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.
Showing posts with label currency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label currency. Show all posts
Friday, November 27, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Four More Stamps: Fabulous Macau
For the first time since I arrived here in Hong Kong, I left the Special Administrative Region to visit Macau, another SAR of the People’s Republic of China. With different immigration schemes and regulation, leaving Hong Kong got me one stamp in my passport, entering and leaving Macau got me two more, and my reentry into Hong Kong got me another large student stamp.
In addition to controlling immigration separate from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau each maintain their own currencies. Macau’s is the Pataca, which is pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (which is in turn pegged to the U.S. Dollar). Being such as small currency zone though most everyone takes Hong Kong Dollars there, which means that only as much as 30% of currency in circulation in Macau is the Macanese Pataca.
For those who don’t know, Macau is often referred to as the Monte Carlo of China; and for those of you who don’t what Monte Carlo is, I refer to Macau as the little Las Vegas of China.
Situated on an island and a peninsula (which I believe is technically another island), it’s quite a bit smaller than Hong Kong SAR and has an industry heavily based on the gambling and entertainment industries. However, in comparison to the Strip of Las Vegas, many of the casinos appear smaller and less in number. Like Las Vegas, there were many not-so-ritzy areas that appear in stark contrast with the shining lights of tourist Macau.
Though more than anything, I went to Macau with some other exchange students to simply see and be there, I found the cultural items, most of with heavy Portuguese influence to be the most interesting part of the whole expedition.
Which brings me to another point—Macau is an SAR because it used to be a Portuguese colony in much the same manner that Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Having been controlled since 1557 by the Portuguese, Macau has a history as being the oldest European colony in China. Having been given back to China in 1999, Macau is also the last European colony to be returned. So in many ways, Macau is more Portuguese than Hong Kong is British.
The name of Macau itself has, since I first learned about the city, always been a point of personal contention. In Chinese, it is referred to as 澳门, which would be pronounced as Àomén in Mandarin and Ou3mun4 in Cantonese, neither of which sounds like its English name, adopted through Portuguese.
Though not a problem, since many names have not been transliterated properly (for China would be written Zhōngguó or at least Zhongguo), and life continues to move on, apparently when the Portuguese first landed in Macau, the locals told them that the territory was called AMaa5Gok3, named after Matsu, the goddess of seafarers, for whom a temple is dedicated. On the other hand, the name Hong Kong is transliterated by the British from Hoeng1Gong2, which was and remains the local name of the main island.
But back to the trip, we took a ferry from Central District direct to Macau’s ferry terminal. At about 37 miles, the journey took about an hour. With how bumpy the journey was, I was glad that I didn’t get seasick on the way there.
Trying to find the way to the hotel that we booked, we went up to the taxi stand and asked cabdrivers whether they could take us to the address we had written down. None of them had any idea where it was. Apparent to us now, the bilingual street names are translations of each other and not transliterations, meaning that a street named “Praca de ponte e horta” is not understood by those who operate in Cantonese (which has a completely different sounding name for the same street).
We ended up taking a bus to the Central Square (which has an absence of casinos). Nearly all the buildings along the way showed Portuguese styling. And I don’t know how it is in Portugal, but like in France and Italy (where I have been in Europe) the street names were written on the sides of buildings instead of on freestanding posts, as they are in most of Hong Kong and the United States.
The Central Square (officially Senate Square), in addition to sidewalks along the main road, was colorfully tiled in black and ivory, with wavy stripes and designs of animals apparent (which I read is traditional Portuguese pavement). The buildings were ornate and brightly colored with traditional columns and arches. Preparing for some festival in all likelihood, large decorations in the shapes of fruits and vegetables were hung over the main square. I watched them put them up from my window when I ate at McDonalds the next morning.
Our hotel, which, while close to the square, was not as close as described on its website. Ole London Hotel was, while not located in the best of neighborhoods, not in the worst of neighborhoods, and offered a comfortable bed, bath with a large showerhead, and free air conditioning.
Once we dropped off our stuff, the first stop was Macau Tower. Similar in shape to the Space Needle of Seattle, Washington, the one in Macau offers great views of Macau (as well as mainland China across the river) in addition to the highest bungee jump in the world. I did not have the privilege to do that, though it was more like I didn’t want to spend the money.
