Archive for March, 2010

Things I Didn’t Post: Oh Shit, Google -Edition

March 23rd, 2010

There’ve been quite a few things going on here in China, and in Xi’an for that matter that seem perhaps trivial for their own spell-binding post, but put them all together and I guess we’ve got something. So let’s get started.

Shoes

The shoes I brought here are starting to get rather worn out with all the walking I do nearly every day. So I decided I’d look into buying a new pair of shoes, the ChineseIMG_1515 brands I’ve seen like Li-Ning, and Erke looked like they had some cool stuff. No dice. I wear size 12-13 depending on brand, which equates to 46-47 in Chinese (Euro sizes), and the Chinese brands don’t carry or even make anything larger than size 44. So I started looking at all the shoe stores, turns out, I’m a freak of nature. I really began to feel the pain my good friend Chris endures finding his size 15 shoes. Most of the shoe stores didn’t just have the shoes sitting out in boxes so I’d have to ask if they had my size, which was almost universally no. Pretty soon you just get tired of asking, and think “just show me what you DO have in 46 and let me pick from those!”. Long story short, I managed to find a pair of New Balance shoes in size 45 that must’ve ran big, because they fit nicely. Green, ¥327? Sold.

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The Honest Truth About Chinese Toilets

March 9th, 2010

 

DSCN4188Maybe you’ve never really thought about it but, are bathrooms the same everywhere on earth? Of course not. So it shouldn’t surprise you that in China one must often squat to use the toilet. There are western-style toilets around, usually for the handicapped, or in western-style places, like hotels, KFC, McDonald’s, etc. I guess if you wanted to, you could probably manage to visit China and never use a squat toilet, but why miss out on the fun? Shortly before the 2008 Olympics and my first trip to China, my dad forwarded me a silly email, (clearly written by someone like this guy (not my dad)), ridiculing China for having squat toilets. I think my dad was trying to scare me or at least just jesting. Personally I wasn’t afraid of squat toilets per se, but afraid of using them incorrectly. Like what happened if I uh,..went to the bathroom, on my pants? That’d be a shitty situation. (har har!) Long story short, that never happened and I learned it wasn’t all that difficult, in fact now I’m totally okay with it. All it took a little practice, and remembering to bring a package of tissues with you wherever you go.

I had,in fact, considered writing a blog post about toilets in China, but this post from the Lost Laowai Blog covers it pretty well so I’ll share it with you.

“The Women’s Bathroom in China — The Honest Truth about Chinese Toilets”

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Hong Kong

March 4th, 2010

An early morning in Shenzhen, some dumplings for breakfast, and a taxi to the ferry station began our trip to Hong Kong. IMG_0742Upon setting foot on the ferry, I reminded Tyler, “you’re leaving China for a long time man”. “But isn’t Hong Kong part of China?” he responded. Well, yeah, it’s “part” of China, but in reality, it’s nothing like China. An hour later on a fairly empty ferry and we were waiting in line to get our passports stamped, granting us entry into Hong Kong.

After getting into Hong Kong, we left the ferry station, into the attached building, which turned out to be a mall. That was convenient I guess, we found an ATM machine so that we could get some Hong Kong dollars, since they don’t even use the same money as mainland China does. We had two options to get to the place we were staying, take a taxi or take the metro. The only difficulty was we weren’t exactly sure where we were, and couldn’t find any sign of a metro station nearby. So we eventually conceded to taking a taxi. It took a few tries, but finally we found a driver who knew where we wanted to go. It wasn’t easily noticeable at first, but oh shit, these guys drive on the other side of the road! Clearly Britain had been here before. The driver happily took across the harbor to Kowloon (a section of HK) and the place we were staying. Chung King Mansion, was the name of the place. Sounds pretty swanky right? Hardly. It’s actually a huge converted “project” building that has more than a dozen “guesthouses” some licensed, some not. As soon as we got out of the taxi there were quite a few middle eastern and Indian guys trying to help us with our bags, and get us into their guesthouses. We declined and walked through the lines of restaurants, net bars, and people selling random crap, this place seemed pretty shady, and on first sight, scared me a little that we were even staying here. Finally we managed to find the only one, out of 12 or so elevators that went where we needed it to. Upon arriving on the 12th floor and getting our tiny and expensive room, I actually felt rather comfortable. Looking online the night before, I had read many good reviews, saying that this guesthouse was pretty respectable and not too expensive compared to some of the others in the building.

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Guangzhou & Shenzhen

March 2nd, 2010

Note: These posts are a little late, as I’m already back from my trip and started school again earlier this week. They’re late because didn’t have nearly as much time as I thought I would to post them while traveling. Now you know.

Guangzhou was the first stop on our tour of southern China. Getting off the airplane was nice, I didn’t need to wear my coat, and what’s this?IMG_1367 There was actually green vegetation outside! Something Tyler nor I had seen for at least a couple months. Since we were only in Guangzhou for about a day, we simply roamed around, checked out the Pearl River, sampled some of the good local foods (Egg McMuffins are nothing compared to the egg biscuit I had!) and in the evening went tor a night ferry ride on the Pearl, to see the beautifully lit up buildings and bridges.

The next day, about an hour train ride later and we were in Shenzhen, mere kilometers from the border to Hong Kong. We didn’t do a lot in Shenzhen because it’s mostly just a border city and shopping haven for those coming from Hong Kong to buy cheap goods. Not to mention, so much of the shopping and eateries were still closed for the Chinese New Year “golden week” (what they call their week long national holiday). Thus there wasn’t a lot to do in the city, but it was alright, we relaxed and had some really spicy noodles as well as some local beer while we planned on how to get to Hong Kong, as well as what we’d do when we arrived.

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Chinese New Year in Xi’an

March 1st, 2010

year_of_the_tiger_stamps_extremely_popular80d5e4ad94886fd3c33aThe Year of the Tiger is here, and I was in Xi’an to celebrate with my Chinese family. Tyler and I rolled into the Xi’an train station at about 8:30 AM and immediately  decided we needed to find some breakfast. Unfortunately, due to the holiday, this wasn’t the easiest thing to do as many of the street vendors who sell wonderful breakfast foods were shut down for the holiday. We decided to take a couple quick bus hops to my buddy’s favorite Hu La Tang place for breakfast. Hu la tang is a spicy beef-stew with a slightly slimy consistency due to the corn-starch added to it. We both enjoyed a nice bowl with bread and a bottle of bing feng (a local orange soda) for breakfast. Soon after we caught the 336 bus back to my school in north Xi’an. Upon arrival, we got settled, made up a bed for Tyler and showered before going out in search of some lunch.

Later in the afternoon my dad came to pick us up from my school and take us downtown to my grandparent’s home where we’d be spending the holiday. Along the way we stopped at a small fireworks vendor on the street corner. The amount and size of the fireworks was quite impressive! Sure, I’ve seen a lot of fireworks at warehouse sellers around July 4th, but these fireworks, they were huge! Apparently the biggest fireworks vendors are able to legally sell, at least in North Dakota, are 500 grams or less, due to safety concerns. Well, China has none of that. There were very large items for sale, many large canister-style munitions weighing in at 3000+ grams were for sale, for less than 200 Yuan (about $30). We bought a few big ones, and a large string of firecrackers for later in the evening.

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