Olympic Torch

If you look back to one of my early October postings, I mentioned a park we wandered through that held a lot of recreational activities. The name is Yiu Xiu Park (which I misspelled - the correct spelling is Yue Xiu Park which sounds like 'you shoe'). Anyway, I posted a few pictures you haven't seen yet below. One of the most striking buildings in the park was under renovation at the time. It housed a museum of Guangzhou history that was 5 stories tall. We wandered through it, even though it was encased in bamboo scaffolding.

I discovered last week when I turned my television on why it was being renovated. The 2008 Olympics will be held in Beijing. Last Wednesday, the Chinese began the running of the torch for their Olympics. Their starting point was in Guangzhou in front of this museum! It was exciting for me to be able to say that I had been there shortly before. What a small world!

Friday night Ryan and I went to a big shopping mall and wandered around before enjoying coffee out on the promade, watching children rollerblading. While in the mall, we went up to the seventh floor where we found a video arcade, a haunted house, and an Indiana Jones thrill ride. I still claim victory on the air hockey table, 7-5. Ryan thinks I mis-read the score! The haunted house was a treat because we got to enjoy a little bit of Halloween. Speaking of which, who won the office costume contest this year??

Oh - and of course the latest dinner update - Candy took us out for traditional Cantonese food again last night. Ryan and I got to share a duck's foot. We were provided with plastic gloves so we were able to keep our hands clean.
After dinner we stopped at 2 night clubs. The first one featured a band from the Philippines singing Abba, Richard Marx, and other ballads. A few drunk men got up to sing a Taiwanese rock song, although it wasn't really supposed to be a Karaoke Bar... then we went to a dance club called Tang which had a band playing latin music. The ambiance had a bit of Indian or oriental flair. It also reminded me of the club in one of the early scenes of the movie XXX, set in Prague.

I ventured out alone on Sunday for the first time since I got here (one month). I went to a church where I was told there was a Catholic mass in English. I left the hotel and had one of the valets tell the taxi driver where to take me. The taxi took me through some back roads as a short cut, and there were a few times where I got pretty worried about my safety. I didn't see anyone that looked remotely like me. Being a minority is a very uncomfortable feeling! As I searched my wallet for the fare, I found my St. Christopher medal which Grandma Joan gave me many many years ago to protect me during my travels. What a comfort that was...

So I found the church well enough, but the mass in English had been moved to 3:30 in the afternoon. So I spent a few minutes talking with someone who turned out to be a deacon (being ordained next month) who was leaving soon for South Africa. He was very friendly and helpful. Then I stayed for the Chinese mass.

Another eventful weekend in Guangzhou! :) Julie (a friend) and Dave (a coworker) both arrive this week, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Also, congratulations to cousins Kim and Carl for their second family addition, Clay! Big sister Madeline must be so excited... I can't wait to meet him!

What's in a Horn?

Possible meanings of a car horn when driving in Guangzhou:

“I am preparing to turn left into the path of oncoming traffic. I hope you see and avoid me.”

“I am making a blind right turn around a parked truck. Anyone beyond the truck, beware.”
“I am driving faster than you, so I advise you to speed up or change lanes.”
“The road narrows ahead. Be sure you leave enough room for my car on your right/left.”
“You need to slow/stop your bicycle, or I will probably hit you.”
“I am running a red light… just so you all know, I’m here in the middle of this intersection…”
“That pedestrian in the crosswalk ahead isn’t moving fast enough for my liking.”
“I am turning right and merging into oncoming traffic, and I don’t want to have to use my brake pedal, so everyone please slide to your left.”
“I know this is a 3-lane road based on the suggestive white paint on the pavement, but we can surely fit at least 5 vehicles across and still leave plenty of room for the bicycle commuters…”
“My turn-off is 50 meters ahead… I will make a slow gradual turn across 3 lanes of traffic at this point.”
“FYI – I’m passing you on your left. We are currently not on a collision course, but why don’t we just continue to maintain our current lanes?”

Viel spass!!

