Destination 1
Maya Bay (เกาะพีพีเล)
Vikings' Cave
Phi Phi Island (หมู่เกาะพีพี) (and enroute)
Back to Patong Beach (หาดป่าตอง)
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Fun in the Sun, Part 2
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Phuket: Expats and Australians
The second day we had to wake up way early. We had scheduled a boat tour stopping at three places the day before. I’m still not completely sure where we ended up going, but it was definitely worth the money and the devotion of one full day.
At something like 7:40 a.m. we pushed ourselves out of the hotel’s front door. There, after a five-minute wait, came a minibus to pick us up and transport us to the boat dock on the other side of the island. Along the way, the bus gradually filled up to the brim with passengers from other hotels as well.
We got to the dock to find crowds of people there. It kind of reminded me of my hometown—it was 80% white, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, was definitely unexpected.
Snooping around and listening to the noise, it became clear that a great deal of them were Australian. There were some French and English people, but the Australians were so prevalent that one of my friends who is Australian herself told me that their stereotypical accent was annoying. I have often had the same sentiment as of late, I’ve noticed. Copious amounts of the word “like,” in conjunction with rising intonation at the end of every sentence—“They talk in questions!”—has really begun to irk me.
The boat that we loaded onto had three decks—the lowest and cheapest, the middle V.I.P. section, and the upper deck not reserved. As expected, the crowds flocked up to the upper deck, for the views, for the air, for whatever. We claimed the cheap seats that we were meant to claim, which was fine, because there was plenty of open space on the middle deck for fresh air and water viewing—or so I thought.
We arrived at the first stop about half an hour after disembarking. With white-sand beaches, there were plenty of lawn chairs (that turned out to cost money, so we moved), and colorful fish to go around. To get off the boat, we had to get onto smaller (motorized) boats to get to shore.
One of my friends bought bread for the fish (that they were selling onboard), and she shared it with us. Like little kids, we threw the bread into the water and watched the fish converge. I started with small niblets that were consumed quickly, but I ended up submerging the rest of my piece in the water, allowing the fish to take hits at it while I still held the other side.
My friends proceeded to have drinks out of pineapples while I consumed a can of Coke. They then posed with the tops on their heads like hats. The weather wasn’t overly sunny. In fact, it was more overcast in nature, and it seemed like it was going to rain.
I know that I have trouble with weather. I complain in rain, I know, and whine when the temperature is less than 60 degrees. The thing is that I have trouble predicting weather as well. The first time it rained while I was in Hong Kong, I stepped out of the front door of the hall with a short-sleeved shirt, short pants, and flip-flops. That day, I slipped twice, and bought an umbrella. The next day I slipped again and waterlogged my right foot in a wet shoe. At least the second day I had a sweater. In planning for Taipei, I figured that since the temperature said 29 degrees Celsius, I wouldn’t have to worry about rain. Wow, was I wrong. The first two days it poured like I’d not seen in a long time. There, I bought another umbrella (this time plaid). I guess in California, it has to be under a certain temperature to start raining, and if it’s about to rain, the temperature will first drop.
And it started to rain when we were back on the big boat, going from the first destination to the second. (The first I can’t remember the name; the second Maya Bay). All the people lounged on the upmost deck started coming down, and I had the pleasure of informing them that the seats around me were taken. When it stopped raining between the second destination and the third (Maya Bay and Phi Phi Island), they selfishly went right back up to their undeserved seats.
Also, sitting down on the boat took longer than necessary, specifically and definitely because people filing on wanted to get their hands on the buffet onboard before sitting down. They just couldn’t sit down and allow everyone else to sit down so that the boat could start going before they crowded the buffet trays. Oh well.
Maya Bay was amazing. With sheer cliffs surrounding the bay, except for one private beach area, the water was deep. The tour came with snorkeling equipment, so we went snorkeling around the bay, diving and encountering fish. The water was cold (though not as bad as my parents’ pool) and the fish remained systematically unfriendly, but the experience was amazing. I had snorkeled before, the latest that I can remember being in La Jolla Cove (near UCSD).
I also learned about some sea critters that I had no knowledge of. In the water, it felt like I was getting pinched all over, but not by fingers. My Australian friend enlightened me to the fact that those were sea lice, and that she has them back home. Apparently, I could feel only around a quarter of the bites plaguing me.
Between the second and third destinations, there was about an hour of travel time. Getting seasick inside, we headed out to the deck. The spacious room seemingly apparent earlier in the trip seemed to disappear under the crowds—and by crowds, there couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen people on the bow of the vessel. The three-to-four person benches were being occupied by but a few (large and) inconsiderate people. To onlookers, they gave haughty looks, like they deserved those seats. And maybe they did deserve those seats, because the four of us got a deal on that daytrip. The price advertised for the day was ฿2200 THB per person ($66 USD), but when the four of us asked for a discount (because the travel agents give them out left and right), they quoted for the four of us just ฿3600 total, or ฿900 per person ($27 USD). In short, anyone who didn’t ask for a discount got gypped. We resorted to standing along the edge of the boat with plenty of fresh air but not seats.
The last stop on that trip was a town on Phi Phi Island. It was most definitely a tourist town, but walking through it, hawkers weren’t nearly as aggressive back on Phuket Island. They only started if you walked into their shop, having of course shown interest.
Wondering what I bought in Thailand, then? Well I bought a few postcards to send back home, but also I got a few novelty-type t-shirts. One said Red Bull (as in the energy drink brand) in Thai along with the iconic logo. Originally, Red Bull is from Thailand and its English name is a direct translation from the Thai name กระทิงแดง, and not the other way around. The other was a Coca-Cola t-shirt in Thai. My friend going to India said that if she found an iconic logo in a foreign language on a t-shirt, she would post me one.
The town was more peaceful and quiet than Patong Beach, and when we went exploring, we ended up on a different beachfront and had to retrace our steps to get back to the proper beach (and eventually the boat). Along the way were multiple companies offering diving and scuba certification. If I had free time and unrestricted money, I would do that.
The journey back to the dock on Phuket Island was an hour and forty-five minutes. This was followed by a cramped minibus ride back to Patong Beach, with me keeping my knees firmly touching so that I was not nudging the guy on my left and so that I didn’t hit the gearshift on the right. (The driver sat on my right, as the country drives on the left for the most part).
That was a tiring day and a tiring night. We went through many more markets and I found myself buying like 24 fl. oz. of Thai tea from the neighborhood 7-Eleven. Going through the markets was much more fun than going through markets in Hong Kong and Mainland China because the semblance of those places (such as Stanley Market on the south side of Hong Kong Island) to Chinatowns back home (I’ve been to those of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Monterey Park, San Francisco, and Chicago), is quite high. However, in Thailand, the merchandise and the approach to salesmanship were so different.
That night, I did little studying. The next day, we flew back to Hong Kong. After the same minibus ride, we arrived at the small airport to find lines flying like rat-tails out of the entrances. After waiting and entering the building, we realized that it was because they do security checks upon entrance into the building, rather than after check-in, as I’ve seen in all other airports.
I ended up studying less than imagined on the plane because I was super tired. Though the test went alright, I wondered a mere day earlier what was with the plane that I was on. The airplane (an Airbus I believe) was billowing steam from the joints between the overhead compartments and the walls and ceiling. It became more disconcerting as it became so noticeable that people began taking pictures of it as it obscured the ceiling. Eventually it subsided and I was never so glad to land as I was during that flight.
