Harbin for Christmas

It seemed that all Hohhot had to offer us for Christmas was an (even more than usually) overpriced dinner at any of the nice hotels at which we have taken to dining somewhat regularly. So in the interest of breaking from our routine a bit, and in hopes of surrounding ourselves with more friends for the holiday, we planned a trip to Harbin for the week. The Sunday night before Christmas, after Alison finished her last day in over three weeks of consecutive working days, she, Phil, and I hopped on an overnight train to Beijing.

We were in a soft sleeper on the train (see Somewhere and Back Again if you don't know what that means); after boarding, Phil and I went looking for some provisions. During this time the fourth (and female) occupant of our room arrived. Alison reports that this woman seemed relieved to find that at least one of her neighbours for the night was also a woman. I imagine she was not as pleased to see me and Phil arrive with ten bottles of beer.

Anyway, the train ride passed more or less uneventfully. The absence of a power outlet in our room meant our viewing of The Meaning of Life was cut short. On arrival in Beijing we made our way to the airport and were in Harbin sometime in the early afternoon. Erik and Joe from Changchun had arrived by train shortly before us. (Apparently due to their delay in booking their tickets they got to enjoy the train's standing room for the three-hour ride.)

Before meeting up with Joe and Erik, we checked into our hotel and went for some lunch at a nearby pizza place we found. We were attracted by its large sign, which turned out to be the only big thing about it. Inside it consisted essentially of a counter on which stood a single toaster oven.

Moving on, we met up with Joe and Erik, who were staying in the apartment building where live Harry and Stuartina, who are the only people in the entourage to be residents of Harbin. We went for a scrumptious Christmas Eve dinner at a Arabian restaurant run by a Syrian fellow who spoke decent Chinese but less English. An interesting feature of this place was the page on the menu for various flavours of tobacco, served in a hookah. We elected to try the strawberry one. Alison observed it was like a dessert, but without the calories.


Oh, but before dinner, I neglected to mention, we went to have a gander at the St. Sophia Roman Orthodox Church, which is now an architectural art museum. It was certainly made all the more beautiful by the presence of a giant inflatable Santa Claus in front of it.

The rest of the night was taken up with a visit to a club called Box; after a few months in Hohhot it was novel to go anywhere that stayed open past 1am and had people awake at that hour to boot. I noticed that this place also had hookahs available.


Christmas Day—my first ever away from my family—was nice enough. Alison and I paid brief homage to the present tradition, and her gift to me of a bottle of Bailey's allowed us to keep up the habit from the last few years of starting drinking before noon to celebrate our Lord's birth. We enjoyed a Russian Christmas dinner of sorts along with Joe, Erik, and Phil.

Boxing Day we strolled around Harbin a bit. The city puts on an ice sculpture festival, which had not begun, if my facts are straight. But I suppose it takes a while to put it together so there still were plenty of sculptures about. Quite a few were along a busy walking street in the town, and there were many more in a park which you could enter for 50元. Erik was quite vocal about how much of a rip-off that was (he spoke from some prior experience, apparently) so we didn't venture in there. The picture here is of a Chinese chess board in ice sculpture form. I think the pieces were moveable but the whole thing was fenced off.

Oh, and that day Alison and I decided to change accommodations and stay in one of the apartments in the building where Erik and Joe were. Let me list some of our reasons, and by reasons I mean complaints against the hotel where we had been staying (the Zhengming Jinjiang, in case any of you are planning a trip to Harbin and want to know where to avoid):

• Our main reason for picking the hotel was that we'd called in advance to find if it had a pool, which it did. Phil was the first to go and try to use it, and they told him it was closed; he fortunately managed to convince them to open it.
• Even with the pool open, it still had a stupidly early closing time. The rest of us did meet up with Phil in time to have a brief dip though, but not before encountering some more (sadly not atypical) stickling: Chinese pools have a very stubborn insistence on bathing caps.¹ But apparently the people enforcing this rule don't have a clue as to the reason for its existence: They refused to let Erik, who's bald, enter the pool without a cap, even after much explanation and pleading on our part (followed by Alison informing them a number of times that they're crazy). Oh, but he could buy a cap from them, for something like 45元 (about ten times the price of one in a store).
  
• The presence of English-speaking staff was extremely limited. This place claimed to be four-star! All the nice hotels we've visited in Hohhot (for dining purposes, typically) have staff who speak English almost to a fault.
• When we checked in, our room wasn't clean, and we were told it would be forty minutes. We gave it about an hour and when we finally went to the room the beds were made but the bathroom was in disarray, the garbage can filled with remnants of strange take-out food from the previous guests. Even when we got back late on the first night, no one had finished tidying up the room. At least I did manage to coerce a small discount from them on these grounds, for our second night.

Hmm. I suppose I really shouldn't make such a habit of listing things that bug me. I really enjoyed the trip, and the night out on Boxing Day was no exception, despite the fact that Alison and I were starting to get sick by that point. Here you see Harry partway through the night; he was friends with someone at the bar and supplied us with much vodka at a ridiculously low price.


Harbin is a pretty Russian-influenced place. In Hohhot we've grown used to having signs in Mongolian as well as Chinese; in Harbin it's similar, but with Russian of course. One large remnant of this influence is Stalin Park. (Actually, there were/are plenty of other tributes to Stalin throughout China; Changchun's "People's Square" used to be called "Stalin Square," as Joe is a fan of recalling.) Joe was keen on visiting the park, but he was sorely disappointed when we found that the statue of his (apparently) favourite tyrant had been replaced by the one seen here of (Alison surmises) Bambi and his dad.

The only unfortunate factor in the trip was that more of our friends from Changchun didn't join us. I swear people in that city are like the lotus-eaters from Greek mythology, save for the fact that Alison and I are hard-pressed to see what the analogy to the "lotus plant" is in this likening. On the contrary, it seems those that didn't come stayed at home out of fear of the guilt they would have felt for leaving town and having fun!

¹Heavens forfend a stray hair possibly getting in the water which is no doubt sullied in any manner of other ways, including but not limited to the habit people here have of noisily hocking a loogie whenever the mood strikes them regardless of where or in what company they may find themselves.

I bought a bag of soy sauce today

Aye, a bag. My 500mL bottle was running low and I could have replaced it for 7 yuan, but 350mL bags were available for 1. Milk is also purchased in bags... and I recently calculated that it's more economical to buy the smaller bags than the bigger ones. Does nothing make sense in this country?