Getting up to the observation deck cost $90 HKD, but the bungee jump would have set me back $2088 HKD for the jump and $588 HKD for an additional jump, if I wanted it. Plus, one of my friends, who works as a nurse in Australia, said that a lot of peoples eyes pop up when the bungee bounces back due to the pressure change. I did see three of my friends do it too, and though I regretted not doing it with them at first, I decided that I was in Macau not to bungee jump but to see the city.
Later, we went to a casino—the Venetian. While on the other island and away from the other casinos, it is the largest Venetian hotel and casino of them all. I saw the one in Las Vegas and I thought it was pretty cool. The one in Macau was in all earnestness not any better than the one in Las Vegas. They both had the artificial sky and the pool-water Grand Canal, along with St. Mark’s Square (incomplete without Doge’s Palace and the campanile). We went to the food court, which served average food at terribly inflated prices, not to mention the food venues were way slow.
Down on casino level, the casino was just like any other casino. I originally intended to gamble like $5 HKD at slot machines (gambling and drinking age in Macau is 18) but ended up just looking and gambling nothing. What caught my attention was how the casino was entirely shielded off and one had to go in between gates along with people with the authority to verify your age to card you. This is in contrast to how in Las Vegas, they make you walk through the casino to get anywhere and everywhere, in hopes that the combination of clicking and shining lights will get you to sit down for a bit and spend a lot.
The next day, we went back to the central square and ate at McDonalds. It was great except that it didn’t sit well with me. After getting my coffee fix at Starbucks in the same square, we set off on a walking tour prescribed by the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hong Kong and Macau.
On top of markets (which I have yet to see as any better than Chinatowns in the United States), some of the highlights were St. Dominic’s Church on Central Square, which, being Catholic, reminded me of the many Catholic churches I saw early last summer in France and Italy. The main difference was that the interior of this church, just as grand as the others, is painted a light color, which in part makes it much more bright than the others. As part of the church, one of the bell towers was turned into a museum that houses relics and the like.
The other highlight was the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which used to be the façade of a seventeenth-century church in that location. Now, the façade is reinforced and equipped with a viewing platform, from which there is a great view of Macau. In front of the façade are steps leading down to street level. Though just as crowded as the Spanish Steps in Rome, there are more of them.
We headed back to Hong Kong that day, ready for classes to start again the day after.
In addition to controlling immigration separate from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau each maintain their own currencies. Macau’s is the Pataca, which is pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (which is in turn pegged to the U.S. Dollar). Being such as small currency zone though most everyone takes Hong Kong Dollars there, which means that only as much as 30% of currency in circulation in Macau is the Macanese Pataca.
For those who don’t know, Macau is often referred to as the Monte Carlo of China; and for those of you who don’t what Monte Carlo is, I refer to Macau as the little Las Vegas of China.
Situated on an island and a peninsula (which I believe is technically another island), it’s quite a bit smaller than Hong Kong SAR and has an industry heavily based on the gambling and entertainment industries. However, in comparison to the Strip of Las Vegas, many of the casinos appear smaller and less in number. Like Las Vegas, there were many not-so-ritzy areas that appear in stark contrast with the shining lights of tourist Macau.
Though more than anything, I went to Macau with some other exchange students to simply see and be there, I found the cultural items, most of with heavy Portuguese influence to be the most interesting part of the whole expedition.
Which brings me to another point—Macau is an SAR because it used to be a Portuguese colony in much the same manner that Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Having been controlled since 1557 by the Portuguese, Macau has a history as being the oldest European colony in China. Having been given back to China in 1999, Macau is also the last European colony to be returned. So in many ways, Macau is more Portuguese than Hong Kong is British.
The name of Macau itself has, since I first learned about the city, always been a point of personal contention. In Chinese, it is referred to as 澳门, which would be pronounced as Àomén in Mandarin and Ou3mun4 in Cantonese, neither of which sounds like its English name, adopted through Portuguese.