Cultural Weekend

After a quiet evening in the hotel Friday night, Ryan and I took a whirlwind trip to Hong Kong on Saturday. We were afraid that our work schedule would get very busy this week and this weekend would be our last free weekend. But the hotels were all filling up quickly. Rates in the hotels that weren't already full were climbing at about $100/hour (already in the range of $350) by the time we started making phone calls Friday afternoon. So we only stayed one day. It was a total of 7 or 8 hours of travel time for 6 hours in the city. And there was some kind of convention, so the taxis were stuck in traffic - we braved the metro! It was very clean and easy to use. We only got confused once. The whole city was very crowded.
We took the metro to the island of Hong Kong and walked through some of the better shopping streets before discovering some sort of festival in a local park there. Six groups of schoolgirls were manipulating huge Chinese dragons through the crowd to music. Then as we wandered we discovered the Hong Kong IKEA so Ryan got his first taste of furniture shopping on a grand scale! We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant before leaving to come home.

On Sunday, we attended the China Open Badminton Tournament 2006. I never knew Badminton was such an entertaining sport. There were at least 25 countries represented. Our tickets covered entry to all 5 final matches: womens doubles & singles, mens singles & doubles, and coed doubles. I remember playing badminton in my childhood and it was a slow, lazy game. Not so! There were offensive spikes, and defensive digs, and diving and changing direction and crazy fans and prize money and everything! (I sound like I'm three years old, don't I?)
One of the girls in the pink uniform actually played in both the women's doubles final and the coed doubles final. The sport seemed to favor taller people but she was one of the shortest and fastest players there.
Serving takes place in the middle of the court, and the birdie can't touch the net but usually it's a slow lob that barely clears the top of the net. Then they lob it to the back court where one of the players takes a flying leap to 'hit' the birdie down and over the net (maybe 5' tall) as hard as he can. It's rally scoring, 21 points, best of 3 wins. The crowd would cry out 'Sah!' every time one of the players jumped to attack. The word means 'hit!' There were some incredible volleys that lasted for over 30 seconds too. Oh - and the birdies have real feathers in them too - they aren't the plastic molded ones that I remember from my childhood.
Nine out of ten teams in the final were from China. One of the singles females was from China but representing The Netherlands. The mens doubles team that won was from Indonesia.

I was worried that the stadium wouldn't be air-conditioned. Turns out I was worrying about the wrong thing. The stadium was air-conditioned, but for some reason it didn't occur to me that the average person is much shorter here. I couldn't fit into the stadium seat! I had to sit sideways with my knees in front of the person sitting beside me. Lucky for me, I sat beside my Chinese coworker, Candy, who is maybe 5' tall. She was able to cross her legs and still not contact the seat in front of her. Ryan made it through, but he was less comfortable than I was.

After the tournament, we strolled through a shopping mall across the street from the stadium, and actually saw advertisements for sporting equipment featuring the people we had just finished watching!

Before heading back to the hotel we stopped at our first spicy Szechuan style restaurant. They prepared our tea (called 'treasure tea' in Chinese) by putting tea leaves into individual pots with lids, and then pouring hot water into them from a kettle with a spout that's about 3' long! I just had to get a photo. The waiter walked with the spout hidden straight up behind his back. It was so long it would have doubled as a weapon. The water practically jumped out of the spout - and the waiter would aim about 6" in front of the teacup in order to hit the mark! I didn't see him miss either. Impressive.

Good news at work today! I might be coming home sooner rather than later. I'll keep you posted!

Homesick!!!

Well, it's Day 20 of my trip. And even though it took me all week to post all of my Hong Kong pictures, it's been a pretty quiet week for me. Work has been a little slow, and we're waiting for some things to be finished up before we can start on the next phase of our project. Evenings have also been quiet.

We did visit the German restaurant again on Wednesday. It was a warm night. We ate out on the patio. After dinner we bought two tickets for a Pearl River cruise up and down the river in downtown Guangzhou. The entire city was lit up in neon along the riverfront.