In sadder news, I visited my beloved pool, and was dismayed on two fronts. First, it was twice the price I expected. Then while swimming it turns out that despite the presence of lane ropes and signs instructing otherwise, people still do swim around the perimeter. Later in the evening my opinion of the pool was heightened again somewhat when Phil and I were at the bar. A man approached us and started talking to me, after a short while asking if I knew why he had done so. No, I confessed, to which he explained that he'd seen me swimming earlier. (I refrained from asking if he was the tool I was forced to run into when he cut me off.) The redemption for the pool came in my learning from him that a thirty-use card is available for 330 yuan. (I'd paid 20 for one time.)

To catch up on mundane details for those not yet aware, Alison and I are now living in Hohhot, in the province of Inner Mongolia. It's a smaller city than Changchun, but seems to have a little more culture. All signs are in Mongolian as well as Chinese, so I'm bound to stay to some degree illiterate regardless of how much Chinese I learn. We live in a Muslim district, which was especially interesting during Ramadan when someone would wander about at 3:30 every morning banging pots and pans—or doing something else that sounded like it—the intent of which supposedly was to make sure everybody woke up and had a chance to eat something before sunrise imposed the beginning of the day's fasting. Boy, that guy... as religiously intolerant as it sounds, I wanted to throw rotten eggs at him. (In my defence, I had that reaction before I knew what the heck his reason was for making such a din. But my feelings weren't changed too much by learning it.)

All Hallows Shindig

I've been asked whether Inner Mongolia has Hallowe'en. Well, not really. Nor does China in general, nor Asia, for that matter, I suspect. In any case, within our subcommunity, which includes Alison's English school and the Holiday Inn next door (which has a half-decent buffet and a Western bar¹), it's a bit of a different matter.

The school has had lots of decorations up (mostly thanks to Alison) for the last week, and had a party for their students last night (two days after Hallowe'en). But the height of our Hallowe'en experience was Wednesday night (appropriately) when there was a special at the buffet (meaning for one that it included beer) and a party at the bar. We met a couple of new friends there—two French guys (Antoine and Matthieu), one of whom had joined Alison's "I Live in Hohhot" group on Facebook.

After dinner we made the short walk to the bar where some others were awaiting us. These were four girls who are students at Inner Mongolia University, where I'm studying Chinese. They were Tomoko and Akiko (possibly the only Japanese students at the university), Tomoko's Mongolian roommate (whose name I regrettably forget), and their Korean friend Mun Gen (probably misspelled, but merely a phonetic approximation anyway). None of them are actually in the same class as me, though; this connection was also made through the Facebook group! The collection of us at the bar made for an interesting mixture of languages. Chinese and English were predominant, in that everyone spoke both of those, with varying competence. But other languages with at least two more-or-less-fluent speakers among us were French, Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian.

Oh, but as for the "Hallowe'en" aspect: All the servers at the bar had some manner of costume. In our group, Alison had a pair of devil horns, after her "bat" idea (involving creating wings from a black umbrella) failed; I wore a pig head (which was a pig-faced pillow, minus the stuffing) and fuzzy pink mittens as hoofs²; and Tomoko and at least one of the other girls had a mask of some variety.

In conclusion, we played the "bad influence" card that night, with everyone staying out until after 3am, including the girls who live in the university dorm (which closes at 11). I think everyone had a good time, at the end perhaps excepting Wilson, the bar manager, who wanted to close up and go home well before we let him.

¹"Western bar" meaning that the place has a number of imported beers and is an order of magnitude more expensive than other drinking establishments around.

²My costume was only worn on the ride (did I mention my bike is sweet?) to the hotel, and my entrances to the buffet and to the bar, as visibility was very poor and the mitts made me too warm. (Perhaps the visibility aspect made the bike ride mildly foolish? In any case I think it may have reduced the number of stares I got, as when costumed I cannot be identified as non-Chinese.)

I'm in love...

... with a swimming pool. Yup. A couple of Alison's (adult) students took us on Wednesday (Hallowe'en, that is) to try out a pool they frequent weekly or so. Those not familiar with what my expectations might be are referred to my previous post on swimming.

I was in awe.

The pool was a fifty-metre, eight-lane one. With lane ropes. And people swimming the length of the pool, keeping right, not going diagonally or around the perimeter! The icing on all this was that the price to use this pool is about half that of the one we used in Changchun.

And there were people there who could actually swim! Some were doing flip turns. And butterfly. As impressed as I was, I was also glad to find myself to be faster than them.

If my standards were not so low, I could have complaints: There is only one time clock (as opposed to one at each end of the pool) and it wasn't moving, there were no backstroke flags,¹ and the pool's quite a bit farther from our home—about a twenty-minute bike ride, rather than a three minute walk.

I don't mind the greater distance though as it gives me more of a chance to ride my wicked cool bicycle.

¹Or rather there was one set of flags, and they were way too far from the end of the pool to be of any (normal) use. And they were being used to hang a message, which Alison's students informed us described to people how not to swim like total idiots (à la Changchun swimmer). So I guess they did have a worthy enough purpose after all.

Backtracking: Beijing and beyond

All right. I realize the blog had a hiatus of about three months. At any rate I stumbled across this entry which I never finished; it was started near the end of August:

I've given myself a month to let my memory fade so my post can be of a more appropriate shortness. After my brief Hong Kong trip I flew to Beijing because the timing of my need for visa renewal, by happy coincidence,¹ was very similar to the timing of Simon (Alison's dad) being in the capital. (Speaking of capital I realize that I have now been in five countries' capital cities, but never have I visited Ottawa. Hmm.) The situation in Beijing made a pleasant change from my closet-sized rooms in Hong Kong. Simon was on a tour with his friends Liz and Cathy which had just taken them through Shanghai and Xi'an. It was just them (and now me), a driver with a van, and a guide. I met up with them at the restaurant they were having dinner, but not before making my own way there from Beijing airport, and that was a frustrating portion of the day.

There was a cheap bus to get me from the airport to the train station, which is much more central. After that I needed to get a cab, and even though I realized the foolishness of it as I did it, I went for the cabs right at the station rather than walking down the street a little way. I new taxis would be more expensive but I didn't know how much to expect (and hence what sort of price I should scoff at). I called Simon and got the guide to talk to my prospective driver, and the fellow quoted me 150 yuan, which sounded ridiculous as cab rides I was used to in Changchun would start at 5 and rarely go over 10. Sure, Beijing is a bigger city but 150 sounded outrageous. I walked away, then I realized I didn't really want to bother the guide to talk with every potential driver, so I conceded defeat and went back to the first guy; fortunately he offered 100 at this point (which was still way too much, as it turns out). Adding insult to injury was the fact that the driver was a moron as well as a rip-off artist. For one, the guy I'd had talk to our guide was one in a group of three, and in the end it was one of the other two who led me away to his car (which wasn't even a real taxi). He didn't bother talking to the first man about where it was I wanted to go, so after driving for a few minutes he asked where I was going. Out comes the phone again. Then some more driving. And some frustration on his part. Another phone call. This time it ended up being Simon on the other end instead of the guide so the idiot was just loudly demanding into the phone whether Simon speaks Chinese. At one point we even stopped in the middle of a (thankfully quiet) intersection, and the driver got out, wandering around trying to find someone to talk to to ask where to go. Most people ignored him (no wonder - he was a total doofus). He eventually found a place that has the same name on the outside as the restaurant I'm trying to get to. I wasn't convinced I was in the right place so I called the guide yet again and eventually I was fairly sure that Simon et al were inside, so I paid the nincumpoop his outrageous fee and got on my way. Turns out no, this wasn't where I wanted to be, but fortunately it was quite close and the guide managed to find me. Bah.

