Deer Turns Around with Fräulein Bärbele

So I found my Fräulein Bärbele who kindly accompanied me to Lu Hui Tou (鹿回頭) for the day. Ironically, I was a bit sick as well, and the weather was not so great because of the typhoon that had arrived in Guangzhou. Nonetheless, the day was just so relaxing and enjoyable. While watching the sunset behind the cloudy sky, the stillness enveloped the atmosphere.

Lu Hui Tou, which literally means "Deer turns around", refers to a park at the top of a hill on a small peninsula sticking out into the ocean. Its name comes from a legend where a Li (黎 - one of the minority groups in China) hunter chased a deer for several days, trapping it on one of the cliffs of the hill. Left with no recourse, the deer turned around and transformed into a beautiful maiden.



My camera is not functioning still, but between the two of us, we had one that worked. Views of Sanya City from Lu Hui Tou:

Phoenix Island (鳳凰島), linked to Sanya City by a bridge:

An old and yet still formidable tree near the top of Lu Hui Tou:

The view of the peninsula and ocean out from the top of Lu Hui Tou:

Sunset behind the clouds:

Afterwards, we had dinner at a small shop that served very authentic Hainanese Chicken Rice (though the dish seems to be more popular in Malaysia and Singapore than Hainan):

There was also a very tasty (but perhaps odd looking) local dessert called 雞屎藤 (Ji Shi Teng), which comes from one of the herbs we saw up on Lu Tou Hui.

Hilton Sanya

I arrived in Sanya actually on 9/21, and have been staying at the Hilton near Yalong Bay (亞龍灣) using my points. Somehow the Hilton Sanya Resort is only classified as a category 3 for points (the scale goes roughly from 1-6, where a 1 would be the hotels with the fewest amenities, and a 6 would be the five star, top of the line hotels), which seems like a real bargain. There's also a point stretcher promotion for the Hilton Sanya during pretty much most of September and October, which means it only costs 15,000 points per night instead of 25,000 points.

Anyhow, due to my Diamond VIP status with Hilton thanks to my many business trips to Minneapolis and Chicago, they upgraded me to a room with an ocean-side view. In addition, I got free fruit everyday, complimentary breakfast, and a bottle of wine that made for a good gift.

Some pictures that were taken on 9/21. The room:

The view from my balcony:

The rest of the resort:

Sunset at Yalong Bay beach, right by the resort:

The End of the Earth

Sanya (三亞). The southernmost city in China. Here there is a spot called "Tianya Haijiao" (天涯海角 - literally "limit of heaven, corner of the sea"), which in Chinese literary tradition, refers to the End of the Earth, the very limits of the Civilized World:

Self-timed picture:

Walking alone:

Unfortunately, my camera got sand in it and now it cannot focus, which means I may not have any easy means of taking any more pictures. However, with the sunset coming up and no camera, I couldn't help but look to alternatives - I bought a disposable camera to capture the beautiful scene:

The sunset was amazing. To the west, the mountain seemed like it was burning, on fire with a radiance beyond the horizon that was surely far greater than anything mankind could summon, even with all our weapons of mass destruction combined. The sky looked painted with breathtakingly beautiful colors laid on top of God's canvas; so round and so perfect was the curvature of the world with the radiant atmosphere bending around it. Laying upside down on the rocks, the clouds were below my feet, and with the strong wind, blowing against my face, it felt perhaps like freefall; an everlasting descent into the eternally distant clouds.

Portrait of Mr. Chiu

I met Mr. Chiu in the OCT (Overseas Chinese Town) Park, a theme park/residential area that houses man-made Shenzhen attractions such as Windows of the World, Splendid China, Chinese Folk Culture Village, and Happy Valley. He was pulling weeds out of the flower bed by the road when I decided to stop by and help him. I had been walking for over an hour and was going to see more of the park before heading back, but decided it was better to look for something else to do (I forget sometimes I have no schedule and can do whatever I please - this is one instance I actually remembered and was well rewarded for putting my plans aside).


Mr. Chiu would not let me help him initially, so we just chatted at the beginning. He first apologized for his poor Mandarin even though it was mostly intelligble to me; he said he hasn't spoken Mandarin in a long time, as everyone around him including his supervisor spoke Cantonese. Mr. Chiu was from Maoming, Guangdong in the South and had come to Shenzhen after his boss at the factory told him of the new opportunities here. However, the work is hard, and he is already in his early 50s. In the mornings he cleans the streets and works on maintaining the gardens in the afternoon until 6:10pm. He works everyday outside of national holidays, and earns about 1100 RMB a month, roughly 35 RMB (about $7 USD) a day, though he is given free meals and lodging. His wife also works in the complex, but their 3 sons are in Guangzhou.

I asked Mr. Chiu about his background, and he said that growing up, he did not like to study. Consequently, he only went to school until 3rd grade before he quit and helped out on the family farm. His sons also were not fond of studying, and had all quit in middle school. They enjoy playing mahjong, and, Mr. Chiu says proudly, are quite good players; however, perhaps they are not good enough, as they have lost much money gambling away their money. Mr. Chiu also said he wasted quite a bit of money on cigarettes, a habit he had picked up since he was 19 through friends. The supervisor gets mad when he smokes while he's working, but nonetheless he can't help himself sometimes.

