Knowing how big this world is on foot, not that it’s any smaller by motorized transportation, I’m always worried about getting lost—especially in different countries. To this effect, I always try to learn the language(s) of where I’m going, so that I’m at least able to ask for directions. To this effect, I tried to make sure I knew enough Italian when going though Italy, though hearing my accent they would always switch into English on me. And in Paris, my French, while admittedly rusty, was sufficiently fluent to get us to where we wanted to go.
So in China, I’ve been quite pleased with my Mandarin skills, because I have found that while studying abroad, my travels have improved my Mandarin just as much as my Cantonese despite the fact that in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the primary language of 95% of the population.
So going around in Beijing I recall thinking that I practiced my Mandarin a lot—and I did; however, it was very localized. It was mostly all for haggling, because I knew that there’s what I like to call an “English fee” for foreigners. When it came to the important stuff though, I found that my friend who speaks much more Mandarin with much better aptitude than me did all the talking. And it worked well—we got what we needed, and again it worked in Guilin.
Nanjing was a different case in that I was traveling in a group where I spoke the most Mandarin. I figured that it would be an experience, especially since I kept telling myself and others that I would have really had trouble going around Beijing (and again in Guilin) with my level of Mandarin.
At the train ticket counter in Shenzhen I had to buy one person a ticket to Guilin, and the guy at the ticket counter found my Mandarin so bad that he asked me if I speak English in English instead seeing that I was struggling. I didn’t even try in Cantonese because I know my Cantonese is worse and from previous experience, most of the ticket people don’t operate in Cantonese.
As foreign languages go, my speaking proficiency from highest to lowest goes: Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. On a side note, someone asked me if I conducted a conversation in Cantonese, which I laughed at, sarcastically saying that one semester of Cantonese for Foreign Learners did me so well that I could now speak it better than Mandarin.
Needless to say, my Mandarin is still way better than my Cantonese. And because I have treated Mandarin and Cantonese as such similar languages over the years, I’ve been going through sorting out the finer points of Cantonese that I totally misunderstood before taking classes.
For example, when talking about actions, soeng2 (想) in Cantonese would correspond more to yào (要) in Mandarin whereas jiu5 (要) in Cantonese would correspond to xūyào (需要) in Mandarin, with the sets meaning to want and to need, respectively. Xiǎng (想) in Mandarin means to think.
Back at the train counter in Shenzhen, I was buying the groups tickets this time to got to Shanghai South Station (上海南火车站/上海南火車站), later taking a high-speed train to Nanjing. Unlike the other time, I was able to get through the whole process in Mandarin alone. I also understood enough to grasp that we could only buy train tickets back in Shanghai.
And at Shanghai South Station, buying tickets for my two friends went even faster and even smoother. I managed to get them two hard sleepers for the way back.
The rest of the trip went along the same lines. I managed to be understood and to understand. Since Beijing and since Chinese school when in was in elementary school, I’ve come a long way.
Showing posts with label train. Show all posts
Showing posts with label train. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Nanjing: Planes, Trains, and the Paparazzi
So my last full-fledged trip of this term started out as all the others—with transportation of course. This one required more than the others though, because as my travel buddies were aiming to save money, we opted to take trains over planes.
Nanjing is 733 miles or 1,180 kilometers from Hong Kong and would have taken two hours to fly there. As trains go, the one going from Shenzhen (Hong Kong’s Mainland border city) to its terminal at Nanjing Station would have taken twenty-five hours. In contrast, the train to Shanghai South Station would take eighteen hours and then a high-speed train to Nanjing would add on two hours from Shanghai Station via a twelve-stop metro journey. We opted for the latter.
And we couldn’t take one of the MTR through trains, which go almost non-stop to either Shanghai or Beijing from Kowloon (Hung Hom Station), because they go every other day, which for our schedule happened to fit on the wrong days.
Chinese trains are annoying. They’re decently convenient time-wise and reasonably priced. The problem is that you can’t book tickets online. I went to a travel agent (China Travel Service) and found that you have to book tickets at the stations themselves. Hong Kong’s train stations are owned and operated by the MTR Corporation, the same company that owns and operates the subway system. This means that to buy tickets in advance, you would have to truck yourself the hour and a half north to Shenzhen to buy your tickets since the rail facilities here are neither owned nor operated by the same people in Mainland China.
This trek up to Shenzhen wasn’t too appealing, and we figured we’d be able to get tickets shortly before departure, since we did the same for one person for the train to Guilin. Also, there was only one train scheduled each way each day, so we figured that ridership did not afford more than one train a day. Ultimately, we had to find our way up to Nanjing, because we’d already paid for the hotel and I’d already booked my flight back.
We were wrong on both accounts. The train was to leave at 13:29 and arrive at Shanghai South at 6:58, so early in the morning on Friday we got to Shenzhen. We went up to the counter and we were kindly informed that there were no beds left. This meant that we had to buy a seat. Fine. We had to get up to Nanjing, and a seat would do just that, so we bought our tickets and started counting down the hours until hell.
Now I know how I do with long flights. I’ve got a yearly quota for the number of flights over five hours I can handle. This train was going to be eighteen hours sitting. In comparison, my flight from San Francisco was only fourteen hours long and my flight earlier this summer from Los Angeles to Zurich was but eleven.
Well, anyways, the time came and we all got squished while queuing to get onto the train. I always thought it was pointless to squeeze onto mass transit vehicles, because if you’ve got a ticket, you’re getting on, and the vehicle isn’t going to go any sooner if you get on it first. Oh well.
The train was set up in tables. On half of the train, there were six seats in two rows of three around a four-person table. On the other half of the train, there were four seats in two rows of two. In between was an aisle just slightly bigger than that on an airplane.
Like the train to Guilin, in between the sleepers and the seats there was the dining car. While looking for it, I realized I had no idea how to call in Mandarin, so I called it a restaurant, and the staff looked at me like I was stupid. Instead, we met a businessman named Sharp that had approached us half because he was just being friendly and half because he was taking advantage of the opportunity to practice his English with us (my white friends more than me).
Eventually we got our dinner and found wandered back to our table set up. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the seats were facing in the same direction, because the guys across from us wouldn’t stop staring at us, half because my friends are white, half because I was speaking English, and entirely because we were all associating ourselves with each other.
What made the trip worse was that it just seemed to get more and more crowded. People were crowding the areas between cars as well as making use of the bathroom sinks and floors as beds. With pooper stoopers, the floor just got dirtier and dirtier, and it was pretty apparent as seen by the color what this dirt was actually made of. These people who wandered onto the train without a seat I assumed paid to stand, but took the opportunity to claim a seat when one arose. After going to the wrong side of the train (because Car No. 1 was connected at the back to Car No. 16), we found some guys in our seats. I asked them to move in Mandarin, and an older man replied to me in English “switch seats.” Without gesturing which seats to switch to, had he meant switching at all, we just waited until they got out of our seats. In the process of moving themselves and their stuff, they had to move their circular saw from under one table to another, which I thought was peculiar. We had just gone through x-ray security not fifteen minutes ago.
Needless to say, I read an entire book in one sitting (though it was only 180 pages long) in two hours and proceeded to eat two trays of Mandarin oranges and one tray of bananas that we paid ¥10 CNY in total for. After exhausting things to do (because it was difficult to pull my binder out of my bag to study) it was about time to go to sleep. We had hoped that they’d turn off or at least dim the lights after 11:00 p.m. But when 11:00 p.m. came and went, we hoped for midnight. And by the time I fell asleep it became apparent that the lights were there to stay. I got all of about five hours of sleep on that eighteen-hour train ride. One of my friends got as little as half an hour. We all decided that airplanes are much better than hard seats on Chinese trains.
We arrived at Shanghai South Station at about 7:30 a.m. but had to stay there until the ticket office opened at 8:00 a.m. to help my friends buy tickets back for later in the week. I was to leave from Nanjing by air but they were going to come back to Shanghai to scout the place out. One of them studies Mandarin but neither of them felt they had the capacity to negotiate hard-sleepers back to Shenzhen. I actually found that I did the whole thing without any effort. They got their train tickets back, and what’s better is they got hard sleepers—so the hellish ride there wouldn’t be a hellish ride back.
We ate breakfast at a place called Mister Donut in the train station. My problem with eating doughnuts is that they make me feel like a doughnut in the short term as well as in the long term.
Next up, we had to get from one train station to the other, because trains to Nanjing left from Shanghai Station, and we were currently at Shanghai South Station. This was anticipated and hence smooth. For ¥4 CNY, we went the twelve stops along Line 1 of the Shanghai Metro to Shanghai Station.
Although it was going very well, at Shanghai Station, our luck had apparently run low. We waited to buy train tickets to Nanjing at the automated machines and waited for a long time. By the time we got up to the front, the every other machine went out of order, including ours, so we were ushered a block down to the ticket office. It was packed. Luckily we got our train tickets without much ado.
Waiting turned out to be a prelude for what was to come next. Already in the eighteen-hour train, our group of three had elicited many looks from the Chinese countrymen. What are two white people doing in a Chinese long-distance train? What is that Chinese guy doing with them? Is that English they’re speaking? 我听不懂! Needless to say, I explained to a lot of people who asked that they’re Scottish and Australian. If you care, I’m American. Yes, they’re my classmates and we study in Hong Kong.
In the waiting room in Shanghai Station though, we noticed though that people were taking pictures. My friend said, “Paparazzi, twelve o’clock.” I looked. There, on one knee a guy had his camera phone out with the lens noticeably popped out, snapping away at the white people. Another guy had a full-on camera out. One of their flashes went off. I wondered if these people saved these pictures for their friends and went like “I saw white people at Shanghai Station!” I don’t think my friends got their pictures taken in Beijing, and I thought Shanghai had more tourists and non-Chinese business people and non-Chinese people in general. Like I said though, this incident was a prelude.
The train journey from Shanghai to Nanjing was about two hours in length. The modern high-speed trains of China Railway High-Speed (CRH) were a lot cleaner and a lot more streamlined than the aging conventional rail ones. The staff were friendlier as were the passengers themselves, though granted this time we were all facing the same direction. The English displayed on the message board in the cabin was a little shotty and all, but at least it was understandable—bottom line was that we weren’t there for the English.
While napping, one of the staff members picked up my friend’s camera and woke her up. He said something to the effect of she should put that camera away because people can take it while she’s sleeping, especially because there’s nothing pretty to take pictures of inside this train. Between each statement, he would say, “” to which she would nod her head. I thought that she was actually answering his questions, that she did understand what he was saying like he asked. She was just nodding yes. So here’s a lesson: like my mom’s friend said, if you don’t understand something, it works more often than not to answer in the negative. No!
After arriving in Nanjing, we had our hotel address on a piece of paper (in pinyin only, unfortunately). We got in an unregulated taxi by accident and got ripped off. For the three of us, he charged ¥200 to take us to our hotel, which wasn’t that far away. However though, he helped us through our address dilemma, since it seems that most people in China don’t read pinyin (because they read the harder characters). He drove us to one hotel, where we asked concierge where our hotel was. They didn’t know the hotel’s name (it was a Holiday Inn, but no one calls it that because it has a Chinese name), so he said he would take me to the address. I said that was great. Later, looking at a map, the hotel was super close to one of the metro stops and we could have gotten there, had we planned better, for ¥2-4 each. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Nanjing is 733 miles or 1,180 kilometers from Hong Kong and would have taken two hours to fly there. As trains go, the one going from Shenzhen (Hong Kong’s Mainland border city) to its terminal at Nanjing Station would have taken twenty-five hours. In contrast, the train to Shanghai South Station would take eighteen hours and then a high-speed train to Nanjing would add on two hours from Shanghai Station via a twelve-stop metro journey. We opted for the latter.
And we couldn’t take one of the MTR through trains, which go almost non-stop to either Shanghai or Beijing from Kowloon (Hung Hom Station), because they go every other day, which for our schedule happened to fit on the wrong days.
Chinese trains are annoying. They’re decently convenient time-wise and reasonably priced. The problem is that you can’t book tickets online. I went to a travel agent (China Travel Service) and found that you have to book tickets at the stations themselves. Hong Kong’s train stations are owned and operated by the MTR Corporation, the same company that owns and operates the subway system. This means that to buy tickets in advance, you would have to truck yourself the hour and a half north to Shenzhen to buy your tickets since the rail facilities here are neither owned nor operated by the same people in Mainland China.
This trek up to Shenzhen wasn’t too appealing, and we figured we’d be able to get tickets shortly before departure, since we did the same for one person for the train to Guilin. Also, there was only one train scheduled each way each day, so we figured that ridership did not afford more than one train a day. Ultimately, we had to find our way up to Nanjing, because we’d already paid for the hotel and I’d already booked my flight back.
We were wrong on both accounts. The train was to leave at 13:29 and arrive at Shanghai South at 6:58, so early in the morning on Friday we got to Shenzhen. We went up to the counter and we were kindly informed that there were no beds left. This meant that we had to buy a seat. Fine. We had to get up to Nanjing, and a seat would do just that, so we bought our tickets and started counting down the hours until hell.
Now I know how I do with long flights. I’ve got a yearly quota for the number of flights over five hours I can handle. This train was going to be eighteen hours sitting. In comparison, my flight from San Francisco was only fourteen hours long and my flight earlier this summer from Los Angeles to Zurich was but eleven.
Well, anyways, the time came and we all got squished while queuing to get onto the train. I always thought it was pointless to squeeze onto mass transit vehicles, because if you’ve got a ticket, you’re getting on, and the vehicle isn’t going to go any sooner if you get on it first. Oh well.
The train was set up in tables. On half of the train, there were six seats in two rows of three around a four-person table. On the other half of the train, there were four seats in two rows of two. In between was an aisle just slightly bigger than that on an airplane.