Moral: Unless you know what the fare for a ride should be, take a real taxi and insist on using the meter. I.e.: Don't be an idiot like me. Now I know.

The rest of Beijing was great. We had a nice dinner the first night, then spent the next three days visiting the Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Ming Tombs, and the Great Wall.

And now, I continue, writing in November:

The Forbidden City was interesting, but sadly much of it was under renovation. There are many galleries though each is surprisingly sparse in actual artifacts, as most have apparently ended up in other countries. It also dragged on a little; the guide was very well informed but after a small amount of information pretty much everything starts slipping over my head.

The Ming Tombs didn't actually include any tombs. Supposedly they're empty and so many people complain about the lameness of visiting them that tour guides don't bother going there anymore. We just walked down a long path with lots of stone statues on either side.

As for the Great Wall, I'd always thought people referring to "climbing" it were just poorly translating some Chinese word for "walk along." But no. The part we visited was indeed pretty steep. At the beginning the stairs are packed but after about a third of the way up you lose the crowd. Overall it felt like a little over half of the Grouse Grind, for those familiar with that frame of reference.

After the climb (which, not to boast, only Simon and I did to completion), our tour included a stop at a foot massage place. Some who know me may be surprised to hear that I actually succumbed to this, and it wasn't too unpleasant, actually (if a little painful in parts).

The next morning, Liz and Cathy prepared for a day of shopping before returning to Canada, and Simon and I rode a bit of the Beijing transit system together. It was surprisingly primitive - one underground circle line and a single light rail line jutting off to the northwest (which fortunately had a station quite close to our hotel) were the parts we rode and from looking on a map are pretty much all the system has to offer! I do hear though that six or so more lines are under construction for next year.

From the subway we parted ways—Simon to find some accommodation for his remaining days in the city, and me to reach the train station, from where I returned to the airport and then to Changchun.

¹I was going to say "happy happenstance" for the alliterative value of it, but then on mere suspicion I queried dictionary.com and my fears were confirmed: The two words are indeed etymologically related, so I couldn't bear to put them together.

A Day in the Special Administrative Region

Why did I go to Hong Kong, some of you may be wondering? Let's discuss Chinese visas for a moment. In Vancouver I was issued a three month tourist visa. Essentially legit; I just happen to be continuing some Canadian work while I'm visiting. I'm not in any business dealings, and I'm not being paid any money by a Chinese company. I would think China would be happy with the presence people such as me - my net effect is one of bringing money into the country. But the procedure for renewing one's visa while in the country certainly doesn't reflect this expected happiness. In Changchun, even when I went with in with our friend Lorenzo, who was in the army and is a Communist Party member, and is good at Getting Things Done, there were still more hoops to jump through than I would like: I would have to register my address with the local police (if I'm a visitor just wandering around spending money willy-nilly, why would I have an address?); I would need to show that I have 24,000RMB deposited in a Chinese bank (what on Earth is up with this requirement?); and after all this, I would only get a one-month extension. We had been told that renewing the visa in Dalian might actually be easier (after all, Dalian has real tourists; why would Changchun have any tourists?), and although it did seem like an easier prospect there - no requirement to register or have a wad of Chinese money in the bank - the extension I would have got there would still have been for only one month, from the time of renewal (not from the original expiration). This wasn't of much use as we were in Dalian about a month before my original visa was to expire.

Enter the old standby idiosyncrasies of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Messed up that it's supposedly part of China, but going there is easier for Westerners than it is for mainland Chinese. Anyway, Hong Kong is rife with travel agents who have the connections to issue Chinese visas for a mild premium.

So in my one full day in Hong Kong, that's what I did fairly early in the morning - go to apply for the visa. Way easier than in Vancouver. Show up, hand over my passport, tell them what I want, pay the fee (which wasn't unreasonable), come back and get it in the evening. (What I'm used to at the Consulate is showing up, filling out an extensive form, waiting for two or three hours, and then coming back for it three or four days later, unless I were to pay twice the price.)

I had time to spend, and the Lonely Planet was my friend; I decided on two destinations, one of which I chose mostly because it happened to be near the random MTR stop I had just got off at. I was glad I ended up going to this one - the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. It's where the handover of the Island from the Brits to the Chinese occurred ten years ago. I read that it had some record-breaking sheet of glass as a window (seven stories high), but I had no luck in getting to it on the inside (a guard said the area was closed), and from the outside I couldn't see anything that didn't look like your typical glass walls, looking to my amateur eye like they could be made up of smaller panes of glass as there was much support structure behind it. Oh well. I saw some other tourists and walking near them made out some French, so I figured I'd ask them if they knew where the grande fenêtre was. While I was very pleased that they didn't respond in English and actually tolerated my français for the entirety of the short conversation, they seemed to think the window was visible from the outside and pointed me back from where I'd come; I went back and looked again but to no greater avail.

My next destination was the Peak Tram, a funicular railway that leads to some high-up spot on Hong Kong Island and gives a great view of the surrounding area. By the time I was done there I was ready to find the guesthouse I'd booked for the night. I decided to try somewhere actually mentioned in the Lonely Planet that night; hopefully I would get a window this time. The downside of not staying at the same place was that I had to carry my backpack around all day - as if my body wasn't dealing poorly enough with the heat and humidity already. Good thing I always heed the Hitchhiker's Guide and have a towel with me everywhere.

After unloading and showering at the Welcome Guest House, located in yet another Mansion on Nathan Road, I met up with one of Alison's fellow TEFL'ers¹, Clem (who is originally from Hong Kong and is now back living there). He treated me to dinner at quite a nice Thai restaurant nearby. (In general the foreign food in the area is quite diversified and of decent quality, from what I've heard.)

That's basically it for my Hong Kong story. The next morning I got up and MTR/KCR'd it back to Luohu ("Lowu" on the HK side), cleared customs, eventually found the bus back to the Shenzhen airport, had a "Sausage Burger with Egg" at McDonald's there while Internetting a bit (I could pick up a wireless signal from McD's, Starbucks, and KFC simultaneously), and flew to Beijing. More on that later.

