Category: hong kong 06-07

Chengdu: Second impressions

Being hot, tired and miserable didn’t help my first impressions. It’s gotten a bit better.

It’s still gray and big and industrial, but I saw a few of the parks yesterday and let the Chinese gardens work their curvy magic on me. I also went to the central square, briefly admired the Mao statue, and started one of my stubborn, interminable urban hikes which took me several km away. Usually I feel that streetmaps in guidebooks overstate the size of cities: not so with Chengdu. After circumnavigating Sichuan University in an attempt to find Tex-Mex food, I found a bus back and had dinner and a shower (which both helped tremendously).

This morning I woke up relatively early. I spent the morning at the panda breeding center north of the city. I guess it’s a tourist must-do: there are definitely more pandas there than you’d tend to see in one place. Got a lot of photos, deleted a lot on the ride back, etc.

I hope my couchsurfing attempts in Japan get more successful because it seems like US$25 is about the bottom-line price for a dorm bed in the most crowded dorms available. Ouch. I prefer RMB 25 (what I’m paying now), though 45 or even 60 (Xi’an, Shanghai) would be fine too.

Sichuan food has not been disappointing… nice and spicy. If anyone from first semester at Lingnan is reading this: I found the “Christmas peppers” (all over my gong pao ji ding).

I saw some really interesting headlines on the BBC and NYTimes through my RSS reader, but I can’t actually read the articles (and I don’t want to get the g/h in trouble by scaling the Great Firewall). Bummer.

Today I will continue to be lazy around Chengdu (since I was tramping around peeking at pandas all morning). Tomorrow, I might try to get out to Leshan to see the Big Buddha there (look it up, it’s a bit older than Lantau’s): it depends on the bus timetables since I’ll need to be back here in the evening to catch my flight. It’s a two hour 34 RMB bus ride, so as long as it starts early enough that should work out fine.

Any HK people reading, please please please keep me up on your new and exciting lives. I’m still going through withdrawal.

Banned from the library!

In a personal first for me, today I was informed that I am banned from a library—the Lingnan University one.

My crime? I foolishly completed some of the clearance paperwork for exchange students, including a certification that I have neither loans nor fines outstanding from the Lingnan library. According to the wisdom of Lingnan bureaucracy, this means that I’m done with the library and should be denied physical access to it for the remaining, oh, two days of the term. Amazing, especially since I’d just donated a couple items (unaware that I was already dead to the library). “You cannot use our library anymore.”

I took the hint (after mild fussing and getting the standard “just following unwritten rules without a smidgen of critical thought” excuse).

the end is imminent

People are disappearing right and left. It’s no fun. I’m still sad. People I’ve known since August are disappearing, some forever—and the number of spring-semester exchangers I really hung out with, small to begin with, will soon be at the point where I can count it with my nose.

In other Hong Kong news, at least one political leader nearly tripped over himself to agree with his fellow toady that Hong Kong isn’t ready for universal suffrage because of insufficient national education. The proof is that most HKpeople still think that the Tian’anmen incident on 6-4, 1989, was a massacre. I wonder if it was the tanks or the guns that gave them that impression.

I had a really nice day a couple days back involving freshly-made dumplings in Sheung Wan, a shop full of brilliantly-colored birds, a Star Ferry ride on a clear night, and catching the delightfully cheesy harbour light show in English. On a day like that, though, even staring down the Mirador Mansion courtyard (say) feels atmospheric. Better late than never, right? All this time I’ve been telling people to look away from the Central area when they’re looking for good, cheap Chinese food… Oops.

My tentative plan for the post-term-pre-flight period: I booked a flight to Chengdu for the 23rd. After that I’d like to go overland to Xi’an before flying to Nanjing or Shanghai (which are near each other, Hangzhou, and Suzhou). If money, miles, or both permit, I’d like to spend a week in Japan from there before returning to Hong Kong to catch my flight out. If Japan doesn’t work out, I suppose that’s enough time that I’d be able to take advantage of my bump ticket (free r/t HKG-Manila).

Another several skipped blogs

I might have graduated recently, but I can’t find anyone to confirm it. I hope I graduated.

I’m done with exams now, too, and I should be done with undergraduate education entirely. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do between now and the 12th. There are some nice domestic airfares in China, and there’s always the train. But what about Japan and the Philippines? Tricky.

