircles what used to be the entire city, with a perimeter of 14 km. It turns out you can rent bikes to ride all the way around, and this is exactly what I did. It was a pretty neat ride, even if my bike was the worst thing ever. The wall, although quite solid, is 600 years old, so some parts were rather bumpy, and the bike was definitely a road bike, so I felt every single bump all the way through all of me.

Later this evening, I went to a dinner and show (the dinner and the show together didn't cost me anything close to what that tea cost). The dinner was a dumpling buffet, and let me announce something. Let it be known that I, Daniel Yule, love dumplings. Let it echo down the ages that I will eat just about anything that comes in Dumpling form, including, but not limited to, fish, sharks fin, cabbage and just about anything else you want to stick some dough around and fry. Dumplings are far and away my favourite Chinese food. These particular dumplings were also in the shape of what they had inside of them.

The show was alright. It was a re-enactment of Tang Dynasty music and dance. Now, the dancers and musicians were very good, but you could tell they've done it a million times. They looked bored out on the stage. When you add in the fact that the production values were often downright cheesy, it was an underwhelming experience. But I am of course, comparing it to the acrobats I saw in Guangzhou, and anyone would be hard pressed to even begin to compare with that.

Xi'an is very different from the other cities I have been to. The other cities all look very new and exciting. Xi'an reeks (literally reeks) of past greatness. You can see it everywhere, from the old buildings to the veneration of a dynasty that held power over a thousand years ago. Unlike the poor of Beijing, who try and sell you things, the poor of Xi'an just beg. It just seems like a tired old city. Actually, it reminds me of the London in Oliver Twist. There are decrepit old buildings, beggars, pickpockets, marketplaces, and so on.

Tomorrow night I am leaving for Shanghai, so I won't be blogging most likely, but hopefully I don't have another intense day like yesterday. Anyhow, here is Xi'an in pictures.

Windows Live Spaces

Shanghaied in Beijing

2008-01-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

Holy. Crap.

My last day in Beijing was by far my most intense day yet. I think that's saying something.

It started early, when I met my tour guide at 8:00 am. Her name was Sunny, which aptly described her personality. She was a pretty great tour guide. She was funny, and had lots of interesting things to say, which you'd might think would describe EVERY tour guide, but this is not the case. Turns out, in Beijing, you have to be certified to be a tour guide. 20 000 people apply every year. Only 1 000 make it. Sounds like a martial arts tournament? Tour guiding is serious business in Beijing.

Anyhow, we went off to the Ming Tombs, which is oddly enough, where the Ming emperors are buried. The Ming emperors were also the ones who built the Forbidden City, and all the other stuff we looked at the previous day. The only bit that is open to the public is this one big room that they have converted into a museum. They had some neat stuff in the museum, which I did not take any pictures of because my camera drains batteries faster than you can say "overpriced garbage" (which is something you say a lot).

The most interesting thing about the museum is actually the building itself. It was constructed out of these pillars, which are each about 3 feet thick. These pillars are solid wood, and they were built out of a single tree trunk each. The type of tree they were made from (now extinct) grew on the other side of China. The emperor made 500 soldiers carry 60 trees all the way across China, so he could have a spiffy place to be buried. It took them 10 years.

The other interesting thing about the tombs is what happened during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was Chairman Mao's attempt to push China back into communism, after it had been getting slowly capitalist. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Our tour guide said it was Mao's only mistake. Yep, just that one. No others at all.

Anyways, during the cultural revolution, the Red Guard, which was like a volunteer army of students stormed the Ming Tombs and set one of them on fire, because they were trying to show they were better then the feudalists. Nothing says you're better like fire, after all. So the Emperor and Empress's clothes, which were very well preserved, are now a little cripsy, as are the emperor and empress themselves.

After the Ming Tombs, it was off to the Great Wall. (The Chinese think everything is great. They have their Great Wall, Great Leader Chairman Mao....) The Great Wall is pretty famous, and it rather deserves that fame. It has several different sections, which total 100 000 km. That's more than the circumference of the Earth. It was not ENTIRELY successful at keeping the Mongols out, but it is impressive nonetheless. There's really not much to say about it, except for the way you get up it.

See, the Chinese were pretty clever, and they don't just have their wall any old place, they have it on top of mountains, which makes it extra difficult to get over. So, in order to go up it, you have to walk up a mountain. Or alternately, you can take the roller coaster. Yes, that's right, roller coaster. You get on at the bottom, and it pulls you up. Then you wander around, and come back down, which is about the greatest ride ever.

On the way back home, we first went to a Jade factory, which is pretty cool. Jade is very very beautiful, and they had some absolutely stunning jewelery and other things, which I would love to have taken pictures of, but lo: my camera was out of batteries.

After the Jade factory, we went to a silk factory, where they show you how they make silk. The silk they take off the worm's cocoon is very very fine, and it takes 8 strands to make a single thread. Then, they take those threads and turn them into flat pancakes of silk. THEN they stretch it out and turn it into a blanket. Make sense? It's OK, I don't understand, and I watched them do it.

The store they had after (because they always take you to a store) had some lovely silk kimonos and such, but not for men, and not for cheap. So, no one is getting a kimono, I am sad to say.

Because traffic was light, we got back to the hotel early, so I had about 4 hours to kill before I had to meet the person who was taking me to the train station. So, I decided to walk to Tienanmen Square, which was not too far away. That is where the fun began.

Tienanmen Square is on the opposite side of the Forbidden City from where I was, and the Forbidden city is quite large. So it was actually a longer walk then I thought it would be (about a half hour). When I got to the courtyard that separates the Forbidden City from Tienanmen Square, the PLA was doing some marching exercises, which I watched, but they had also blocked off Tienanmen Square for their marching. So, there was a huge crowd of people at the gate, which I slowly ambled towards. I should point out that a LOT of people were openly staring at me. In several instances, children would point at me to their parents, and their mom would go "shhhhh" and point them in the other direction. Also in this time period, a pair of women and a man came up to me and started talking to me about my trip, for no reason I could discern, but they were nice enough, and I really like talking to people who live in China, because that's how you learn things.

Anyhow, eventually I got into the square and it is pretty cool. Dead centre in the middle is Mao's Mausoleum (A Mao-soleum if you will). On every side are gorgeous buildings. Also, the army is EVERYWHERE in that square. I was actually kind of sad about that, since I was going to put on my hat and get someone take a picture of me pretending to order students shot. No reason in particular I wanted to do that, since nothing like that ever happened in Tienanmen Square, right Chinese government?

I didn't have much time in Tienanmen square though, because these two Chinese girls started talking to me, and offered to show me around old Beijing, so they could practice their English. This was a pretty awesome idea, since I wanted to see as much as possible, and having a local guide is super cool. Plus it was the same direction as my hotel, and I was pretty sure those two girls couldn't overpower me. I say girls, but they were probably my age.

Anyhow, they showed me around (and Old Beijing is pretty nifty. It is rather old: 600 years in fact). After walking for a while, they said they were tired, so why didn't we stop in this teahouse? I thought that seemed fun, and agreed, but the second I walked in the door, I remembered something that the Aussies had mentioned the day before. They were walking around in Shanghai, when they met some students who took them to a teahouse. Then, they were given various "samples" of tea, asked to buy some, and then informed that the "samples" they had just drank were, in fact, rather expensive. I became very suspicious that this was about to happen to me.

And wouldn't you know it, I was right. I tried some very nice tea, and sampled some very nice fruit. You might know I am not the biggest fan of tea, but that was before I came to Beijing and had some of the best tea in the world. The English can stuff it. The sludge they and the countries they colonized are drinking is nothing compared to some of this tea.

That said, after all was said and done, each cup of tea (I had 8, I think) was 30 yuan ( = $4.10 CAD). That's a pretty steep price to pay for a cup of tea. But when you consider the fact that the tea cups were doll-sized (because they were samples), it becomes ridiculous. They also charge you for the fruit. All told, the bill was 1100 Yuan ($150 CAD). Then, ever so conveniently, the girls didn't have enough to pay for their share, so I had to pay half. I wasn't upset though, and I'll tell you why.

I have now been successfully conned. I don't think it'll happen again. And I don't think I could ask for a better con. In the process of being conned, I got shown around Beijing, drank some excellent tea, and had a nice chat with some locals. (The con, here being that I'm pretty sure those two girls were working with the tea house.)

Anyhow, after that (no I didn't leave immediately. I had already been duped, what more could they possibly do) we wandered around for a little while, and then they stated that I absolutely had to have some Peking Duck, that being the dish that Beijing is famous for. Well, I DID want to try some Peking duck, so we took a taxi to a restaurant, I ordered some duck for me, and some fried rice for them (this was what they were getting out of it). The duck was quite good, and I don't at all regret that part of it.