Like the train to Guilin, in between the sleepers and the seats there was the dining car. While looking for it, I realized I had no idea how to call in Mandarin, so I called it a restaurant, and the staff looked at me like I was stupid. Instead, we met a businessman named Sharp that had approached us half because he was just being friendly and half because he was taking advantage of the opportunity to practice his English with us (my white friends more than me).
Eventually we got our dinner and found wandered back to our table set up. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the seats were facing in the same direction, because the guys across from us wouldn’t stop staring at us, half because my friends are white, half because I was speaking English, and entirely because we were all associating ourselves with each other.
What made the trip worse was that it just seemed to get more and more crowded. People were crowding the areas between cars as well as making use of the bathroom sinks and floors as beds. With pooper stoopers, the floor just got dirtier and dirtier, and it was pretty apparent as seen by the color what this dirt was actually made of. These people who wandered onto the train without a seat I assumed paid to stand, but took the opportunity to claim a seat when one arose. After going to the wrong side of the train (because Car No. 1 was connected at the back to Car No. 16), we found some guys in our seats. I asked them to move in Mandarin, and an older man replied to me in English “switch seats.” Without gesturing which seats to switch to, had he meant switching at all, we just waited until they got out of our seats. In the process of moving themselves and their stuff, they had to move their circular saw from under one table to another, which I thought was peculiar. We had just gone through x-ray security not fifteen minutes ago.
Needless to say, I read an entire book in one sitting (though it was only 180 pages long) in two hours and proceeded to eat two trays of Mandarin oranges and one tray of bananas that we paid ¥10 CNY in total for. After exhausting things to do (because it was difficult to pull my binder out of my bag to study) it was about time to go to sleep. We had hoped that they’d turn off or at least dim the lights after 11:00 p.m. But when 11:00 p.m. came and went, we hoped for midnight. And by the time I fell asleep it became apparent that the lights were there to stay. I got all of about five hours of sleep on that eighteen-hour train ride. One of my friends got as little as half an hour. We all decided that airplanes are much better than hard seats on Chinese trains.
We arrived at Shanghai South Station at about 7:30 a.m. but had to stay there until the ticket office opened at 8:00 a.m. to help my friends buy tickets back for later in the week. I was to leave from Nanjing by air but they were going to come back to Shanghai to scout the place out. One of them studies Mandarin but neither of them felt they had the capacity to negotiate hard-sleepers back to Shenzhen. I actually found that I did the whole thing without any effort. They got their train tickets back, and what’s better is they got hard sleepers—so the hellish ride there wouldn’t be a hellish ride back.
We ate breakfast at a place called Mister Donut in the train station. My problem with eating doughnuts is that they make me feel like a doughnut in the short term as well as in the long term.
Next up, we had to get from one train station to the other, because trains to Nanjing left from Shanghai Station, and we were currently at Shanghai South Station. This was anticipated and hence smooth. For ¥4 CNY, we went the twelve stops along Line 1 of the Shanghai Metro to Shanghai Station.
Although it was going very well, at Shanghai Station, our luck had apparently run low. We waited to buy train tickets to Nanjing at the automated machines and waited for a long time. By the time we got up to the front, the every other machine went out of order, including ours, so we were ushered a block down to the ticket office. It was packed. Luckily we got our train tickets without much ado.
Waiting turned out to be a prelude for what was to come next. Already in the eighteen-hour train, our group of three had elicited many looks from the Chinese countrymen. What are two white people doing in a Chinese long-distance train? What is that Chinese guy doing with them? Is that English they’re speaking? 我听不懂! Needless to say, I explained to a lot of people who asked that they’re Scottish and Australian. If you care, I’m American. Yes, they’re my classmates and we study in Hong Kong.
In the waiting room in Shanghai Station though, we noticed though that people were taking pictures. My friend said, “Paparazzi, twelve o’clock.” I looked. There, on one knee a guy had his camera phone out with the lens noticeably popped out, snapping away at the white people. Another guy had a full-on camera out. One of their flashes went off. I wondered if these people saved these pictures for their friends and went like “I saw white people at Shanghai Station!” I don’t think my friends got their pictures taken in Beijing, and I thought Shanghai had more tourists and non-Chinese business people and non-Chinese people in general. Like I said though, this incident was a prelude.
The train journey from Shanghai to Nanjing was about two hours in length. The modern high-speed trains of China Railway High-Speed (CRH) were a lot cleaner and a lot more streamlined than the aging conventional rail ones. The staff were friendlier as were the passengers themselves, though granted this time we were all facing the same direction. The English displayed on the message board in the cabin was a little shotty and all, but at least it was understandable—bottom line was that we weren’t there for the English.
While napping, one of the staff members picked up my friend’s camera and woke her up. He said something to the effect of she should put that camera away because people can take it while she’s sleeping, especially because there’s nothing pretty to take pictures of inside this train. Between each statement, he would say, “” to which she would nod her head. I thought that she was actually answering his questions, that she did understand what he was saying like he asked. She was just nodding yes. So here’s a lesson: like my mom’s friend said, if you don’t understand something, it works more often than not to answer in the negative. No!
After arriving in Nanjing, we had our hotel address on a piece of paper (in pinyin only, unfortunately). We got in an unregulated taxi by accident and got ripped off. For the three of us, he charged ¥200 to take us to our hotel, which wasn’t that far away. However though, he helped us through our address dilemma, since it seems that most people in China don’t read pinyin (because they read the harder characters). He drove us to one hotel, where we asked concierge where our hotel was. They didn’t know the hotel’s name (it was a Holiday Inn, but no one calls it that because it has a Chinese name), so he said he would take me to the address. I said that was great. Later, looking at a map, the hotel was super close to one of the metro stops and we could have gotten there, had we planned better, for ¥2-4 each. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Germans All Have Blond Hair and Blue Eyes
I guess I just can’t shake it off. Most incidents are minor and not worth mentioning, except perhaps in larger contexts, because a constituency is made of its smallest parts, right? At this point, I don’t plan to exempt myself from this observation, because I know I do it too—I just wish it would all stop.
I guess the basis of this whole thing starts from a simple rule of thumb in English class in high school—never make absolute statements in essay writing. I’ve learned a long time ago now that applies to speaking now, because almost all absolutes are wrong, if even by the smallest degree. I’ve just learned that if all people believe the same absolute, it’s fake truth wills out against the real truth—which I guess is to be expected, since as records are reflections of events and not the events themselves, what’s “true” is largely up to interpretation, whatever the truth may be.
I’m guessing that this post is just going to amount to episodes of logical fallacies and the sense I’ve made of them.
The Germans
I once said to my group of friends here, something something something “is like saying that everyone in Germany has blond hair and blue eyes—it’s just not true.” Now, I’ve seen the statistics and I’ve seen it for myself (meaning I’ve been to Germany), but the fact that even though a vast majority of Germans have blond hair and blue eyes, the fact of the matter is that not all of them do, even if you only include ethnic Germans in Germany. I’ve met plenty of people from Germany who don’t have blue eyes and plenty more who don’t have blond hair.
My logic was lost on them though, as it often seems that 95% equals 100%, but any one who’s studied any form of science (natural or social) would tell you that it’s not the same, however damn close it is.
My statement got the reply, “Well have you ever been to Germany? Because I’m always surprised by the sheer number of blond-haired, blue-eyed people there”—to which I said yes, and that it’s still not all, to which I was rebutted, “Yeah but it’s a lot”—and I to that I said that yes, there are a lot, but it is still not all, and that’s the bottom line. And though I was ultimately right in logic, my statement got rejected because the falsity of notion and not the logic was what was agreed to.
In the Middle of China
Fine. On the train to Guilin, this guy started a conversation in Mandarin with me and the three other people in my group. I was the one with the highest proficiency (with two being nil), so I did most of the talking. They all said where they were from (Scotland, Australia, and Norway), and I said I was from the United States, using it as an excuse for my lack of proficiency. I am well aware that I’m noticeably of Chinese decent (though many perceive my attitude of that fact as meaning that I’m ashamed of my past or that I’ve got false notions about my appearance—both of which are false), so the guy pressed further at me. I asked the others what I should tell him.
One friend said that I should say that my family’s from China. I told her that’s not true (because to me that would imply that my parents met in China and moved to the United States, which isn’t true, with one parent never having been outside of North America and the other speaking better English than Chinese). By that logic though, I should have asked my Australian friend whether she would say that her family is from Britain, since her father’s from there and that overall she could trace her entire ancestry back to the Isles, because I’m pretty sure she would have said no.
American Dad
It seems funny to me that no matter how much things are illogical, the most superficial aspects of something just make up for the rest, even if it makes something more illogical.
Just a couple days ago, I got asked where my father is from since I always say that I’m trying to learn Cantonese, partly so that I can use it back home with my mother, who’s originally from Hong Kong, having left the Crown Colony at the age of eleven. I said Michigan, which is the complete truth.
Though I ultimately understand, I’ve always wondered why I get such a variety of reactions when I say my dad’s from Detroit. The fact of the matter is that that’s the truth. It’s where he was born and where he spent the first half of his childhood (the other half being in Chicago). He’s got those annoying double negatives to prove his difference in dialect.
So my friend asked me just a few days ago where my dad was from. I said Michigan, which elicited surprise. I was kind of taken aback. I wasn’t offended, but I was surprised, because I spend a lot of time with this friend and I’m sure I’d told her before. She had it in her head for some reason that my dad’s from Hong Kong like my mom is. I said that if that were the case, my Chinese would likely be much better—native even, if not at least near.
The Locals
The time I went to dinner with my floor here, I got local students asking how I could possibly American. After all, I look Chinese. To that I tried to say that why can’t you be both, or why can’t you be one in certain aspects and the other in other aspects? Unfortunately, I couldn’t convey that, nor could I convey my surprise that those students have never heard of populations that are not homogenous. (Hong Kong is 95% Han Chinese whereas the United States is less than 70% non-Hispanic white with California coming in at less than 50% non-Hispanic white.)
The Disconnect of the Upper Echelons
What’s the funniest is who knows what. Earlier this week, I walked into the Finance office to apply for my caution money back (a $350 HKD deposit) now that the semester is coming to an end. I asked for the proper forms not knowing what I needed, and though I’m 華人, I got the form for exchange students. The secretary for the office had heard my foreignness in my accent and judged my origin based on that rather than my skin color, so to speak. This feat would not have seemed so impressive had the pro-vice-chancellor on Monday not said what she said.
As I said earlier, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Amy Tsui came in to speak at the last lecture of Hong Kong and the World. I’ve got my opinions of school administrators, most of which along the theme of being disconnected and haughty (though not overtly arrogant). She of all people is someone you would expect to get this straight, having done her Ph.D. (in linguistics) in the United Kingdom.
Seeing our class of forty in attendance, she noticed the two white people in the lecture hall and referred to them as the “two foreigners in the class,” (though there were about ten of us), without thinking that maybe some of us happen to be of Chinese decent. Of all people, I would have expected her to understand well that culture, like language, is passed down through socialization and isn’t dictated in our genes. (Unlike the many people back home, including some of the people closest to me, who overtly believe that I am more comfortable around people who look like me rather than the people in my hometown—composition: 85% white).
I guess it just goes to show that those at the uppermost echelons of society are often the most ignorant whereas those of us who have our feet firmly planted on the ground—the ones who interact with everyday people—really know what’s going on.
Add It All Up
The bottom line is that I hold none of the above statements against the people who uttered them. This is because I’m well aware that as much as I try to monitor myself and bring myself back down to logic, I still fall victim to the same forces.
So the base line is that I really dislike when people hate that they are expected, especially in public situations, to be politically correct all the time. All that means is that you ultimately don’t care about anyone else (in feelings, emotions, situations, etc.), even if you think you are just joking. It gets worse when such is followed by a request not to judge, and I’m sorry, but the fact of the matter is that I already will have.
Just try and try hard, that’s all I can and do hope for.
I guess the basis of this whole thing starts from a simple rule of thumb in English class in high school—never make absolute statements in essay writing. I’ve learned a long time ago now that applies to speaking now, because almost all absolutes are wrong, if even by the smallest degree. I’ve just learned that if all people believe the same absolute, it’s fake truth wills out against the real truth—which I guess is to be expected, since as records are reflections of events and not the events themselves, what’s “true” is largely up to interpretation, whatever the truth may be.
I’m guessing that this post is just going to amount to episodes of logical fallacies and the sense I’ve made of them.
The Germans
I once said to my group of friends here, something something something “is like saying that everyone in Germany has blond hair and blue eyes—it’s just not true.” Now, I’ve seen the statistics and I’ve seen it for myself (meaning I’ve been to Germany), but the fact that even though a vast majority of Germans have blond hair and blue eyes, the fact of the matter is that not all of them do, even if you only include ethnic Germans in Germany. I’ve met plenty of people from Germany who don’t have blue eyes and plenty more who don’t have blond hair.
My logic was lost on them though, as it often seems that 95% equals 100%, but any one who’s studied any form of science (natural or social) would tell you that it’s not the same, however damn close it is.
My statement got the reply, “Well have you ever been to Germany? Because I’m always surprised by the sheer number of blond-haired, blue-eyed people there”—to which I said yes, and that it’s still not all, to which I was rebutted, “Yeah but it’s a lot”—and I to that I said that yes, there are a lot, but it is still not all, and that’s the bottom line. And though I was ultimately right in logic, my statement got rejected because the falsity of notion and not the logic was what was agreed to.
In the Middle of China
Fine. On the train to Guilin, this guy started a conversation in Mandarin with me and the three other people in my group. I was the one with the highest proficiency (with two being nil), so I did most of the talking. They all said where they were from (Scotland, Australia, and Norway), and I said I was from the United States, using it as an excuse for my lack of proficiency. I am well aware that I’m noticeably of Chinese decent (though many perceive my attitude of that fact as meaning that I’m ashamed of my past or that I’ve got false notions about my appearance—both of which are false), so the guy pressed further at me. I asked the others what I should tell him.