Also stay tuned for my comments on Hong Kong, which will mark my return from monotonous storytelling back to witty (?) observations of life.

¹Teaching English as a Foreign Language

One Country, Two Systems: The Second System

(This was written on Sunday night at about 1:00am... with some additions the next evening. I realize I probably carry on at too much length in here - I guess that's the trouble of writing with everything too fresh in my mind. I should have waited till my memory started to fade a bit. So I put in a few headings to divide this up into arbitrary parts so you won't be scared away by the length.)

Part One

Here's my adventure today.

It starts after having lunch with Alison next to her school. I go to get a cab to take me to the airport. I've been told this should cost about 80 yuan, but that you have to bargain for that beforehand. So I ask the first driver how much to take me to the airport, and he says 100. I counter with 70, figuring that might get me 80, and he goes off on some tirade that I don't understand, the conclusion of which is 90. I walk away but he calls after me so I go back and he continues to chatter away too quickly and with too many words I don't know, so I call Rebecca (one of the staff at Alison's school) to translate. Turns out he's still saying 90. So I figure he's a jerk, and go to the next guy, who says 70 right away, and buys me an iced tea along the way when he gets one for himself. I just feel bad because he tries twice to start some conversation during the drive and even with him speaking slowly and me asking him to repeat himself, I still don't understand. But anyway, I get to the airport, check in, and wait. I sit quite far away from my gate just like everyone else because there's shade there and all the seats near the gate are below a large glass portion of the roof. But before all that, on the drive there I see a couple of amusing (to me) billboards on the highway, with equally humorous pictures accompanying them which I wish I'd photographed: "No Drunken Driving" and "Do Not Drive Tiredly." Anyway, it's meant to be a 2:40 flight and it starts boarding at 2:39, and takes off at 3:20. But I really have no complaints, as I had the window seat and the middle seat of the three was unoccupied. Even after the stop in Nanjing nobody got on to fill that seat.

Some bits of note on the flight itself:

• Before takeoff, the flight attendants went around and counted the passengers with little clicky counter.


• There are ads for some brand of baijiu (white liquor) plastered all over the overhead compartments.


• There's no first class or business class on the plane.


• At both Changchun and Nanjing, there was a bridge to board the plane, just like I was used to before China. (Other domestic flights I've taken in China involve a really wide bus carrying passengers airside.)


• Despite what I've heard about some Chinese pilots (even on international flights) not speaking English, at least one of the pilots spoke it well. From the other one I couldn't decipher a single word after "Ladies and gentlemen." Oh, and everyone making announcements says "zee," not "zed." Bah.


• Two hours in, they play an overloud airline promotional video, followed by the flight attendants leading the passengers in a little stretching routine. The strangest bit though is that just after this they play some more promo video, still too loudly, but this time at least one stewardess is doing an interpretive dance (or is it sign language?) along with it! It lasts for five minutes, and everyone applauds after it!

Okay, so we land in Nanjing at 5:40... I try to use the wireless Internet, and am pleased to find an unsecured one available, but it turns out to be a China Mobile one that requires a login. I'm initially disappointed, but then I find an "English" link on the page that comes up, and it seems like I should just be able to text something to a certain number from my phone and get a password, which I can use and have the access charged to my phone. I try it, but the message I get back is all in Chinese and doesn't seem to contain a password. My hopes are dashed again. Oh well, I don't have a long wait, so I give up.

I get in line again for the plane when it starts reboarding, and I'm getting a bit annoyed at the not-atypical observation that a lot of people seem to be budging and cutting in front of the whole line. Then a nice gentlemen shows up and says to me that I shouldn't be waiting in line: "Transit passengers board first." Oh.

Part Two

The plane arrives at about 8:45 at its final destination: Shenzhen. It's 35 degrees out, so I'm glad the large bus taking us to the terminal has air conditioning. Where's Shenzhen, you ask? Right next to Hong Kong: a 20-yuan bus ride away. First things I see when I get in the airport are a McDonald's and a Starbucks. I'm not sure at first which bus to take and a final find someone inside who can tell me the number, then back outside I go, warding off the many many people approaching me saying "taxi." One of them, after I decline to ride in her taxi, asks where I'm going, and points me at the bus whose number matches the one I'm looking for. So much niceness there is, hiding behind much more rudeness... or if not rudeness, at least loudness. I buy a ticket for the bus but it turns out the one that's sitting there isn't the one that's going to take us. The one with the same number that pulls up in front and unloads its passengers isn't going either. But the one that pulls up and unloads in from of that one is. Shortly after 9:00 we're off, and the ride's a bit over an hour.

Again with the bulleted list, this time about the bus ride:

• It isn't a full-sized bus: Each row in the bus has two seats on the left, one on the right. The abnormal thing is that there is a fourth seat that could flip down and fill the isle. Practical enough, but I wonder perhaps if the reason I haven't seen the like before is that it may not pass whatever standard buses have to meet. (The Code of Vehicles From Which Passengers Are Likely to Be Able to Be Pried in the Case of an Accident, maybe?)


• A bus next to us at one point has the name of its coach line (I guess) printed on the side: Flying Horse. But the "rse" part doesn't appear, due to a wheel well or something. I have myself a juvenile chuckle.


• There are some road workers along the way removing some white lines from the road. With hatchets.

The Hong Kong customs port at Luohu is a busy busy place. Even at 10:30pm on a Sunday. Oh wait... I guess that time might have reason to be busy. But I was a bit overwhelmed nonetheless. Got through there pretty uneventfully. By accident I went first to the floor where the lineups were for Hong Kong/Mainland Chinese residents; when I ended up on the correct floor it was pleasantly less busy. Stood in line for a bit until I realized I'd forgotten to put my date of birth on my exit card, which made me realize I'd left my pen back at the counter; in the time I took to go back and get it a large (tour, or something) group came in and got in front of me. Oh well, I had more time to read the signs above all the lanes, which rotated their messages through English and Chinese versions of "Foreign Passport,"¹ something-or-other else, and "Consult a doctor if you are feeling unwell."