Afterwards, they helped me get a taxi back to my hotel. Or they kind of did. My hotel was kind of a hole in the wall, so they directed him to take me to the North Entrance to the Forbidden City, which is about a 5 minute walk from my hotel. He took me to this place, let me out, and I found myself promptly lost. You see, I had memorized the way back to my hotel, but I had done so in daylight, and it was now quite dark. I knew I was in the right area, and I knew the name of the street I was looking for, so I decided to walk along the Forbidden City until I found it.

I finally found the street (Jingshan Street, in case you're wondering) and started going down it, only to realize that it definitely was not the right street. At this point, I was late to my hotel to get picked up, lost, and by myself in a dark city whose native language I didn't speak. I was also dressed in a ridiculous manner. Luckily for me, I don't panic until after things have finished happening, because a split second later I figured out that Jingshan was a crescent, and I had come in the other side, so I only needed to keep walking. I made it to my hotel, and my contact took me to the train station.

Once on the train, I sat down in my bunk (which is TINY. They have four people in about the same space as your standard closet.) A family with a crying baby came in and took the other three bunks. I was not impressed. However, the girl from the family asked me, for some reason, if I spoke French, and when I said yes, she asked if I could trade bunks with her grandmother, which I was happy to do. I was also very happy to speak to someone in French. You see, since I've got here, I've been fighting the urge to spout French at the Chinese, because for some reason I think they'll understand. Somewhere deep in my brain is the idea that all non-English languages are the same. So, finally getting to speak French, and to a Chinese person was pretty excellent.

I'll pick up from being on the train in the next post. But first, let me allay some suspicions you might have. The topic of my having a girlfriend is of great interest to the Chinese. And when I tell them I don't have one, they usually call me handsome, and then tell me I should find a nice Chinese girl while I am here. You'd think I'd enjoy being called handsome, but the Chinese say that to everyone, except for Dr. Chen, who thinks everyone is ugly.

The thing with finding a nice Chinese girl while I am here is that according to these same people, in China, if you have a girlfriend, that basically makes her your fiance. Among the things on my list to-do, getting engaged to a girl who doesn't reside in the same country as me, or speak the same language as me is pretty low down. So, instead of fending off offers to help me with my love life, I've started telling people I have a girlfriend. So you know, she is short, skinny, 20 years old and very beautiful. I don't know what her name is, or what she's like, but no one is very interested in her. But she is apparently very lucky to be my girlfriend, because I am such a prime piece of real estate.

Anyhow, my point is I made sure to tell these two Chinese Con artists about my fake girlfriend right away, so they were not at all trying to seduce me into anything. No, it was for pleasant company that I gave away so much money. What's more, I'm pretty convinced it was worth it, although I wouldn't do it again.

At any rate, here are some pictures of the Great Wall and Tienanmen square. My camera ran out of batteries before I could take some pictures of my shyster friends (of course).

Windows Live Spaces

The Emperor's Pads

2008-01-01T03:35:00.000-08:00

Today was the first actual day of my tour, and it was pretty intense. But before we get to that, let me tell you something very important about Beijing that I forgot yesterday. It is VERY cold. Now, in terms of actual temperature, it is not that cold. I would say it hovered between 0 and -5 degrees Celsius today. But there was a cutting wind that I was not at all dressed for. I also made the silly mistake of not bringing any gloves. This is because in Canada, I just keep my hands in my sleeves. Thing is, when you're taking pictures, it is really hard to do that, and I took a lot of pictures. Almost 100, although not all of them were upload worthy. Indeed, only about 40 were. Point is, every time we left the bus, my hands went numb.

So, to begin with, we visited the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. The Forbidden City is the palace where the Emperor lived from the time it was built in 1420 until the last emperor renounced his throne in 1912. All told, 24 Emperors lived there. It is an incredible place. It was designed to copy the Purple Palace, where the gods lived in Heaven, since the Emperor was thought to be an Earthly manifestation of the divine. Because it was so holy, common people were not allowed inside, thus: Forbidden.

It is also a very big palace, with many different parts, for the emperor to do various kinds of activities. Indeed, the emperor would keep in shape just walking around to the different places he had to go. It was designed according to Feng Shui, with Earth in the middle, Water to the North, Fire to the South, Wood to the West and Metal to the East. It is incredibly designed and everything, down to the tiniest detail is so precise and beautiful. The emperor thought he was hot stuff, and he built the palace to prove it.

After the Forbidden City, we took off to the Temple of Heaven, which isn't so much a temple as it is a place where the Emperor went twice a year to nicely ask the gods for a good harvest. The Temple is even larger than the Forbidden City, except that it is mostly forested. There is something called "The Long Corridor" which is where they used to walk with the sacrifices. Now it is a place for street performers and street vendors to do their stuff. There were people singing, dancing, telling stories and selling you just about anything you ever wanted (more on this later).

Then we broke for lunch at a nice Chinese Restaurant, which obviously caters to Westerners, because not only did they serve us chicken wings and french fries, but the Chinese food they gave us was not prepared in the usual Chinese way. See, the Chinese like to eat all of the meat, not just the bits that we Westerners like to eat. So that means they don't bother to remove things like gristle, fat or bones, which combined with the fact that you can't exactly remove those things with chopsticks, makes for an interesting restaurant experience. But this place didn't do that. Everything was quite clean, and the food we did have was easily identifiable, which is not a trait most of the food I've eaten has.

After lunch, we went to the Emperor's Summer Palace, which is a huge expanse of land, even bigger than the Forbidden City. This Palace had an even longer "Long Corridor", the longest in the world. It also had a man made lake that some emperor had made as part of a garden for his mom. Those emperors really thought they were something special, let me tell you. They just loved to show off.

And that was the end of the tour. Except for the rather significant parts that I left out. First of all: the other members of my tour. They were all from New Zealand and Australia, and holy crap were they ever walking stereotypes. No one said Bruce, but I kept expecting them to. They were loud, crude, laughed a lot, and drank a bunch of beer. And that was just the women!

Secondly, our tour twice stopped at these Government stores. The first one was a pearl store, where the lady showed us some pearls inside an Oyster (which was still living when she pulled it apart). Then we were expected to look around and buy something. In this case, I rather defied their expectation. The cheapest thing there was some tiny Pearl Earrings, and they were $40 USD. Now they were very beautiful, and some of the necklaces there were the loveliest jewelery I have ever seen. But when prices start at $40 and rise steeply from there, I'm sorry, but there's no one I love that much.

You see, the reason we come to these government stores is for them to recoup the costs of the tour, which is subsidized. So the prices there are higher than what you might find elsewhere. I knew this going in, and so there was no way I was going to lose the advantage of my incredibly cheap tour by spending ridiculous amounts of money on jewelery.

Another place we went to was a Tea House. We were ushered into a room with a nice Chinese girl in a Kimono-y thing who gave us samples of various types of tea. Now this tea was very spectacular. I am not the biggest fan of tea, but I am a fan of this tea. She also explained the culture around tea, and it turns out there is a tea tree that is 1700 years old. I find that pretty darn impressive. Tea from this tree is rather expensive, as you might imagine.

Another thing: everywhere you go, there are people selling you stuff. And not in booths or something, just running around with merchandise in their hands, pushing it at you, nattering at you in Chinese. The things they were selling were this: Rolex watches, Gucci purses, Olympic toques, postcards, and occasionally food. You can be quite sure that none of these things were actually what they purported to be (with the possible exception of the food. But I wouldn't bet on that). These people flock where the tourists are. Now I usually just ignore them. But the Aussies (I'm going to lump the New Zealanders in with them), LOVED to play with these people. Some vendor would come up to them, and the Aussie would say, "One Yuan" (One Yuan = $0.13 CAD) The seller would say something like "50 Yuan", and the Aussie would repeat "One Yuan." This would go on for quite some time, with the seller lowering and lowering his price, until eventually the Aussie would start coming up and they'd meet somewhere around 15 Yuan = $2 CAD (which is ridiculously cheap, even for imitation Gucci). Thing was, these Aussies weren't buying things they needed. Nope, they were just screwing around for the heck of it, and would usually end up mocking the poor street vendor for a while before they eventually bought whatever crap they were selling.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I was very cold. I did not pack enough warm clothing, because I did not think it would be so frigid. So, I wanted to buy some gloves. They were a very nice pair, they say "The North Face" on them, which is a good brand (except they are likely not actually North Face). The guy offered me 40, and I got him down to 15, with some help from the Aussies. I also got a Toque, for an extra 5 yuan. That's about $2.75 CAD for a nice pair of gloves and a Toque. Thing is, I don't have the heart for bargaining. I like to see a price, decide if I like it, and then buy something. I don't want to argue with some guy over it, because he has no qualms about rambling on and on about how I am cheating him out of money, which makes me feel bad, although he is clearly lying, or he wouldn't sell it to me. Anyways, it is quite an experience, but I prefer the old "read the flier" method. I like me some price tags.