One friend said that I should say that my family’s from China. I told her that’s not true (because to me that would imply that my parents met in China and moved to the United States, which isn’t true, with one parent never having been outside of North America and the other speaking better English than Chinese). By that logic though, I should have asked my Australian friend whether she would say that her family is from Britain, since her father’s from there and that overall she could trace her entire ancestry back to the Isles, because I’m pretty sure she would have said no.
American Dad
It seems funny to me that no matter how much things are illogical, the most superficial aspects of something just make up for the rest, even if it makes something more illogical.
Just a couple days ago, I got asked where my father is from since I always say that I’m trying to learn Cantonese, partly so that I can use it back home with my mother, who’s originally from Hong Kong, having left the Crown Colony at the age of eleven. I said Michigan, which is the complete truth.
Though I ultimately understand, I’ve always wondered why I get such a variety of reactions when I say my dad’s from Detroit. The fact of the matter is that that’s the truth. It’s where he was born and where he spent the first half of his childhood (the other half being in Chicago). He’s got those annoying double negatives to prove his difference in dialect.
So my friend asked me just a few days ago where my dad was from. I said Michigan, which elicited surprise. I was kind of taken aback. I wasn’t offended, but I was surprised, because I spend a lot of time with this friend and I’m sure I’d told her before. She had it in her head for some reason that my dad’s from Hong Kong like my mom is. I said that if that were the case, my Chinese would likely be much better—native even, if not at least near.
The Locals
The time I went to dinner with my floor here, I got local students asking how I could possibly American. After all, I look Chinese. To that I tried to say that why can’t you be both, or why can’t you be one in certain aspects and the other in other aspects? Unfortunately, I couldn’t convey that, nor could I convey my surprise that those students have never heard of populations that are not homogenous. (Hong Kong is 95% Han Chinese whereas the United States is less than 70% non-Hispanic white with California coming in at less than 50% non-Hispanic white.)
The Disconnect of the Upper Echelons
What’s the funniest is who knows what. Earlier this week, I walked into the Finance office to apply for my caution money back (a $350 HKD deposit) now that the semester is coming to an end. I asked for the proper forms not knowing what I needed, and though I’m 華人, I got the form for exchange students. The secretary for the office had heard my foreignness in my accent and judged my origin based on that rather than my skin color, so to speak. This feat would not have seemed so impressive had the pro-vice-chancellor on Monday not said what she said.
As I said earlier, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Amy Tsui came in to speak at the last lecture of Hong Kong and the World. I’ve got my opinions of school administrators, most of which along the theme of being disconnected and haughty (though not overtly arrogant). She of all people is someone you would expect to get this straight, having done her Ph.D. (in linguistics) in the United Kingdom.
Seeing our class of forty in attendance, she noticed the two white people in the lecture hall and referred to them as the “two foreigners in the class,” (though there were about ten of us), without thinking that maybe some of us happen to be of Chinese decent. Of all people, I would have expected her to understand well that culture, like language, is passed down through socialization and isn’t dictated in our genes. (Unlike the many people back home, including some of the people closest to me, who overtly believe that I am more comfortable around people who look like me rather than the people in my hometown—composition: 85% white).
I guess it just goes to show that those at the uppermost echelons of society are often the most ignorant whereas those of us who have our feet firmly planted on the ground—the ones who interact with everyday people—really know what’s going on.
Add It All Up
The bottom line is that I hold none of the above statements against the people who uttered them. This is because I’m well aware that as much as I try to monitor myself and bring myself back down to logic, I still fall victim to the same forces.
So the base line is that I really dislike when people hate that they are expected, especially in public situations, to be politically correct all the time. All that means is that you ultimately don’t care about anyone else (in feelings, emotions, situations, etc.), even if you think you are just joking. It gets worse when such is followed by a request not to judge, and I’m sorry, but the fact of the matter is that I already will have.
Just try and try hard, that’s all I can and do hope for.
Friday, November 27, 2009
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 17, 2009
Guilin: The Two Sisters
We arrived at about 7:00 a.m. at Guilin Railway Station. Off the train and out of the train station shortly thereafter, we walked wearily though we were not overly tired. The forced early morning start was good in that we were now up and had a nice long, full day to do stuff.
Out of our group of six, three of us were going to catch the 9:25 p.m. train back to Shenzhen that night of that same day. Three of us, including me, were to stay overnight and catch the train back the next day. To this effect, we all went to the hotel that three of us booked, where we all put our stuff for the day.
The reception at the small hotel (named Guilin Riverside Hostel) was extremely nice, especially by Chinese standards, and helped us book our Li River Cruise the next day. As I was to find out, Guilin is really a tourist town (more like city), and many people are very nice as I ended up spending a lot more money than anticipated.
After stopping at the hotel, we went out to the main street to find bus number 11 to Seven Star Park. While we were walking though, a taxi driver offered to take us around the city for ¥30 CNY for the whole day to as many tourist sights as we wanted. When we made it clear that we would need two cabs since there were six of us, the cab driver brought over an additional cab driver, and the price for both sat at ¥50 CNY, all people included. It sounded unreasonably cheap, and I was a little weary of taking them up on their deal.
After a bit of group deliberation, we decided that it would be fine. Though they would be going off the meter for us, they were official cab drivers, legitimate and legal, and we figured that even if they upped the price on us at the end of the day, it would still be really cheap.
So we hopped in the cabs. Since we now had longer-distance transportation, we figured we’d see the sights farther out first. First on the list was breakfast, now Reed Flute Cave (芦笛岩), which sat on the outside of the city and was a considerable walk from the closest bus stop.
The cabs went all of a block-and-a-half to get to where the drivers took us for breakfast. The place was in a backstreet and served really good Guilin noodles (桂林米粉), a big bowl for ¥3 CNY, which I later found out that you pour soup into
The city was quite dense, and though the air was not noticeably polluted, the traffic was often gridlocked, and it took us a while to get out to the mountains.
Guilin is famous for its mountains. They are unusually vertical and skinny for their height, and they noticeable pop up from relatively flat ground. Most are covered with vegetation, and some have temples built on top. The majority of them, though, sit grouped in formations that have led many a Chinese poet to muse over their beauty and uniqueness much in the same way they’ve marveled over Hangzhou and Suzhou. And with Mao Zedong on one side of the ¥20 bill, one particular scene from these mountains is printed on the other. They truly are one of the many prides of China.
We arrived at Reed Flute Cave and bought out tickets at what I thought was the entrance. Actually, we gave our money to the taxi drivers, who went up to the window and bought our tickets for us. After that, they drove us to the actual entrance, probably another half mile down the road.
The entrance, while not done up, was noticeably commercially centered, with an official gift shop selling goods and hawkers selling the same goods for less. Entering the cave was unlike any cave that I had been in before.
Yes, I’ve been in caves before—two to be exact, namely in the Jewel Cave in Black Hills, South Dakota (where Mount Rushmore is), and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Each was about the same as the other. There were small caves to crawl though and generally a few larger caves. All of it was lit brightly to avoid accidents and considerably cooler than the aboveground weather.
Reed Flute Cave was pretty much the same actually. The main differences were in the way it was actually done up. The floors were all relatively wide and concreted flat with aggregate stone. The caves were lit with bright, alternating colors. Places were concreted to accumulate water to make the interior more picturesque, in which case tube LED lights would light the shoreline between the pond and the path.
I thought that while it was visually appealing (minus the visible LED tube lighting), it wasn’t what I felt nature should be. I’ve thought that nature is best left untouched—a concept, which I now know, I was taught.
Inside the caves, besides stalactite and stalagmite formations, were also some big turtles being attended to by staff members. Each was named by a sign saying “Thousand-year-old Turtle,” the validity, of which, I of course doubted. For each turtle (there were three total) you could pet, which of course, was as fun as petting any turtle, with the same fear that it could nip your hand off (though they were so lethargic that they probably didn’t care at that point in their lives). Two, you could buy pendants off their shells and one you could buy food to feed it.
Exiting, I used the bathroom, which reminded me of the infamous pooper stoopers that China is known for and the general lack of sanitary measures both on the ground and through the lack of soap next to the sink. For a country that’s so concerned about a swine flue pandemic, it would seem reasonable that more measures would take place to prevent the spread of germs, and by extension, disease.
Though the tour through the caves was guided, the path was clear, and most visitors, especially us for our lack of Mandarin comprehension, ended up wandering around by ourselves. By the end I forgot that there was even a guide to begin with. The taxi drivers met us at the exit of the caves.
Next on the journey was Yaoshan (瑶山), which is the highest peak in the range of mountains around Guilin. The park had a cable car going up, which we took. At the top, we got the classic frame of the beautiful mountains that Guilin is known for. Again, the cab drivers took our money and paid for the tickets. They said they needed to do so to get free parking for the taxis.
On the cable car ride and at the cable car stop, the view was not the best though, because though it was a sunny day, fog masked the clouds and all that was visible were faint outlines. From the cable car stop, walking further up towards the top of the hill, the view did not get any better, though the white members of our group kept getting asked by the locals to take pictures with them because I guess they don’t see white people that often. They didn’t mind, and I even ended up taking the picture.
Taking the chairlift half back down the mountain, you’re prompted to get off. As part of the round-trip ticket to the top of the mountain and back, there is a toboggan-style ride to get from midway down the mountain all the way to the bottom, believe it or not.
Unfortunately, I got few pictures of the ride itself, since I was told I couldn’t take pictures while speeding down the winding metal track. We were allowed to control our speed with a lever and warned that there’s a sharp curve at the very beginning that’s kind of nasty that we definitely need to slow down for. I was sure that many of my friends would just go for it at full speed, because, I guess, you only live once.
I, on the other hand, took my time. While in parts I did go fast for fun, I figured I was only going to go down the slope of this mountain once, so I would rather enjoy it. As I went down, there were a lot of safety personnel that I didn’t expect. Most stood on right before the curved sections to blow their whistle to prompt you to slow down if need be.
I could feel the fresh Guilin air through my hair I suppose. But while the ride was exhilarating, there was no real view involved with the track layout. It was fine, because, I guess, we’d already gotten the view on the top and on the chairlift.
At the foot of the hill, next to the visitor center, there were some small shops. We went to a small coffee shop hoping for a good cup, as some of us were starting to crash from the early start to the day, but it was exactly how it was in Beijing airport—noticeably “brewed” from instant and quite sub-par.
Meanwhile, the taxi drivers were booking tickets for us for the Four Rivers, Two Lakes cruise later that evening. The later came up to join us at the coffee shop, where we found I found out that they were sisters.
The time now was around 12:30 p.m., and the cruise was set for 4:15 p.m. So with hours to spare, we decided to check out the Ming Palace along the way. It’s officially called the Jingjian Princes City (靖江王城), and while it was never used as the main residence of the royals, it served as one point from where the ruler could do business.
Once again the sisters insisted on buying our tickets for us after we gave them our money. It became apparent that what seemed at first just a courtesy was actually a way for them to make money. For the price that we were to pay, it now made sense how cheap it was, and frankly, we were fine with it, because for the individual sites we still paid the listed entrance fee.
Entering, the complex looked small and unimpressive with the exception of the lone mountain the middle. To get to the mountain, we went through building upon building, ranging from dining halls to bedrooms and throne rooms, and the cave under the mountain.
After coming out of the cave on the other side of the mountain, we realized that we’d missed the path to the top. It ended up being on the west side of the hill, and when we got to the foot of the steps, the path that we were about to climb became visible and clearly steep.
All things considered—namely how long the day had already run—the climb wasn’t too bad. It was taller than it looked and the view of Guilin from the top was pretty good. There were a few buildings at the top, as well as a place to buy drinks, of course. From there you could clearly see the way that the city formed on the flat land around the mountains.
I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for getting the bird’s-eye view of a city. In Rome, it was as simple as the roof terrace of the hotel. In Paris, it was the Arc du Triomphe (because we didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower). In Hong Kong, the view I got was from the Peak. Chicago—Sears Tower (now renamed). Both the Ferris wheel and Taipei 101 did the trick in Taipei.
At this time, we still had a couple hours before the cruise, so we got lunch. The food was good, though we had to eat around of the odd-sized bits of bone with the lamb.
After walking around a local supermarket for a bit and checking out what was there to be offered, we went over the center of Guilin, where the famous pair of pagodas stands.
The cruise was supposed to go for an hour and a half, but ended up going for about an hour. The usual route was not taken for a couple reasons. First the normal course would have run straight past Elephant Trunk Hill, a symbol of Guilin that has been effectively monetized by strategically planting trees to block views from the street and charging ¥30 to get into the park. In addition, according to the taxi drivers, the water level when we went was too low, so many boats by design cannot wade through those waters.
Waiting for the cruise to board, another group of locals insisted on getting a picture with the white people in our group. I took a photo as well.
We got a good picture of Guilin, though. It was very obvious which edifices were historical and which ones were new development. Many of the hills that we saw were covered with climbers and hikers. At the end of its course, right before turning around, there was a well-kept historical-looking area whose name we never found out.
By the time we met up with the taxi drivers again, it was nearing 6:00 p.m., and with half of us getting on a train in just three hours, we decided it would be best to just grab dinner. Anyways, one of my friends wanted to go see the “Dream of Li River” show, which was to begin at 8:00. The cab drivers helped us book us tickets and later picked them up for us.
We asked the sisters to take us somewhere local to eat—and I would find out, it was a little too local for me. The menu had all sorts of exotic things listed. Absent were beef, pork, or chicken dishes, since I guess we weren’t taken to a touristy restaurant.
So we tried it. There was a plate of snails, a plate of Li River shrimp, some soup, some sort of fried rice, and white rice. I ended up with some fried rice and a whole lot of white rice. I tried the soup, and I while I could see why others like it, it just didn’t suit my taste.