It’s a shame that I didn’t get to travel more outside of Greater China, this trip has made me realize. No matter how much Taiwan tries to act independent and no matter how much Hong Kongers look down at Mainland Chinese habits, the fact of the matter is that the places are so much more similar to each other than to other east Asian countries, and for that I feel I’m missing out.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
At something like 7:40 a.m. we pushed ourselves out of the hotel’s front door. There, after a five-minute wait, came a minibus to pick us up and transport us to the boat dock on the other side of the island. Along the way, the bus gradually filled up to the brim with passengers from other hotels as well.
We got to the dock to find crowds of people there. It kind of reminded me of my hometown—it was 80% white, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, was definitely unexpected.
Snooping around and listening to the noise, it became clear that a great deal of them were Australian. There were some French and English people, but the Australians were so prevalent that one of my friends who is Australian herself told me that their stereotypical accent was annoying. I have often had the same sentiment as of late, I’ve noticed. Copious amounts of the word “like,” in conjunction with rising intonation at the end of every sentence—“They talk in questions!”—has really begun to irk me.
The boat that we loaded onto had three decks—the lowest and cheapest, the middle V.I.P. section, and the upper deck not reserved. As expected, the crowds flocked up to the upper deck, for the views, for the air, for whatever. We claimed the cheap seats that we were meant to claim, which was fine, because there was plenty of open space on the middle deck for fresh air and water viewing—or so I thought.
We arrived at the first stop about half an hour after disembarking. With white-sand beaches, there were plenty of lawn chairs (that turned out to cost money, so we moved), and colorful fish to go around. To get off the boat, we had to get onto smaller (motorized) boats to get to shore.
One of my friends bought bread for the fish (that they were selling onboard), and she shared it with us. Like little kids, we threw the bread into the water and watched the fish converge. I started with small niblets that were consumed quickly, but I ended up submerging the rest of my piece in the water, allowing the fish to take hits at it while I still held the other side.
My friends proceeded to have drinks out of pineapples while I consumed a can of Coke. They then posed with the tops on their heads like hats. The weather wasn’t overly sunny. In fact, it was more overcast in nature, and it seemed like it was going to rain.
I know that I have trouble with weather. I complain in rain, I know, and whine when the temperature is less than 60 degrees. The thing is that I have trouble predicting weather as well. The first time it rained while I was in Hong Kong, I stepped out of the front door of the hall with a short-sleeved shirt, short pants, and flip-flops. That day, I slipped twice, and bought an umbrella. The next day I slipped again and waterlogged my right foot in a wet shoe. At least the second day I had a sweater. In planning for Taipei, I figured that since the temperature said 29 degrees Celsius, I wouldn’t have to worry about rain. Wow, was I wrong. The first two days it poured like I’d not seen in a long time. There, I bought another umbrella (this time plaid). I guess in California, it has to be under a certain temperature to start raining, and if it’s about to rain, the temperature will first drop.
And it started to rain when we were back on the big boat, going from the first destination to the second. (The first I can’t remember the name; the second Maya Bay). All the people lounged on the upmost deck started coming down, and I had the pleasure of informing them that the seats around me were taken. When it stopped raining between the second destination and the third (Maya Bay and Phi Phi Island), they selfishly went right back up to their undeserved seats.
Also, sitting down on the boat took longer than necessary, specifically and definitely because people filing on wanted to get their hands on the buffet onboard before sitting down. They just couldn’t sit down and allow everyone else to sit down so that the boat could start going before they crowded the buffet trays. Oh well.
Maya Bay was amazing. With sheer cliffs surrounding the bay, except for one private beach area, the water was deep. The tour came with snorkeling equipment, so we went snorkeling around the bay, diving and encountering fish. The water was cold (though not as bad as my parents’ pool) and the fish remained systematically unfriendly, but the experience was amazing. I had snorkeled before, the latest that I can remember being in La Jolla Cove (near UCSD).
I also learned about some sea critters that I had no knowledge of. In the water, it felt like I was getting pinched all over, but not by fingers. My Australian friend enlightened me to the fact that those were sea lice, and that she has them back home. Apparently, I could feel only around a quarter of the bites plaguing me.
Between the second and third destinations, there was about an hour of travel time. Getting seasick inside, we headed out to the deck. The spacious room seemingly apparent earlier in the trip seemed to disappear under the crowds—and by crowds, there couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen people on the bow of the vessel. The three-to-four person benches were being occupied by but a few (large and) inconsiderate people. To onlookers, they gave haughty looks, like they deserved those seats. And maybe they did deserve those seats, because the four of us got a deal on that daytrip. The price advertised for the day was ฿2200 THB per person ($66 USD), but when the four of us asked for a discount (because the travel agents give them out left and right), they quoted for the four of us just ฿3600 total, or ฿900 per person ($27 USD). In short, anyone who didn’t ask for a discount got gypped. We resorted to standing along the edge of the boat with plenty of fresh air but not seats.
The last stop on that trip was a town on Phi Phi Island. It was most definitely a tourist town, but walking through it, hawkers weren’t nearly as aggressive back on Phuket Island. They only started if you walked into their shop, having of course shown interest.
Wondering what I bought in Thailand, then? Well I bought a few postcards to send back home, but also I got a few novelty-type t-shirts. One said Red Bull (as in the energy drink brand) in Thai along with the iconic logo. Originally, Red Bull is from Thailand and its English name is a direct translation from the Thai name กระทิงแดง, and not the other way around. The other was a Coca-Cola t-shirt in Thai. My friend going to India said that if she found an iconic logo in a foreign language on a t-shirt, she would post me one.
The town was more peaceful and quiet than Patong Beach, and when we went exploring, we ended up on a different beachfront and had to retrace our steps to get back to the proper beach (and eventually the boat). Along the way were multiple companies offering diving and scuba certification. If I had free time and unrestricted money, I would do that.
The journey back to the dock on Phuket Island was an hour and forty-five minutes. This was followed by a cramped minibus ride back to Patong Beach, with me keeping my knees firmly touching so that I was not nudging the guy on my left and so that I didn’t hit the gearshift on the right. (The driver sat on my right, as the country drives on the left for the most part).
That was a tiring day and a tiring night. We went through many more markets and I found myself buying like 24 fl. oz. of Thai tea from the neighborhood 7-Eleven. Going through the markets was much more fun than going through markets in Hong Kong and Mainland China because the semblance of those places (such as Stanley Market on the south side of Hong Kong Island) to Chinatowns back home (I’ve been to those of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Monterey Park, San Francisco, and Chicago), is quite high. However, in Thailand, the merchandise and the approach to salesmanship were so different.
That night, I did little studying. The next day, we flew back to Hong Kong. After the same minibus ride, we arrived at the small airport to find lines flying like rat-tails out of the entrances. After waiting and entering the building, we realized that it was because they do security checks upon entrance into the building, rather than after check-in, as I’ve seen in all other airports.
I ended up studying less than imagined on the plane because I was super tired. Though the test went alright, I wondered a mere day earlier what was with the plane that I was on. The airplane (an Airbus I believe) was billowing steam from the joints between the overhead compartments and the walls and ceiling. It became more disconcerting as it became so noticeable that people began taking pictures of it as it obscured the ceiling. Eventually it subsided and I was never so glad to land as I was during that flight.
It’s a shame that I didn’t get to travel more outside of Greater China, this trip has made me realize. No matter how much Taiwan tries to act independent and no matter how much Hong Kongers look down at Mainland Chinese habits, the fact of the matter is that the places are so much more similar to each other than to other east Asian countries, and for that I feel I’m missing out.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Fun in the Sun, Part 1
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Phuket: Pad Thai and Elephants
As of late, I’ve had to focus my time and effort into my studies, so my blogging has unfortunately not been as frequent as I like. As a result, I’ve begun to fall behind again.