Then, once I got back to the hotel, I decided I need a new coat. I am going to the Great Wall tomorrow (which is north) and then to Xi'an, which is just as cold as here. So, I went to one of the shops on the street, half-heartedly bargained with the guy, and bought me a bitchin' coat:

This is the same style of coat and hat that the People's Liberation Army (China's national army) uses. I bought this coat for three reasons:

1) It is really really warm. The second I put it on, I was warm outside for the first time since I got here.

2) I wanted, as I have wanted for years, a long coat. This is the only style of long coat 'round here that isn't a woman's coat.

3) I love the style. I happen to think the PLA has really stylish outfits, even if they are supporting a repressive reigeme.

I see poor people wearing these all over the place, because it is very cheap, and very warm. In fact, by purchasing this coat, I have gone from Rich Tourist to Possible Homeless Person, and people have started treating me accordingly. If they don't look too closely at me, people will happily push me out of the way (not violently, just taking my place in line), and if they DO look to closely at me, they have this look of surprise, and then they gape for a second. Every time. I haven't got this many double takes in a long long long time. Although I think that is largely the hat and coat together.

Anyhow, I am in love with this coat, and I may never take it off. My hotel room is also very cold, because I have a remote control for the heating system, but I have no idea where to point it, so my room is about 13 degrees. Last night I had to sit wrapped in a blanket, but TONIGHT, I have my coat. I am warm warm warm.

OK, so here are the pictures. Flickr was going to make me pay for more storage space, so now I have moved on to Windows Live Spaces. This blog is rapidly becoming a "Picture Storage Sites of the Internet" tour.

Windows Live Spaces

Good Morning Beijing!

2007-12-31T05:59:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

So, Beijing isn't anywhere close to Vietnam, and most people probably won't get the reference, but there you have it.

Today I left Guangzhou and came to Beijing. I had my first experience with Chinese air travel, and I came away rather impressed. The Guangzhou airport (which I took a picture of) is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen, and getting my ticket and finding my gate was extremely straightforward. I had about the same amount of difficulty I would have in the Vancouver Airport, which is to say, not much.

The plane ride was pretty excellent as well, except for the wait we had for air traffic control to let us in. I sometimes get very nervous in planes, and this happened to be one of those times. You see, despite the fact that everything was exceptionally well taken care of, and that I was in a Boeing 757, I had some wild suspicions about the quality of maintenance on the aircraft. I've noticed how insane the Chinese are when it comes to driving, and what sorts of risks they take (the Taxi driver today turned left across three lanes of traffic, even though he was in the right lane, for example), so I wondered if perhaps the same went for aircraft. I tried to console myself with the fact that I had never HEARD of plane crashes in China, but then again, the state controlled media doesn't like to report on disasters that happen within China. Tends to dissuade people from spending their moneys = dampening the economy.

Anyways, we arrived safe and sound at the Beijing airport. Let me just say that Beijing is huge. Absolutely enormous. We flew over most of it on the way to the airport, and it just goes on and on and on. We must have been at several thousand feet, and I could not see an end to the city in any direction. I tried to take some pictures, but I did not have a window seat, so all I got were some lovely pictures of the sun.

Then, I met my tour guide and he took me to my hotel. My hotel is AWESOME. Not the hotel itself, it is pretty regular, and a major step down from the five star treatment I have been used to. But its location is amazing. I am about a five minute's walk from the Forbidden City, which is directly connected to Tiananmen Square. In the other direction (which happens to be the direction I randomly walked when I went exploring), is a famous market street, which I wandered around in, and ate supper in. I went to a Chinese fast food restaurant, which is much like a Chinese Restaurant in Canada, and had supper. I had supper for $2.50. I love the price of food here.

The street my hotel is on is also some kind of crazy marketplace. It is basically a bunch of street vendors who yell at people to get them to buy things. Unfortunately, it seemed the only people on the street were me and other vendors.

The other awesome thing about my hotel is the Guest Directory. This book is such a goldmine of Engrish (poorly translated Chinese, that is) that I might just need to steal it. I'm OK with paying for it if they want me to. Some highlights:

"Mails: If you want to post the mails, express mails or packages, please contact the business center at ****. You can get your mail or package at the front desk, or inquire it at 11 or 12."

"Catering services: Located on the -1st floor..."

"Visitors: If he is not accompanied with the guest, the visitor is not permitted to enter the guest's room."

"Rule 4: It is forbidden to install the copycat and fax machine in the bedroom."

"Rule 8: The gambling, drug, bawdry and whoring and other illegal acts and forbidden at the hotel."

I love the use of the word bawdry. It is so archaic that my spell checker (yes I have one) doesn't know it exists. The only place I've seen it before was in a class on 17th century drama. It means lewd or obscene acts, for those of us who are not complete dorks.

Lastly, although I can't read my own blog most of the time (as blogspot mysteriously doesn't work inside the walls of China), I still get the comments. They are sent to me via email. And also: I really enjoy getting them. More than once, a single comment has pulled me out of some pretty intense homesickness. So, if you have something to say, I'm happy to hear it.

Oh, and on the topic of comments, I got this one on my last post:

"建伟 has left a new comment on your post 'Lazy days in Guangzhou':

.As China increasingly is seen as a growing business power, interest in learning the Chinese language had rocketed, and dominance of Chinese over English will be a long time coming. More and more people begin to learn Chinese, because here is clear career potential for the future. Chinese language education market will be prosperous. Check the site http://www.********.cn/ to learn more about learning Chinese."

Dominance of Chinese over English, huh? Could happen. But those wacky Chinese are jumping the gun a little bit. 15 years of phenomenal growth does not a certainty make. Remember the lessons of the Americas during the 1920's. Or more recently, Japan in the 1990's. Although I admit that a lot of that is the fact that I'm rather fond of certain western values (like freedom of information. I like reading my own blog), which I don't want to lose, should a censoring dictatorship rise to dominance.

OK, here are the pictures. I've had to switch to Flickr, because they've decided in their great wisdom that Picasa is too seditious to be allowed in China. Also, I am now on my fifth set of batteries since getting here.

View pictures here

Lazy days in Guangzhou

2007-12-30T05:01:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I can't stop using the name of the city I'm in as part of my title. You would think that after a week, everyone would get the idea that I am in Guangzhou.

The last two days have been exceptionally unproductive. Dr. Chen and Dr. Lo left yesterday, leaving me all alone. Actually, in at least one way this is nice, because Dr. Chen had started to snore. On the downside, I no longer have anyone around to translate. I figured that would be OK, since I would take a tour with an English speaking guide, but after evaluating my finances, decided not to.

Instead, I explored the area around my hotel. I was hoping to find a store of some kind, but I was completely unable to do so. There is a big block of apartment buildings near my hotel, but I have no idea where they are buying their food and so on from. They can't possibly all have cars or they wouldn't fit, so there must be some hidden grocery store I couldn't find.

I did, however, manage to have a pleasant walk through a beautiful neighborhood, and found something called "The Guangzhou Gym", which is undoubtedly the largest gym I have ever seen. I'm wondering if "Stadium" got mis-translated. I didn't go inside this gym, but I did take some pictures from the outside.

I wouldn't want people to get the idea that all I did was go for a walk in two days. Although this may not be such a terrible idea to get, I have been busily pursuing academic interests, ranging from cryptography to architecture. I have also been learning some of the Chinese language.

On the topic of language, it has been a huge barrier for me here. I never expected everyone here to speak English, as that would be Western arrogance at its height. However, considering this is a hotel which targets English speaking people, I have had a number of problems, the worst of which was me losing 5 yuan because I couldn't tell the room service girl that it belonged to me, and not her. Should I ever come back to China (which will depend entirely on the amount of money I have), I will try very hard to have a degree of proficiency with conversational Chinese.