Also, I tried the Guilin Li River snails. One actually was enough for me. The snails were small, as were the shrimp, and I found myself trying to get the meat of sorts out of the shell with a toothpick. Once that was successfully done, I put the object into my mouth, aiming to look as little as possible at it, which was easier said than done. I chewed a few times and it was notably mushy, with a little crunch at the end. I took a picture of the animal’s now empty shell and that was the end of that experience.
On the other hand, one of my friends took quite a liking to those snails and ended up eating most of them. With his plate of empty snail shells in front of him, I dubbed him the snail master. Another one of my friends were showing everyone how to peel the shell off cooked shrimp in his mouth and without hands, causing me to be impressed and others to look away. With his plate piled high with shrimp shells, I dubbed him the shrimp master.
The sisters ate with us as well, and they ate a bit of everything really. I guess it fits since they were probably from Guilin and were accustomed to the local food. The whole day, they had been really helpful to us—offering advice about where to go and helping us get tickets, so the group treated them to dinner.
From there, we went back to the hotel for them to get their bags. There we decided that we were each going to chip in ¥20 CNY each for the cab, which added up to ¥120, which was more than the ¥50 they asked for, because, well they deserved it, and ¥20 per person for the whole day is really not that much money (about $2.90 USD). From the hotel, our cabs split in different directions. One went to the train station.
Mine went to the “Dream of Li River” show. It wasn’t that it wasn’t impressive, but for someone who’s already seen most all of the acts of that show done in different places, with more skill, it was kind of a letdown. Similar in the ballet-based show we saw in Beijing, “History of Kung Fu,” as well as to the shows I saw in 2007 in Beijing and in Xian, in addition to the show I saw at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2006, I was kind of disappointed at their lack of originality.
Though that day ended on a low note, the overall activities that we got accomplished in that first day well overcame the mediocrity of the evening ballet-style show. The sheer volume of events that we did made me feel like the morning we arrived was a full day earlier.
Guilin was really more than I expected in the atmosphere that I got from the city, though the scenery was a bit of a let down through the choking fog. Little did I know of the beauty that was to come but the next day.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Out of our group of six, three of us were going to catch the 9:25 p.m. train back to Shenzhen that night of that same day. Three of us, including me, were to stay overnight and catch the train back the next day. To this effect, we all went to the hotel that three of us booked, where we all put our stuff for the day.
The reception at the small hotel (named Guilin Riverside Hostel) was extremely nice, especially by Chinese standards, and helped us book our Li River Cruise the next day. As I was to find out, Guilin is really a tourist town (more like city), and many people are very nice as I ended up spending a lot more money than anticipated.
After stopping at the hotel, we went out to the main street to find bus number 11 to Seven Star Park. While we were walking though, a taxi driver offered to take us around the city for ¥30 CNY for the whole day to as many tourist sights as we wanted. When we made it clear that we would need two cabs since there were six of us, the cab driver brought over an additional cab driver, and the price for both sat at ¥50 CNY, all people included. It sounded unreasonably cheap, and I was a little weary of taking them up on their deal.
After a bit of group deliberation, we decided that it would be fine. Though they would be going off the meter for us, they were official cab drivers, legitimate and legal, and we figured that even if they upped the price on us at the end of the day, it would still be really cheap.
So we hopped in the cabs. Since we now had longer-distance transportation, we figured we’d see the sights farther out first. First on the list was breakfast, now Reed Flute Cave (芦笛岩), which sat on the outside of the city and was a considerable walk from the closest bus stop.
The cabs went all of a block-and-a-half to get to where the drivers took us for breakfast. The place was in a backstreet and served really good Guilin noodles (桂林米粉), a big bowl for ¥3 CNY, which I later found out that you pour soup into
The city was quite dense, and though the air was not noticeably polluted, the traffic was often gridlocked, and it took us a while to get out to the mountains.
Guilin is famous for its mountains. They are unusually vertical and skinny for their height, and they noticeable pop up from relatively flat ground. Most are covered with vegetation, and some have temples built on top. The majority of them, though, sit grouped in formations that have led many a Chinese poet to muse over their beauty and uniqueness much in the same way they’ve marveled over Hangzhou and Suzhou. And with Mao Zedong on one side of the ¥20 bill, one particular scene from these mountains is printed on the other. They truly are one of the many prides of China.
We arrived at Reed Flute Cave and bought out tickets at what I thought was the entrance. Actually, we gave our money to the taxi drivers, who went up to the window and bought our tickets for us. After that, they drove us to the actual entrance, probably another half mile down the road.
The entrance, while not done up, was noticeably commercially centered, with an official gift shop selling goods and hawkers selling the same goods for less. Entering the cave was unlike any cave that I had been in before.
Yes, I’ve been in caves before—two to be exact, namely in the Jewel Cave in Black Hills, South Dakota (where Mount Rushmore is), and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Each was about the same as the other. There were small caves to crawl though and generally a few larger caves. All of it was lit brightly to avoid accidents and considerably cooler than the aboveground weather.
Reed Flute Cave was pretty much the same actually. The main differences were in the way it was actually done up. The floors were all relatively wide and concreted flat with aggregate stone. The caves were lit with bright, alternating colors. Places were concreted to accumulate water to make the interior more picturesque, in which case tube LED lights would light the shoreline between the pond and the path.
I thought that while it was visually appealing (minus the visible LED tube lighting), it wasn’t what I felt nature should be. I’ve thought that nature is best left untouched—a concept, which I now know, I was taught.
Inside the caves, besides stalactite and stalagmite formations, were also some big turtles being attended to by staff members. Each was named by a sign saying “Thousand-year-old Turtle,” the validity, of which, I of course doubted. For each turtle (there were three total) you could pet, which of course, was as fun as petting any turtle, with the same fear that it could nip your hand off (though they were so lethargic that they probably didn’t care at that point in their lives). Two, you could buy pendants off their shells and one you could buy food to feed it.
Exiting, I used the bathroom, which reminded me of the infamous pooper stoopers that China is known for and the general lack of sanitary measures both on the ground and through the lack of soap next to the sink. For a country that’s so concerned about a swine flue pandemic, it would seem reasonable that more measures would take place to prevent the spread of germs, and by extension, disease.
Though the tour through the caves was guided, the path was clear, and most visitors, especially us for our lack of Mandarin comprehension, ended up wandering around by ourselves. By the end I forgot that there was even a guide to begin with. The taxi drivers met us at the exit of the caves.
Next on the journey was Yaoshan (瑶山), which is the highest peak in the range of mountains around Guilin. The park had a cable car going up, which we took. At the top, we got the classic frame of the beautiful mountains that Guilin is known for. Again, the cab drivers took our money and paid for the tickets. They said they needed to do so to get free parking for the taxis.
On the cable car ride and at the cable car stop, the view was not the best though, because though it was a sunny day, fog masked the clouds and all that was visible were faint outlines. From the cable car stop, walking further up towards the top of the hill, the view did not get any better, though the white members of our group kept getting asked by the locals to take pictures with them because I guess they don’t see white people that often. They didn’t mind, and I even ended up taking the picture.
Taking the chairlift half back down the mountain, you’re prompted to get off. As part of the round-trip ticket to the top of the mountain and back, there is a toboggan-style ride to get from midway down the mountain all the way to the bottom, believe it or not.
Unfortunately, I got few pictures of the ride itself, since I was told I couldn’t take pictures while speeding down the winding metal track. We were allowed to control our speed with a lever and warned that there’s a sharp curve at the very beginning that’s kind of nasty that we definitely need to slow down for. I was sure that many of my friends would just go for it at full speed, because, I guess, you only live once.
I, on the other hand, took my time. While in parts I did go fast for fun, I figured I was only going to go down the slope of this mountain once, so I would rather enjoy it. As I went down, there were a lot of safety personnel that I didn’t expect. Most stood on right before the curved sections to blow their whistle to prompt you to slow down if need be.
I could feel the fresh Guilin air through my hair I suppose. But while the ride was exhilarating, there was no real view involved with the track layout. It was fine, because, I guess, we’d already gotten the view on the top and on the chairlift.
At the foot of the hill, next to the visitor center, there were some small shops. We went to a small coffee shop hoping for a good cup, as some of us were starting to crash from the early start to the day, but it was exactly how it was in Beijing airport—noticeably “brewed” from instant and quite sub-par.
Meanwhile, the taxi drivers were booking tickets for us for the Four Rivers, Two Lakes cruise later that evening. The later came up to join us at the coffee shop, where we found I found out that they were sisters.
The time now was around 12:30 p.m., and the cruise was set for 4:15 p.m. So with hours to spare, we decided to check out the Ming Palace along the way. It’s officially called the Jingjian Princes City (靖江王城), and while it was never used as the main residence of the royals, it served as one point from where the ruler could do business.
Once again the sisters insisted on buying our tickets for us after we gave them our money. It became apparent that what seemed at first just a courtesy was actually a way for them to make money. For the price that we were to pay, it now made sense how cheap it was, and frankly, we were fine with it, because for the individual sites we still paid the listed entrance fee.
Entering, the complex looked small and unimpressive with the exception of the lone mountain the middle. To get to the mountain, we went through building upon building, ranging from dining halls to bedrooms and throne rooms, and the cave under the mountain.
After coming out of the cave on the other side of the mountain, we realized that we’d missed the path to the top. It ended up being on the west side of the hill, and when we got to the foot of the steps, the path that we were about to climb became visible and clearly steep.
All things considered—namely how long the day had already run—the climb wasn’t too bad. It was taller than it looked and the view of Guilin from the top was pretty good. There were a few buildings at the top, as well as a place to buy drinks, of course. From there you could clearly see the way that the city formed on the flat land around the mountains.
I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for getting the bird’s-eye view of a city. In Rome, it was as simple as the roof terrace of the hotel. In Paris, it was the Arc du Triomphe (because we didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower). In Hong Kong, the view I got was from the Peak. Chicago—Sears Tower (now renamed). Both the Ferris wheel and Taipei 101 did the trick in Taipei.
At this time, we still had a couple hours before the cruise, so we got lunch. The food was good, though we had to eat around of the odd-sized bits of bone with the lamb.
After walking around a local supermarket for a bit and checking out what was there to be offered, we went over the center of Guilin, where the famous pair of pagodas stands.
The cruise was supposed to go for an hour and a half, but ended up going for about an hour. The usual route was not taken for a couple reasons. First the normal course would have run straight past Elephant Trunk Hill, a symbol of Guilin that has been effectively monetized by strategically planting trees to block views from the street and charging ¥30 to get into the park. In addition, according to the taxi drivers, the water level when we went was too low, so many boats by design cannot wade through those waters.
Waiting for the cruise to board, another group of locals insisted on getting a picture with the white people in our group. I took a photo as well.
We got a good picture of Guilin, though. It was very obvious which edifices were historical and which ones were new development. Many of the hills that we saw were covered with climbers and hikers. At the end of its course, right before turning around, there was a well-kept historical-looking area whose name we never found out.
By the time we met up with the taxi drivers again, it was nearing 6:00 p.m., and with half of us getting on a train in just three hours, we decided it would be best to just grab dinner. Anyways, one of my friends wanted to go see the “Dream of Li River” show, which was to begin at 8:00. The cab drivers helped us book us tickets and later picked them up for us.
We asked the sisters to take us somewhere local to eat—and I would find out, it was a little too local for me. The menu had all sorts of exotic things listed. Absent were beef, pork, or chicken dishes, since I guess we weren’t taken to a touristy restaurant.
So we tried it. There was a plate of snails, a plate of Li River shrimp, some soup, some sort of fried rice, and white rice. I ended up with some fried rice and a whole lot of white rice. I tried the soup, and I while I could see why others like it, it just didn’t suit my taste.
Also, I tried the Guilin Li River snails. One actually was enough for me. The snails were small, as were the shrimp, and I found myself trying to get the meat of sorts out of the shell with a toothpick. Once that was successfully done, I put the object into my mouth, aiming to look as little as possible at it, which was easier said than done. I chewed a few times and it was notably mushy, with a little crunch at the end. I took a picture of the animal’s now empty shell and that was the end of that experience.
On the other hand, one of my friends took quite a liking to those snails and ended up eating most of them. With his plate of empty snail shells in front of him, I dubbed him the snail master. Another one of my friends were showing everyone how to peel the shell off cooked shrimp in his mouth and without hands, causing me to be impressed and others to look away. With his plate piled high with shrimp shells, I dubbed him the shrimp master.
The sisters ate with us as well, and they ate a bit of everything really. I guess it fits since they were probably from Guilin and were accustomed to the local food. The whole day, they had been really helpful to us—offering advice about where to go and helping us get tickets, so the group treated them to dinner.
From there, we went back to the hotel for them to get their bags. There we decided that we were each going to chip in ¥20 CNY each for the cab, which added up to ¥120, which was more than the ¥50 they asked for, because, well they deserved it, and ¥20 per person for the whole day is really not that much money (about $2.90 USD). From the hotel, our cabs split in different directions. One went to the train station.
Mine went to the “Dream of Li River” show. It wasn’t that it wasn’t impressive, but for someone who’s already seen most all of the acts of that show done in different places, with more skill, it was kind of a letdown. Similar in the ballet-based show we saw in Beijing, “History of Kung Fu,” as well as to the shows I saw in 2007 in Beijing and in Xian, in addition to the show I saw at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2006, I was kind of disappointed at their lack of originality.
Though that day ended on a low note, the overall activities that we got accomplished in that first day well overcame the mediocrity of the evening ballet-style show. The sheer volume of events that we did made me feel like the morning we arrived was a full day earlier.
Guilin was really more than I expected in the atmosphere that I got from the city, though the scenery was a bit of a let down through the choking fog. Little did I know of the beauty that was to come but the next day.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Guilin: Sleeper Trains and Airplanes
My latest journey started in Shenzhen, from where we were to catch the thirteen-hour sleeper train to Guilin. This was a Friday, as my plan was to arrive in Guilin on Saturday morning, spend the night, and then take the sleeper train back to Hong Kong via Shenzhen in time for Monday classes. Looking at Wikitravel, it looked like there was about enough in Guilin and vicinity to last for about two full days, though actually being there, it was obvious that this trip could have easily lasted for at least a week.