Though not a problem, since many names have not been transliterated properly (for China would be written Zhōngguó or at least Zhongguo), and life continues to move on, apparently when the Portuguese first landed in Macau, the locals told them that the territory was called AMaa5Gok3, named after Matsu, the goddess of seafarers, for whom a temple is dedicated. On the other hand, the name Hong Kong is transliterated by the British from Hoeng1Gong2, which was and remains the local name of the main island.
But back to the trip, we took a ferry from Central District direct to Macau’s ferry terminal. At about 37 miles, the journey took about an hour. With how bumpy the journey was, I was glad that I didn’t get seasick on the way there.
Trying to find the way to the hotel that we booked, we went up to the taxi stand and asked cabdrivers whether they could take us to the address we had written down. None of them had any idea where it was. Apparent to us now, the bilingual street names are translations of each other and not transliterations, meaning that a street named “Praca de ponte e horta” is not understood by those who operate in Cantonese (which has a completely different sounding name for the same street).
We ended up taking a bus to the Central Square (which has an absence of casinos). Nearly all the buildings along the way showed Portuguese styling. And I don’t know how it is in Portugal, but like in France and Italy (where I have been in Europe) the street names were written on the sides of buildings instead of on freestanding posts, as they are in most of Hong Kong and the United States.
The Central Square (officially Senate Square), in addition to sidewalks along the main road, was colorfully tiled in black and ivory, with wavy stripes and designs of animals apparent (which I read is traditional Portuguese pavement). The buildings were ornate and brightly colored with traditional columns and arches. Preparing for some festival in all likelihood, large decorations in the shapes of fruits and vegetables were hung over the main square. I watched them put them up from my window when I ate at McDonalds the next morning.
Our hotel, which, while close to the square, was not as close as described on its website. Ole London Hotel was, while not located in the best of neighborhoods, not in the worst of neighborhoods, and offered a comfortable bed, bath with a large showerhead, and free air conditioning.
Once we dropped off our stuff, the first stop was Macau Tower. Similar in shape to the Space Needle of Seattle, Washington, the one in Macau offers great views of Macau (as well as mainland China across the river) in addition to the highest bungee jump in the world. I did not have the privilege to do that, though it was more like I didn’t want to spend the money.
Getting up to the observation deck cost $90 HKD, but the bungee jump would have set me back $2088 HKD for the jump and $588 HKD for an additional jump, if I wanted it. Plus, one of my friends, who works as a nurse in Australia, said that a lot of peoples eyes pop up when the bungee bounces back due to the pressure change. I did see three of my friends do it too, and though I regretted not doing it with them at first, I decided that I was in Macau not to bungee jump but to see the city.
Later, we went to a casino—the Venetian. While on the other island and away from the other casinos, it is the largest Venetian hotel and casino of them all. I saw the one in Las Vegas and I thought it was pretty cool. The one in Macau was in all earnestness not any better than the one in Las Vegas. They both had the artificial sky and the pool-water Grand Canal, along with St. Mark’s Square (incomplete without Doge’s Palace and the campanile). We went to the food court, which served average food at terribly inflated prices, not to mention the food venues were way slow.
Down on casino level, the casino was just like any other casino. I originally intended to gamble like $5 HKD at slot machines (gambling and drinking age in Macau is 18) but ended up just looking and gambling nothing. What caught my attention was how the casino was entirely shielded off and one had to go in between gates along with people with the authority to verify your age to card you. This is in contrast to how in Las Vegas, they make you walk through the casino to get anywhere and everywhere, in hopes that the combination of clicking and shining lights will get you to sit down for a bit and spend a lot.
The next day, we went back to the central square and ate at McDonalds. It was great except that it didn’t sit well with me. After getting my coffee fix at Starbucks in the same square, we set off on a walking tour prescribed by the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hong Kong and Macau.
On top of markets (which I have yet to see as any better than Chinatowns in the United States), some of the highlights were St. Dominic’s Church on Central Square, which, being Catholic, reminded me of the many Catholic churches I saw early last summer in France and Italy. The main difference was that the interior of this church, just as grand as the others, is painted a light color, which in part makes it much more bright than the others. As part of the church, one of the bell towers was turned into a museum that houses relics and the like.