It seems to me that I have been awfully hard on the Chinese here in my blog. Anyone reading (hi government censors!) could easily get the impression I was not enjoying myself, or I was disgusted with the country. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Although there are some areas of intense poverty, as I have mentioned earlier, the areas which are NOT impoverished are astoundingly sophisticated. I would consider, say, Vancouver, a sophisticated, world class city. But the impressive parts of Guangzhou put it to shame. First of all, there is the architecture. The Chinese are not content with straightforward, boring buildings. Within the wealthier, and ever middle class sections of the city, every building has a unique and interesting design, which is not showy just to be showy, but just plain elegant.

Furthermore, the transit system is phenomenal. There are comfortable, fast trains going everywhere. The highway system, although plagued by toll booths is extremely well maintained and very efficient. The largest cities have subways, with easy to use access cards that the PG bus system could learn a thing or two from.

In addition to all that, in the midst of the city (which is where I am), there is greenery everywhere. Even the lampposts have a compelling design. Each thing may sound somewhat trivial, but when you put it all together, you end up with a city that is beautiful and extremely convenient. The only thing stopping me from declaring it the best city I have ever seen is my dislike for the food and my lack of knowledge of the language.

You wouldn't think food would be that big a deal, but I would say that it has become a metaphor for all of the things I miss constantly about Canada. There's nothing like feeling disappointed every time it's meal time. Next time, I am bringing a chef with me.

Here in the hotel, they have a Western Restaurant. This "Western" Restaurant is about as close to Moxie's as the China Cup is to a Chinese restaurant over here, which is to say, not at all the same. "Western" food generally consists of noodles or rice, typically with beef, seafood or chicken. This COULD be western, except everything is prepared in a Chinese way, and it really just tastes the same as Chinese food, except in this case I know what it is before I eat it. In fact the "Western" restaurant here is much closer to a Chinese restaurant in Canada than it is to Earl's. I would even be happy with Denny's.

(On a side note: every time an establishment plays Western music, it is invariably soft rock from the 70's, 80's or early 90's. I have heard Celine Dion, Paul Simon and Elton John. Considering in a Canadian Chinese Restaurant they play that hokey Chinese stuff that everyone associates with China, is this what they think of our music? Do they know about things like heavy metal or punk? Have they ever heard of an indie song? I have heard some modern Chinese music, and it was all pop. Not like J-Pop, but Backstreet Boys/Britteny Speares kind of pop. Some of it was quite good. Some of it was not.)

Tomorrow I fly to Beijing and start my tour, so I won't have time to wind my lazy way along a cultural rant like this. Instead, I will have actual things I have done to talk about. Won't THAT be exciting.

Quick Update

2007-12-29T10:00:00.001-08:00

It occurred to me as I was going to sleep today that I hadn't written
a blog update. This is largely because I did nothing at all today.
So, here I am, checking in, so no one is worried I have died. I will
sum up what I did for tomorrow's blog entry.

Whirlwind Guangdong Tour

2007-12-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day of the conference. So naturally, we skipped town and zoomed around the countryside instead of attending.

We got picked up by Dr. Lo's sister-in-law, to take a tour of her husband's company, and also to be shown around the countryside. The business was sort of neat. They make a device that takes cars with a bent frame and straightens them. We got to see it in operation. Dr. Chen detected a flaw in in the way they set it up, and they had a big discussion about physics, in which it turned out he was right.

After that, we went for lunch. I was able to experience more delightful Chinese cuisine. Like snake. And Chicken's head. I took some pictures of the other things the restaurant had. Any animals you see in the pictures are designed to be eaten. G.R.O.S.S.

Time to talk about the Chinese road system. I have divined the reason why Chinese people in Canada walk across roads without paying attention to cars. It is because in China, cars wander across sidewalks without paying attention to pedestrians. There don't appear to be any such thing as traffic laws, only traffic suggestions. Cars travel at an arbitrary speed, at an arbitrary place on the road (sometimes on the right side), arbitrarily honking their horns. Traveling anywhere is exceptionally terrifying.

Furthermore, it isn't just cars on the roads. There are people in mopeds, bicycles, pedestrians and motorized carts, who all feel that they have every right to be in the middle of the road doing whatever speed they like. Unlike in Canada, where when you are on a bike and a car is bearing down on you, you move to the side of the road, here, they just continue blithely along inches from the car's bumper. Why everyone in China hasn't died in a car accident is completely beyond me. I'm not sure how it is that I haven't died in a car accident yet.

We saw some beautiful countryside. I love mountains, and China has some absolutely gorgeous ones. We went to Bai Shui Xi mountain, which has China's largest waterfall falling off of it. The waterfall appeared to be coming out of the top of the mountain. I have no idea how that was happening. It was crazy. And very lovely.

Once we got outside of Guangzhou, it was very interesting to see the complete change in terms of quality of life. Every building is run down, dirty and small, unlike the clean, sparkling skyscrapers of the city. The people wear rags, and carry stuff around on their carts, instead of cars. What's worse is the attitude of the upper class Chinese towards these people. It is like they are a lesser form of people. They are not respectful to their waiters (no tipping in China) and interact with the lower classes only when it is necessary to get a service from them. The workers in the factory I visited make about $1000 yuan per month. That's about $130 CAD. Per month. I make 4-5 times that, and I am a student. It is quite frankly appalling.

Furthermore, the Chinese have an unfortunate attitude towards women. It is not that the society is misogynistic. It is the incredible weight that Chinese place on physical appearance, especially for women. I have never once heard a Chinese person praise a woman for her brain, although they are constantly talking about how smart and competent the men are. It is not the men's fault, it is everyone's fault.

China's problem, I think, is that they have an upper class living in the 20th century (not the 21st, despite their modern looking cities), and a lower class living in the 19th century, or earlier. The peasants are just that: peasants. They are not like Western farmers, who are respected, they are like the peasants of feudal Britain.

That said, knowing what I do about Chinese history (which I will not wax eloquent about at this stage), it is absolutely incredible how far China has come in the last century. 100 years ago, China was an empire ruled by a 3 year old child, which was completely unable to fend off the British or Portuguese, and which was hardly respected at all throughout the world. Shortly after, China descended into a dark ages, with Warlords ruling their own little Kingdoms. 75 years ago, China was engaged in a civil war. 50 years ago, China surprised the world with its incredible strength during the Korean war. 30 years ago, the starvation and poverty that was rampant at the time started to be solved. Today, China is a leader in the world economy, and is poised to become the next superpower. From a disintegrating fuedal empire to an economic powerhouse in 100 years is phenomenal. I suspect that the attitudes which are holding it back will change soon enough, because China has shown itself to be adaptive in the past, and I think it will do so again.

I believe that at least part of the reason I feel this way is that I have been steeped in Western values from the time I was very young, and I find it very hard not to judge according to them. The Western Values of equality and respecting people's differences are not so well supported here, and I won't deny it is hard to get past. However, I also think the Chinese could teach us some things about patience, and about the importance of industriousness. The Chinese love hard work. It's a big part of their culture that working hard will bring you rewards, and who can't agree with that?

Hiking

2007-12-27T05:58:00.000-08:00

Today, I woke up late, had my breakfast and took off on a hike of epic proportions. I knew the trail was about 3 km long, with a rise of about 350 m (1100 ft), which is about twice the size of cranbrook hill. So, not too bad, I thought.

I started out my hike by getting lost around the hotel, and trying to break through the police perimeter in the process. Neither of those things were on purpose, but nevertheless, I ended up having to walk all the way around the hotel, which might not sound like that big a deal, but we're talking a huge hotel. I just checked, and it is a mile around the perimeter of the hotel, which I walked entirely.

Once I managed to get on the correct trail (after accidentally trying to break through a different secure perimeter), I found it to be quite beautiful. The path was entirely paved, and not with pavement, but with cemented stones. It was very pretty. There were nice flowers, running brooks, pools of water, and everything you might want on a hike (except for potable water, which I forgot to bring). However, as I advanced, I began to wonder exactly how this whole "mountain climbing" thing was going to happen, since the first kilometer or so of trail had an overall rise of about 50 feet. Then things started to pick up, but not very much.

Then suddenly, the trail got to the actual mountain, and things got intense. You see, unlike our uncivilized, unpaved trails back in Canada that have to wind their way up a steep incline, the Chinese just build stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. The last set of stairs was about 630 long, which at the conservative estimate of 15 stairs per floor, is equivalent to 42 stories of stairs. And that was just the last bit.

Actually it was not. The trail that I had taken so far only got me to the peak area; I was still a couple hundred feet lower than the peak itself. So, after buying some water and ice cream at the nice store, I attempted to walk up the next set of stairs. However, the park ranger told me no. Seeing as "yes" "no" "hello" and "thank you" were the only words we had in common in either language, I had no idea why this might be the case. Only after walking around the ring road (the peak had a ring road!) to a place where the lady also knew English numbers did I find out I had to pay an additional 5 yuan to climb to the summit, on top of the 5 I had paid to access the previous trail.