Like I said, it all started in Shenzhen, land of the Special Economic Zone. With this being my third time to China, I wasn't particularly thrilled about roaming about, but since the train was to leave at 5:25 p.m. and three of my friends had not yet seen Shenzhen, we decided to make Friday before the train a Shenzhen train trip.
Other factors made it desirable to see Shenzhen that day. I was lucky enough to be granted a multiple-entry Chinese visa (meaning I could enter China as many times as I want during my visa's validity for no more than 30 days per entry). I'm not sure whether it's because I've gotten a Chinese visa once before or they've got a soft spot for me because I'm ethnically Chinese, but many of my friends were only allowed to apply for double-entries. Since Shenzhen is Hong Kong's land gateway to Mainland China, it just made sense to see Shenzhen on the same entry as Guilin since they had limited entries.
That day was odd in a couple ways. First, I had never gone long-distance overnight on a train before in a foreign country. I've been on long-distance trains and I've been to foreign countries and I've been on long-distance trains in foreign countries, but never overnight. This teensy weensy fact that this journey was my first sleeper train ever in any part of the world created this sort of aura in my head.
What also made this journey special (and this first Shenzhen leg odd) was that there are certain unwritten stipulations in my study abroad experience set in place by my sponsors--my parents. I am to learn Cantonese to the extend that I can speak decently with my mother. I am to travel as much as especially to see places that I have not yet been too. I am to travel to Guilin, because it's beautiful and easier to get to from Hong Kong than from California. Besides, many a poet over China's several-thousand-year history has posed Guilin as China's national treasure (though not necessarily in those worlds).
So because of that, the day kind of floated by. To start, I forgot my Shenzhen map in my room so we had to get a new one (which wasn't nearly as good) when we got there. I'd only been to Shenzhen twice before this trip, but my natural sense of direction took over as my friends noticed I wasn't even looking at the signs when I went from one MTR line to another and another, and then through immigration, where I knew where the shortest immigration lines were and where to fill out the health forms to enter China, and to crook my neck to the side so they could take my temperature.
In Shenzhen, I took them to the same place that I had street food the time before. We found some good stuff, and I maintain that while I've had my fair share of complaints about not-so-good food at restaurants, I've never felt poorly about street food--plus it's way cheaper.
But before that, we went to two places. The better one (by far) was Lianhuashan (莲花山) Park, which was an easy walk from the current northern terminus of Shenzhen Metro Line 4. There we took a brief-but-enjoyable hike (which was worsened by the heat) to a lookout point. After breaking many points along the way, it probably took us half-an-hour to hike to the that lookout. It was (very recently) paved as an open space, with the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) in the form of an impressive statue looking out at the same view as the people over Shenzhen.
The park was great, minus the speakers that kept counting in Mandarin. It sounded like commands in square-dancing songs, so we figured it must be to facilitate some sort of similar activity. It was nice to get a proper view over Shenzhen though, because down on the ground, it is not nearly as noticeable how developed Shenzhen is, especially if you live on Hong Kong Island, where grass gives way to a sea of skyscrapers.
But before that, we went to the Chinese Folk Cultural Village (中国民俗文化村), which was meant as a showcase for China's fifty-five minority ethnic groups. While interesting as a concept, the way the park was laid out and the fact that the concept is never fully explained to foreign tourists who know little about China's ethnic groups, combined with the price of entry, we probably could have done without it.
As we finished up with our Shenzhen day trip, we made a run from street food to the train station, arriving just fifteen minutes before departure, physically getting onto the train just five minutes before it left the station. The pictures in later posts don't really show the conditions of the sleeper trains. There was nothing wrong with them, but they are very old style and according to what I've read, the trains being put on China's new high-speed rail network are a lot more modern.
I got the hard-sleeper class, as did all but one of my friends, who got a soft sleeper (for nearly double the price) because he got his ticket later than the rest of us. In the hard-sleeper compartments, there were six beds total, with three stacked above each other on each side, illustriously named top, middle, and bottom (上,中,下) on our tickets. The beds appeared clean and we were given linens to stay warm. Though I didn't see it first-hand, I was told that the soft-sleeper compartments had four beds--two on each side--and were equipped with doors that closed. The floor was not so clean though, and when walking from one train car to another, you could see the grime originating from the bathrooms (with pooper stooper toilets). On the bright side, I didn't get sick off of this trip.
The duration was something I was afraid I wasn't going to deal with well, actually. My flight to Hong Kong from Los Angeles happened also to be thirteen to fourteen hours long, and by the time that plane was about to land, I was more than ready to just get off already. However, this trip was quite bearable. For a few hours, I wrote blog posts on my computer while on my bed. (I only brought my computer because I put myself under the impression that I was going to study in some fashion while in Guilin.)
The hours following, the group socialized in the diner car of the train as we winded down for the coming day. Getting to bed a bit before 11:00 p.m., we were due to wake up before the train was to arrive at Guilin at 6:42 a.m. the next day. So we tucked ourselves in and right as we went to sleep, I saw one of the train attendants with a flashlight crouching in our compartment neatly moving our shoes to one side.
After the constant clunking of the wheels on the tracks (especially since I was in the bottom bunk), we woke up at 6:15 a.m. to find the train going seemingly in the opposite direction. While one of my friends thought that we'd missed our stop and were heading back, I assured them all that trains work by turning around at terminal stations, giving the illusion that you're then going in the wrong direction. (Newbs!)
The train screeched to a halt at around 7:00 a.m. and we, in all our lethargic glory stumbled off the train and into Guangxi Zhang Autonomous Region (province equivalent).
To skip all the meat of the story, I'm going to continue by going back to Hong Kong, leaving you watering at the mouth for my favorite trip so far, Guilin.
Sunday night, I found myself in a different train car than the others because of a possible mistake when we bought our train tickets in Shenzhen. It wasn't a big deal though, as the main objective was just to get back to Hong Kong, hopefully in time for my 2:00 p.m. class (as my 9:30 a.m. class was canceled that week). As expected, the train was just like the last with pretty much the same exact ammenities.
That night, I read for a while before going to sleep, and waking up well before when the train was supposed to arrive at 10:30 a.m. (though it arrived closer to 11:30), I did my Cantonese homework. Starving and knowing I wasn't going to get the opportunity to eat before 5:00 p.m., I heard the train attendant selling Guilin noodles (桂林米粉) passing by. I bought it, and though it wasn't nearly as good as what I actually had twice in Guilin, it was fulfilling. I ate with ease as I convinced myself that it had been boiled at some point, because by the time I'd gotten it, it was a bit hotter than lukewarm.
Needless to say, I got to class on time and in one piece, though I actually got lost trying to find the immigration counters getting back into Hong Kong. I blame the signs.
Not yet have I have I ever been late, much less absent from a lecture or a tutorial here at the University of Hong Kong.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Like I said, it all started in Shenzhen, land of the Special Economic Zone. With this being my third time to China, I wasn't particularly thrilled about roaming about, but since the train was to leave at 5:25 p.m. and three of my friends had not yet seen Shenzhen, we decided to make Friday before the train a Shenzhen train trip.
Other factors made it desirable to see Shenzhen that day. I was lucky enough to be granted a multiple-entry Chinese visa (meaning I could enter China as many times as I want during my visa's validity for no more than 30 days per entry). I'm not sure whether it's because I've gotten a Chinese visa once before or they've got a soft spot for me because I'm ethnically Chinese, but many of my friends were only allowed to apply for double-entries. Since Shenzhen is Hong Kong's land gateway to Mainland China, it just made sense to see Shenzhen on the same entry as Guilin since they had limited entries.
That day was odd in a couple ways. First, I had never gone long-distance overnight on a train before in a foreign country. I've been on long-distance trains and I've been to foreign countries and I've been on long-distance trains in foreign countries, but never overnight. This teensy weensy fact that this journey was my first sleeper train ever in any part of the world created this sort of aura in my head.
What also made this journey special (and this first Shenzhen leg odd) was that there are certain unwritten stipulations in my study abroad experience set in place by my sponsors--my parents. I am to learn Cantonese to the extend that I can speak decently with my mother. I am to travel as much as especially to see places that I have not yet been too. I am to travel to Guilin, because it's beautiful and easier to get to from Hong Kong than from California. Besides, many a poet over China's several-thousand-year history has posed Guilin as China's national treasure (though not necessarily in those worlds).
So because of that, the day kind of floated by. To start, I forgot my Shenzhen map in my room so we had to get a new one (which wasn't nearly as good) when we got there. I'd only been to Shenzhen twice before this trip, but my natural sense of direction took over as my friends noticed I wasn't even looking at the signs when I went from one MTR line to another and another, and then through immigration, where I knew where the shortest immigration lines were and where to fill out the health forms to enter China, and to crook my neck to the side so they could take my temperature.
In Shenzhen, I took them to the same place that I had street food the time before. We found some good stuff, and I maintain that while I've had my fair share of complaints about not-so-good food at restaurants, I've never felt poorly about street food--plus it's way cheaper.
But before that, we went to two places. The better one (by far) was Lianhuashan (莲花山) Park, which was an easy walk from the current northern terminus of Shenzhen Metro Line 4. There we took a brief-but-enjoyable hike (which was worsened by the heat) to a lookout point. After breaking many points along the way, it probably took us half-an-hour to hike to the that lookout. It was (very recently) paved as an open space, with the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) in the form of an impressive statue looking out at the same view as the people over Shenzhen.
The park was great, minus the speakers that kept counting in Mandarin. It sounded like commands in square-dancing songs, so we figured it must be to facilitate some sort of similar activity. It was nice to get a proper view over Shenzhen though, because down on the ground, it is not nearly as noticeable how developed Shenzhen is, especially if you live on Hong Kong Island, where grass gives way to a sea of skyscrapers.
But before that, we went to the Chinese Folk Cultural Village (中国民俗文化村), which was meant as a showcase for China's fifty-five minority ethnic groups. While interesting as a concept, the way the park was laid out and the fact that the concept is never fully explained to foreign tourists who know little about China's ethnic groups, combined with the price of entry, we probably could have done without it.
As we finished up with our Shenzhen day trip, we made a run from street food to the train station, arriving just fifteen minutes before departure, physically getting onto the train just five minutes before it left the station. The pictures in later posts don't really show the conditions of the sleeper trains. There was nothing wrong with them, but they are very old style and according to what I've read, the trains being put on China's new high-speed rail network are a lot more modern.
I got the hard-sleeper class, as did all but one of my friends, who got a soft sleeper (for nearly double the price) because he got his ticket later than the rest of us. In the hard-sleeper compartments, there were six beds total, with three stacked above each other on each side, illustriously named top, middle, and bottom (上,中,下) on our tickets. The beds appeared clean and we were given linens to stay warm. Though I didn't see it first-hand, I was told that the soft-sleeper compartments had four beds--two on each side--and were equipped with doors that closed. The floor was not so clean though, and when walking from one train car to another, you could see the grime originating from the bathrooms (with pooper stooper toilets). On the bright side, I didn't get sick off of this trip.
The duration was something I was afraid I wasn't going to deal with well, actually. My flight to Hong Kong from Los Angeles happened also to be thirteen to fourteen hours long, and by the time that plane was about to land, I was more than ready to just get off already. However, this trip was quite bearable. For a few hours, I wrote blog posts on my computer while on my bed. (I only brought my computer because I put myself under the impression that I was going to study in some fashion while in Guilin.)
The hours following, the group socialized in the diner car of the train as we winded down for the coming day. Getting to bed a bit before 11:00 p.m., we were due to wake up before the train was to arrive at Guilin at 6:42 a.m. the next day. So we tucked ourselves in and right as we went to sleep, I saw one of the train attendants with a flashlight crouching in our compartment neatly moving our shoes to one side.
After the constant clunking of the wheels on the tracks (especially since I was in the bottom bunk), we woke up at 6:15 a.m. to find the train going seemingly in the opposite direction. While one of my friends thought that we'd missed our stop and were heading back, I assured them all that trains work by turning around at terminal stations, giving the illusion that you're then going in the wrong direction. (Newbs!)
The train screeched to a halt at around 7:00 a.m. and we, in all our lethargic glory stumbled off the train and into Guangxi Zhang Autonomous Region (province equivalent).
To skip all the meat of the story, I'm going to continue by going back to Hong Kong, leaving you watering at the mouth for my favorite trip so far, Guilin.
Sunday night, I found myself in a different train car than the others because of a possible mistake when we bought our train tickets in Shenzhen. It wasn't a big deal though, as the main objective was just to get back to Hong Kong, hopefully in time for my 2:00 p.m. class (as my 9:30 a.m. class was canceled that week). As expected, the train was just like the last with pretty much the same exact ammenities.
That night, I read for a while before going to sleep, and waking up well before when the train was supposed to arrive at 10:30 a.m. (though it arrived closer to 11:30), I did my Cantonese homework. Starving and knowing I wasn't going to get the opportunity to eat before 5:00 p.m., I heard the train attendant selling Guilin noodles (桂林米粉) passing by. I bought it, and though it wasn't nearly as good as what I actually had twice in Guilin, it was fulfilling. I ate with ease as I convinced myself that it had been boiled at some point, because by the time I'd gotten it, it was a bit hotter than lukewarm.
Needless to say, I got to class on time and in one piece, though I actually got lost trying to find the immigration counters getting back into Hong Kong. I blame the signs.
Not yet have I have I ever been late, much less absent from a lecture or a tutorial here at the University of Hong Kong.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Fame
The last time I traveled to Shenzhen, it was poorly orchestrated and we didn't end up seeing that much. I wanted to go back. So the Monday before last, I hoped on the MTR East Rail Line and did just that. With the tickets costing less than $10 USD each way, I figured it would definitely be worth it to go back and check out the place better since last time we ran out of daylight to fully see the place.