Now two weekends ago, we managed to make our way over to Phuket, Thailand (ภูเก็ต). The name isn’t pronounced as crudely as it looks. As I was enlightened, the “h” in Phuket (as well as in “Thai”) denotes aspiration, think puff of air, rather than an “f” (or “th”) sound in conjunction with the “p” (or “t”). As such the “Ph” at the beginning as “p” like at the beginning of the word “pin.” Glad we got that one straightened out.
Secondly, Phuket is an island, according to my research. Telling my friends though was an uphill battle, as I had to contend with faulty logic in convincing them—example of which include: “I don’t think it’s an island because I don’t think it’s an island;” “But there’s buses going to Phuket”—ever heard of bridges?; and my favorite, “It doesn’t look like it on the flight map”—well I’m sorry, but small islands aren’t worth drawing as separate from the mainland when covered by a dot and lines—does Singapore look like an island on the flight map? As I would later find out, that friend didn’t know Singapore’s land mass consists of one main island and a number of smaller ones. And Australia is smaller than China, but only by about two million square kilometers. Cool.
Well we landed after four hours of flying from Hong Kong (I remember five hours from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.), and went through immigration. Like in Taiwan, the officers stapled our departure cards to our passports, but we went through without a hitch.
On the other side, I pointed out the stand of tourist maps saying “Welcome to Phuket Island” in English and when we went up to the taxi counter to get transportation to our hotel about an hour away at Patong Beach (หาดป่าตอง), there was a map clear as day showing the island formation. Without rubbing it too much into their faces, I gave them haughty looks for fun as they looked away in shame, realizing that their (faulty) logic had been to no avail.
We ended up in a minibus (smaller than Hong Kong minibuses) to Patong Beach and our lodging, the Patong Swiss Hotel. The whole ride was in the dark, but from what I could see (mostly buildings), it became obvious that we weren’t in China anymore. The funny thing was that this was the first time on the whole trip that we (myself included) had been outside Greater China. As I’ve just recently figured out, this was to be my last trip outside Greater China before going back to California.
The thing is, though, that despite the fact that we were in a foreign foreign country, there was more English on signs and in general than Thai (which by the way is quite aesthetically pleasing). Our minibus stopped midway at a storefront to collect our tickets, and after politely refusing their tours and excursions, I got back onto the bus.
Arriving at the Patong Swiss Hotel, I was exhausted. By this time, it was about 1:00 a.m. Hong Kong Time and about midnight local time. Ready to lie down, we checked in to find that they had given us just two beds for our five-person reservation. One person got sick though before the trip, so we arrived as four. So the first night we ended up sharing beds, though the next morning we were given two bigger rooms (and me my own bed). Like in Guilin, the showers were without curtains, which only meant to me that the cleaners would have more work (though I tried hard not to get water everywhere).
That first night, I studied for my Fine Arts final, which was to take place the day after we got back to Hong Kong. The rest of them went out exploring Patong Beach nightlife.
The first morning, I woke up in a rut. It was quite hot and humid (though admittedly not as bad as my first weeks in Hong Kong), and we had just come from sub-75 degree temperatures back in the SAR.
After getting ready, we went out the front door, and much to my amazement, the beach lay right across the (two-lane) street from the hotel. I hadn’t noticed it at all the night before! I guess I forgot that my friend booked us a beachfront hotel.
We walked a couple blocks along that street. What was expected were the large volumes of shops selling merchandise, particularly knock-off brands. What wasn’t expected was the large number of expats there—and I say expats rather than tourists because most men were hand in hand with Thai women (though I remain open to the interpretation that many of them could just be escort). It was odd to see such a large expat population, but on the other hand it wasn’t unreasonable since they, along with the large numbers of European and Australian tourists present, were the reason for all the English signage.
Walking by, the hawkers try to grab your attention—and they do it much better than in Mainland China and definitely better than in Hong Kong, where they don’t even attempt. There, they understood the value of the relationship in business. Rather than pulling you in by listing off their merchandise, they’d start by “Hello, where are you from?” or “My you’re handsome,” or something to that effect. I personally got a lot of “你好s.” One of my American friends who speaks Cantonese answered back: “I speak Cantonese” in English, to which I laughed.
We got breakfast at one of the many done-up venues. I got some authentic Pad Thai, which was delicious, and some (real?) Thai Tea, which tasted more like cold milk than anything else.
This is the only trip that I took this term that I didn’t really take to get any historical culture out of—no sightseeing, more fun I suppose (though I enjoy sightseeing).
So that day we actually got to ride (Asian) elephants. It cost ฿500 Thai Baht for a half hour (฿33 Baht = $1 USD), so that was like $15 USD. The experience wasn’t really like I’d imagined. I’ve ridden on horseback on multiple occasions (and my fair share of carnival ponies when I was under three feet tall), but never an elephant.
There was a platform to mount them that was a good ten feet in the air. Getting on was intimidating, as you were to step onto the elephant’s back to get into the seat secured on the elephant. The guide sat right behind its head, on its neck with his feet touching the elephant’s ears. To move left, the guide would shake the elephant’s left ear with his left foot, and to move right, the guide would shake the elephant’s right year with his right foot.
The whole thing made us feel oddly sad for the elephants, and remembering back the horses, I remember having similar sentiments, only to cast them off by saying that we aren’t the first to do this.
We were taking all over a muddy trail. The barefooted guide dismounted the elephant halfway and took pictures of us, this led the elephant back to the base with voice commands. At one point, the elephant began to make a wrong turn, and the guide hit its right leg hard with a sickle-looking rod, making a vicious sound and making us wonder what was going on.
I guess we couldn’t help but to feel sorry for the elephants. I guess you could hope that at least they are well taken care of and fed properly. As we dismounted the elephants, one put its trunk up on the platform. My friends petted it, thanking him (or her) for his (or her) service. I guess I was too busy taking photos, because as I reached my hand out after putting my camera away, it retracted its trunk and went on its way.
The rest of the day we went around the shops and played a modified (and more intense) form of Jenga at a bar. At night, we got Mexican food. Right after, I went back to the hotel to keep studying for my Asian Art History class.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Now two weekends ago, we managed to make our way over to Phuket, Thailand (ภูเก็ต). The name isn’t pronounced as crudely as it looks. As I was enlightened, the “h” in Phuket (as well as in “Thai”) denotes aspiration, think puff of air, rather than an “f” (or “th”) sound in conjunction with the “p” (or “t”). As such the “Ph” at the beginning as “p” like at the beginning of the word “pin.” Glad we got that one straightened out.
Secondly, Phuket is an island, according to my research. Telling my friends though was an uphill battle, as I had to contend with faulty logic in convincing them—example of which include: “I don’t think it’s an island because I don’t think it’s an island;” “But there’s buses going to Phuket”—ever heard of bridges?; and my favorite, “It doesn’t look like it on the flight map”—well I’m sorry, but small islands aren’t worth drawing as separate from the mainland when covered by a dot and lines—does Singapore look like an island on the flight map? As I would later find out, that friend didn’t know Singapore’s land mass consists of one main island and a number of smaller ones. And Australia is smaller than China, but only by about two million square kilometers. Cool.
Well we landed after four hours of flying from Hong Kong (I remember five hours from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.), and went through immigration. Like in Taiwan, the officers stapled our departure cards to our passports, but we went through without a hitch.
On the other side, I pointed out the stand of tourist maps saying “Welcome to Phuket Island” in English and when we went up to the taxi counter to get transportation to our hotel about an hour away at Patong Beach (หาดป่าตอง), there was a map clear as day showing the island formation. Without rubbing it too much into their faces, I gave them haughty looks for fun as they looked away in shame, realizing that their (faulty) logic had been to no avail.