Part Three

Once though customs I hop on the Kowloon Canton Rail (KCR), the light rail system in the area. My destination is Tsim Sha Tsui, an area of Kowloon² rife with guesthouses. I'm under the impression that I need to switch to the MTR³ to get there, though I'm a little confused that the terminus station of the KCR is also called Tsim Sha Tsui ("Tsim Sha Tsui East," actually). The Lonely Planet's map seems to indicate that the KCR station is quite aways from the actual Tsim Sha Tsui district, so I stop at Kowloon Tong where I can mosey down to the subway. I take a quick trip along two MTR lines to my destination, where I see signs saying that it links to the KCR there. Hmph.⁴

By now it's about midnight. When I reserved my single room in the Cosmic Guest House I estimated my time of arrival as "afternoon." I said that back when I thought my flight was going to be a couple of hours. When I realized that it would be five-plus, I sent an e-mail off to the guest house saying I'd be getting there "later in the evening." I know that was an understatement, but nonetheless I believe them not to read their e-mail. Before I could arrive there and find that I didn't have a room though, I had to decipher this address:

12/F Block A1, A3, F1, F4
Mirador Mansion
54-64 Nathan Rd
Tsim Sha Tsui
Kownloon HK⁵

Here's how it turns out:

1. The "54-64" doesn't mean "unit 54 at address 64"; it simply seems to mean that the address in question is for a large building that occupies the space that could be taken up by numerous buildings numbered 54 through 64.


2. "Mirador Mansion" is the name of the building. The area seems to have many such "Mansions" and they're basically high-rise apartments, built in some kind of quadrangle so there's a courtyard in the middle.⁶ The bottom couple of floors comprise some manner of market.


3. "12/F" refers to the floor, and "Block A1, A3, F1, F4" is a bit unusual in an address and means that the guesthouse's rooms are spread over four different "blocks" of the mansion (each possibly accessed by a different elevator). Actually, I think it might just be two blocks (A and F) and two units in each of those blocks.
   

Before I know all this, I simply manage to locate the "mansion," in the vicinity of which it is impossible to walk with a backpack and have someone try to get you into their guesthouse less than once every ten seconds.⁷ Being the sucker that I am (and also seeing that the entrance is mostly gated and manned by a guard and I'm not sure if I can enter on my own), I go with one of the guesthouse pushers who's quoting me a price less than the one for the room I've reserved. The room is tiny and unwindowed but it has air conditioning and a shower. I say maybe and go off to find something more Cosmic. Once I discover the grisly fate of my reservation I figure I'll go back and take the tiny room, but not before indulging a curiosity: I passed a Holiday Inn not far down the road, and I wonder how much a room would be there.

I should mention that on the walk down Nathan road I received a number of offers, some for "massage," some for "sexy massage," and one to "spend some time with me for money" (I think that's what she said) - I guess I didn't say no firmly enough to this last lady because she followed me a bit to offer more of an explanation; it went something along the lines of, "Because you should enjoy yourself while you're here, and you could have a good time." I said it sounded very nice but no thank you. When I reached the Holiday Inn there awaited another such proposition outside; when I turned it down the lady who offered it asked if I wanted a hotel room. I said yes - I was outside the Holiday Inn, after all, but there was a staircase down and I wasn't sure if the entrance was at street level or downstairs, so I gestured down the stairs and asked her "Is it down here?" She gave some manner of affirmative response so I headed down the stairs. When I noticed she was following me I had to explain that I wanted a room by myself, and finally she left.

The only staff I find in the Holiday Inn are some floor cleaners, so I give up and go back to Mirador Mansion. Not seeing my would-be hostess,⁸ I almost go to look at a room with yet another guesthouse owner, but happily as we're about to board the elevator, the lady in question comes out and I tell her I'll take the room. And that's that.

¹Strangely, I noticed at least two instances of people abbreviating this to "passport" rather than to "foreign" (or one of its derivatives) - like when I was on the wrong floor, someone saw me and said, "Passport? Downstairs."

²For those that don't know about Hong Kong, as I didn't until a few days ago, it's made up of a few areas. Hong Kong Island (self-explanatory) and Kowloon⁹ are two of them: Kowloon is the chunk of mainland just north of the Island.

³Mass Transit Rail - Hong Kong's subway system.

⁴I have since been informed that while the two stations are indeed connected underground, the KCR train does actually stop a fair distance away and it's a heck of a subterranean walk between them.

⁵It's a good thing I took some responsibility myself for this trip and didn't rely solely on Alison's babysitting. I wrote down the whole address, while she omitted the first two lines, thinking "54-64 Nathan Rd" sufficient.<sup>10

6</sup>...into which people can throw their garbage and cause a letter of complaint about hygiene to be posted on their elevator.

⁷Typical sales pitches include "Guesthouse?" and "Take a look first?"

⁸I wish I could come up with a word with less connotations, but all I can think of is "landlady" and that's not really correct.

⁹Call to light anything from Wayne's World, anyone?

¹⁰Well, it's more of an irrelevant thing than a good thing, I suppose, judging by the good it did me to find the place. And the full address also appears in the Lonely Planet, a copy of which I managed to bum just before leaving.

Somewhere and Back Again

A week-and-a-bit ago we got back from Dalian, with Alison's dad Simon in tow, arriving at the Changchun train station at about 6:00 am having spent the night in a so-called "soft sleeper" car - where the rooms are somewhat private and have two double bunk-beds. The fourth occupant was already snoring loudly when we boarded the train; he turned out in the morning to be a Korean fellow who spoke decent English and confessed to having been quite drunk the night before.

Backing up a step, Alison and I went to Dalian on the Monday of that week, leaving Changchun on Sunday night. To save some money we took a "hard sleeper" on the way there - this means the bunk-beds are three high, and there aren't really separate rooms, just doorless compartments. We still got a decent sleep though. The worst part of all this though was that Alison had much trouble buying the tickets from a very rude woman at a nearby hotel. Fair enough, it wasn't your typical ticket purchase: two hard sleepers there, and three soft sleepers back. But it really shouldn't have taken forty-five minutes, nor resulted in such emotional anguish to the buyer!

Our gracious hosts in Dalian were Matthew and his girlfriend Rebecca, who live in an apartment on the nineteenth floor of a five-star hotel. Alison knows Matthew from Chengdu, where they were roommates for a short time and Matthew was Alison's first Chinese teacher. He has been here for three or four years and seems pretty much fluent - it's encouraging to witness. Matthew now works (though not for much longer, I gather) for the head office of the school where Alison works, which is a nine-to-five-type job. Rebecca has the more flexible schedule of an English teacher, and she was so kind as to spend most of Monday and Tuesday showing us around the city. Dalian provided a very pleasant contrast to the China I have grown to know, living in Changchun: The city seems really clean, on the bus we witnessed actual large patches of greenery, and we even spent a while at the beach! The seaside is pretty novel when one's city is mostly concrete and dust with little water to be seen.

The idea was that we would meet Simon on Monday night at the airport and that he'd be arriving with two friends, Liz and Cathy. This failed to come to fruition on two counts. The first was that there was some miscommunication between Alison and Simon involving a less-than-healthy respect for the International Date Line. Simon was to arrive Tuesday, not Monday (and happily not Sunday). The second was that China Airlines (in keeping with its country's policy of doing basically whatever the heck it wants without providing compensation to those adversely affected by it) decided not to go through with the flight that Liz and Cathy were scheduled to take.