I completely omitted mentioning my trip to Yangshuo, near Guilin in Guangxi province on the weekend before last. I went up with Catherine, François, and Betsy. We stayed at a place called Yangshuo Culture House, where the wonderful Wei kept us well-fed and well-oriented. Yangshuo is famous for its limestone hill scenery, which you can see in my pictures. We went to the Water Cave, climbed Moon Hill, went bamboo rafting on the Yulong, and generally wandered around. Wei’s family supplied ridiculous breakfasts and dinners, including some stuffed chilis I’m still missing.

The trip included two sleeper buses: one from near Luohu to Guilin (we got off at Yangshuo and skipped Guilin entirely, on the advice of almost everybody), and one from Yangshuo to a bus station a good way west on Shenzhen metro line #1. The second was a bit nicer, but had a less flexible design which involved essentially trapping my feet in a box.

My Yangshuo album will get bigger after I steal some pictures from the others. 4558

After Yangshuo, I wrote another paper and took my final exams. I’ve also been getting to hit my local food favorites pretty hard (Thai from Gold Dragon, Vietnamese from Mini Paris, and South Asian from Tuen Mun Curry House). I will miss the HK$22 set lunch from the curry house and the HK$20 moan, but I’ll miss the crack-laced HK$30 red curry from Gold Dragon even more.

On Saturday my former co-worker and brief housemate Jeff arrived in Hong Kong, and I spent a couple days showing him around—not nearly long enough for Hong Kong, but better than most of you reading this are doing, right? Today I met him at Sheung Shui and crossed to Mainland with him, where I pointed him to the airport bus and picked up a cheap suit and shirt I’ve been having worked on at Luohu Comm. Ctr. The suit is definitely of lower quality than the one I had made in TST, but at a third of the price that’s to be expected. The shirt, though, is just fine: I might e-mail for a couple more, now that they have my measurements.

People are leaving. That’s really sad. I hope I get to say goodbye to more properly this semester, but the departure dates are even more spread-out: some are gone already, and many are leaving before we get kicked out of our housing on the 23rd.

Don’t ask me where I’ll be on the 23rd; I can barely answer for tomorrow. There’s this really cheap flight from Guangzhou to Xi’an I’ve got my eye on…

Korea pt. 2

I was even worse about uploading this installment. Not even a pile of essays imminently due got me to write this post.

Studying for my first (inconsequential) final, however, has done the trick.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember this part very well. The JSA was great. Look at the photos. I was on the North Korean side of the conference room at Panmunjeom, and I wasn’t incinerated. The flight was normal.

Korea, pt. 1

Sorry, I’ve been quite slack in my blogging for this trip. I’ll try to remember a bit here.

The flight Friday was a little late but nothing to complain about too much. THAI’s food was a pleasant surprise: the dinner wasn’t amazing, but the warm roll and metal cutlery were. The scalding hot towel was amazing too, in a different way.

My seatmate during takeoff and landing (guess he liked the window) was a pretty good picture, but since he wasn’t asleep near me my camera missed out. Picture: European traveler, ponytail, faded jeans cutoffs reaching just barely below his crotch, and the reddest skin I’ve ever seen. Wow.

ROK immigration controls and not figuring out the absurdly easy pay phones conspired to make me about an hour later into Arrivals than I’d expected. I caught an airport bus and was met by Mrs. Lee, a third of the Lee family (old family friends) who have been keeping me well-fed with a roof over my head for the duration of my visit. I’ve been sampling Brazilian and Korean classic foods and having a pretty good time.

Saturday I was walked around Ilsan and a little in downtown Seoul, seeing the Gyongbuk palace grounds, Insaedon (“Koreatown”), and Itaewon (“Americatown”) before a semi-wild English teachers’ night out in Ilsan. Sunday, I went into the city in the afternoon in time for an international festival, including “World Food Court.” I kept myself busy with samosas, juices, empanadas, cakes… and then went to the War Memorial, near Itaewon in Yongsan (Militarytown). It’s a very impressive museum with three main areas, the first covering ancient Korean wars, the second and largest covering The War, and the third covering the modern ROK military. The grounds outside have a couple neat sculptures and an incredibly impressive collection of military hardware that would make even the Vietnamese blush.