The last picture is of the White Swan Hotel - one of the nicest hotels in the city - 5 stars. Ryan and I sat in their dining room and had a few beers one night - expensive!

Anyway, something weird happens to you after about 2 weeks of business travel. You start to look at the calendar and say, I'm getting a little bit tired of this. You notice that your trip isn't even half over. You tire of eating out at restaurants every night. It's when the coping mechanisms come out - things like room service, pulling out your favorite movie DVDs you packed, and craving for simple homemade meals. Simple things like steamed vegetables, steaks, macaroni and cheese, fruit you recognize, all the basics start popping into your head. You find yourself wondering if it's possible to boil spaghetti in a hotel hot pot because you're craving something simple, easy, and quick.

I'm especially tired of riding in the back seat of a taxi each and every day. I miss my house, my cats, and being able to call my friends in the evenings. I miss the autumn chill in the air and the leaves falling. I will miss the gradual change of seasons this year. When I return, I will go from 80 degrees here to 40 degrees at home. I miss American television. I miss fresh air, country roads, and clean water.

But you learn how to make it through. We send postcards, call home, e-mail friends we haven't spoken to in a while, we travel to Hong Kong in search of Irish Pubs and true American style hamburgers. We visit Starbucks when we're feeling nostalgic. Call it a seventh inning stretch. I'm almost to the point where I'm looking forward to eating Chinese food again. But I'm also counting the days until I land in Cincinnati and go to Outback for that traditional steak dinner!

So, we're spending the day in Hong Kong tomorrow. It's a total of 4 hours travel time, for maybe 6 hours in the city, but since we have no other plans for Saturday, why not? (And all the hotels were full Saturday night!!)

Oh - and on Sunday we're going to the final match of a badminton tournament. It should be something to see - the popular sports over here are badminton, tennis, and ping pong. We even got caught in a traffic jam leaving work at 7:00pm tonight because people were on their way to the badminton tournament! Maybe I'll take up a new sport while I'm here.

Miss you all!!!!

An Evening on the Promenade

After our Star Ferry Harbor Tour, we walked along the Promenade and visited the Avenue of the Stars. I was reminded of Newport on the Levy. Beautiful views of the city and lots of places to sit beside the water. Many couples were out for a romantic evening. We happened across a band playing some kind of music with instruments I didn't recognize.
On the Avenue of the Stars, most of the handprints were made by Asian actors whose names I didn't recognize. However, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee were prominently featured.
After the stroll, we stopped at a waterfront restaurant for drinks and desserts. The view, as always, was beautiful.

Hong Kong Harbor at Night

We paid $85 Hong Kong (about $10 US) to take a one hour tour of Victoria Harbor at night. It was breathtaking. We waited too long and missed the 8:00pm light show, but we boarded at 8:20pm and had an hour of quiet beauty on the boat and fresh air. It was the Star Ferry again, but a different boat style. We stood up at the front of the boat for most of the time, snapping photos. Hong Kong is beautiful any time of day, but it's just breathtaking at night. Here's a view of a clock tower lit up on the Kowloon side, in front of the Hong Kong Cultural Center:
A view of Hong Kong Island, Central area:
Another view of Hong Kong island, this time Wanchai area:
And, of course, the lights on our boat were even beautiful!

Markets in Hong Kong

We found two of the most crowded, narrow, pedestrian streets in Hong Kong on the island. There was only room for one person to pass at a time between all the vendor booths of clothing and fabric. If we stopped walking we created a traffic jam though. And I don't know how the vendors got their wares loaded and unloaded each evening! Every shopping street had a different kind of theme. We found the Jade market, the antiques market, the clothing market, the watch market... everything has a theme. My coworker told me this morning about the 'fake market' here in Guangzhou where she bought a knockoff coach wallet.
Here we have a fruit market street. Directly across from it was a flower market.
And then on a street corner a few streets away were the more local shops. I believe these two shops were selling ginseng roots of all shapes, sizes and varieties (are there varieties??) and dried seafood of all types, respectively. I don't know if the seafood is a delicacy or used for medicinal purposes.