Liz's daughter Katie, who was finishing up a year of teaching in Dalian, fortunately knew the correct time of her mother's originally scheduled (and Simon's actual) arrival. This saved us from a day-early trip to the airport. And Katie had already arranged a driver for the trip back from the airport at this time, and she was nice enough to go with us to get Simon, even though she had to go back to the airport the next day.

All these confusions aside, the trip was a really good one. We spent Wednesday with Simon and ended up going to this one park whose attraction is a large hill with a metal slide coming down it. The ads called it "largest land slide" or something; it was basically like a waterslide but with no water. So we rode the chairlift to the top - this involved the slightly-harrowing passage over a highway with somewhat hokey-looking safety nets over where the lift and slide went over. They take your picture as you get to the end of the chairlift ride and then try to sell you it. Alison and I are pretty much in the habit of buying no such things, but Simon in his first day insisted on getting one. Anyway, for the slide down you ride a plastic small-wheeled seat with a stick to operate the brake. It was pretty fun, though in retrospect I would have liked to be less chicken and have more faith in the engineering of the slide's banking and such. I think though that I may have some cause to be cautious; this is, after all, the country where the "ground" of most electrical sockets seems to be attached to nothing, and where we have newly poured cement at the bottom of our stairs, and someone put a brick in the cement to act as a support for the plank that was placed as a bridge over the wet cement; now that the the cement has dried there is a brick sticking out of it, just waiting to trip somebody.

Unincommunicado again

Went to get a new cellphone yesterday. One thing Alison has on hers that she figured I should get is a dictionary. Admittedly without spending $500 or more it's unlikely to get a dictionary that'll actually give the pronunciation for any of the words you find, but at least if you can translate from English into Chinese characters then you can look stuff up and wave your phone in someone's face in any dire situation that calls for it. It was pretty time-consuming because the display units are nonfunctional and it took the employees a while to run off to some mystery location and retrieve a real one each time we found something promising.

We looked at one LG phone that had a dictionary that wasn't as, say, standard as one typically expects dictionaries to be. Some entries would give you the translation to Chinese; some would just give the English pronunciation (and some arbitrary characters to approximate that pronunciation), and some had examples of usage. The first word we looked up was "hello" and it gave no translation, simply this example:

"Hello Mr. Cock, I have got a nice surprise for you."

I figured I'd be a little daring and looked up "fart" - only an example in this entry too:

"Stop ~ing around an behave yourself." [sic]

Sadly I ended up buying a different phone.

addendum

I've already posted today and don't want people not to read this because I write too much, but I have to mention a couple of things I saw at the gym today:

• A guy smoking on the bench press.
• Two women in heels: one on a stationary bike and one playing racquetball.
  

Acclimatizing

So Alison thought that if I was going to work here I'd probably have to put on my own music to drown out all the noise from outside... Trouble is, I find even my own music to be a distraction, mostly when I have to think hard about something in particular that I'm working on. And at first the noises outside were indeed annoying. There's the incessant car honking, the restaurant or whatever nearby that plays about four songs¹ on an interminate loop, talking and shouting, random sounds of construction and such, and then the guys who walk around with pushcarts shouting something unintelligible every ten seconds or so - all either selling or collecting something. (Actually, more irritating than the unintelligible monosyllabic cries is the loudspeaker set to repeat the same line over and over.) But now it's all truly just background noise... unless I'm in a particularly irritable mood, of course.

On the guys- pushing- carts- collecting- crap- and- shouting- something- probably- meaningless note, I'm intrigued by the garbage collection system here. The place for people in our building to take our garbage appears to be an arbitrary spot next to some stairs outside. So that's where we take it. And amazingly enough, at times we see a guy coming up the stairs to collect it, taking it down to his little cart to carry it away somewhere. I see lots of these garbage cart dudes around. (Actually our guy seems to be better-off than most - his cart is a bicycle one, not a mere walky one.) It wasn't until a week or two ago that I went for a fairly-early-morning walk that I saw the next step in the system - I came across an actual garbage truck, at its rear a large number of garbage carts with their pushers unloading them into the truck. I'm told, actually, that sometimes there's an intermediary - a larger cart pulled by a donkey or mule. I guess all this is a way to make use of the huge excess of cheap labour this country has.

This excess is apparent in other areas, too. For instance, virtually every store or restaurant has too many employees. A lot of shops along the street Alison's school is on seem to have the view that this overemployment can be put to use to bring in more customers. I'm sure there are many ways to bring this philosophy to life, but I'm not so sure of how successful their current strategy is. It consists of this:

1. Put a large display out in the street, usually comprising something big and inflatable.
2. Play really loud bad music outside the door.
3. Place many employees amidst the display. They can be divided between these two tasks:
1. Handing out flyers.
2. Clapping.

Of course your business can pick and choose from these techniques. So the stores with somewhat smaller annoyance budgets will simply have loud music and a couple of workers outside clapping (and occasionally smiling).

And now a brief break to gripe about toilets again. I've mentioned the toilet paper thing before, yes? Now, a lot of toilet paper rolls here have no core, which is because many bathrooms (such as our apartment's) don't have a toilet roll holder, and I guess because it's somewhat less wasteful (which I'm all in favour of). But the lack of roll holder means that you have to pick up the roll at each use, and, hypothetically, one could slip and drop the whole roll of paper into the toilet. That would sure be careless though, and boy am I glad that I've never done that. Not even just now.

Back to garbage stories! The other day this woman came to the door and knocked really loudly, repeatedly, not even pausing, for, say, five seconds or so between bouts of knocking to give anyone a chance to get to the door. When Alison opened it:

• woman: "JABBERJABBERJABBERJABBERJABBER!"
• Alison: "对不起，我不会说中文。" [Sorry, I can't speak Chinese.]
• woman: "JABBERJABBERJABBERJABBERJABBER!"
• Alison: "Um..." (reaching for phone)
• woman: "JABBERJABBERJABBERJABBERJABBER!"
• woman: "JABBERJABBERJABBERJABBERJABBER!"

Alison finally got hold of one someone from her school, who then spoke with the woman. Turns out she was there to get the garbage collection fee. My point, for those at home, is simply that if someone doesn't seem to speak your language, whatever it be, the following are not going to help you get your point across:

• Talking loudly.
• Saying the same thing repeatedly without slowing down.

Here endeth the lesson.


¹One of them seems to have English lyrics, even.