We ended up in a minibus (smaller than Hong Kong minibuses) to Patong Beach and our lodging, the Patong Swiss Hotel. The whole ride was in the dark, but from what I could see (mostly buildings), it became obvious that we weren’t in China anymore. The funny thing was that this was the first time on the whole trip that we (myself included) had been outside Greater China. As I’ve just recently figured out, this was to be my last trip outside Greater China before going back to California.
The thing is, though, that despite the fact that we were in a foreign foreign country, there was more English on signs and in general than Thai (which by the way is quite aesthetically pleasing). Our minibus stopped midway at a storefront to collect our tickets, and after politely refusing their tours and excursions, I got back onto the bus.
Arriving at the Patong Swiss Hotel, I was exhausted. By this time, it was about 1:00 a.m. Hong Kong Time and about midnight local time. Ready to lie down, we checked in to find that they had given us just two beds for our five-person reservation. One person got sick though before the trip, so we arrived as four. So the first night we ended up sharing beds, though the next morning we were given two bigger rooms (and me my own bed). Like in Guilin, the showers were without curtains, which only meant to me that the cleaners would have more work (though I tried hard not to get water everywhere).
That first night, I studied for my Fine Arts final, which was to take place the day after we got back to Hong Kong. The rest of them went out exploring Patong Beach nightlife.
The first morning, I woke up in a rut. It was quite hot and humid (though admittedly not as bad as my first weeks in Hong Kong), and we had just come from sub-75 degree temperatures back in the SAR.
After getting ready, we went out the front door, and much to my amazement, the beach lay right across the (two-lane) street from the hotel. I hadn’t noticed it at all the night before! I guess I forgot that my friend booked us a beachfront hotel.
We walked a couple blocks along that street. What was expected were the large volumes of shops selling merchandise, particularly knock-off brands. What wasn’t expected was the large number of expats there—and I say expats rather than tourists because most men were hand in hand with Thai women (though I remain open to the interpretation that many of them could just be escort). It was odd to see such a large expat population, but on the other hand it wasn’t unreasonable since they, along with the large numbers of European and Australian tourists present, were the reason for all the English signage.
Walking by, the hawkers try to grab your attention—and they do it much better than in Mainland China and definitely better than in Hong Kong, where they don’t even attempt. There, they understood the value of the relationship in business. Rather than pulling you in by listing off their merchandise, they’d start by “Hello, where are you from?” or “My you’re handsome,” or something to that effect. I personally got a lot of “你好s.” One of my American friends who speaks Cantonese answered back: “I speak Cantonese” in English, to which I laughed.
We got breakfast at one of the many done-up venues. I got some authentic Pad Thai, which was delicious, and some (real?) Thai Tea, which tasted more like cold milk than anything else.
This is the only trip that I took this term that I didn’t really take to get any historical culture out of—no sightseeing, more fun I suppose (though I enjoy sightseeing).
So that day we actually got to ride (Asian) elephants. It cost ฿500 Thai Baht for a half hour (฿33 Baht = $1 USD), so that was like $15 USD. The experience wasn’t really like I’d imagined. I’ve ridden on horseback on multiple occasions (and my fair share of carnival ponies when I was under three feet tall), but never an elephant.
There was a platform to mount them that was a good ten feet in the air. Getting on was intimidating, as you were to step onto the elephant’s back to get into the seat secured on the elephant. The guide sat right behind its head, on its neck with his feet touching the elephant’s ears. To move left, the guide would shake the elephant’s left ear with his left foot, and to move right, the guide would shake the elephant’s right year with his right foot.
The whole thing made us feel oddly sad for the elephants, and remembering back the horses, I remember having similar sentiments, only to cast them off by saying that we aren’t the first to do this.
We were taking all over a muddy trail. The barefooted guide dismounted the elephant halfway and took pictures of us, this led the elephant back to the base with voice commands. At one point, the elephant began to make a wrong turn, and the guide hit its right leg hard with a sickle-looking rod, making a vicious sound and making us wonder what was going on.
I guess we couldn’t help but to feel sorry for the elephants. I guess you could hope that at least they are well taken care of and fed properly. As we dismounted the elephants, one put its trunk up on the platform. My friends petted it, thanking him (or her) for his (or her) service. I guess I was too busy taking photos, because as I reached my hand out after putting my camera away, it retracted its trunk and went on its way.
The rest of the day we went around the shops and played a modified (and more intense) form of Jenga at a bar. At night, we got Mexican food. Right after, I went back to the hotel to keep studying for my Asian Art History class.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
广州 (Guangzhou)
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall (纪念堂)
TV & Sightseeing Tower (电视观光塔)
Chigang Pagoda (赤岗塔)
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Class Roundup: Asian Art History
Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present (coded FINE1008) was my first and only class to end thus far. I took the final this past Monday and now have but to wait and see what I get in the class. This class roundup serial is for me to conclude my posts about the classes that I’m taking here. It’s odd in a way that everything’s ending. I’ve echoed this before and I will still talk about it later in more detail, but I feel like I’m just not ready to go back yet.
This class was comprised of three assessments apart from general participation in tutorials and attendance at lectures. (I didn’t miss a single class or tutorial for this class). The three assessments consisted of two medium-sized papers and one final examination.
The two term papers were different for me. It was a challenge in that I’d never written a paper for any humanities subject before. Writing for political science, much is quantitatively based, more so at UCSD than at HKU (where we seem to be more on the philosophical side of things), I was constantly unsure of whether what I was doing was right. Furthermore, I wondered whether what I was doing was wrong.
The first paper, we had to choose any one object from either the HKU Art Museum, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, or Sotheby’s art auction house. Not really opting for traveling, I chose a Buddhist statue in the university’s art gallery. It was of Weitou, guardian of the Dharma (named Skanda in Sanskrit). The statue was gilt wood, but I could find hardly anything on Weitou or wood gilding. I was forced to deduce more than I was comfortable with and rely heavily on my own opinions and observations without having published scholars to back me up. When it was all said and done, I got an A-, which considering that she said she doesn’t grade easy, was a relief.
The second paper, we had a choice between two tasks. The first was do create a piece of art ourselves using the techniques talked about in class. This had to be accompanied by a paper describing your own work, telling why and how you used certain techniques. And I preferred to do this assignment. However, seeing that I had about a week to do this assignment (which is no time by my anti-procrastination standards), along with the fact that I had no idea where to get the resources to paint, I felt pressured to do the second task.
The second task was to compare two particular handscrolls, one a copy of the other. My thesis was something to the effect of the techniques used in the copy bring more meaning to its basis in the original. I got a B+ on it.
As for the final, the jury (of one member) is still out. I won’t likely find out my grades until January at the earliest, late March at the latest. All things considered though, I felt I did reasonably well.
It was organized into three parts: image identification, unfamiliar object identification, and short essay.
Image identification consisted of four pictures of works we studied in class. To each we were to place with applicable names and titles as well as a general time frame. In addition, we were to describe the significance of the presented works and analyze their importance, preferably with a sociohistoric emphasis.
To study for this, I printed out all the images from the Fine Arts Interactive Visual Archive (or FAIVA for short), and took extensive notes on them in lecture and in tutorial, as well as on the side, like information on the time period in general and background information on the author and such. As a rough estimate, there were between thirty and forty images that I went through over and over.
Out of the four of them, I probably did a bang-up job on like two and a half of them. The other one and a half I believe I knew enough to earn most of the points.
For the second part, we were to be presented with a (replica) ancient Chinese object. In all honesty, the only reasonable object that she would have given us was an ancient Daoist vessel—and it was.
For this, we had to describe the technique behind making it (basically bronze into a clay mold) and its significance. I figure I did pretty well. I had a lot to say about it, especially because she talked about it extensively in the last tutorial (and I took extensive notes which I studied over).
