Category: Travel

Here is an assembly of most of the things I brought back from this trip : Noritake bone China coffee mugs, Will Pan aka 潘玮柏 Pan Wei Bo 3 CD set made in Germany, panda bear (cannot go to China and NOT come back with a panda bear, right?!), Starbucks espresso mugs for Shenzhen and China, ‘lucky cat’ piggy bank (Japanese, not Chinese, though), ‘Cartier’ watch (Chinese, not French! hah), Year of the Tiger crocheted card, Starbucks gift in bag, cheap but beautiful bone China.  A modest collection, yes – no silk!, no jade!, no expensive China! – I’m too cheap!  Actually, my Chinese-English electronic translator didn’t make it into the picture and was a few $100.

Got my passport out to New York by overnight mail, I need a visa again, hopefully I will get a multiple-entry one this time.  Otherwise I just ran errands, picked up three weeks’ mail (90% junk mail of course) at the post office, and went to the gym.  It felt so nice to get some exercise.

.. and it’s still Thursday.   I traveled back in time, so to speak, of course.  It reminds me of the limerick –

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light;
She set out one day,
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

– by Arthur Henry Reginald Buller, in the December 19, 1923 issue of Punch

It’s 10 o’clock at night and I have to run out to get milk and bread. I’ll put a few more Hong Kong pictures up tomorrow.

Wow! I made it to Hong Kong today!  and I so wished all of you could be here to experience it with me !  I would never have made it without going with my colleague from work, though.   We started out on a bus ride in Dameisha, and had to transfer twice. There is no way I could have figured out the Chinese bus tables at the transfer stops.  The buses took us to Shenzhen, and then we got separated at the Chinese customs, and again at the Hong Kong customs points.   Isn’t customs/ immigration is a little like human relationships? Do I let you in? Do I like you? Do I like your politics? What will you offer in return for the offer of new cultures, new vistas, new experiences? (Money! I guess).

After getting through Hong Kong customs, the efficient (and crowded) Mass Transit Railway (MTR) System is at one’s disposal to go just about anywhere on Hong Kong Island (bottom of map picture) and Kowloon (top part of map).   First a few basics about Hong Kong .. it is now a special administrative region of China (handed over in 1997 by the British), they have a different currency from China, the Hong Kong dollar. The written language is the same as in mainland China, but they speak Cantonese and not Mandarin!

So here goes with a quick run-down of what we did.  We stopped at a nice electronics store, and I bought a little handheld Chinese-English translator-computer with a stylus that lets one practice Chinese writing as well (I’ll try to learn just a few characters at a time. I have no illusions about how difficult it is, given that it takes a Chinese person 15 years of schooling to learn the written language!  Next we had a nice lunch, dumplings and noodles in a broth for me. The MTR got us to Victoria Bay/ Hong Kong harbor where the picture of me was taken (so it’s the Hong Kong Island skyline behind me, a little foggy).  Then we took the short Star Ferry ride across the water to Hong Kong Island. My colleague Samuel went clothes shopping while I went to a department store called Sogo. I came away with a stuffed panda bear, a lucky cat piggy bank and two Noritake coffee mugs.  The MTR took us back to the border post with Shenzhen, where we again negotiated the two customs entry points.  I was called out of the long line (no doubt because I was looking very foreign with my lily-white face in the large crowd of Asian people). My temperature was taken with an infrared scanner before they let me through.

I’ll post a selection of colorful pictures of Hong Kong tomorrow.  It was all a little overwhelming and I couldn’t get enough of the imagery everywhere.  I will have to go back.

Hey – I was not going to sit in the apartment in Dameisha today, so I got on the Sunday shopping van to Shenzhen with 3 other coworkers.

Pictures from top to bottom –

The store looks very respectable, but sells only knock-off watches.  I’m sporting a classic sqaure ‘Cartier’ I’ve seen many times in print ads in Time magazine.. nice enough for $40, not?  / Remember that the Chinese New Year is not yet here!  (second week in Feb) so the signs for a happy 2010 are all still up / Roasted duck in a Carrefour store – very good, we bought some /  The cute kid was playing with the live seafood in front of him : ), this is also in the Carrefour store (international French store chain, but they are not in the USA).