Stuff to sweep under the rug

There are some general things about the Chinese language that I find interesting. If you take away the ridiculous writing system¹ and the absurd idea of using only one syllable per word,² then it’s remarkably simple. There’s no conjugation, no plurals, and basically no need to put extra words in the sentence that don’t really add to the meaning. For instance, there’s a word for “please,” but in most contexts it sounds weird, so you can just leave it out and get to the point. To my Western ear, it makes everything sound rude, or at least abrupt, but I’m getting used to it. One place I find the absence of “please” strange is with some beggars: some will just say “thank you” over and over. And there’s no beating around the bush with things like “Could you spare some change?” In the case of one woman who followed us around for a while the other day, it was simply, “Give me one kuai.”

And this brings me to a more depressing topic. Alison tells me there’s more street poverty here than there was in Chengdu. It goes with the generally higher degree of rundownness that seems to exist here. I was walking home from the gym today, and my route took me through an underground market to avoid an intersection.³ On each of the two sets of stairs I had to take, there is often some variety of street vendor, but even more frequently at least one panhandler. Further down that street, I noticed the guy who has no hands and no feet, who usually crawls along in the middle of the sidewalk pushing a can; this time he was resting against the wall. I wonder about this man; I don’t know much about the politics of begging in China, because I haven’t asked (and Alison tells me that people won’t say much even if you do ask), but I don’t think it’s so elaborate as in, say, India, where there’s a whole hierarchy and people choose to be mutilated as part of the “job,” but still - how does one lose one’s hands and feet? Very bizarre, very sad. Anyway, further down the street from this guy was the oddest begging set-up I’ve seen yet. There was a man lying flat, face-down, repeatedly nodding his head. This in itself wasn’t that out of the ordinary: Alison has talked about seeing arrangements with one person like this (sometimes not just nodding, but banging his head into the ground), and a second person next to the first, doing the actual begging. This man in particular was alone, but he had a boom box next to him, playing something, and occasionally he’d look up from his nodding to adjust something on the stereo. I just don’t understand.

Now to be insensitive and shake thoughts of other people's misfortune from my mind, I will leave you with a couple of recent photo albums:

• Some amusing things I've come across so far (I'll be adding more to this one as I go along, so check back if you're an Engrish - or in this case Chinglish - fan)
• Pictures of skewers of food that my boss wanted to see after I mentioned eating sticks of meat to him

¹ A phonetic writing system makes so much sense! If I see a word that I don’t know, at least I can probably figure out how to say it, and then I can ask some one, “What does ‘ludicrous’ mean?” If I can’t pronounce it, I can just say, “Do you know this word: O, U, T, R, A, G, E, O, U, S?”

² The sound “shi” (sounds like the “shou” in “should”), with a sharp falling tone (as opposed to the four other tones that exist), could mean to be, city, thing, pattern, life, room, scholar, inspect, experiment, or at least thirty other things. (At least 37 characters exist with this pronunciation, and each character can have more than one meaning.)

³ Alison always stays at street level as she doesn’t like the market and because Joe got his wallet stolen in there once; Joe, however, still takes the underground route because it’s faster and includes some stairs for better exercise.

A Belated Topic

I'm going to start this post on a higher note than my other ones, and talk a bit about the wedding we went to about a month ago for one of Alison's fellow teachers, Ben. He's from the States and his now-wife Amanda is Chinese. However one couple we met a the wedding was the opposite - Chinese guy and foreign (in this case Irish) girl, which isn't so common at all. Anyway, the wedding was held in Songyuan, which is one or two hours away by train.

(Oh yeah, and the resolution to the cliffhanging state I left you in, albeit at the beginning of the previous post: The water came back on after six days.)

Further ado aside, here are some guidelines for anyone who plans to attend a Chinese wedding:
- Be ready to get up early. Everything will be over before noon.
- Unless you're one of the people getting married, don't waste time getting dressed up. Wifebeater and/or baseball cap is pretty much expected attire.
- If you don't think you can hold out until 8:30am to start drinking, you can bring your own beer to the table, as demonstrated by another of Alison's colleagues who was sitting with us.

Me, I was a bit hung over from the night before when we all went out and ate barbeque on a street corner near our hotel, so I partook in neither the beer nor the baijiu ("white liquor" - pretty much the hard alcohol in China, though it's less than 40% - and you can get it in various flavours from stuff having soaked in the bottle - one bottle I saw at a restaurant last night had a large root and a snake in it).

On the topic of the hotel (from which we were but a block away), it was a rather curious, place. We didn't get room keys; there was simply an attendant on each floor who had to open the doors for us whenever we wanted. The rooms were a little dirty and not too well maintained - one of the two bed lamps in ours was dangling from the wall where it should have been mounted. Our shower produced not so much of a shower as a dribble (though I'm told ours was better than most). Finally, each room had a water cooler in it, but it wasn't until I'd had drunk least two or three litres - I went for a run on the first afternoon - that I learned they were actually filled with tap water. I had to put my faith in whatever remnant of a filter was left. (Nothing came of it, so maybe I could save the two dollars we spend almost weekly to have water delivered, and brave the tap... On second thought, tap water often has a stench to it, so I think the two dollars is worth it just to avoid that.)

Back to the joining of two souls forever in happiness, etc.:

As friends of the groom we got to go through some morning pre-wedding rituals with him. First we went to Amanda's parents' home and Ben had to bang on the door and convince them to let him in, which they eventually did. Inside were some friends of the parents, and some snacks and stuff laid out for us - this included a platter of cigarettes. On with the ritual, Amanda was in her bedroom with her mother, and Ben had to go through the same routine to get through that door. Once inside, he had to find her shoes, which he did in record time because one of the Chinese English teachers from Aston (Alison and Ben's school) had advised him on the most typical hiding spots. Finally, after much picture-taking, the last step was for Ben to carry Amanda outside, which he did only after she descended the stairs from her parents' sixth-floor apartment on her own.

On the topic of the shoes Ben had to find: they were red, and Amanda's socks were yellow. Aside from that, for the first half of the morning they were both in rather Western wedding dress: he in a tux and she in a white gown. Later on they changed into something more Chinese: red suits, both his and hers. Ben said later that the shoes to be more traditional were actually meant to have been green, but he drew the line there on the thought that she would have looked too much like a traffic light.

The only downside of the whole process, ignoring the getting-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn element, was the MC for the ceremony. They had Lucy, another of the Chinese English teachers from Aston, acting as a translator for us outlanders, but the main dude's strategy seemed to be to talk overly loudly into a mic that was already being ampilified too much, to make jokes about foreigners, and to drown Lucy out before she could get more than two words in edgewise.

Ack! I just read over my second entry and came across the line, "Is it too much to as for a waiter to leave give you time..." I can't believe I got away with that.