Just as a refresher, Shenzhen is the Special Economic Zone (city) in Mainland China that borders Hong Kong to the north. As I remembered through this trip there, Shenzhen is a very new city, set up to take advantage of Hong Kong's special status. My aunt and uncle recounted to me months ago how it used to be a nice, relatively quiet place until its designation as a SEZ in 1980. At that time the city boomed as the mountains were gutted to reclaim the sea. Today, Shenzhen serves as a reminder to how fast development can occur in China. Though it lacks the same level of recognition of Hong Kong, it has at least one million more residents (officially) than Hong Kong.
Admittedly, this trip to Shenzhen was not entirely about sightseeing. I needed a haircut. My uncle told me that it cost him more to cut his hair at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Clearwater Bay, Kowloon than at the local barber in Fremont, California. From this, and in addition to asking my friends here how much they cut their hair for in Hong Kong, I figured it might be worth it to venture out into Mainland China, hereonout in the post referred to as China.
China is known for being cheaper than Hong Kong, as most people would presume. As I would find out later on, some parts are (way) cheaper than others--but that's for later. Shenzhen is famous for its massages--so I figured why not put the two together and and make an experience out of it. As I would later calculate, the haircut and massage (which were inseparable services) plus the round-trip journey on the MTR cost just a little more than a simple haircut in Hong Kong--so I justified this extra expense (less than $5 USD) in the experience to be beheld, or in my case relaxed. A friend of mine felt the same way, so I didn't go alone.
After a couple hours in Hong Kong (bus and subway), we got up to Shenzhen before 11:00 a.m. and proceeded into China. Border control was standard and expected, though this last passing gave me just four pages left in my passport for visas and entry/exit stamps (out of the original fourteen).
Right on the other side sits Shenzhen's main train station, so to prepare for Guilin the coming weekend, we bought tickets to lessen what had to be done later, as well as to save our seats (or in our case beds) in both directions. A friend of mine asked for them in Mandarin, which I later found out I had a lot of trouble doing, but more on that later.
After that we got food and headed off to get our hair cut. The particular place that we went to had to services available: haircut plus Thai massage, and haircut plus Chinese massage. The Thai-style one was longer in duration and more expensive at ¥50 CNY while the Chinese-style one was ¥40 CNY. Not being a huge fan of massages, viewing them more as painful than relaxing, I went for the Chinese-style one and my friend went for the Thai-style one.
I swear they washed my hair at least three times (because I lost count). When that was said and done they wrapped a towel around my head and proceeded to give me the massage. Parts were painful and others were soothing, though in the end I can't say I felt calmer or anything like that. While my masseuse was massaging my left arm, she received a phone call and ended up distracted, massaging that one arm for like ten minutes. Because of the lack of barbers (or for my elitist friends "hair-stylists"), I was told I was going to have to wait for a while before getting my hair cut, so they recommended I just upgrade to the Thai one, so I did--hey, it's all part of the experience, right?
When it was time, I sat in the chair and watched as my hair fell to the floor. As this was the first time cutting my hair since I left California, there was plenty being removed to go around. For the first time in months I could feel the air hovering around my now naked ears. The thing is though that the barber was cutting my hair kind of funny. I felt like it was becoming a mushroom.
In my primary- and secondary-school days, I would hate having my hair cut, and as a result it would grow out. While most wouldn't really care, because it would just get long, my hair happens to be really quite thick, and as such, it would grow more out than down. No matter what style haircut I would get, it would always become mushroom-shaped.
And now my hair was being cut mushroom-shaped.Though I write as if I was doing all the communication, I wasn't. My friend was helping me communicate all the way through alternation between Mandarin and Cantonese that was making my head turn round as I was being asked where I was from and proceeded by something to the effect of "you're Chinese descent." So in this process, My friend helped me ask the barber to make it smaller, and slowly it became so. When he thought it was done, I was sent back to the bed-sink complex for a rinse-off. He then cut it shorter, which required another rinse-off.
After that, to my surprise, he began spiking my hair. Sometimes I push up the front, but that was the only day that I've ever walked around in public with a head full of spiked hair, but whatever. I experienced first-hand what Shenzhen is famous for.
We finished off that day by doing some more sightseeing (which was highly uneventful) followed by street food (which was highly delicious and incredibly cheap). On the journey back to Hong Kong Island, I looked through my passport and realized just how extensively I've traveled. Before coming, I thought I might not even be allowed to exit the SAR without being able to come back to resume my studies as a student based on the wording of my immigration visa. Now all the entrances and exits (plus my Chinese visa) have filled up my pages, and now I have no choice but to say "yes" when people ask, "Are you well traveled?".
Back to my passport, it was advised that some states don't let you into the country without at least four empty passport pages. So this morning, I went to the United States Consulate-General here in Hong Kong and got additional pages added to my passport. They fit kind of funny, but they get the job done.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Just as a refresher, Shenzhen is the Special Economic Zone (city) in Mainland China that borders Hong Kong to the north. As I remembered through this trip there, Shenzhen is a very new city, set up to take advantage of Hong Kong's special status. My aunt and uncle recounted to me months ago how it used to be a nice, relatively quiet place until its designation as a SEZ in 1980. At that time the city boomed as the mountains were gutted to reclaim the sea. Today, Shenzhen serves as a reminder to how fast development can occur in China. Though it lacks the same level of recognition of Hong Kong, it has at least one million more residents (officially) than Hong Kong.
Admittedly, this trip to Shenzhen was not entirely about sightseeing. I needed a haircut. My uncle told me that it cost him more to cut his hair at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Clearwater Bay, Kowloon than at the local barber in Fremont, California. From this, and in addition to asking my friends here how much they cut their hair for in Hong Kong, I figured it might be worth it to venture out into Mainland China, hereonout in the post referred to as China.
China is known for being cheaper than Hong Kong, as most people would presume. As I would find out later on, some parts are (way) cheaper than others--but that's for later. Shenzhen is famous for its massages--so I figured why not put the two together and and make an experience out of it. As I would later calculate, the haircut and massage (which were inseparable services) plus the round-trip journey on the MTR cost just a little more than a simple haircut in Hong Kong--so I justified this extra expense (less than $5 USD) in the experience to be beheld, or in my case relaxed. A friend of mine felt the same way, so I didn't go alone.
After a couple hours in Hong Kong (bus and subway), we got up to Shenzhen before 11:00 a.m. and proceeded into China. Border control was standard and expected, though this last passing gave me just four pages left in my passport for visas and entry/exit stamps (out of the original fourteen).
Right on the other side sits Shenzhen's main train station, so to prepare for Guilin the coming weekend, we bought tickets to lessen what had to be done later, as well as to save our seats (or in our case beds) in both directions. A friend of mine asked for them in Mandarin, which I later found out I had a lot of trouble doing, but more on that later.
After that we got food and headed off to get our hair cut. The particular place that we went to had to services available: haircut plus Thai massage, and haircut plus Chinese massage. The Thai-style one was longer in duration and more expensive at ¥50 CNY while the Chinese-style one was ¥40 CNY. Not being a huge fan of massages, viewing them more as painful than relaxing, I went for the Chinese-style one and my friend went for the Thai-style one.
I swear they washed my hair at least three times (because I lost count). When that was said and done they wrapped a towel around my head and proceeded to give me the massage. Parts were painful and others were soothing, though in the end I can't say I felt calmer or anything like that. While my masseuse was massaging my left arm, she received a phone call and ended up distracted, massaging that one arm for like ten minutes. Because of the lack of barbers (or for my elitist friends "hair-stylists"), I was told I was going to have to wait for a while before getting my hair cut, so they recommended I just upgrade to the Thai one, so I did--hey, it's all part of the experience, right?
When it was time, I sat in the chair and watched as my hair fell to the floor. As this was the first time cutting my hair since I left California, there was plenty being removed to go around. For the first time in months I could feel the air hovering around my now naked ears. The thing is though that the barber was cutting my hair kind of funny. I felt like it was becoming a mushroom.
In my primary- and secondary-school days, I would hate having my hair cut, and as a result it would grow out. While most wouldn't really care, because it would just get long, my hair happens to be really quite thick, and as such, it would grow more out than down. No matter what style haircut I would get, it would always become mushroom-shaped.
And now my hair was being cut mushroom-shaped.Though I write as if I was doing all the communication, I wasn't. My friend was helping me communicate all the way through alternation between Mandarin and Cantonese that was making my head turn round as I was being asked where I was from and proceeded by something to the effect of "you're Chinese descent." So in this process, My friend helped me ask the barber to make it smaller, and slowly it became so. When he thought it was done, I was sent back to the bed-sink complex for a rinse-off. He then cut it shorter, which required another rinse-off.
After that, to my surprise, he began spiking my hair. Sometimes I push up the front, but that was the only day that I've ever walked around in public with a head full of spiked hair, but whatever. I experienced first-hand what Shenzhen is famous for.
We finished off that day by doing some more sightseeing (which was highly uneventful) followed by street food (which was highly delicious and incredibly cheap). On the journey back to Hong Kong Island, I looked through my passport and realized just how extensively I've traveled. Before coming, I thought I might not even be allowed to exit the SAR without being able to come back to resume my studies as a student based on the wording of my immigration visa. Now all the entrances and exits (plus my Chinese visa) have filled up my pages, and now I have no choice but to say "yes" when people ask, "Are you well traveled?".
Back to my passport, it was advised that some states don't let you into the country without at least four empty passport pages. So this morning, I went to the United States Consulate-General here in Hong Kong and got additional pages added to my passport. They fit kind of funny, but they get the job done.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Shenzhen Shenanigans
The day after Mid-Autumn Festival, we went up to Shenzhen. Admittedly, it was a spur-of-the moment decision, but for $20 HKD to get there, it was worth the daytrip.
Shenzhen is the first of China’s Special Economic Zones, sharing its southern border with Hong Kong’s northern border. From what I can gather, it was set up right around when China began opening up to the world. Back then Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony and these zones were meant to stimulate international trade and investment.
My aunt and uncle, who are familiar with Hong Kong as of recent, told me of Shenzhen’s amazing transition. I couldn’t gather whether they thought it positive or negative, but they talked about gutting the mountains to reclaim the sea, skyscrapers popping up from the small fishing village that it used to be. Today, Shenzhen has an official population larger than Hong Kong SAR (8.6 million over 7 million), with many more unlisted and commuting people contributing to its makeup.
In just one of the many examples of China’s massive and impressive economic growth, Shenzhen has two subway lines crossing each other with about thirty stations total. Before 2011, there will be three times that many stations open on five lines.
Heading from Central District on Hong Kong Island, the journey to the border at Lo Wu took about an hour, transferring lines thrice. Alternatives to Shenzhen (that we did not take) were ferries from Sheung Wan and Central Piers, some of which conveniently go directly to Shenzhen Airport. From Hong Kong Airport, there are ferries direct to Shenzhen Airport as well for transfers free of additional security checkpoints.
At the border, we went through Hong Kong exit immigration (which I now know I can use the “Residents” line at) and Chinese immigration, where the woman thoroughly checked my passport and shifted her eyes between my face on my passport and my face in person.
Through customs, Shenzhen Railway Station is immediately to the left. A shopping mall is to the right. We went into the shopping mall, where they persistently kept trying to sell us fake Rolexes and the like. They went so far as grabbing arms to try to drag you into their shop.
From there, we took a bus to this beach area that a local recommended to us. There was pretty much nothing there but some street shops and a theme park that we could see the other side of without entering. We took the bus back shortly thereafter.
On the bus ride both ways, it was apparent that we were no longer in Hong Kong. The streets were three lanes wide in each direction and ran straight as arrows. Each light post on either side of the road had two Chinese flags all the way down each avenue (possibly because of National Day).
The buses themselves were operated differently. There were no money-collecting machines that I am so used to. The buses cost about ¥6 CNY and instead of paying a machine (or metal box), you paid the ticket collector, who in turn kept an eye on who entered the bus, announcing stops as crowds came and went.
Back to where we started, we took the Shenzhen Metro to a park called Window of the World, which I feel turned out to be kind of a waste of time.
Exiting the subway station, you come out of a glass pyramid (hey, that’s the Louvre!) and proceed towards the entrance. While corny, some would say that’s part of the appeal. Entering the park the first thing you see is the Eiffel Tower, which dominates the curb appeal of the property. After buying tickets, you ascend to the park and enter to the main stage, surrounded by different style columns.
Going around the park, it’s divided into different continents. The biggest section of the park is Europe (big surprise). That’s in the center where the Eiffel Tower stands opposed to the Arc du Triomphe as well as Venice, with St. Mark’s Square and Holland with a bunch of windmills. Elsewhere in the park were sites in Thailand as well as the Taj Mahal and a garden representative of Japan. I posed in front of the Sydney Opera House, flanked by “traditional” Maori dwellings. For America, there was a model of the main sites of Washington, D.C., as well as Niagara Falls incorporated into the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. For Africa there was an elephant and the Pyramids of Giza.
Leaving the park, we crossed the road to a mall in search of food. We found some average food and walked outside and saw the street vendors (who kept having to move their carts to avoid the police). With a friend’s assistance, I learned sort of how to eat sugar cane that cost me just ¥1 CNY.
After that it was back to the border and back to Hong Kong Island.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Shenzhen is the first of China’s Special Economic Zones, sharing its southern border with Hong Kong’s northern border. From what I can gather, it was set up right around when China began opening up to the world. Back then Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony and these zones were meant to stimulate international trade and investment.
My aunt and uncle, who are familiar with Hong Kong as of recent, told me of Shenzhen’s amazing transition. I couldn’t gather whether they thought it positive or negative, but they talked about gutting the mountains to reclaim the sea, skyscrapers popping up from the small fishing village that it used to be. Today, Shenzhen has an official population larger than Hong Kong SAR (8.6 million over 7 million), with many more unlisted and commuting people contributing to its makeup.