The other highlight was the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which used to be the façade of a seventeenth-century church in that location. Now, the façade is reinforced and equipped with a viewing platform, from which there is a great view of Macau. In front of the façade are steps leading down to street level. Though just as crowded as the Spanish Steps in Rome, there are more of them.
We headed back to Hong Kong that day, ready for classes to start again the day after.
Monday, September 7, 2009
City LIfe
Being here for two weeks, I have fallen into something of a routine. Living inconveniently far from campus, I find myself taking public transportation to school frequently. The buses that run by my hall are so-called minibuses (小巴) that seat sixteen, standing prohibited.
These first few weeks of class, there have been large crowds of students trying to get to campus, crowding the bus stop whenever I want to catch a bus. Besides the raw numbers trying to get on these minibuses, there seems to be no respect for who got there first, so everyone sort of piles onto the bus as the bus driver indicated how many more seats remain.
It costs either HK$4.50 of $5 to get to main campus, so since paying this twice a day adds up, the university has a shuttle service. But with a bizarre schedule and few shuttles, this resource seems more of a formality than an actual service.
Because of this, I’ve found myself taking cabs to school more often than not. At about HK$21, if you get a group of four or five together and split it, it’s roughly the same price with faster service.
If I have time, I grab a bite on campus if I didn’t already at Bay View Restaurant, a very average canteen located beneath my hall. Frequently I find coffee because my hallmates do not allow me to get to sleep as early as I would like.
Going to class, I sit more frequently towards the front of the lecture hall here than at home because the locals don’t stop chatting with each other while the professor tries to talk. (We’re still in the middle of the add/drop period, when students are choosing classes, so once this is over, not only will there be less students in attendance, but also many students simply do not show up to lecture.)
For lunch I got to one of the four eateries on campus. My favorite, the one in Swire Hall above the Global Lounge is packed. Here, instead of having tables for two and four, the tables here seat eight to twelve, which means that whereas at home you usually didn’t sit down at a table already taken, you have to here if you hope to sit.
And a note on morality and ethics, I was telling a hallmate once at a crazy McDonalds that send the fastest eater to find a table and reserve it, allow the rest of us to order, then once we get our food, allow the last person to get their food. If you don’t do that, it’s hard to get a table. My hallmate said that that wasn’t fair for some reason that I don’t remember, since it didn’t seem logical to me, but I told him that that’s what they do.
At the canteen above Swire Hall, students seemed to come in big groups. They’d claim a table with one person and all their bags and backpacks, then proceed to order. So when I picked up my food, I walked around for ten minutes trying to find seats that didn’t have bags on them. Of those, half of those were reserved (as I was told off in Cantonese).
After my classes are over, me and some of my friends (also exchange students) do something locally. There’s actually a nice mall nearby named Westwood, where we go frequently. It has a few nice restaurants, a poor selection of retail stores (but that’s not why we go there) and a Wellcome store (yes, with two Ls), which I wish the locals had told me about.
Two weeks ago, I arrived in Hong Kong without blankets of a pillow. The lack of a blanket I could deal with, as it was filthy hot and humid well into the night. The day after next, I asked a local student where I could buy a pillow. He sent me to Causeway Bay, which happens to be halfway across the island, to IKEA.
Knowing IKEA back home as a large home store, I set out, without a map or any idea where in Causeway Bay I was going. The minibus dropped us off and I wandered around for a while. After asking a few people where IKEA was and getting piecemeal answers, I decided to just go to a bedding store I saw along the bus ride. I paid HK$174 for that pillow, thinking that’s like less than $25 USD. Unfortunately for me, at the Wellcome at Westwood, a short five-minute bus ride away, they were selling nice pillows for HK$30. Oh well! It’s too late now.
As there is an undoubtable and irresolvable delay in what currently happens and what I write about in posts, I’ll say that I type this right now as I wait for a University of California Education Abroad Program “How to get approval for classes back home” seminar to start.
Also, I haven’t written about it yet, but I’ve done quite a bit of local sightseeing over the past few weeks. Just this weekend I went on two tours advertised by the school giving a good overview of the area.
Posts to come!