Dirty, Dirty Country

The water's not running; hasn't been since yesterday morning. Apparently one can't count on even contaminated water to be in sufficient supply. Though I think the problem is just in our building. Alison tells me the last time this happened it took three days to come back on, so this has her more determined that we should find a new apartment for the fall. Alison bought two jugs of water to wash her hair with during this crisis. I think I might just head to the pool today - it's been a few days since I last swam, anyway. And besides, the pool showers have complimentary shampoo.

The other night I went out for dinner with Joe at a restaurant near his place. Joe doesn't really like much Chinese food, and I was happy for a break from it. The place is called Tabasco (and does actually have Tabasco on the tables, in two varieties). Apparently it is run by Germans, and it has something of an "internatial" décor - lots of countries' flags and such, intermingled with some Chinese lanterns. Joe points out that most Western restaurants with such a theme probably wouldn't include the North Korean flag in it. Anyway, they serve a number of Southwest dishes, though the overall selection is pretty broad. They took our drink order and I figured I'd take it easy and just have tea (which in most places here is just brought to the table by default). I'm glad they came back a few minutes later to confirm which kind of tea I wanted because in the interim I had come across the tea in the menu - green tea was sixty or seventy yuan for a pot (about six yuan to the dollar). So I asked for a beer instead, which was five. The waitress's English was pretty good, though it's comical how little phrases can be mis- or overused. She would say "please wait a moment" after every visit to the table. I also got a kick out of her serving my beer. First, it was a wine glass that she poured it into - and she seemed to have mastered a technique to maximize the head. Once she'd filled the glass, she made a little gesture and said, "Sir, please," as might be more typical after being served in a finer, Frencher locale. Oh yeah, and everything was "sir." It all seemed a little ironic as most Mexican-type restaurants I've been to previously aren't exactly high-brow.

Then last night, I was walking to meet up with Alison and gang at a restaurant many foreigners frequent for the two-for-one beer on Fridays. On my way I encountered my first Chinese motorcycle gang. Or at least a procession of somewhere between twelve and twenty two-wheeled vehicles. I use that description because some were scooters. And as if that didn't make it lacking enough in hardcoredom to be denied the title of "gang," many of the bikes were blaring bad pop music, and all were decked out in bright flashing lights.

On Unpleasant Shirtlessness and Swimming Patterns

So Alison went the other day and got us a membership at a local hotel's health club, which includes a pool. So I went swimming for my first time in China. The pool is about 15 metres square, I would venture, so it's hard to know how far I was going. But it was nice to be in the water nonetheless, though a couple of elements kept it from being the ideal aquatic experience: Firstly they forced me to wear a cap. Well first I just refused, saying "wo bu yao" ("I no want") to the guy who offered the cap to me, and getting in the water. Then he sent in a colleague the next time I was stopped at the wall, and she was more insistent, clarifying (after a fashion) that it wasn't a courtesy offer for my comfort. I don't know what they were worried about, what ill effect my hair was expected to have on their pristine (have I noted how much Chinese people like to spit yet? No? Well it's quite a lot) water. Anyway, no matter. Of more annoyance were the fellow pool users who thought it more pleasant to swim around the perimeter of the pool rather than back and forth in a lane. Oh well, I could just use the gogglelessness-induced blindness as an excuse if I ever ran into one of them. Sadly I didn't (me having about twice their speed and twice their weight I'd have had eight times the energy going into such a collision).

This brings me to courtesy in fitness facilities in general. We had previously been attending (and I still will be, when I don't want to use the pool) another, cheaper (about $1 a visit, rather than $3) gym which enlightened me to the differing standards involved in the exercise experience one might encounter from country to country. Here are some elements of etiquette people might be used to in a weight room in the West:
- Wearing a shirt (especially amongst those with no visible muscles and possibly some extra padding) is generally expected.
- Weights should typically be returned to their rack in some semblance of order. Even if not, it is reasonable to expect a given pair of dumbbells to be found in the approximate vicinity of each other.
- One typically doesn't snack on a loaf of bread whilst sitting on the equipment.
- When you're done your workout, you usually go home, as opposed to sitting on benches (which may be in demand) and chatting with your friends (who are also probably not exercising) indefinitely.

While I'm on a rant, I'll throw out some questions that have come to me in this first month, regarding this country:
- Is it crazy to expect to find toilet paper in any stall, even in nice restaurant?
- What's up with plumbing that doesn't allow you to flush said paper, necessitating a garbage can next to any and every toilet?
- Is the concept of a separate shower stall in an apartment bathroom so difficult to grasp? Or do people like having their whole toilet area soaked in such away that requires shoes in that room all the time?
- What do people think to gain from ogling and shouting "hello" at any foreigner they see in the street?
- Is it too much to as for a waiter to leave give you time to peruse the menu after giving it to you, without standing over you awaiting your order right away?

Okay, that's enough complaining, methinks.

Tune in next time, when I promise to positate the negatory.

Oh, and I've had one request so far to receive these postings by e-mail, so if anyone else wants to get on that list, saving the hassle of checking back here for updates (or learning how to use some newfangled RSS or Atom technology hoo-hah), lemme know.

plus fifteen hours

Well, never really saw any reason to join this blog trend before... but for my own convenience I figure I can write stuff here and avoid having to go over the same things with everyone I end up talking to. So I've been out of Canada for a little over a month now. Let's start from the beginning.

I left Canada in too much of a rush, always figuring in the months leading up that I'd have more time than I did. So a huge thank-you to my parents, and especially Alison's mom Brenda for all the help packing and moving, as well as storing (!) all my stuff, then for the extensive cleaning of the apartment that managed to get virtually all our deposit (something I never thought possible). Thanks also to Ryan for dealing with the sale of my car.

Anyway, China... To cover the bases for those with whom I haven't spoken or written lately, I came here to join Alison, who's teaching English in a city called Changchun. Last year she spent six months doing the same in Chengdu (other corner of the country). I'm thankful to my company for being open to me continuing my job from here, which I have just got pretty much back to full speed on, after some time working out the kinks in this Great Firewalled Internet connection.

I don't want to load all the first month into one posting and put anyone who drops by off ever coming back, so I'll go with one story for now.

I was out for dinner about three weeks ago with Joe, one of Alison's coworkers. Neither of us being great at knowing what things on the menu are, it was fortunately a place with pictures so I just picked something at random that appeared passable. Although it looked a little odd on arrival (not quite what I thought I had pointed at in the menu), it turned out to be very tasty, and I thought what I was eating to be some variety of small, curiously coloured and textured potatoes. It actually wasn't until a couple of days ago in another restaurant that I was convinced otherwise, when I saw the uncooked primary ingredient of what I had had, in a large dish, some of them moving slightly: silkworms.