In just one of the many examples of China’s massive and impressive economic growth, Shenzhen has two subway lines crossing each other with about thirty stations total. Before 2011, there will be three times that many stations open on five lines.
Heading from Central District on Hong Kong Island, the journey to the border at Lo Wu took about an hour, transferring lines thrice. Alternatives to Shenzhen (that we did not take) were ferries from Sheung Wan and Central Piers, some of which conveniently go directly to Shenzhen Airport. From Hong Kong Airport, there are ferries direct to Shenzhen Airport as well for transfers free of additional security checkpoints.
At the border, we went through Hong Kong exit immigration (which I now know I can use the “Residents” line at) and Chinese immigration, where the woman thoroughly checked my passport and shifted her eyes between my face on my passport and my face in person.
Through customs, Shenzhen Railway Station is immediately to the left. A shopping mall is to the right. We went into the shopping mall, where they persistently kept trying to sell us fake Rolexes and the like. They went so far as grabbing arms to try to drag you into their shop.
From there, we took a bus to this beach area that a local recommended to us. There was pretty much nothing there but some street shops and a theme park that we could see the other side of without entering. We took the bus back shortly thereafter.
On the bus ride both ways, it was apparent that we were no longer in Hong Kong. The streets were three lanes wide in each direction and ran straight as arrows. Each light post on either side of the road had two Chinese flags all the way down each avenue (possibly because of National Day).
The buses themselves were operated differently. There were no money-collecting machines that I am so used to. The buses cost about ¥6 CNY and instead of paying a machine (or metal box), you paid the ticket collector, who in turn kept an eye on who entered the bus, announcing stops as crowds came and went.
Back to where we started, we took the Shenzhen Metro to a park called Window of the World, which I feel turned out to be kind of a waste of time.
Exiting the subway station, you come out of a glass pyramid (hey, that’s the Louvre!) and proceed towards the entrance. While corny, some would say that’s part of the appeal. Entering the park the first thing you see is the Eiffel Tower, which dominates the curb appeal of the property. After buying tickets, you ascend to the park and enter to the main stage, surrounded by different style columns.
Going around the park, it’s divided into different continents. The biggest section of the park is Europe (big surprise). That’s in the center where the Eiffel Tower stands opposed to the Arc du Triomphe as well as Venice, with St. Mark’s Square and Holland with a bunch of windmills. Elsewhere in the park were sites in Thailand as well as the Taj Mahal and a garden representative of Japan. I posed in front of the Sydney Opera House, flanked by “traditional” Maori dwellings. For America, there was a model of the main sites of Washington, D.C., as well as Niagara Falls incorporated into the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. For Africa there was an elephant and the Pyramids of Giza.
Leaving the park, we crossed the road to a mall in search of food. We found some average food and walked outside and saw the street vendors (who kept having to move their carts to avoid the police). With a friend’s assistance, I learned sort of how to eat sugar cane that cost me just ¥1 CNY.
After that it was back to the border and back to Hong Kong Island.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Welcome to Hong Kong
I am so utterly confused.
When I landed on Friday, August 21, I just wanted to get to my dorm as quickly as possible. From the airplane Hong Kong looked beautiful, and from the ground it still does. I took the airplane express train to Central Hong Kong, where the taxi pick up area was located underground.
I waited there for half an hour as the taxis slowly came and went. In the meantime, I began sweating up a storm as I realized how humid it really was. Even inside the stations, which I believe were somewhat air-conditioned, I was a precipitating mess carrying around my bags. I just wanted to get to my hall.
Just about 20 hours before then, my parents dropped me off in the airport. We didn’t weigh my one suitcase, so my dad brought an extra duffle bag in case I needed to repack to avoid the $150 over-weight fee. I could bring up to two pieces of luggage weighing less than 50 pounds each, but not one weighing up to 100 pounds. It turned out that my suitcase weighed almost eighty pounds, so it was good my dad brought the extra bag.
Security was on high alert that day, so I had to wait through winding Disneyland-style lines with the other travelers trying to get into the terminal. Before then I said my goodbyes to my parents, and then I was alone and off on my way. The next time I would see home or my immediate family would be in December.
Finally my taxi came up to the gate. I entered after my bags were in the trunk and we were off. He asked where I was headed in Cantonese. I replied “6 Sasoon Road, the University of Hong Kong.” Unfortunately, I mispronounced “Sasoon,” which I said with an “oo” like “moon” as I was taught. However, as Anglicization is an aid more than a solution, the way the “oo” of “Sasoon” is pronounced is closer to the French “u” as in “tu.”
So he misunderstood me. I ended up showing him the cheat card that the university provided me with that explicitly said, “Please take me to the following hall at the University of Hong Kong at 6 Sasoon Road: Lee Hysan.”
Then he was like, “Oh Sas[French “u”]n Road!” As we emerged from the underground pick-up place, I couldn’t help but notice the roads sprawling upwards, the streets visibly twisting back and forth among themselves—and it wasn’t even a freeway. These flights of roads gave me the impression that most of Hong Kong Island was like that, and I quickly became hesitant to go exploring the city by myself. Now most people tell me I have a good sense of direction, but this sight just intimidated the hell out of me and at that point I just wanted to sleep.
We drove from the downtown district up and around the west side of the island, into Pok Fu Lam District where I couldn’t help but noticing the propensity of Hong Kongers to finish their buildings in tile. While not really noticeable in pictures, most residential buildings are covered in small ceramic tile squares of varying colors.
As we approached my hall I was shocked. I was still in a surreal mind state, but the hall was nothing like what I expected. The turn-around driveway was partially under construction and all the buildings surrounded it had bamboo-constructed scaffolding and green covering.
I walked in and found an unexpected language barrier with the woman who was helping me check in. I was under the impression that since classes were held in English, most of the staff would be competent as well. Well there’s an expectation thrown out the window.
I went up to my room on the fourteenth floor, which has great views (albeit covered by green mesh netting) of the west entrance to Victoria Harbor. I also found a couple hall mates to introduce myself to. One was really nice and one was really not so nice (like students elsewhere).
That night, I finished up by calling my mother (at 6 a.m. pacific daylight time) and my HKU exchange buddy, who offered me a tour of campus the day after I arrived. The first picked up, relieved that I had gotten there on time and safely (as there is only one SFO-HKG flight a day and my flight to SFO from LAX was delayed by almost two hours). The latter didn’t pick up, but as I will explain, I still got my tour later.
That night—no air conditioning, fully humid with just a fan and five open windows—I went to sleep, apprehensive about what was to come. My thoughts drifted on, as always.
Lesson learned—pronouncing Anglicized Hong Kong names and places with an American accent won’t get me very far.
Welcome to Hong Kong, James.
When I landed on Friday, August 21, I just wanted to get to my dorm as quickly as possible. From the airplane Hong Kong looked beautiful, and from the ground it still does. I took the airplane express train to Central Hong Kong, where the taxi pick up area was located underground.
I waited there for half an hour as the taxis slowly came and went. In the meantime, I began sweating up a storm as I realized how humid it really was. Even inside the stations, which I believe were somewhat air-conditioned, I was a precipitating mess carrying around my bags. I just wanted to get to my hall.
Just about 20 hours before then, my parents dropped me off in the airport. We didn’t weigh my one suitcase, so my dad brought an extra duffle bag in case I needed to repack to avoid the $150 over-weight fee. I could bring up to two pieces of luggage weighing less than 50 pounds each, but not one weighing up to 100 pounds. It turned out that my suitcase weighed almost eighty pounds, so it was good my dad brought the extra bag.
Security was on high alert that day, so I had to wait through winding Disneyland-style lines with the other travelers trying to get into the terminal. Before then I said my goodbyes to my parents, and then I was alone and off on my way. The next time I would see home or my immediate family would be in December.
Finally my taxi came up to the gate. I entered after my bags were in the trunk and we were off. He asked where I was headed in Cantonese. I replied “6 Sasoon Road, the University of Hong Kong.” Unfortunately, I mispronounced “Sasoon,” which I said with an “oo” like “moon” as I was taught. However, as Anglicization is an aid more than a solution, the way the “oo” of “Sasoon” is pronounced is closer to the French “u” as in “tu.”
So he misunderstood me. I ended up showing him the cheat card that the university provided me with that explicitly said, “Please take me to the following hall at the University of Hong Kong at 6 Sasoon Road: Lee Hysan.”
Then he was like, “Oh Sas[French “u”]n Road!” As we emerged from the underground pick-up place, I couldn’t help but notice the roads sprawling upwards, the streets visibly twisting back and forth among themselves—and it wasn’t even a freeway. These flights of roads gave me the impression that most of Hong Kong Island was like that, and I quickly became hesitant to go exploring the city by myself. Now most people tell me I have a good sense of direction, but this sight just intimidated the hell out of me and at that point I just wanted to sleep.
We drove from the downtown district up and around the west side of the island, into Pok Fu Lam District where I couldn’t help but noticing the propensity of Hong Kongers to finish their buildings in tile. While not really noticeable in pictures, most residential buildings are covered in small ceramic tile squares of varying colors.
As we approached my hall I was shocked. I was still in a surreal mind state, but the hall was nothing like what I expected. The turn-around driveway was partially under construction and all the buildings surrounded it had bamboo-constructed scaffolding and green covering.
I walked in and found an unexpected language barrier with the woman who was helping me check in. I was under the impression that since classes were held in English, most of the staff would be competent as well. Well there’s an expectation thrown out the window.
I went up to my room on the fourteenth floor, which has great views (albeit covered by green mesh netting) of the west entrance to Victoria Harbor. I also found a couple hall mates to introduce myself to. One was really nice and one was really not so nice (like students elsewhere).
That night, I finished up by calling my mother (at 6 a.m. pacific daylight time) and my HKU exchange buddy, who offered me a tour of campus the day after I arrived. The first picked up, relieved that I had gotten there on time and safely (as there is only one SFO-HKG flight a day and my flight to SFO from LAX was delayed by almost two hours). The latter didn’t pick up, but as I will explain, I still got my tour later.
That night—no air conditioning, fully humid with just a fan and five open windows—I went to sleep, apprehensive about what was to come. My thoughts drifted on, as always.
Lesson learned—pronouncing Anglicized Hong Kong names and places with an American accent won’t get me very far.
Welcome to Hong Kong, James.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
A Parisian Prelude
Sorry it’s been over a week since my last post. I’ve been caught up in other projects, but now I’ve come to the realization that I’m leaving not too soon from now—in less than two weeks, and I’d need to finish of my pre-departure blog posts. So here it goes.
A Parisian Prelude
Here, I feel like we idealize Europe as a cultural center. It’s filled with excitement and emotion, romance and adventure. This was my first time going to Europe, and I was expecting all of the vibrancy that people talk about in Europe, only to find out that the only thing that I found to be how I imagined was that in France they spoke French and in Italy, they spoke Italian.
As something of a prelude to the much longer trip that I’ll be departing on in two weeks, I want to show how I handled this experience abroad and reflect upon how I see my home state now.
I departed on June 18 and left France for Italy on June 24. In that short week, I found that Paris (the only place we went in France) was not what I expected; however, I grew to like it.
We arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport and had to take the Metro to my cousin’s house in Neuilly-sur-Seine. It was one of the RER trains which are supposed to be faster than the regular Metro trains, but was just more creaky and old feeling in my opinion. What struck me first was that everywhere I looked there was graffiti. On the trains; some inside the trains; at the stations; on the buildings lining the corridors—Europe was not how I pictured it at all.
Not that there’s no graffiti in the United States or Los Angeles; however, in my humble suburb and the surrounding bedroom communities we have very little graffiti. Most of it is out of sight and the city maintains the graffiti patrol, which makes sure graffiti is quickly eliminated by water pressure or paint. And it works. Thousand Oaks is a very clean looking city.
The subway was very crowded. We must have been waiting at least 45 minutes at the airport subway station before the train came. By that time, the platform was packed and the coming train followed suit. The subway made its way down to the central station named Châtelet—Les Halles. It was kind of dingy at best and filthy at worst. We then took another line to get to my cousin’s place. The entire journey took almost two hours including waiting time. We were tired and jetlagged and from the Pont Neuilly station we had a 10-minute walk to her house.
She said she lived on the first floor, but forgetting how Europe labels the ground floor “0,” making our second floor their first floor, we found our way onto their rez-de-chausée and knocked on to their downstairs neighbor’s door (who we were told later was a crank). Only after we found the intercom and messaged them did we find that they lived on the floor above the ground floor. My cousin came down with a “didn’t you know?!” face and brought us up to her floor on an elevator fit for two-and-a-half moderately sized people.
Such was my first day.
Over the next five days, we moseyed our way around Paris and I grew to like it. The tourist areas had less graffiti and I got used to the big-city feel (crowdedness) of the subway. As soon as I got used to Paris, though, we were off to Italy—and a whole different experience.
A Parisian Prelude
Here, I feel like we idealize Europe as a cultural center. It’s filled with excitement and emotion, romance and adventure. This was my first time going to Europe, and I was expecting all of the vibrancy that people talk about in Europe, only to find out that the only thing that I found to be how I imagined was that in France they spoke French and in Italy, they spoke Italian.
As something of a prelude to the much longer trip that I’ll be departing on in two weeks, I want to show how I handled this experience abroad and reflect upon how I see my home state now.
I departed on June 18 and left France for Italy on June 24. In that short week, I found that Paris (the only place we went in France) was not what I expected; however, I grew to like it.
We arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport and had to take the Metro to my cousin’s house in Neuilly-sur-Seine. It was one of the RER trains which are supposed to be faster than the regular Metro trains, but was just more creaky and old feeling in my opinion. What struck me first was that everywhere I looked there was graffiti. On the trains; some inside the trains; at the stations; on the buildings lining the corridors—Europe was not how I pictured it at all.