These first few weeks of class, there have been large crowds of students trying to get to campus, crowding the bus stop whenever I want to catch a bus. Besides the raw numbers trying to get on these minibuses, there seems to be no respect for who got there first, so everyone sort of piles onto the bus as the bus driver indicated how many more seats remain.
It costs either HK$4.50 of $5 to get to main campus, so since paying this twice a day adds up, the university has a shuttle service. But with a bizarre schedule and few shuttles, this resource seems more of a formality than an actual service.
Because of this, I’ve found myself taking cabs to school more often than not. At about HK$21, if you get a group of four or five together and split it, it’s roughly the same price with faster service.
If I have time, I grab a bite on campus if I didn’t already at Bay View Restaurant, a very average canteen located beneath my hall. Frequently I find coffee because my hallmates do not allow me to get to sleep as early as I would like.
Going to class, I sit more frequently towards the front of the lecture hall here than at home because the locals don’t stop chatting with each other while the professor tries to talk. (We’re still in the middle of the add/drop period, when students are choosing classes, so once this is over, not only will there be less students in attendance, but also many students simply do not show up to lecture.)
For lunch I got to one of the four eateries on campus. My favorite, the one in Swire Hall above the Global Lounge is packed. Here, instead of having tables for two and four, the tables here seat eight to twelve, which means that whereas at home you usually didn’t sit down at a table already taken, you have to here if you hope to sit.
And a note on morality and ethics, I was telling a hallmate once at a crazy McDonalds that send the fastest eater to find a table and reserve it, allow the rest of us to order, then once we get our food, allow the last person to get their food. If you don’t do that, it’s hard to get a table. My hallmate said that that wasn’t fair for some reason that I don’t remember, since it didn’t seem logical to me, but I told him that that’s what they do.
At the canteen above Swire Hall, students seemed to come in big groups. They’d claim a table with one person and all their bags and backpacks, then proceed to order. So when I picked up my food, I walked around for ten minutes trying to find seats that didn’t have bags on them. Of those, half of those were reserved (as I was told off in Cantonese).
After my classes are over, me and some of my friends (also exchange students) do something locally. There’s actually a nice mall nearby named Westwood, where we go frequently. It has a few nice restaurants, a poor selection of retail stores (but that’s not why we go there) and a Wellcome store (yes, with two Ls), which I wish the locals had told me about.
Two weeks ago, I arrived in Hong Kong without blankets of a pillow. The lack of a blanket I could deal with, as it was filthy hot and humid well into the night. The day after next, I asked a local student where I could buy a pillow. He sent me to Causeway Bay, which happens to be halfway across the island, to IKEA.
Knowing IKEA back home as a large home store, I set out, without a map or any idea where in Causeway Bay I was going. The minibus dropped us off and I wandered around for a while. After asking a few people where IKEA was and getting piecemeal answers, I decided to just go to a bedding store I saw along the bus ride. I paid HK$174 for that pillow, thinking that’s like less than $25 USD. Unfortunately for me, at the Wellcome at Westwood, a short five-minute bus ride away, they were selling nice pillows for HK$30. Oh well! It’s too late now.
As there is an undoubtable and irresolvable delay in what currently happens and what I write about in posts, I’ll say that I type this right now as I wait for a University of California Education Abroad Program “How to get approval for classes back home” seminar to start.
Also, I haven’t written about it yet, but I’ve done quite a bit of local sightseeing over the past few weeks. Just this weekend I went on two tours advertised by the school giving a good overview of the area.
Posts to come!
Friday, July 17, 2009
Who Do You Represent?
As this month-long hiatus suggests, I’m in the process of getting my work ethic back after a three-week vacation to Europe. I like to think this little trip to Europe was like a prelude for what I will come upon this fall.
Prior to this I had been out of the country three times—twice to Canada and once to China. My Canadian trips were a road trip and a cruise and China was a ten-day tour of Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Much in contradiction to my expectations, Italy was like China in ways I will get to in a later post.
This trip I went with my mom and my little brother. We went to France for about a week (Paris only) where we stayed with and visited family and then Italy for two weeks (Rome, Campania, Venice, and Tuscany), where we were truly on our own.
So over the next couple posts I have chosen certain events to reflect on from this trip. These first two events bring up a point that I have already mentioned early on.
Who do you represent?