I set off, passed the tower where you could ring the very loud bell, and got to the top (where they had another store, of course). I took some excellent pictures, and rested for a while, as I was now very tired. The peak is at 382 m, the hotel at 26, the difference between which is just taller than the top floor of the empire state building. I compare it to a building, because EVERYTHING was stairs. Steep, stoney stairs. I then began my descent, and discovered that my legs were rather a lot like pool noodles at this point. I was hoping they didn't give out on me, as it would be a fairly long roll to the bottom of the stairs, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't end up OK at the end.

I dragged myself down the hill, and eventually made it back to the hotel. I must be getting old, because I found walking down hills (and stairs) to be vastly more tiring than walking up. I was actively relieved when there was a bit of the trail that was uphill towards the end.

So, I finally ran into Chinese bugs (which look like some weird combination of wasp and fly) and I also had my first encounter with a wild animal. It was a ferocious cat! And I don't mean like a leopard or something. No, I mean a house cat. But it was wild. And very scared of me. (Course I'd be scared of people too, if I were a cat in China).

I saw a lot of really awesome things today. In fact, I don't think I've seen so many picturesque, and photo-worthy things on my whole trip so far. UNFORTUNATELY, not only was my camera out of batteries, but I forgot my memory stick. So I could only take a few pictures before I ran out of space. So, here they are:

And here is a rough map of where I walked: All told it was about 7 km.

Monkey Story

2007-12-26T06:24:00.000-08:00

Turns out I was wrong about the Chinese Acrobatics. It was tonight, not yesterday, not that it matters much to anyone over there. It matters to me though, because without that, I would have done exactly nothing today.

There was an exhibition for some big party officials today, but they wouldn't let me in. At first, I had no idea why this might be, since the nice Police Officers didn't speak English, and I don't speak Chinese. However, someone soon explained to me that it was because I wasn't technically one of the Chinese Scholars the event is for. Even when Dr. Chen tried to talk me in, it didn't work. Then he tried to tell me to sneak in, but I refused, since one of my major goals for this trip is not getting arrested.

So, they had to exhibit without me, so I sat in the hotel room and read. Not that I don't enjoy reading, but I did that most of the day. Dr. Chen mentioned a few days ago that there was no reason someone couldn't get their graduate degree in one year, as long as they got their thesis done. So, I also started in on what might eventually become my thesis. Or just some paper I try to get published.

Anyways, after sitting around and doing nothing all day, I was pretty excited to go see some acrobatics. The name of the show was "Monkey Story: Journey to the West" and I don't think I'm overstating it to say that it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Now I know I say that a lot, about a lot of things ranging from webpages to haircuts, but this is no hyperbole. I came in expecting some neat tricks, I came out with my jaw on the floor.

The basic story (which I only found out afterwards, because the introductory text and programme were both in Chinese) is there is a monkey with super powers who joins a monk and some other animals on a journey to India to recover the Sutras from Vulture Peak. Along the way they encounter various mythical demons and creatures who want to eat the monkey's flesh, because they think it will make them immortal. They eventually get there, and it is over.

So, the story is not very innovative, but I didn't understand it anyhow so it wasn't important. These acrobats were doing everything you ever imagined possible, and then more. Perhaps you thought you were good at something. You were wrong. These guys were good at everything ever invented, including (but not limited to) juggling, basketball, flying and puppets. It is one thing to walk across a tightrope, and maybe to stand on one foot on it. It is another thing entirely to bounce off a rubber pole held 5 feet off the floor, do a flip forwards and sideways, and then land back on that pole.

Everything about the show was incredible, from the costumes to the sets to the acrobats themselves. At one point they had a staff fight on stage in midair. I just don't see how you can get any cooler than that. The show lasted about an hour and a half, and I wanted it to go on and on forever. I couldn't understand anything about plot, character or theme, which are the three things I usually look for in a story. But it didn't matter because it was so very beautiful to look at. No WONDER Chinese cinema looks so amazing. They have a long history of making pretty things. The West may have Shakespeare, but China has this, and I would put them on par. They are entirely different approaches to art, but this was at least as deeply moving as a well done Shakespeare, and I know a thing or two about well done Shakespeare.

So, if you ever have a chance to see Chinese acrobats do a show, take it. It is worth any price to see. I took some pictures, and a movie at the end, but it really doesn't get across the sheer impossibility of what these people are doing.

Guangzhou Christmas

2007-12-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

So today, I have an amazing Christmas present for everyone. It is ME. Or at least a video of me. Today (and today only) my blog is a video blog. Enjoy.

P.S. Man, I would have killed for a copy of Premiere. Windows Movie Maker seems to have been designed by opossums. And they don't even have opposable thumbs.

An Unconventional Day

2007-12-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

Today has been pretty crazy. I have had an enema of Chinese culture potent enough to drop a hippo.

To begin with, there was the convention, which is the whole reason I am here. We exhibited our device all day, and we had lots of interest -- from fellow exhibitors. Many people came by and I showed them how it worked, often via pantomime, since Dr. Chen had his own booth for face recognition, and Dr. Lo was too busy wandering around to help out. But they seemed impressed.

Unfortunately, the representatives from industry were only there because the government forced them to be, so they were not very interested in much. They meandered around and then left, without ever really talking to anyone.

That was the boring part of the day. Then came dinner. I am getting much better at determining the sorts of foods that I like, and those I do not. But, during dinner, a bunch of guys came and sat at my table and talked, in English(!) about politics and economics. One guy in particular had a lot to say. He looked like a Buddhist Monk, but he most definitely was not. Indeed, he had a Chinese Russian accent (+2 to communism, although he was very very capitalist) He was full of all sorts of useful information (which I have since verified). For example, the GDP (the amount of money a place makes in a year) of the USA is about 12 trillion. The annual tax revenue is around 1 trillion, or 1/12. The GDP of Guangzhou, where I am, is ¥600 billion. The annual tax revenue is ¥200 billion, or 1/3. Think of that. 1/3 of the money made last year went to the government. Add into that the fact that the economy is BOOMING, and you've got yourself one rich government. The sort of government that can afford to pay for hundreds of Chinese scholars to come to a conference, fly for free, stay at a 5 star hotel, with all costs paid for.

It was also this Chinese gentleman's opinion that this entire convention was nothing more than some party official's attempt to pad his resume and get promoted. I do not share his cynical view, but I think it is quite clear that the function of this conference is not to bring together research and industry, as was claimed. No, the point of this conference is to show off how wonderful China is to all of its scholars who know better, and have left. It is good for me, since I get to tag along and see the best that China has to offer, but it is pretty useless for everyone else, who came seeking investment.

It is also interesting to note that every single one of the people at the table were of the opinion that America is going to fall, economically speaking, and China will rise in its place. It wasn't if, it was when. Most of them pegged it between 20-50 years. Now, I admit it seems likely that America will slide into a recession, and it is hard to deny China's economic prowess. But nothing ever goes as planned. I have quite a bit of faith in the American's ability to pull themselves out of a slump (especially a slump they can see coming), and China's economy is built entirely on the fact that they have 1.2 billion people, large amounts of whom are willing to work for almost nothing.

At any rate, after dinner there was a movie, which I decided to go to, because the only Chinese movies I have ever seen are Martial Arts movies, a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. First, the theatre. Imagine the commercialism in famous players exaggerated to a ridiculous degree. The ads ran for about 25 minutes. And they were almost entirely ads, there were only three movie trailers. One of the ads was this: the main character from the movie we were about to watch crawled out of the trenches (it was a period piece) and held out a cell phone. Apparently, no one pointed out that they didn't use cell phones during the Korean war.

After a lot of advertisements I didn't really understand, since they weren't in English, the movie started. I was in luck: there were English subtitles, so I was able to understand what was going on. Now, I have heard people complain that some Hollywood movies are too patriotic. To that, I say piffle! I can't imagine something more ridiculously patriotic than the movie I watched tonight. First though, some history.

I imagine most people don't know that the Chinese were fighting a civil war for most of the first half of the twentieth century. From 1927 until 1950 the Communists and the Nationalists fought it out. They did take a brief break during World War II to fail at fending off the opportunistic Japanese. Essentially, in the Early 1900's, the last emperor died, and warlords took over. A man called Sun Yat-sen wanted to re-unite China, and asked both the west, and the USSR for help. The west ignored him, but the USSR supported him, while at the same time supporting the Communist party that was trying to do the same thing. After attempting to work together for a while, the Nationalists and the Communists declared war on each other, and started fighting, while at the same time trying to fight the warlords. For a long time, the Nationalists were winning, until the Japanese showed up and wiped out their entire army.