The last part was a short essay question. We were given the topics beforehand—to describe the function, significance, and perception of a place of leisure either in Ming China or Japan. I went over the Ming Garden, since the professor reviewed that one as well the day before in tutorial.
I have reason to believe that I did decently well in the class. Hopefully I got at least a B+, which they say will round up a third to an A- when grades transfer back to UCSD.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
This class was comprised of three assessments apart from general participation in tutorials and attendance at lectures. (I didn’t miss a single class or tutorial for this class). The three assessments consisted of two medium-sized papers and one final examination.
The two term papers were different for me. It was a challenge in that I’d never written a paper for any humanities subject before. Writing for political science, much is quantitatively based, more so at UCSD than at HKU (where we seem to be more on the philosophical side of things), I was constantly unsure of whether what I was doing was right. Furthermore, I wondered whether what I was doing was wrong.
The first paper, we had to choose any one object from either the HKU Art Museum, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, or Sotheby’s art auction house. Not really opting for traveling, I chose a Buddhist statue in the university’s art gallery. It was of Weitou, guardian of the Dharma (named Skanda in Sanskrit). The statue was gilt wood, but I could find hardly anything on Weitou or wood gilding. I was forced to deduce more than I was comfortable with and rely heavily on my own opinions and observations without having published scholars to back me up. When it was all said and done, I got an A-, which considering that she said she doesn’t grade easy, was a relief.
The second paper, we had a choice between two tasks. The first was do create a piece of art ourselves using the techniques talked about in class. This had to be accompanied by a paper describing your own work, telling why and how you used certain techniques. And I preferred to do this assignment. However, seeing that I had about a week to do this assignment (which is no time by my anti-procrastination standards), along with the fact that I had no idea where to get the resources to paint, I felt pressured to do the second task.
The second task was to compare two particular handscrolls, one a copy of the other. My thesis was something to the effect of the techniques used in the copy bring more meaning to its basis in the original. I got a B+ on it.
As for the final, the jury (of one member) is still out. I won’t likely find out my grades until January at the earliest, late March at the latest. All things considered though, I felt I did reasonably well.
It was organized into three parts: image identification, unfamiliar object identification, and short essay.
Image identification consisted of four pictures of works we studied in class. To each we were to place with applicable names and titles as well as a general time frame. In addition, we were to describe the significance of the presented works and analyze their importance, preferably with a sociohistoric emphasis.
To study for this, I printed out all the images from the Fine Arts Interactive Visual Archive (or FAIVA for short), and took extensive notes on them in lecture and in tutorial, as well as on the side, like information on the time period in general and background information on the author and such. As a rough estimate, there were between thirty and forty images that I went through over and over.
Out of the four of them, I probably did a bang-up job on like two and a half of them. The other one and a half I believe I knew enough to earn most of the points.
For the second part, we were to be presented with a (replica) ancient Chinese object. In all honesty, the only reasonable object that she would have given us was an ancient Daoist vessel—and it was.
For this, we had to describe the technique behind making it (basically bronze into a clay mold) and its significance. I figure I did pretty well. I had a lot to say about it, especially because she talked about it extensively in the last tutorial (and I took extensive notes which I studied over).
The last part was a short essay question. We were given the topics beforehand—to describe the function, significance, and perception of a place of leisure either in Ming China or Japan. I went over the Ming Garden, since the professor reviewed that one as well the day before in tutorial.
I have reason to believe that I did decently well in the class. Hopefully I got at least a B+, which they say will round up a third to an A- when grades transfer back to UCSD.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Currency, Coins, and Octopus
I opened my draw a while ago to find some (not much) American money. It was just lying there, having not been touched in quite a while. I picked and thought that they were just funny—funny shaped, funny colored, funny everything. They seemed awfully long in comparison to their width and way too green for their own good. It made me realize that though I’ve been here only for three months, it’s been enough to make me reevaluate my norms and see that I’ve not really talked about money here in Hong Kong.
By money, I don’t mean business. There’s enough of that here. I mean the nuts and bolts. I mean the greenbacks and the buckaroonies. I remember my first week here, I found myself with a wallet full of coins. I thought it was ridiculous how many coins I was carrying and when I emptied it out on my desk, I found about $60 HKD worth.
The funny thing is that they only divide the dollar into tenths here, so in theory I should be getting less change here than back in the States, being that back there we divide the dollar into cents. Yeah, here they divide it into cents as well, but the smallest coin is worth ten cents. Prices quoted in cents get rounded to tenths and in Cantonese, they would actually count ten cents as one unit (一毫), or one ten-cent unit.
I actually went running around my early days here calling ten-cent pieces dimes, because that’s what you’d call it back in the States. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters are what’s in common circulation, right? Here, in coins there are ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, dollar, two-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar pieces. On a quick side note, I learned that talking about coins in American terms is not understood properly by other English speakers. They would say ten-piece instead of a dime, for example, and though words such as nickel can be figured out if you sit down for long enough, I’ve more than once gotten blank stares at my coin calling. But back onto everything else.
So there’s a funny collaboration of reasons for why I end up with more change here than back home. For instance, one USD is equal to almost eight HKD (fixed) here, so in some funny way, maybe the fact that I have to pay more in raw numbers combined with the fact that coins have higher raw face value here gives me that increase. I think though that the main reason is that back home, I hardly deal with notes and coins.
I deal with credit cards. Swiping for things is the easiest way back home. Most places have it integrated into the system, and for many purchases under like ten dollars or something, they’ve stopped asking you to sign the receipt. Here, I’ve seen people use credit cards. It takes forever. There are very few if any registers here that have integrated credit card capabilities. Clerks have to do it through the separate machine and enter the dollar amount separately, and the receipts print out funny. They look like sheets off the pads waiters write on at restaurants. In short, it’s not worth it here to use a credit card.
However, the Octopus card is in vogue instead—and it’s here to stay. It’s really quite a good system. It’s in essence a debit card without a signed contract. You can store up to $1000 HKD on the card and deposit money at a plethora of locales. You’re also allowed to go negative up to $35 HKD in one transaction, so if you’ve forgotten, chances are it’s not a big deal. It’s taken everywhere as well. Except for the taxicabs, I’ve hardly seen a place that takes money but not Octopus Cards.
The name is a different issue though. In Cantonese, the name is 八達通, which means something along the lines of “eight arrivals card.” The name was chosen during a competition, and has good vibes with eight being an auspicious number and all in Chinese. However, the only connection between the Cantonese name and the English name is that the first word in the Cantonese name is eight, and octopi have eight legs (or tentacles or whatever).
I guess I’ve got money on my mind though because I’m on a mission to collect coins for my brother’s currency collection. So a lot of non-Europeans don’t know this, but the Euro, while legal tender in the Eurozone, is minted by the individual countries. I’m not sure about the bills, but the coins at least (one-cent, two-cent, five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, euro, two-euro) are all produced by the individual countries and as such have state symbols that allow the currency to maintain national identity in the face of universality. These coins float all around the Eurozone, so while we were in France and Italy this past summer, he tried to collect as many as he could (a daunting task).
So I’m collecting for him. So far, I’ve got a full set of Thai Baht and some Chinese Yuan (though I think he might already have a set of that). I’m also trying to get a set of the modern Hong Kong Dollar coins (with the bauhinia flower) as well as a set of the pre-handover coins (with Queen Elisabeth II). My roommate who goes to Macau a lot has retrieved me most of the Macau Pataca. In addition, I’m trying to squeeze other currencies out of my fellow exchange students. In short, my little brother should be happy.
Back on to term paper writing!
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
By money, I don’t mean business. There’s enough of that here. I mean the nuts and bolts. I mean the greenbacks and the buckaroonies. I remember my first week here, I found myself with a wallet full of coins. I thought it was ridiculous how many coins I was carrying and when I emptied it out on my desk, I found about $60 HKD worth.
