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!
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!
posted by Libby | 9:04 AM
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