In Italy we were checking into our bed and breakfast in Sorrento. We found the owner’s assistant at the check in desk. In Europe, as many people know, there are so many languages, even if one were to only count the official ones. Unfortunately, Italian was not one of the languages I had little knowledge of. Why would you go to Italy without knowing any Italian? Well we tried.
I have reading knowledge of Italian but my speaking abilities are highly constricted. In Italy I found out just to what extent they are. Don’t worry; they improved as we went along. Beforehand I made attempt during school, between classes and clubs.
The short story is that not all went as planned.
Anyways in Europe, because of the plethora of languages, multinational organizations, especially, have to translate from one language to another via a third because of the lack of bilingual translators in the needed languages.
So I spoke Spanish with the hotel owner—and because of her choice of words, I think her competence in the language was less than mine. She called the owner to get us a key.
Now my Italian receptive fluency is questionable as well, so I only picked up the gist of it. She said that you have some clients here, etc.—and then a pause. “…Giapponesi?” she mentioned to her boss. I look at her quizzically, ready to chuckle. She saw me and tried again “cinesi?...” I maintained my look. She was telling the hotel owner that we were Japanese, and then Chinese when I gave her my look.
I don’t know how it really matters what we are, but I suppose she felt inclined to suppose. After she hung up, she asked me, “¿De dónde sois?”
To which I replied, “Los Estados Unidos.”
“Oh. Lo siento. Son los rascos.”
She meant it was our eyes. I guess it was relatively common. Being American (at least without semantic appendages) means being white to most people, including my now former roommate, he himself an Asian American. I guess despite our accents and the fact that we spoke American English, at least initially, we generally are seen as coming from China, or more frequently—Japan.
She had no trouble understanding that we were visiting from the United States. However, another incident, also in Italy, left me wondering just how educated some postal workers are.
Post offices in Italy double as currency counters. So we went into one in Amalfi (in the Campania region) to exchange some American cash for some euro.
We gave the clerk the American money and my mom gave her her passport, which she had to put in the system (probably for the police). Before she did that though, she went bill by bill and checked the security features. Reasonable, as she probably does not see American money every day (although she probably does during tourist season), it took some 25 minutes to count the money (six times) and verify security (with the assistance of two big binders and two additional employees). And in the end, they rejected our worn-out ten-dollar bill and asked us to take it to the bank instead.
Putting my mom’s passport into the system, she needed only to input the information exactly from the passport into the computer. Birthplace—Hong Kong; country—Giappone; I blinked twice. Hong Kong is definitely in China and not Japan. My mom kept saying, “Cinese, cinese” since Hong Kong is in China. And so she changed it to “Cine.”
Beneath she inputted nationality. Despite the fact that the passport has a big “USA” on top of the mugshot, she put in Cine (China). I pointed and said, “Stati Uniti” (United States). She smiled at me and then changed the nationality.
Erasing “Cine” (both in location of Hong Kong and nationality), she typed “Giappone” (Japan) twice—one in each spot. Before I could say anything she immediately submitted all the information. “Finito,” she exclaimed triumphantly.
I suppose she chose her judgment over the passport in front of her and my words to her. The good thing is we got our euro; however, INTERPOL won’t be able to find who exchanged a couple hundred dollars in Amalfi.
So I have postulated two scenarios for myself.
First, I will be accepted as an American exchange student. I will learn about my host culture with courtesy from my hosts, as they understand that I’m in unfamiliar territory. This is probably the ideal situation, especially considering I have about a month to brush up and learn Cantonese; and unfortunately I have made little progress as of recent.
The second is that the students will think I’m Chinese (culturally) and think it’s odd that I don’t understand the way things work. Perhaps I will not be afforded the courtesies host students afford to non-East Asian ethnicity exchange students.
I think that, at least in the university, my circumstances will fit into the first situation. As for travel abroad and any sightseeing I will do, it will be closer to the second…
Prior to this I had been out of the country three times—twice to Canada and once to China. My Canadian trips were a road trip and a cruise and China was a ten-day tour of Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Much in contradiction to my expectations, Italy was like China in ways I will get to in a later post.