Then, after WWII was over, the clever Communists, led by Mao Zedong, applied to Russia for help, and got the Russians to tell the Japanese (who were no longer allowed to be in the army) to come on over and help them. So, with the aid of the Japanese and the North Koreans, the Communists were able to beat down the Nationalist forces and establish the reigning party they have today. It's worth noting that once the west realized that the nationalists were fighting communists, they tried to help out, but it was to no avail. Furthermore, the nationalists liked to say they were going to establish a democracy, just as soon as they beat those communists, but in the meantime, it was martial law. Point is, it's pretty hard to say which side had the moral high ground.

So, the movie was about a psychopath named Gu Zidi, who was a captain in the Communist Army. The first scene of the movie, which was a battle, involved him shooting a nationalist POW in the head, because earlier the nationalists had the audacity to fire an artillery shell into his forces. But apparently he was emotional, so it was OK. They were stinking capitalists anyhow.

Then he is ordered by the Colonel to hold a mine, until he hears the retreat bugle. However, because those poor communists were out of troops, he had only the remainder of his regiment, 47 men. So, he goes to the mine, fights off countless numbers of Nationalist troops, until they eventually kill off all of his men. He, being not at all a coward, decides this is a good time to run away and hide, which he does, putting on an enemy's uniform so he doesn't get caught. This is how he's caught, so when the Communists pick him up, they think he's one of them.

The rest of the movie is him being angry at people because they don't believe his story, and his entire regiment basically gets lost in paperwork. There was about 10 minutes where he was digging on the side of a mountain, trying to find the bodies of his men where the mine had collapsed on them. Then, miraculously, they believe him, they find the bodies and everyone is happy. All in all, it was the most ridiculous excuse for a propaganda film I have ever seen. Although it did look pretty.

On the way home, I noticed we had a police escort, and I realized that I had seen police cars and police boats the previous night as well. Yes, they decided that we were so important we needed a police escort. Not that it mattered. The people here drive like lunatics, and don't pay any attention to laws, or other cars. They also don't believe in seatbelts, as no vehicle I have been in has any.

Anyhow, I got some pictures from last night from Dr Lo.

And these are the ones I took today, after I negotiated the purchase of some batteries. It was harder than it sounds.

Cruising for Pearls

2007-12-23T05:32:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of the conference proper. The conference is called "The 10th Guangzhou Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science and Technology". It is basically an excuse for the Chinese government to show off how wonderful it is to live and work in China. So, the conference today was a series of presentations about what it's like to work in China (hint: they say it's grand). Unfortunately these presentations were all in Mandarin, so there was little point in me attending. So, I spent most of today being intensely useless.

It turns out being left on my own all day was pretty good, because it let me get over the rather extreme level of crankiness I had going on yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what caused it, but I suspect it was being in a city where I can't be sure that any given person, or even some given people will have any understanding of English, which is pretty scary. But I have had all day to deal with it, and I feel much better now.

So, until about 5 pm, I did pretty much nothing, except finish reading Arthur & George (which is a fantastic novel by Julian Barnes that I would highly recommend), and begin to learn some Mandarin, so I at least would not be completely in the dark.

However, after 5, we got ready to go out on the Pearl River for dinner. We hopped in a bus that took us around Guangzhou, while a guide talked about the various things we were looking at. Unfortunately, it was in Mandarin, and Dr. Chen fell asleep, so I have no idea what they were saying. But Guangzhou's downtown is pretty impressive. It is even more impressive from the water. Turns out our dinner was on a river boat that went up and down the Pearl (which is the third largest river in China, and about the size of the Fraser at Vancouver).

The Chinese have this fascination with neon and LCD displays. For no reason I could discern, except possibly that it looked cool, the entire river wall was lined with an LCD strip that had blue blocks of light running along it. It was pretty impressive. Also, there were numerous buildings which were advertisements themselves. The entire side of the building was one big LCD display, used to show advertisements, and in one case to show a neat pattern of lights that was either meant to be pretty or hypnotic.

Along with this rather excellent view (which was explained, once again, in Mandarin), was the first dinner I have had in almost a week where I didn't once feel like gagging. (Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration. It is not). I have talked a fair amount about what I've been eating, but how it is served bears mentioning as well.

The Chinese loves them some buffets. Practically every meal has been a buffet of one sort or another. Even when they serve your table, they serve it in a Buffet style. This is pretty cool, let me tell you. What they do is they bring you some stacks of bowls. The bowls are cylindrical, so they stack without mashing what's inside. You take things out of the top bowl put them on your plate, and then move it to the bottom, revealing what was underneath, which may or may not be the same thing. The waiters constantly come to the table to take away old bowls and bring in new ones. If the things in the bowls were more edible, I would have really really liked this idea.

The other thing, which is pretty obvious, is that they use chopsticks for everything. I'm getting fairly adept with them, since I have to use them three times a day or I'll starve, but you will never, ever convince me that they are better than a fork. In fact, using chopsticks basically requires you to eat in a disgusting manner, slurping the food into your mouth, if you want to get all of it. I COULD request a fork, since we are at a hotel that caters to westerners, but I don't want to appear a boorish foreigner, even if that is what I am.

Anyhow, after the tour we (Dr. Chen, Dr. Lo, some other Prof from PG and myself) decided to take a walk down the river. This walk was one of the most awesome things I have done so far, for two reasons. First of all, under a bridge there were a group of street people who have monkeys they make do tricks for money. Now, I am saying it is awesome because I saw monkeys. But for these monkeys, things are not so awesome. I saw them while they were on their break, and they are kept on a rope about 18 inches long, tied to a railing, and given the condition of them and their owners, I suspect they are not fed very well. On the upside, they can console themselves with the fact that they are monkeys, and monkeys are awesome.

Secondly, as we were leaving the dock after the cruise, three women who were standing in a group saw me and ran up to me to push a card each into my hand. This is pretty standard around here, but usually if you don't hold your hand out, they won't give you anything. These ones chased me down and shoved it into my hand. I figured it was an advertisement for something or other. So, I was somewhat shocked when I looked down at what was in my hand and discovered a naked lady (whose name, it turns out, is Lily Mike. The card reads as follows: (warning, this is racy. So if you are say, my parents, you have been warned)

"Virgin Pink Lady Russian lady Boy Service: You Want beautiful Young Chinese girls for Massage and sex? Yes, that's What we have. We are Providing Professional Massage service. Excellent quality Of our girls is guaranteed and fast delivery is our promise. We Will Assign girls according to your special requirements, your comfort, our Pleasure! Do not hesitate, call now!"

It then goes on to list the various types of "masseuses" you can have: Virgin, Sparetime Model, Beautiful women, Student Girls, Young girls, Russian girls, Office girls and Factory girls.

Now I find this entire idea hilarious. Also sad, since it must work, or they wouldn't be doing it. But I find myself wondering what "Boy Service" is. And why "Russian girls" is its own special category. What about Hungarian girls, hmmm? What's interesting here is that they didn't try to give cards to any of the other people I was with. Just me, and they actively sought me out. I'm hoping it's because I'm foreign, and not because I'm radiating desperation or something like that.

Anyhow, although I saw lots of interesting things today, my camera is out of batteries, and I am having trouble finding some new ones (since the hotel is about a half kilometer away from anything else). So I have no pictures to share. Dr. Lo took a bunch, but he took off before I could steal his memory card. So, tomorrow I will put them up, since the only real exciting thing I'll be doing is seeing a movie or something. Oh and going to the exhibition. So, we'll see how that goes.

P.S. If anyone wants the number of a "Beautiful Girl Boy Virgin Service" (another of the cards I got) the number is 135387 58786. It says right on the card it'll be "SEXy".

Hello Guangzhou

2007-12-22T04:17:00.002-08:00

This morning, I had my first real encounter with racial discrimination. Or at least, I suspect that was the case. I was still trying to sleep when Dr. Chen and Dr. Lo went out for breakfast, so I had to go out by myself. I went to the same restaraunt as I have the last two mornings in a row, so I feel I have a pretty good understanding of how things are supposed to work. I sat down, expecing someone to bring me a menu. No one did. I had to flag a waitress down. I also had to flag a waitress down to order my food, get more water and get the bill. This is exceptionally odd, since they usually bring you the bill right after your food. On the upside, the food was pretty excellent. It did however make me very behind for packing.