The funny thing is that they only divide the dollar into tenths here, so in theory I should be getting less change here than back in the States, being that back there we divide the dollar into cents. Yeah, here they divide it into cents as well, but the smallest coin is worth ten cents. Prices quoted in cents get rounded to tenths and in Cantonese, they would actually count ten cents as one unit (一毫), or one ten-cent unit.
I actually went running around my early days here calling ten-cent pieces dimes, because that’s what you’d call it back in the States. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters are what’s in common circulation, right? Here, in coins there are ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, dollar, two-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar pieces. On a quick side note, I learned that talking about coins in American terms is not understood properly by other English speakers. They would say ten-piece instead of a dime, for example, and though words such as nickel can be figured out if you sit down for long enough, I’ve more than once gotten blank stares at my coin calling. But back onto everything else.
So there’s a funny collaboration of reasons for why I end up with more change here than back home. For instance, one USD is equal to almost eight HKD (fixed) here, so in some funny way, maybe the fact that I have to pay more in raw numbers combined with the fact that coins have higher raw face value here gives me that increase. I think though that the main reason is that back home, I hardly deal with notes and coins.
I deal with credit cards. Swiping for things is the easiest way back home. Most places have it integrated into the system, and for many purchases under like ten dollars or something, they’ve stopped asking you to sign the receipt. Here, I’ve seen people use credit cards. It takes forever. There are very few if any registers here that have integrated credit card capabilities. Clerks have to do it through the separate machine and enter the dollar amount separately, and the receipts print out funny. They look like sheets off the pads waiters write on at restaurants. In short, it’s not worth it here to use a credit card.
However, the Octopus card is in vogue instead—and it’s here to stay. It’s really quite a good system. It’s in essence a debit card without a signed contract. You can store up to $1000 HKD on the card and deposit money at a plethora of locales. You’re also allowed to go negative up to $35 HKD in one transaction, so if you’ve forgotten, chances are it’s not a big deal. It’s taken everywhere as well. Except for the taxicabs, I’ve hardly seen a place that takes money but not Octopus Cards.
The name is a different issue though. In Cantonese, the name is 八達通, which means something along the lines of “eight arrivals card.” The name was chosen during a competition, and has good vibes with eight being an auspicious number and all in Chinese. However, the only connection between the Cantonese name and the English name is that the first word in the Cantonese name is eight, and octopi have eight legs (or tentacles or whatever).
I guess I’ve got money on my mind though because I’m on a mission to collect coins for my brother’s currency collection. So a lot of non-Europeans don’t know this, but the Euro, while legal tender in the Eurozone, is minted by the individual countries. I’m not sure about the bills, but the coins at least (one-cent, two-cent, five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, euro, two-euro) are all produced by the individual countries and as such have state symbols that allow the currency to maintain national identity in the face of universality. These coins float all around the Eurozone, so while we were in France and Italy this past summer, he tried to collect as many as he could (a daunting task).
So I’m collecting for him. So far, I’ve got a full set of Thai Baht and some Chinese Yuan (though I think he might already have a set of that). I’m also trying to get a set of the modern Hong Kong Dollar coins (with the bauhinia flower) as well as a set of the pre-handover coins (with Queen Elisabeth II). My roommate who goes to Macau a lot has retrieved me most of the Macau Pataca. In addition, I’m trying to squeeze other currencies out of my fellow exchange students. In short, my little brother should be happy.
Back on to term paper writing!
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Guangzhou (广州)
I honestly don’t know what I expected out of Guangzhou, but had I, no doubt I would have been disappointed. For those of you who may not have a grasp on Chinese geography, Guangzhou is the capital city of Guangdong province and sits a few hundred kilometers from Hong Kong.
To get there, we took a train from Hung Hom station in Kowloon to Guangzhou East Railway Station. The trip took about an hour and forty-five minutes, with a disproportionate amount of that time in Hong Kong SAR. The route shares tracks with the light blue East Rail Line of the MTR, and as such crawls along said tracks so as to disturb MTR traffic as little as possible. And when you cross into Mainland China though, heavy rail is separated from light rail and the train speeds up dramatically.
Crossing borders (since Hong Kong and Macau maintain their own immigration systems), we exited Hong Kong first in Hung Hom Station. Upon exiting the train in Guangzhou, we went through Chinese immigration.
Finding somewhere to eat, we went to Beijing Street (北京路), which was actually more for shopping. I suppose it’s similar in notability to Shanghai’s Nanjing Street. Instead of finding dim sum, which was what we were hoping for, we stumbled into an Argentine restaurant. Resisting the temptation to test their Spanish, I found the waitress asking why I can’t speak Cantonese, since the two friends I was with we doing all the ordering while I stayed silent in the corner. The food was okay. It wasn’t great but I suppose it wasn’t bad either. Though we were looking for dim sum, getting away from Chinese food for a bit was nice.
Beijing Street itself was a little piece of history from what I could surmise. Based on the name of the street, I would think that in some way or another, the northern direction of the road more or less led to Beijing (over a thousand kilometers away). Similarly, I would surmise that Nanjing Road in Shanghai leads to Nanjing in one way or another (a couple hundred kilometers east).
What brought this to mind, because a name is often just a name, was that the center section of this (pedestrian) road was covered in glass. Looking in, it looked like an old pathway, perhaps the old Beijing Road hundreds of years before it was surrounded by shops galore. There were signs describing what was beheld, but my Chinese proficiency pales when confronted with text.
From there we descended to the underground and looked to see what there was to do in conjunction with stops on the metro map. There seems to be nothing famous in Guangzhou (at least to the likes of the Great Wall or the Terra Cotta Warriors). As people upon people kept passing by, it became clear that this was just a big city with lots of people.
Finally, we settled on the Second Workers’ Cultural Palace. It looked like an interesting enough place to go. After waiting in line for the ticket machines and finding that our machine didn’t take bills, we found another machine, bought our tickets, and entered the metro.
In short, it was crowded. I felt a hand on my face the whole journey. I used to think that people were kind of impolite on the Hong Kong MTR system. As the main example, letting people out of the train car before entering makes sense in terms of politeness and just plain old logistically. No two things can take up the same space, so letting people uncram themselves from the subway before you cram yourself on is just good sense.
Getting off of the subway with much effort, we went back to street level, scrambling to find the Second Workers’ Cultural Palace. After much roaming, we finally asked a security guard where it was, and he replied, “It’s right here!” Looking around us, there was a halfway dilapidated shopping center with big characters along the top “市二宮.” It was disappointing but funny at the same time.
Back in the metro, we settled on the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, because, actually I don’t know why. I guess we were kind of looking for something with substance, so we went. It was like every other Sun Yat-sen memorial I had been to. Inside was a museum that we didn’t enter and the whole time it was raining.
Back in the metro, we proceeded onto Chigang Pagoda. By the time we exited the station, the sun was already falling, so we didn’t go all the way to the site. We viewed it from a distance and then went back to the station. Along the way, you could see the new spiral tower they were building for the 2010 Asian Games hosted by Guangzhou.
The TV & Sightseeing Tower, as it has been dubbed, is not open yet, but the structure is finished. It was so tall that the top could not be seen because of cloud cover.
To get back to Guangzhou East Railway Station, we took another (extremely) crowed metro ride. People were crowding the entire station shoulder to shoulder, and to transfer trains, we had to circle around the platforms in that crowd. It was so packed that to get out of the train, I had about nine inches of room in which to squeeze out of. Luckily, I was able to push myself through and not get lost in Guangzhou.