Five of us made another run into Shenzhen, and this time I saw a little more of the city than just Walmart.   Shenzhen -with a population of 12 million already! – is by some measures still the world’s fastest growing city.  There are brand-new buildings everywhere.   I saw ‘digital malls’ as they are called, a little grungy inside, but crammed with 150 cell-phone and gadget sellers.

Pictures from top to bottom (remember that double-clicking should display the picture a little bigger, to take a closer look):

Clusters of high-rise apartment buildings are everywhere in the city/ Our driver parked his van in front of the Casablanca Bar/ Unfortunately sights like these of historic Chinese architecture are very rare in Shenzhen/ One of the main streets downtown, sporting a Starbucks, a McDonalds and Coca-cola billboards, all with an Asian twist.  I love cultural west-meets-east confluences like these! /  My favorite sighting of the day : a colorful Lenovo truck with a cute African zebra saying ‘Let’s open happy’ ! .. it’s almost certainly going to make me buy a Lenovo notebook next.

I have to submit a picture of a Chinese toilet – amazingly these are found even in the brand-new building we just moved into.   Mercifully each washroom has one western-style toilet as well.   Yay!   We didn’t have those in the building we started in the first week.  An interesting exercise it was to put your feet on the white footholds and squat to do the dirty deed !

I lucked out and got upgraded to FIRST CLASS from San Francisco to Hong Kong (so abandon any sympathy you might have had left for me for the 15-hr flight and think personal pod with entertainment, flat-folding seat and five course meals!).

Saw two movies, had two meals and two naps, got in Tue night at 7 pm at Hong Kong International airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok.  Customs and baggage claim at the airport went very smooth.

Once all of the team had arrived at Hong Kong airport, the drivers of two vans helped the 10 of us to load up all our luggage. Next stop was the China mainland customs and checkpoint where some of us got scanned for a high fever.

The drive in from there, to our apartments in Dameisha, to the east of the city of Shenzhen (pop. 12 million), was interesting. This is no longer Hong Kong. This is China. No English. We made our way through Shenzhen’s high-rise buildings and apartments with their gaudy neon signs, and several tunnels. The area is very hilly.

Everything is going smooth so far.  I arrived at Seattle airport so early that United put me on the 6 am flight (original schedule was for 7.40 am).
My bags are stuffed with Starbucks coffee and decadent Western snacks such as m&m chocolate candies.
Hopefully they won’t confiscate any of it in Hong Kong at the customs check point!

.. so I should try to get some sleep. The taxi will show up at 4 am !
I want to be at the airport early, so that I miss the Monday morning business crowd. I will post again as soon as I have access in China, but it may not be until Wednesday.

I’m gearing up for my first trip to China for a project there.   I believe I have the important stuff all done and ready: my shots for tetanus, typhoid fever & diphtheria, passport with China visa, Visa card, wallet, business-casual clothes, computer, mouse, cord & China outlet adapter, medicines, multivitamins, Starbucks coffee, South African tea, iPod, Blackberry, camera, batteries & chargers, extra business cards.

I leave Seattle on Monday Jan 4 at 7.30 am .. so that is going to make for getting up very early.  There will be plenty of time to snooze on the aircraft, though! I am scheduled to arrive at 6 pm on Tuesday Jan 5 at Hong Kong’s  Chek Lap Kok airport. A driver with a van will collect all of us arriving from the States, and drive us across the border into the Shenzhen area in mainland China.

Seattle to San Francisco is 679 miles as the crow (airplane, that is) flies, and will take 2 hours.  San Francisco to Hong Kong is 6,927 miles and will take 15 hours.
En route, the plane will cross the International Date Line on the globe.
Crossing the International Dateline traveling west (the way I will do), results in the additional of a full day (24 hours) to the time on the traveler’s clock.
Crossing it while traveling east, a full day is subtracted from the traveler’s clock! So the traveler starts over with the 24-hour period he/ she had departed from.

The number of hours for one’s final clock adjustment depends on the departure and arrival time zones.  China time is 15 hours ahead of Seattle. Amazingly, the entirety of mainland China’s designated time of day squats in one single time zone, even though its territories cover some 60° of longitude. (Standard time zones are 15° of longitude wide).