I frantically packed, and then left the room very quickly, in the process forgetting a thing or two. In fact, when I got to the train station, I suddenly realized I did not have my $300 worth of Rembini. I frantically phoned the hotel, and they said they would look for it, but since I was trying to board a train, it was difficult to hear what was going on, so I promised I would phone them back. I was not very impressed with myself losing this. If you know me very well at all, you know I don't really have $300 to throw around.

We then boarded the train for Guangzhou, which was very, very nice. I would take the train over a plane any day of the week. The only real problem was the screaming babies. They really ought to gas them. This is China after all.

I don't want to be accused of being seditious, but the biggest thing I noticed after leaving Hong Kong is how poor everything looks. Except for in the centres of cities we passed, the buildings were all in shambles, and the people just looked poor. It was very unfortunate.

In fact, when we got to Guangzhou, I was accosted by a homeless man who wanted to carry my suitcase for money. However, as you might remember I didn't have any money. So he was rather out of luck. Also, he kept hounding me, as opposed to anyone else who might have been able to tell him off in a language he understood, although you would think headshaking is rather universal.

All the poverty stopped the minute we entered the Guangzhou Baiyun International Convention Center. This is about the most fancy pants place I have ever been. However, as with the rest of China, they seem opposed to automation (the theory being, I suspect that they have 1.2 billion hanging about, why waste work on machines). So, checking in was done entirely through paper (with carbon copies and everything). This took something like half an hour, for reasons that had something to do with me not being Chinese. Eventually everything was sorted out and we got to our room, which is very VERY nice. Plus: free chocolate.

Interestingly enough, even though I was already IN China, I had to go through Customs again at the train station in Guangzhou. I guess they want to make sure you don't import any capitalist ideas from Hong Kong. What I thought was neat is that they had a big sign behind immigration scrolling through Customs law, in big letters you couldn't miss:

Then they had the table of contents:

Then the law, paragraph by paragraph:

Once in Guangzhou, I called the Hong Kong hotel back, and they said they had not found my cash. So, I did a frantic search of my baggage, and it turns out I had very cleverly stashed it in a locked pouch of my suitcase. Hooray for me!

Then we went to dinner. If you are the sort of person who doesn't like meat, or who doesn't like gross things, I would skip right on over this paragraph. It is about to get very disgusting. Because you see, the Hotel is very fancy, so they had all sorts of Chinese Delicacies, which I decided I would like to try. I had beef tendon, leg of duck, pig's foot and duck's head. This last was very difficult to eat, because it basically looked like they had plucked the head, cooked it, and given it to me. Plus, it was largely bone, since there is very little meat inside a duck's head. Tomorrow they threatened me with cat and snake, but I adamantly refuse to eat cat or dog, on the grounds that I like cats and dogs. I don't really like any other animals. I'm always suspicious they are plotting a revolution.

On an interesting note, I am able to connect directly to this website, facebook, myspace and google, even though I am within the great firewall. However, Dr. Chen had some troubles accessing Yahoo Taiwan, as the CCP doesn't want anyone inside China to hear Taiwan's heretical claim that they are an independent state. (Interesting note: Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. No one else does though) I'm almost tempted to do a search for certain banned keywords. But I don't think I will. I don't want the nice young people in the People's Liberation Army to come knocking on my door.

Tomorrow the conference starts, which means I'm going to be spending a lot of time staring off into space, seeing as everyone here speaks Mandarin. I am the only white person in the conference, I think. Perhaps I will learn Mandarin for tomorrow. Perhaps I will go to sleep because I am exhausted.

Daniel vs. Hong Kong

2007-12-21T04:26:00.000-08:00

On this, my third day here, I finally feel like I have this city understood. As in, if you told me where something was, I could get there, and do whatever it is I needed to do. Or, alternately, I wouldn't die if I was left on my own here. This is good, since I will be on my own in just over a week, in Guangzhou. I am also picking up the pronunciation of the language, if not the language itself.

Today I did many exciting things. To begin with, we went to Hong Kong Polytechnic University to present our research. Dr. Lo gave a talk to the Optometry department there, after which I demonstrated the program. It seemed very well received and they asked me lots of questions about how it works, since neither Dr. Chen nor Dr. Lo is very good at explaining it.

Afterwards, we all went out to lunch. We all are include several professors, the chair of Optometry and the Dean of Health Sciences. Some pretty important people, in other words. They talked about some interesting things, or at least I assume they were interesting. It's hard to say because half of what they were saying was in Cantonese. And it wasn't as if they would have a conversation in English and then switch to Cantonese, they were switching mid sentence, for no reason at all. It seems that there is a war among eye doctors here. The ophamologists (eye surgeons) and optometrists fight over patients and will not refer to each other, which is a pretty big deal. That's basically what I got out of the conversation. Oh and since they thought I was a grad student, the Dean offered me a sort of joint PhD between his department and the Comp Sci program. There was that.

At this lunch, I discovered something. I despise basically all chinese food. I vastly prefer westernized Chinese food to real Chinese food. Although real Chinese food is fresh and much better for you, fake Chinese food tastes like Canada. I spent the rest of the day feeling ill after ingesting that much Chinese food. It just kept being dumped on my plate over and over again, and to be polite I had to keep on eating things I could not and cannot identify.

After that lunch, we went to a place called the Golden Computer Arcade in Sham Shui Po district, which is a big shopping mall filled with, you guessed it, computer stuff. You name a computer stuff and you can buy it there, for about 80% of the price in PG. Plus, there is no tax. I may or may not have bought further Christmas gifts there. It was pretty exciting for me. Instead of having a couple of computer stores, here in Hong Kong they have 5 thousand tiny ones, all selling the same things at randomly different costs. An iPhone (a real one) varies between $4500 and $5400 HKD ($575 - $690 CAD). However, these iPhones are unlocked. Apparently, the golden days of cheap electronics in Hong Kong is over. I'm still holding out for mainland China.

Sham Shui Po is awesome. It is this huge area of markets that looks exactly like every Chinese Martial arts movie. You know when the hero is being chased by the bad guys past a bunch of booths and such? That's Sham Shui Po. (This reminds me. On the night I got here, Dr. Chen and Dr. Lo went out for dinner, and saw a Chinese man and an East Indian man having a martial arts fight on the street. And it was not friendly sparring. It was drunken, 2 am fighting. I intend not to ever challenge someone Chinese to a martial arts fight. Unless AJ is there.)

We then went to yet ANOTHER shopping district (the theme of Hong Kong seems to be "Why yes, that is for sale") because Dr. Chen wanted to go to the Nokia Outlet, to buy his brother a sweet cell phone. I dunno what it was, but it cost about $800 CAD. The most expensive phone in the store (the 8800 Sirocco Edition) cost over $1000 CAD, which is pretty hardcore for a phone with no touch screen or keyboard.

I bought myself a phone (the 2760), for about $100, and it is pretty cool. Major problem I had: the menus were in Chinese. Lucky for me, I happen to be with some people who also speak Chinese. Now it is all Englishified. I bought myself a SIM chip, so anyone can call me. In fact, because my sleeping schedule is so erratic, people can call me basically any time, and I will probably answer. The number is 011 852 90198942. You can read this for some information about why my phone number is so crazy. In China you can do this really cool thing where you buy a SIM chip, plug it into the back of your phone, and it has a certain number of minutes on it. Once you run out of minutes, you buy a new SIM chip. It is like pay as you go, except you have no specific carrier, and you can change whenever you like, AND your minutes don't expire. Plus, the cost is only 4 cents per minute for local calls (for all the Hong Kong numbers I need to call) and about 10 times that for long distance. Anyhow, I'm pretty stoked about my Hong Kong phone.

I was hoping after this that I could sneak off and go to McDonalds or something to scour the taste of lunch from my mouth, but no, "we" decided to get Japanese food as well. So, I had Sushi for the first time. Verdict: I would far rather eat Chinese food. I ate exactly one of something (some kind of fish wrapped in seaweed and rice) and then feigned fullness. Dr. Lo is catching on though.

When I got back to the hotel, I ordered a grilled ham and cheese sandwich from room service. I am here to tell you that was the best $15 I have ever spent in my entire life. It came with french fries! I have nothing against Chinese food, except that I do not like the taste. I rather wish I did, as it seems very interesting, and largely healthy. But I do not. That said, I'm going to have to get used to it. However, once I get home, I am eating pizza for a week. And it will be wonderful.

Also, Dr. Chen mentioned an internship with Microsoft in France. The only way that deal could possibly be sweeter is if you replaced Microsoft with Google. But I'm pretty alright with MS. We'll see how that goes.