The day ended as it started—with a train trip. I’m glad I didn’t spend an extra day or two in Guangzhou, because there was nothing to see. And according to another group of people who tried to go out at night, there was nothing to do.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
To get there, we took a train from Hung Hom station in Kowloon to Guangzhou East Railway Station. The trip took about an hour and forty-five minutes, with a disproportionate amount of that time in Hong Kong SAR. The route shares tracks with the light blue East Rail Line of the MTR, and as such crawls along said tracks so as to disturb MTR traffic as little as possible. And when you cross into Mainland China though, heavy rail is separated from light rail and the train speeds up dramatically.
Crossing borders (since Hong Kong and Macau maintain their own immigration systems), we exited Hong Kong first in Hung Hom Station. Upon exiting the train in Guangzhou, we went through Chinese immigration.
Finding somewhere to eat, we went to Beijing Street (北京路), which was actually more for shopping. I suppose it’s similar in notability to Shanghai’s Nanjing Street. Instead of finding dim sum, which was what we were hoping for, we stumbled into an Argentine restaurant. Resisting the temptation to test their Spanish, I found the waitress asking why I can’t speak Cantonese, since the two friends I was with we doing all the ordering while I stayed silent in the corner. The food was okay. It wasn’t great but I suppose it wasn’t bad either. Though we were looking for dim sum, getting away from Chinese food for a bit was nice.
Beijing Street itself was a little piece of history from what I could surmise. Based on the name of the street, I would think that in some way or another, the northern direction of the road more or less led to Beijing (over a thousand kilometers away). Similarly, I would surmise that Nanjing Road in Shanghai leads to Nanjing in one way or another (a couple hundred kilometers east).
What brought this to mind, because a name is often just a name, was that the center section of this (pedestrian) road was covered in glass. Looking in, it looked like an old pathway, perhaps the old Beijing Road hundreds of years before it was surrounded by shops galore. There were signs describing what was beheld, but my Chinese proficiency pales when confronted with text.
From there we descended to the underground and looked to see what there was to do in conjunction with stops on the metro map. There seems to be nothing famous in Guangzhou (at least to the likes of the Great Wall or the Terra Cotta Warriors). As people upon people kept passing by, it became clear that this was just a big city with lots of people.
Finally, we settled on the Second Workers’ Cultural Palace. It looked like an interesting enough place to go. After waiting in line for the ticket machines and finding that our machine didn’t take bills, we found another machine, bought our tickets, and entered the metro.
In short, it was crowded. I felt a hand on my face the whole journey. I used to think that people were kind of impolite on the Hong Kong MTR system. As the main example, letting people out of the train car before entering makes sense in terms of politeness and just plain old logistically. No two things can take up the same space, so letting people uncram themselves from the subway before you cram yourself on is just good sense.
Getting off of the subway with much effort, we went back to street level, scrambling to find the Second Workers’ Cultural Palace. After much roaming, we finally asked a security guard where it was, and he replied, “It’s right here!” Looking around us, there was a halfway dilapidated shopping center with big characters along the top “市二宮.” It was disappointing but funny at the same time.
Back in the metro, we settled on the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, because, actually I don’t know why. I guess we were kind of looking for something with substance, so we went. It was like every other Sun Yat-sen memorial I had been to. Inside was a museum that we didn’t enter and the whole time it was raining.
Back in the metro, we proceeded onto Chigang Pagoda. By the time we exited the station, the sun was already falling, so we didn’t go all the way to the site. We viewed it from a distance and then went back to the station. Along the way, you could see the new spiral tower they were building for the 2010 Asian Games hosted by Guangzhou.
The TV & Sightseeing Tower, as it has been dubbed, is not open yet, but the structure is finished. It was so tall that the top could not be seen because of cloud cover.
To get back to Guangzhou East Railway Station, we took another (extremely) crowed metro ride. People were crowding the entire station shoulder to shoulder, and to transfer trains, we had to circle around the platforms in that crowd. It was so packed that to get out of the train, I had about nine inches of room in which to squeeze out of. Luckily, I was able to push myself through and not get lost in Guangzhou.
The day ended as it started—with a train trip. I’m glad I didn’t spend an extra day or two in Guangzhou, because there was nothing to see. And according to another group of people who tried to go out at night, there was nothing to do.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Finals (Three) Week(s)
I can’t believe this term is starting to come to an end. It’s now been just over three months since I arrived here (confused) in late August. That means that I have just under a month left here, so I figured I’d sum up my plans for the remainder of my stay.
Believe it or not, classes have begun to end. One of my classes is completely finished—I took my final for it yesterday. One more will be all over after a group presentation next Monday. The third will end with a final examination on Thursday of revision week.
This week is actually the last week of instruction. My lectures have started ending one by one and I’ve harbored mixed feelings about my classes ending, but that’s for a later post. I still have two classes next Monday though, because the instructors wanted to make up for the fact that classes began on a Tuesday. I don’t mind; I’ll be here then.
This weekend will the first in a while that I’m not planning on going somewhere outside of Hong Kong. I’ve got work to do, with four more finals to study for a research paper due the end of revision week. It’ll be nice and quiet here.
After revision week though comes the official period for final examinations. Granted, I’ll only have three (as one’s already taken and the other two are likewise scheduled prematurely). Back at UCSD, finals take up one week. That week is appropriately named finals week, and occurs immediately after instruction stops. We have no revision week and little time to revise in between finals.
Here’s different. It’s partly to blame I suppose on it being on semesters rather than quarters here, but finals week is actually three weeks here. (Okay, in actuality it’s two, but it feels like three to me.)
If you remember from when I registered that we wouldn’t receive our timeslots and venues for finals until mid-November, that time has come. While I would have hoped for them to be grouped together, preferably at the start, they all turned out to be spread out. I have one on December 8, one on December 14, and one on December 18. I leave back for the States on the 21st.
In no way do I plan to use all those gaps for studying. I want to keep travelling! To this effect, I’m going to go to Nanjing from December 4th to the 8th. And in the other gaps, I’m still negotiating where to go and what to do. No worries though—it’ll be good.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Believe it or not, classes have begun to end. One of my classes is completely finished—I took my final for it yesterday. One more will be all over after a group presentation next Monday. The third will end with a final examination on Thursday of revision week.
This week is actually the last week of instruction. My lectures have started ending one by one and I’ve harbored mixed feelings about my classes ending, but that’s for a later post. I still have two classes next Monday though, because the instructors wanted to make up for the fact that classes began on a Tuesday. I don’t mind; I’ll be here then.
This weekend will the first in a while that I’m not planning on going somewhere outside of Hong Kong. I’ve got work to do, with four more finals to study for a research paper due the end of revision week. It’ll be nice and quiet here.
After revision week though comes the official period for final examinations. Granted, I’ll only have three (as one’s already taken and the other two are likewise scheduled prematurely). Back at UCSD, finals take up one week. That week is appropriately named finals week, and occurs immediately after instruction stops. We have no revision week and little time to revise in between finals.
Here’s different. It’s partly to blame I suppose on it being on semesters rather than quarters here, but finals week is actually three weeks here. (Okay, in actuality it’s two, but it feels like three to me.)
If you remember from when I registered that we wouldn’t receive our timeslots and venues for finals until mid-November, that time has come. While I would have hoped for them to be grouped together, preferably at the start, they all turned out to be spread out. I have one on December 8, one on December 14, and one on December 18. I leave back for the States on the 21st.
In no way do I plan to use all those gaps for studying. I want to keep travelling! To this effect, I’m going to go to Nanjing from December 4th to the 8th. And in the other gaps, I’m still negotiating where to go and what to do. No worries though—it’ll be good.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
The Storm that Passed without a Fight
Yeah, I’ve been traveling a lot, I know. This latter half of the semester, I’ve been jetting off to different cities, with my last conquest being Phuket, Thailand, four hours away. There is less than a month left, and though deadlines are looming and finals are approaching, I remain calm and look forward to a few more excursions before my departure back to the States.