Today I came to Gyeongju, in the Southeast of Korea, by express bus. The bus was amazing: lots of legroom, huge seats, well-driven, announcements made by pleasant pre-recorded Korean and English voices, and so on. Even the rest area was impressively clean and modern. This evening, I’ll go back by train: the last direct one left nearly an hour ago, but I’m saving some time at not much expense (and being a train geek) by taking a commuter train to Daegu East and changing for the KTX (the Korean TGV). As for Gyeongju: I probably needed more time. I did get to see some burial mounds (shades of South Charleston) and a couple old, small, interesting pagodas, as well as the Bulguksa temple complex farther out of town.

I’ve been very bad with my camera this trip: apologies in advance. I’ll upload what I did shoot when I get back. I’m most excited about tomorrow, when I am to tour Panmunjeom (the truce village on the border of the Koreas, in the DMZ’s Joint Security Area) and the 3rd Tunnel (one of many DPRK infiltration attempts). To end on a cheerful note, a guide cheerfully notes that if anything untoward happens in the DMZ tomorrow, I’ll “probably be incinerated”—but I think it’s worth it.

A weekend spent entirely inside the SAR

This weekend was unusual, as this entry’s title says. Don’t worry; next weekend, I should be in Seoul.

Last Wednesday was an honorary member of le week-end (the word that us cultured multilingual types like to use) due to its impossibly clear weather. I decided to go to Cheung Chau—not the first time I’d made that decision. Just as had happened every time before, I ended up not going: I played tour guide to Catherine’s friend from Semester at Sea, taking a few hours from TST to Wanchai to Statue Square through the bank buildings through HK Park to Admiralty and back to TST. The weather was so good (sunny, clear, fairly dry, temperate, breezy) that… I’m not even kidding… we could see the other side of the harbor.

Not only that, but looking from the Avenue of Stars one could make out details on estates stretching east along the Island, down to what looked like Shaukeiwan or so. Amazing.

Thursday had the same weather. I had class.

By Friday the weather was getting back to normal: after our two days of perfect weather, the sticky summer nastiness is setting in. This makes my sight-seeing missions within Hong Kong even more urgent than before. So, on Friday, I saw… nothing. Good Thai food, though.

Saturday I did a little better. I went with Andrea to Cheung Chau… just kidding, I tried and failed to go there yet again. We took the ferry from Tuen Mun to Tai O, which I hadn’t yet seen (I’m the last person in the University, maybe). Wandered around, gawked at weird fish products, etc.

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After that it was off by a typically Lantau-ish (heaving, bumpy) bus to Mui Wo, where we went to Silvermine Beach and missed a few ferries. The ferry to Cheung Chau was badly timed: we didn’t even get to miss it.

After a fast ferry and some quick food in Central, I wandered around aimlessly for a while while Andrea and Chloe watched The Painted Veil at Palace ifc. Met up with various people, did various things, chased various people around LKF and Soho, and ended up home in a rather bad mood around 06:00. It was fun up until the last couple hours: I hadn’t been out in Central since February. Highlight: really cool music at an African place (“Makumba”) in Soho.

The late and rough end to the evening nixed my plans to go to Shenzhen (see, I was planning to cross the border) with Trevor and some of his colleagues on a practical, bargain-hunting visit. It was kind of nice, though, to spend a weekend without going through a single immigration checkpoint.

Today, instead of going to Shenzhen, I went to the Nanlian Garden and Chi Lin nunnery, in Diamond Hill, and Wong Tai Sin. They were very cool.
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Afterward, I went to Becky’s church across the street from Baptist U. in Kowloon Tong (just a couple stops back up the line) to check out a couple Kazakhs and their instruments of musical distraction. Unfortunately, I was ambushed by a sort of halfway service pieced together around their performance (just about long enough to pass around the money bags). Their instruments were neat, though. Escaping at a break, I saw the Festival Walk megamall… very impressive, even for Hong Kong. Especially the random ice rink. It had a Yoshinoya, so I was able to put together my beloved beef bowl + 2 cups chili flakes + kimchi concoction for dinner before the long trek back to Tuen Mun. I was tempted to zip up the East Rail to the Shatin Racecourse, since it was a race day, but I think that if I see a race at all it should probably be in Happy Valley. Even without packing that extra sight in, it was a pretty productive weekend.

I’m only missing a few Hong Kong sights now… a lot of a few. Ocean Park, Sai Kung, Cheung Chau, Lamma (Powerstation Beach is supposedly not all that’s to it), a race at Happy Valley, the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery and the Heritage Museum at Sha Tin… and I’m sure I’m missing a ton more. Hmm, the Sheung Shui/Fanling/Tai Po Market old stuff area… the list keeps growing when I turn around.