This trip I went with my mom and my little brother. We went to France for about a week (Paris only) where we stayed with and visited family and then Italy for two weeks (Rome, Campania, Venice, and Tuscany), where we were truly on our own.
So over the next couple posts I have chosen certain events to reflect on from this trip. These first two events bring up a point that I have already mentioned early on.
Who do you represent?
In Italy we were checking into our bed and breakfast in Sorrento. We found the owner’s assistant at the check in desk. In Europe, as many people know, there are so many languages, even if one were to only count the official ones. Unfortunately, Italian was not one of the languages I had little knowledge of. Why would you go to Italy without knowing any Italian? Well we tried.
I have reading knowledge of Italian but my speaking abilities are highly constricted. In Italy I found out just to what extent they are. Don’t worry; they improved as we went along. Beforehand I made attempt during school, between classes and clubs.
The short story is that not all went as planned.
Anyways in Europe, because of the plethora of languages, multinational organizations, especially, have to translate from one language to another via a third because of the lack of bilingual translators in the needed languages.
So I spoke Spanish with the hotel owner—and because of her choice of words, I think her competence in the language was less than mine. She called the owner to get us a key.
Now my Italian receptive fluency is questionable as well, so I only picked up the gist of it. She said that you have some clients here, etc.—and then a pause. “…Giapponesi?” she mentioned to her boss. I look at her quizzically, ready to chuckle. She saw me and tried again “cinesi?...” I maintained my look. She was telling the hotel owner that we were Japanese, and then Chinese when I gave her my look.
I don’t know how it really matters what we are, but I suppose she felt inclined to suppose. After she hung up, she asked me, “¿De dónde sois?”
To which I replied, “Los Estados Unidos.”
“Oh. Lo siento. Son los rascos.”
She meant it was our eyes. I guess it was relatively common. Being American (at least without semantic appendages) means being white to most people, including my now former roommate, he himself an Asian American. I guess despite our accents and the fact that we spoke American English, at least initially, we generally are seen as coming from China, or more frequently—Japan.
She had no trouble understanding that we were visiting from the United States. However, another incident, also in Italy, left me wondering just how educated some postal workers are.
Post offices in Italy double as currency counters. So we went into one in Amalfi (in the Campania region) to exchange some American cash for some euro.
We gave the clerk the American money and my mom gave her her passport, which she had to put in the system (probably for the police). Before she did that though, she went bill by bill and checked the security features. Reasonable, as she probably does not see American money every day (although she probably does during tourist season), it took some 25 minutes to count the money (six times) and verify security (with the assistance of two big binders and two additional employees). And in the end, they rejected our worn-out ten-dollar bill and asked us to take it to the bank instead.
Putting my mom’s passport into the system, she needed only to input the information exactly from the passport into the computer. Birthplace—Hong Kong; country—Giappone; I blinked twice. Hong Kong is definitely in China and not Japan. My mom kept saying, “Cinese, cinese” since Hong Kong is in China. And so she changed it to “Cine.”
Beneath she inputted nationality. Despite the fact that the passport has a big “USA” on top of the mugshot, she put in Cine (China). I pointed and said, “Stati Uniti” (United States). She smiled at me and then changed the nationality.
Erasing “Cine” (both in location of Hong Kong and nationality), she typed “Giappone” (Japan) twice—one in each spot. Before I could say anything she immediately submitted all the information. “Finito,” she exclaimed triumphantly.
I suppose she chose her judgment over the passport in front of her and my words to her. The good thing is we got our euro; however, INTERPOL won’t be able to find who exchanged a couple hundred dollars in Amalfi.
So I have postulated two scenarios for myself.
First, I will be accepted as an American exchange student. I will learn about my host culture with courtesy from my hosts, as they understand that I’m in unfamiliar territory. This is probably the ideal situation, especially considering I have about a month to brush up and learn Cantonese; and unfortunately I have made little progress as of recent.
The second is that the students will think I’m Chinese (culturally) and think it’s odd that I don’t understand the way things work. Perhaps I will not be afforded the courtesies host students afford to non-East Asian ethnicity exchange students.
I think that, at least in the university, my circumstances will fit into the first situation. As for travel abroad and any sightseeing I will do, it will be closer to the second…
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