It’s funny how people think that something has to give for something else to happen—and it’s true. It’s like you can’t be in two places at once (not yet, though I believe not ever), or how matter can’t just disappear. The funny thing then is that people don’t realize that there’s no need to give because there already is so much give—and by give I mean time, of course.
Back at UCSD, the normal course load is about four classes. The minimum is three to be a full-time student. I took five—and there’s a couple reasons for that. The first quarter, I took the standard four. I was bored out of my mind. I caught up with many different television shows (including the nine-season Scrubs and the now-ten-season CSI) and at the end of the year I took to reading a lot.
Because of my boredom, I decided why not take an extra class? I can handle it well and I’ll graduate earlier and spend less of my parents’ money on my education. After all, the UCSD levies tuition against all full-time students equally, regardless of actual credit hours. And after that happened, I was still bored. I started a blog for my upcoming study abroad trip and started brainstorming ideas for extended prose.
Here is not all that different. Each class that I attend here is about three hours per week in duration, except Cantonese, which is about two. Add it all up and I go to class 17 hours per week. With studying, it probably works out to 48 academically-focused hours. A seven-day week is 168 hours long. I sleep off around 56 of those. So 168 minus 56 minus 48 leaves me with 64 spare hours per week.
Last weekend, the Thailand trip lasted about three full days—that’s 72 hours, and two of the three nights I spent studying for my Fine Arts final that I got over with yesterday.
So the time is there—it’s just how you use it, I suppose. I found that working on deadlines early, getting projects done a few days before they’re due (at a minimum) keeps me at rest. That way if I find something (fun) to do, I can easily be spontaneous. Last week, I turned in an essay due Friday at 7:00 p.m. on Monday at 9:00 a.m. The professor hadn’t even given the department office instructions to collect it yet.
I found out that I hate procrastination, and it’s been keeping me afloat ever since I discovered this little preference of mine. At UCSD it was the same way. My first quarter, I had a paper due week eight of the term. The week before, we were to do a peer review in tutorial/section, so I finished it in the middle of week six. I found that my paper was the only one in the class that was really able to be peer-reviewed, so nearly everybody read it. Cool.
So that’s how I do what I do—good ol’ hard work—and it really works. But that’s just one side of the coin. The other is the realization of many of us here—where does the time go at home?
I know the answer for my own situation. It drains into the tube (though my computer functions as my television). I don’t mind reading—in fact, I really like reading, but the television usage can go down. That would renew my spare time.
The funny thing is that while I’ve seen more of the United States than the average American (by means of a thirty-state road trip when I just got my driver’s license in 2006), there is still so much that I’ve never seen. I would struggle to say that I’ve been to New England. I’ve still not been to New York City. I’ve been to many, many national capitals now, yet my own isn’t on that list. Most sad (though common) is that I’ve not been thirty miles south of UCSD. Admittedly, there’s a current travel warning from the Department of State advising travel to Mexican border areas because of recent increases in drug-related violence, but the fact that I can’t say that I’m not well traveled makes it pathetic that I’ve never been to Mexico.
I’ve been to Canada quite a few times, actually, which can be construed as ironic seeing as Mexico is but thirty miles south and Canada is more than a thousand miles north. So I’ve made a personal pact to see more around North America (and South America), time, money, and parent permitting. (Though that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to travel some more with my family).
We’ll see where life takes me when I get back to California.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
It’s funny how people think that something has to give for something else to happen—and it’s true. It’s like you can’t be in two places at once (not yet, though I believe not ever), or how matter can’t just disappear. The funny thing then is that people don’t realize that there’s no need to give because there already is so much give—and by give I mean time, of course.
Back at UCSD, the normal course load is about four classes. The minimum is three to be a full-time student. I took five—and there’s a couple reasons for that. The first quarter, I took the standard four. I was bored out of my mind. I caught up with many different television shows (including the nine-season Scrubs and the now-ten-season CSI) and at the end of the year I took to reading a lot.
Because of my boredom, I decided why not take an extra class? I can handle it well and I’ll graduate earlier and spend less of my parents’ money on my education. After all, the UCSD levies tuition against all full-time students equally, regardless of actual credit hours. And after that happened, I was still bored. I started a blog for my upcoming study abroad trip and started brainstorming ideas for extended prose.
Here is not all that different. Each class that I attend here is about three hours per week in duration, except Cantonese, which is about two. Add it all up and I go to class 17 hours per week. With studying, it probably works out to 48 academically-focused hours. A seven-day week is 168 hours long. I sleep off around 56 of those. So 168 minus 56 minus 48 leaves me with 64 spare hours per week.
Last weekend, the Thailand trip lasted about three full days—that’s 72 hours, and two of the three nights I spent studying for my Fine Arts final that I got over with yesterday.
So the time is there—it’s just how you use it, I suppose. I found that working on deadlines early, getting projects done a few days before they’re due (at a minimum) keeps me at rest. That way if I find something (fun) to do, I can easily be spontaneous. Last week, I turned in an essay due Friday at 7:00 p.m. on Monday at 9:00 a.m. The professor hadn’t even given the department office instructions to collect it yet.
I found out that I hate procrastination, and it’s been keeping me afloat ever since I discovered this little preference of mine. At UCSD it was the same way. My first quarter, I had a paper due week eight of the term. The week before, we were to do a peer review in tutorial/section, so I finished it in the middle of week six. I found that my paper was the only one in the class that was really able to be peer-reviewed, so nearly everybody read it. Cool.
So that’s how I do what I do—good ol’ hard work—and it really works. But that’s just one side of the coin. The other is the realization of many of us here—where does the time go at home?
I know the answer for my own situation. It drains into the tube (though my computer functions as my television). I don’t mind reading—in fact, I really like reading, but the television usage can go down. That would renew my spare time.
The funny thing is that while I’ve seen more of the United States than the average American (by means of a thirty-state road trip when I just got my driver’s license in 2006), there is still so much that I’ve never seen. I would struggle to say that I’ve been to New England. I’ve still not been to New York City. I’ve been to many, many national capitals now, yet my own isn’t on that list. Most sad (though common) is that I’ve not been thirty miles south of UCSD. Admittedly, there’s a current travel warning from the Department of State advising travel to Mexican border areas because of recent increases in drug-related violence, but the fact that I can’t say that I’m not well traveled makes it pathetic that I’ve never been to Mexico.
I’ve been to Canada quite a few times, actually, which can be construed as ironic seeing as Mexico is but thirty miles south and Canada is more than a thousand miles north. So I’ve made a personal pact to see more around North America (and South America), time, money, and parent permitting. (Though that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to travel some more with my family).
We’ll see where life takes me when I get back to California.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Pride and Prejudice
Do you ever wish life were easier? When I was little, I definitely did. Why did it need to be so complicated? It all seemed like farce to me. I thought as I advanced in life, maybe complexities would either become simpler or maybe I would be able to deal with them better.
I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”
In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.
Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.
But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.
In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.
The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.
The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.
He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.
People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.
I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.
I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:
“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”
And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.
My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.
We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).
This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.
Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.
However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.
It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.
It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from. He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?
What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.
After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.
When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.
And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.
Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.
He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.
Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.
And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.
People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.
The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.
The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.
Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”
In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.
Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.
But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.
In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.
The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.
The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.
He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.
People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.
I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.
I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:
“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”
And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.
My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.
We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).
This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.
Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.
However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.
It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.
It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from. He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?
What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.
After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.
When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.
And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.
Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.
He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.
Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.
And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.
People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.
The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.
The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.
Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
National Treasure, Part 3
Yangshuo (阳朔)
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
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