There are more pictures from today, but they are on Dr. Lo's camera. I will get them from him tomomrrow, when we go to Guangzhou on the train. I'm pretty excited. So far I have loved the transit systems here.

Shopping Hong Kong

2007-12-20T12:26:00.001-08:00

I had a pretty intense go at things today. I woke up this morning at about 9 am, looked out my window and was surprised to find that considering I'm in one of the most densely populated cities in the world at rush hour, there were like 5 cars on the road. I wondered about this. I wondered about this until we went to Kowloon, which is the shopping district. You see it turns out that all 8 million people were there, trying to walk up and down the roads, or alternately run the walkers over in their car. The pictures at the end sort of capture the insanity of being there.

Essentially the idea is this: There are thousands of shops, all selling the same thing: one of electronics, food, or clothing. As far as I could tell, all of the stores of a given type were exactly the same. For example, every electronics store had an iPhone surrounded by other smart phones, surrounded by other types of phones. These were always on the left side of the doorway. Furthermore, no store had any prices anywhere, you had to ask someone to tell you the price. This strikes me as exceptionally inefficient, but I'm sure there must be a good reason for doing so. Anyways, it turns out that electronics are about the same here as they are in PG.

UNTIL we went to Chungking Mansions, that is. The first two floors of this building are devoted to shops and such. (Mansions is a complete misnomer. It is actually a 60 year old death trap of a building with cheap rates). These shops are run almost exclusively by East Indian people, and they sell electronics on the CHEAP. Indeed, I held in my hands an "iPhone". An iPhone without a touch screen and with 256 megs of flash memory. Yes, that well known model of iPhone. Anyways, I laughed at the people trying to sell it to me, and then left.

Once I decided not to give my money to someone who is outright lying to me, we took the subway to the actual Island of Hong Kong. (I am not on the island of Hong Kong, I am on the peninsula, in the district of Hung Hom) This island is pretty intense. It has incredibly urban zones, with skyscrapers larger than I've ever seen, and then a park, or a big old hill, with nothing but trees on it.

View Larger Map

After wandering around the Island for a bit, we decided to take the tram up to the top of one of these hills to a place cleverly named "The Peak". This place was some kind of tourist heaven. It is 8 stories high, with glass walls, and escalators, and every floor is covered in glorious tourist-y shops.

You know how in Canada, when you go into a tourist shop, they have all sorts of lame stuff like moose and maple syrup? While these shops have basically the Chinese equivalent, except instead of being lame, it is 100% awesome. Or at least I think so. And so too better the people whose presents I bought today. These two shops right beside each other had about the most concentrated amount of coolness I have encountered in a long time. I did about half my Christmas shopping in a range of 5 m.

It also has a Madame Tussaud's, which was awesome. Dr. Chen and I went in, and we took some quite excellent pictures. They are basically comic gold:

Then we got to the top of the tower, and we had some pretty damn epic views. I've tried to capture them, but it just doesn't do it all justice. The misty city in the background, with skyscrapers rivaling forested hills, and the ocean stretching off into the horizon is about the greatest thing ever.

The major thing I have noticed about Hong Kong is that it is very easy to get around, and very very cheap. A bus ticket (anywhere in the city) is about 50 cents Canadian, and a subway ticket is not much more. Plus, they make it very convenient, with this card you just wave at the machine to pay. You don't even need to take it out of your wallet. I am still not really sure how this works, and it largely doesn't for me, though no one else has a problem. The other major difference is that their light switches work opposite to how I'm used to. Oh, and there is the whole "In China" issue. But by and large, Hong Kong is just a more intense version of Richmond. Waaaaaaaaaaay more intense.

Viva Las Hong Kong

2007-12-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

Well, I am here, in sunny Hong Kong. Or at least, it would be sunny if it weren't the middle of the night. It is currently 3:30 am here, and it has been dark for me for the last 17 hours. I rather miss the sun. It was my friend.

Not that it's not warm here. No it is 20 degrees celsius, and humid as all get out. Anyways, the epic story of my trip:

I started this morning on a snow-blown runway, which the plane had no problems taking off from. However, then I got to Vancouver, got on my plane with no problems and figured I was in the clear. WRONG-O.

The plane had some problems, which delayed us over 6 hours, so by the time I left Vancouver Airport, it was dark. The plane, for some reason which makes sense if you think about it, flies over the top to get to Hong Kong, instead of across. So, I flew over BC, Alaska, The Bering Strait, Russia, China and finally the city itself before landing. Unfortunately for me, I did not have a window seat on the plane, so we might as well have been flying over Antarctica. There were no screaming babies, so I would categorize the flight as a success.

Once in Hong Kong, I went through a bunch of gates where people made me show them my passport, and some other random paper work, and then I was free and clear. Free and clear in the Hong Kong Airport at 1:30 in the morning, when all the services have closed down. Luckily, I was accosted by a taxi driver who wanted to drive me places, and so me and a young man from Toronto hopped in and drove on our merry way. And when I say merry, what I really mean is insane, because the cab driver paid only cursory attention to things like signs, and I don't think he was even aware there WAS a speed limit. It was pretty fun though.

We got to the hotel, I paid the taxi driver $350 (Hong Kong Dollars) and went in to get my room. UNFORTUNATELY, I was at the wrong hotel. I was at the Harbour Plaza Hotel, and what I wanted was the Harbour Palace Metropolis, which had nothing to do with the first one. So, I hopped in another taxi (there are a lot of taxis everywhere. It's like they're a gang) and got to the correct hotel, met Dr. Chen, got my room and sat down to type this, whilst leaching internet from some other building. Turns out being on the 19th floor is good for wireless reception.

And now I am going to sleep. I have to go shopping tomorrow, and the day after that, apparently we're presenting something at a Polytechnical Institute, which is news to me. I took lots of pictures of my trip, but many of them are of dancing lights that don't look like anything. So, I got rid of the bad ones, and here are the awesome ones:

Vancouver-Hong Kong

Delays

2007-12-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

Hooray!

I am stuck in the Vancouver airport, because the smoke detectors in the bathrooms were malfunctioning. Or so they say. Either that's the truth, in which case I feel very safe since they're being so careful with such a little thing, or it's a lie, and the plane could have exploded at any moment. Either way, I think we're getting a new plane. I wish I was getting a new seat-mate. I never thought a small Asian person could take up SO MUCH SPACE.

-Daniel

Hat

2007-12-18T08:02:00.001-08:00

Hey guys,

I realized, using my amazing math skills, that it will be very difficult for me to post today when I got to my hotel, since it is already tomorrow in Hong Kong. Most websites have content first, and then start having filler. I've decided to get all the filler out of the way, and once the content hits, just go at it hardcore.

Anyways, my next update should come in tomorrow at like 5 am PST. Until then, check out this new character art I am working on:

Hey guys,

I realized, using my amazing math skills, that it will be very difficult for me to post today when I got to my hotel, since it is already tomorrow in Hong Kong. Most websites have content first, and then start having filler. I've decided to get all the filler out of the way, and once the content hits, just go at it hardcore.

Anyways, my next update should come in tomorrow at like 5 am PST. Until then, check out this new character art I am working on:

It's me in my travelin' hat. Hope you enjoy it.

-piro

(I mean Daniel)

Leaving

2007-12-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

In about 9 hours, I'll be leaving PG, and in another 3 or so I'll be leaving the country (supposing I don't get detained for smuggling illegal rubick's cubes into China). I am very excited. I spent all day today saying goodbye to people, which was a bit weird, since I sort of assume everyone goes into stasis when I am not around, so it's not like I'll be gone for any time at all, as far as they're concerned.

Anyways, this is my amazing collection of luggage.

The far suitcase is actually a Russian Doll of baggage. Inside the suitcase is a packsack, with ANOTHER packsack inside of it. It's pretty amazing, I know.

So, as it turns out, I don't really have anything of value to say, but I am SO FAR keeping up with my once a day promise. I'm sure everyone will be very disappointed if I don't keep my word.

Sunday Night!

2007-12-16T16:06:00.000-08:00

As everyone ought to have heard by now, I am going to China on Tuesday, Dec. 18. I intend this blog to be a record of what I do and see while I am there. I've bought a digital camera, with which I will take utterly amazing pictures, and post them here, so that everyone can be jealous of all the wonderful things I am seeing. Alternately, I will just find pictures on the internet of things that look cool and pretend I saw them. Like this:

This is red square in Moscow, Russia

I was there today. It was super cool. It turns out that in Soviet Russia, the picture posts you!

Anyways, I'm going to try and update this blog at least once a day from now until I get back. If you're the sort of person who likes to read awesome things, you should check back sometimes. if not, then poops on you.