View from the Peak

After crossing the harbor to the island, we took a tram up the hillside to Victoria Peak in order to get to the best view of Hong Kong. The peak was maybe 500m above the water level. It reminded me of the gondolas on the ski slopes in Austria. At times it felt like we were being pulled straight up the mountain! Slopes were around 45 degrees in some places. It would have been impossible to remain standing in the tram car. When we got to the top, we climbed 7 or 8 escalators out to the observation deck. This is a new deck, built in front of the old one. It was a hazy day, but we took a ton of pictures anyway. Lots of little ice cream shops, a shopping mall, a kindergarten, a few private residences and some other buildings were also at the peak.
This is the view of the island itself. You can barely see the water on the left side of the photo.
Here's another view, showing the tallest building on the island. You can see the ferry port where we left Kowloon across the harbor, too. It's white.
I would recommend it to anyone. We spent a few hours wandering around before daring to ride the tram back down the mountain.

Star Ferry in Victoria Harbor

The first thing we did when we arrived in Hong Kong was to buy a ride across the harbor on the famous Star Ferry. The oldest form of transport across Victoria Harbor, it's a great way to navigate the city. It's also cheap: 2.20 HK$ or about $0.35 US. The boat is wide and open to the elements. We traveled from Kowloon to the Central dock on Hong Kong Island. It was a short ride, maybe 10 minutes. The weather was warm and muggy but there was air moving across the water. This is where the boat docked. There were skyscrapers everywhere.
I saw a few tugboats hovering in the harbor. You can see the Convention Center in the background. It's built entirely on reclaimed land out in the harbor. They were still dregging the bottom of the harbor the day we were there, too. The Hong Kong airport is also built entirely on reclaimed land. Amazing.


We loved the ferry ride so much that we bought tickets for a 1-hour night boat tour that evening.

Train Ride to Hong Kong!

Okay, let me just start out by saying that I took a total of 141 pictures on my 2-day trip to Hong Kong. Thank goodness for digital cameras! I'm trying to group the pictures into different categories so they aren't overwhelming - here's the first shot.

Ryan and I bought two train tickets from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. We paid for first class seats. So of course, I took a picture of the train car. :) It felt a lot like an airplane. In fact, I kept calling the train station 'the airport' by mistake. We waited in line, went through customs, inspections, and had to board 20 minutes early. I expected something a little more like a subway station, but this train was a bit different.
We had duty free shopping, newspapers, a beverage service and optional meals. Traveling in style! The view out the window was interesting, too. It was nice to get away from the crowded city and see the countryside. Unfortunately I can't explain what you're looking at in the photos... but even the countryside looks different somehow.


More pictures to come... of the city next!

Day to Day Life in Guangzhou

I watched from my hotel room window as this man put down ceramic tile on the roof of this home or apartment building over a 3-day period. He carried his own sand up to the roof, made is own grout, and laid the tiles. He still works on his roof periodically, doing finishing touches. The bamboo scaffolding is still up, which makes me think he's got a major renovation project in the works. I see several women like this on the drive to the supplier location in the industrial park of Guangzhou. They are the street cleaners. Their brooms are huge! And they stand out in the middle of traffic and the cars just drive around them. It doesn't look like a pleasant kind of job. The wide-brimmed straw hats keep them cool and I see them everywhere.
These men are balancing on one bamboo pole as they construct scaffolding around this temple. They are working 4 stories in the air with no safety ropes or nets. One person on the ground passes up one pole at a time, while one of them lashes the poles together (looks like wire ties, maybe?) to secure the cross lengths.
This was a large group of people preparing to do some landscaping in the industrial park. I couldn't zoom in quickly enough but they have their bicycles and motorcycles nearby.
This was a group of people who had congregated to either practice or perform vocally in the park I mentioned in a previous post. I didn't recognize the music, but it was beautiful, and the sounds drifted through the park. It was just lovely.