Not that there’s no graffiti in the United States or Los Angeles; however, in my humble suburb and the surrounding bedroom communities we have very little graffiti. Most of it is out of sight and the city maintains the graffiti patrol, which makes sure graffiti is quickly eliminated by water pressure or paint. And it works. Thousand Oaks is a very clean looking city.
The subway was very crowded. We must have been waiting at least 45 minutes at the airport subway station before the train came. By that time, the platform was packed and the coming train followed suit. The subway made its way down to the central station named Châtelet—Les Halles. It was kind of dingy at best and filthy at worst. We then took another line to get to my cousin’s place. The entire journey took almost two hours including waiting time. We were tired and jetlagged and from the Pont Neuilly station we had a 10-minute walk to her house.
She said she lived on the first floor, but forgetting how Europe labels the ground floor “0,” making our second floor their first floor, we found our way onto their rez-de-chausée and knocked on to their downstairs neighbor’s door (who we were told later was a crank). Only after we found the intercom and messaged them did we find that they lived on the floor above the ground floor. My cousin came down with a “didn’t you know?!” face and brought us up to her floor on an elevator fit for two-and-a-half moderately sized people.
Such was my first day.
Over the next five days, we moseyed our way around Paris and I grew to like it. The tourist areas had less graffiti and I got used to the big-city feel (crowdedness) of the subway. As soon as I got used to Paris, though, we were off to Italy—and a whole different experience.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
My Nervousness
Recently, I hypothetically asked my mother what she thought of me driving down to San Diego from Thousand Oaks, some one hundred fifty miles, by myself. I will be turning 19 in less than two months and like to feel as though my maturity exceeds my years. She told me that she was unsure, and still felt that it was still too early. While I understand that she’s just being a protective mother, inconsistencies arise, such as the fact that she knows that I take rides back to UCSD with other students around my age with less driving experience than me. I suppose this exception is to make sure I get to school, seeing as the alternatives would be either a three-and-a-half-hour train ride (costing $27) coupled with a half-hour bus ride to campus, or they drive me to school (two-and-a-half hours optimistically) and then back. Anyway, I help pay for my friends’ gas and carpooling is good for the environment, right?
There is one big hurdle that one needs to get over when studying abroad—leaving home. I guess it is a fairly straightforward process that everyone goes through when they leave the nest. Unfortunately for me, I, as well as most of my suitemates (whom I dorm with), have not really left home. We all go home for breaks, most of us have gone home more than once during each of our three quarters (each quarter consisting of eleven weeks), and first and foremost, we refer to our former domiciles as “home,” and refer to the act of visiting as “going back [home].” Last quarter, my roommate went back to Glendale six or seven weekends out of the ten, and another suitemate went home every weekend until just a month ago and still goes back frequently. I really am no different. Fall quarter, my family visited me once, and I went home once. Winter quarter, I went home twice and my family visited me once. This current spring quarter, my mother has visited me once, and my family plans to visit me the weekend after next, both occasions regarding orientation for study abroad.
My home is in Thousand Oaks, where I was born and raised. I can point to minute landmarks and show whoever cares to where I reached milestones in my life, just the way my parents intended. Don’t get me wrong—I love La Jolla. The weather’s great and insects are few; there is much more diversity here than the suburban community close to my heart, and I can see the blue Pacific from by window. In fact, the similarities between La Jolla and Thousand Oaks, particularly around Westlake High School (where I graduated), are plenty. In a sentence—it’s full of old rich people. There are many nice cars, crime is low, and drivers are bad. It reminds me of home in my own personal way and I’m glad to have it. So in a different way, I have not yet left home. My new town is reminiscent of the old and I have yet to start seeing my family any more than three times a year. Therein lies my stage in life.
Well, I purchased my round-trip ticket from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) a couple weeks ago, and ever since my nervousness has been building steadily. I told my mother of this increase when she was here the other weekend. I received the response, “Why?” Simple and succinct, her one word said a thousand. Did you do something wrong? Did you miss a deadline…oh no, did you miss a housing deadline? It would have been a good thing she didn’t say it out loud, but her intonation gave her utterance meaning, possibly including meaning she didn’t mean to give.
My mother used to live in Hong Kong during her early childhood back in the day, so I’m not sure she understands the full gravity behind my nervousness. Previously, my family visited China for two weeks with a tour group. We visited Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou, all of which in central and northern China. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is in southern China (along with the good food, my mother tells me!). It was a good experience in every sense. Not only did we experience a slice of culture, we also got too see the developing country in development. There were construction cranes everywhere, and unfortunately the cities were masked in pollution. My brother and I realized the extent of our language barriers (my brother’s more than mine).
Will Hong Kong be enshrined in smog? Will it be hot and humid like the rest of China during most of the year? I already know I will have to give up my California weather—but to what extent? I suppose I will find out soon enough. How will the people be? Will the people spit all over the ground like they did in Beijing? Will the people lift their shirts halfway up their chests so as to mitigate the heat as the men did in Xian? Only time will tell I guess.
And back to my family—I will not likely see them during the four-month semester, nor will they likely see me. Whereas I do not think this is going to be a problem on my end, I know my mother has different feelings, to which I answer, “Well at least I’m not leaving for the whole year.” Little consolation, I know.
Recall that she is currently against the idea of me driving to San Diego myself—a distance of one hundred fifty miles. Hong Kong is seven thousand, two hundred miles away (or forty-eight times the distance), on a journey I will be taking by myself, crowded onto a Boeing 747 “Jumbo-Jet” with some four hundred fifty other people. I know that she will be worrying about me and my safety, and while I tell her that I’ll be okay and there’s nothing to worry about because I’ll watch myself, I know that she will remain worried until the whole episode is over and done with.
This is evidenced by the first time I came home by train. I had a 6:35 p.m. train from Oceanside going north to Los Angeles Union Station; and from there I had a bus leaving at 9:30 p.m. for arrival in Simi Valley at 10:40 p.m. Now, I am confident in my directional bearings more than the average bear, and my parents know of my keen abilities (such as being nocturnal). Nevertheless at 6:15 p.m. my father called me to see if I was at the train station yet. On a side note, I realize this whole time I’ve been focusing on my mother. That’s not to say that my father doesn’t care, I just don’t know if in his silent ways he worries about me in the same way. Because of this, I do not know whether he called me on his own accord or whether my mother had him call me. My parents claim to put up a unified front, so I’ll treat this matter as such.
Anyways, I told him yes, that I am at the train station, on the proper platform, and I will call him when I board the train. The train was late by five minutes. At 6:40 p.m., as I was entering the train, my father called me worried because I did not call him shortly after 6:35 p.m. I cleared things up, but before we hung up, he made sure I was on the correct train (keep in mind that trains don’t come any more often than three or four in any given hour on one of two platforms) and that I had my ticket still.
At Union Station in Los Angeles, I boarded the bus and called my parents again to update them. My father wanted to make sure I was on the correct bus again. I told him I was sure because it had the correct number on it as well as the destination Santa Barbara, along which was Simi Valley, the driver accepted my ticket without a problem, and the bus-loading lot was populated with one bus—the one I got on.
In Chatsworth (one stop before Simi Valley), I texted him to tell him of my whereabouts. I didn’t call because there were people on the bus sleeping.
“I’m in chatsworth. I should be in simi by 1045”
I was texting my brother’s phone, which my parents borrowed to pick me up. My parents, having never owned a cell phone personally except for a short stint in 1994, much less one with texting abilities, made an attempt to reply.
“O 2 n i k 2 m m m” I read it and lol-ed.
Anyways, I got there and saw my parents a couple hundred feet away. I began walking to them when I saw my mother flaring her hands about to get my attention, for fear that I may go the wrong direction, though I was clearly going towards them. It was like a corny movie, a scene that was bound to happen. In the car during the ride home they told me how they were so worried because the bus was fifteen minutes late and that it was night, to which I smiled.
Multiply that by 48 for the difference in distance and 4 for the difference in time gone without seeing each other, and we’ll see where we are then.
*
There is one big hurdle that one needs to get over when studying abroad—leaving home. I guess it is a fairly straightforward process that everyone goes through when they leave the nest. Unfortunately for me, I, as well as most of my suitemates (whom I dorm with), have not really left home. We all go home for breaks, most of us have gone home more than once during each of our three quarters (each quarter consisting of eleven weeks), and first and foremost, we refer to our former domiciles as “home,” and refer to the act of visiting as “going back [home].” Last quarter, my roommate went back to Glendale six or seven weekends out of the ten, and another suitemate went home every weekend until just a month ago and still goes back frequently. I really am no different. Fall quarter, my family visited me once, and I went home once. Winter quarter, I went home twice and my family visited me once. This current spring quarter, my mother has visited me once, and my family plans to visit me the weekend after next, both occasions regarding orientation for study abroad.
My home is in Thousand Oaks, where I was born and raised. I can point to minute landmarks and show whoever cares to where I reached milestones in my life, just the way my parents intended. Don’t get me wrong—I love La Jolla. The weather’s great and insects are few; there is much more diversity here than the suburban community close to my heart, and I can see the blue Pacific from by window. In fact, the similarities between La Jolla and Thousand Oaks, particularly around Westlake High School (where I graduated), are plenty. In a sentence—it’s full of old rich people. There are many nice cars, crime is low, and drivers are bad. It reminds me of home in my own personal way and I’m glad to have it. So in a different way, I have not yet left home. My new town is reminiscent of the old and I have yet to start seeing my family any more than three times a year. Therein lies my stage in life.
Well, I purchased my round-trip ticket from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) a couple weeks ago, and ever since my nervousness has been building steadily. I told my mother of this increase when she was here the other weekend. I received the response, “Why?” Simple and succinct, her one word said a thousand. Did you do something wrong? Did you miss a deadline…oh no, did you miss a housing deadline? It would have been a good thing she didn’t say it out loud, but her intonation gave her utterance meaning, possibly including meaning she didn’t mean to give.
My mother used to live in Hong Kong during her early childhood back in the day, so I’m not sure she understands the full gravity behind my nervousness. Previously, my family visited China for two weeks with a tour group. We visited Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou, all of which in central and northern China. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is in southern China (along with the good food, my mother tells me!). It was a good experience in every sense. Not only did we experience a slice of culture, we also got too see the developing country in development. There were construction cranes everywhere, and unfortunately the cities were masked in pollution. My brother and I realized the extent of our language barriers (my brother’s more than mine).
Will Hong Kong be enshrined in smog? Will it be hot and humid like the rest of China during most of the year? I already know I will have to give up my California weather—but to what extent? I suppose I will find out soon enough. How will the people be? Will the people spit all over the ground like they did in Beijing? Will the people lift their shirts halfway up their chests so as to mitigate the heat as the men did in Xian? Only time will tell I guess.
And back to my family—I will not likely see them during the four-month semester, nor will they likely see me. Whereas I do not think this is going to be a problem on my end, I know my mother has different feelings, to which I answer, “Well at least I’m not leaving for the whole year.” Little consolation, I know.
Recall that she is currently against the idea of me driving to San Diego myself—a distance of one hundred fifty miles. Hong Kong is seven thousand, two hundred miles away (or forty-eight times the distance), on a journey I will be taking by myself, crowded onto a Boeing 747 “Jumbo-Jet” with some four hundred fifty other people. I know that she will be worrying about me and my safety, and while I tell her that I’ll be okay and there’s nothing to worry about because I’ll watch myself, I know that she will remain worried until the whole episode is over and done with.
This is evidenced by the first time I came home by train. I had a 6:35 p.m. train from Oceanside going north to Los Angeles Union Station; and from there I had a bus leaving at 9:30 p.m. for arrival in Simi Valley at 10:40 p.m. Now, I am confident in my directional bearings more than the average bear, and my parents know of my keen abilities (such as being nocturnal). Nevertheless at 6:15 p.m. my father called me to see if I was at the train station yet. On a side note, I realize this whole time I’ve been focusing on my mother. That’s not to say that my father doesn’t care, I just don’t know if in his silent ways he worries about me in the same way. Because of this, I do not know whether he called me on his own accord or whether my mother had him call me. My parents claim to put up a unified front, so I’ll treat this matter as such.
Anyways, I told him yes, that I am at the train station, on the proper platform, and I will call him when I board the train. The train was late by five minutes. At 6:40 p.m., as I was entering the train, my father called me worried because I did not call him shortly after 6:35 p.m. I cleared things up, but before we hung up, he made sure I was on the correct train (keep in mind that trains don’t come any more often than three or four in any given hour on one of two platforms) and that I had my ticket still.
At Union Station in Los Angeles, I boarded the bus and called my parents again to update them. My father wanted to make sure I was on the correct bus again. I told him I was sure because it had the correct number on it as well as the destination Santa Barbara, along which was Simi Valley, the driver accepted my ticket without a problem, and the bus-loading lot was populated with one bus—the one I got on.
In Chatsworth (one stop before Simi Valley), I texted him to tell him of my whereabouts. I didn’t call because there were people on the bus sleeping.
“I’m in chatsworth. I should be in simi by 1045”
I was texting my brother’s phone, which my parents borrowed to pick me up. My parents, having never owned a cell phone personally except for a short stint in 1994, much less one with texting abilities, made an attempt to reply.
“O 2 n i k 2 m m m” I read it and lol-ed.
Anyways, I got there and saw my parents a couple hundred feet away. I began walking to them when I saw my mother flaring her hands about to get my attention, for fear that I may go the wrong direction, though I was clearly going towards them. It was like a corny movie, a scene that was bound to happen. In the car during the ride home they told me how they were so worried because the bus was fifteen minutes late and that it was night, to which I smiled.
Multiply that by 48 for the difference in distance and 4 for the difference in time gone without seeing each other, and we’ll see where we are then.
*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