I asked Mr. Chiu if he had dinner plans, and he said that usually he eats in the cafeteria with all the other employees of the OCT Park. The food there is quite terrible, but it is enough. I asked him what he liked to eat, and he said that sometimes if he has a bit of extra savings, he would buy some pork lard/oil to add flavor to his rice.

After talking for quite some time, I convinced him to have me help him weed the garden, as he was falling behind due to our conversation. We worked at it for some time until about 5:40pm, when he said he was going to call it a day. I invited him out to dinner, but he repeatedly declined me out of politeness and also because he felt embarrassed to be dressed in workman's clothes in a nice restaurant. I told him it was no bother - my shorts were not so clean either after all the gardening, and my t-shirt was nothing formal. We compromised in the end - I would buy him dinner but it would have to be take-out. So we washed the mud off our hands at the nearby water faucet and headed over to the plaza.

We asked around the various restaurants, but Mr. Chiu was clearly intimidated by the high end restaurants even when we were only inquiring about take-out possibilities. In the end, there appeared to be not too many take-out places in the area, and so we settled on getting some prepared food to go from the supermarket. I got a plate of cold noodles, 4 chicken drumsticks, and a couple cold drinks for the two of us, all for about $27 RMB ($4 USD). We ate together outside and chatted some more before exchanging phone numbers. He offered to take me to the subway stop via his bike, and so I pedaled to the subway with him in the back - quite an experience, due to my lack of experience biking with a load and with the local traffic patterns - where we parted ways.



On reflection, I think it's time I get out of my own world and do my best to really connect with people from different backgrounds, to understand them better. This reminds me to greet and be nicer to the people we often tend to never see or talk to - the garbage collectors, street cleaners, etc - and not take for granted their hard work in maintaining the various parks, city commons, etc. At the same time, such interactions may be delicate, and it is important to try to approach from a humble position in order to avoid natural class biases and unbalanced social interactions.

In the South - SZ

So I was in Shenzhen to visit a friend I met back in Sichuan, 2004. Back then, we had gone up to Emei Shan (Emei Mountain) together and hung out with monkeys for a day. Unfortunately, Shenzhen, one of the newest and fastest growing cities in China, had less to offer in that respect, though it offered quite a different experience.

I went up Shenzhen's tallest skyscraper, the Shun Hing Square (地王大厦):



From there, you can see Lo Wu, the border checkpoint with HK:



We also visited Dongmen (East Gate), a pedestrian shopping district that looked very similar to certain areas in many other cities in China, such as Nanjing East Rd in Shanghai, Wangfujing in China, etc. Note however, the reference to Taiwan's Ximending (West Gate):



I then took the subway over to the "Windows of the World" station. The one-time subway pass, like Guangzhou's, is in an interesting token shape as opposed to the cards you see most everywhere else:


Windows of the World has a miniature version of a bunch of well known landmarks from all over the world, and is supposedly built to scale. It is managed by OCT (Overseas Chinese Town), a group that maintains the whole tourist park around that area. Here is the front entrance:

While I didn't bother going in (time was short, and I've traveled to quite a few of those landmarks in person already), I did tour much of the rest of the park, which was quite suitable for walking, running, or biking:

There were also some interesting statues in the area and people posing/sleeping next to them:



And then I met Mr. Chiu.

In the South - GZ

Mid-Autumn Festival. Got into Guangzhou, and after meeting up with my friend, dropping off my things, and eating dinner, the first thing we do is head over to Karaoke - apparently my friend's friend was hosting a party in the presidential suite, and who couldn't turn down free Karaoke, eh? Well my friend could not, despite the protestations of his girlfriend. At Karaoke, there was the usual persuasions to drink and my usual persistence to drink water won over. It was actually a fairly pleasant place to pass the time at, as the ventilation system did a good job of clearing the cigarette smoke, there were some tasty snacks, and even a few random songs from Taiwan that I somehow knew. My friend's friend's friends were also fairly nice people to talk to. However, we did not stay long, as it was late and my friend's girlfriend was less than enthusiastic about having to hang out with a room full of strangers.

The next day, we went to a Water Park near Guangzhou, taking advantage of the day off that occurs after the Mid-Autumn Festival. I hadn't been in a water park since I was a kid, and I ended up having more fun than I thought I would - some of the slides were pretty interesting, and we ended having a fairly intense team battle trying to deflate each other's intertubes while on the normally placid intertube rafting circuit.

Picture of us at the Water Park:

The slides:

The main entrance with the corny hippo:

After our day at the Water Park, we came back to Guangzhou for dinner. Despite the taxi driver's efforts, we made it back at a reasonable hour and got to the Sichuan restaurant we were unable to go to the day before. The most memorable moment was when we had the waiter pour our tea in splendid fashion. Some pictures:

In the South - HK

I flew into Shenzhen a couple days ago, then crossed the border to Hong Kong in order to abide by the terms of my visa. From the Shenzhen airport, there is a bus that takes you to the border for 20 RMB. I helped an old woman with her luggage and she in return protected me when others accused me of cutting in line (which was untrue anyhow). We then chatted on the bus as she talked about her life in Shanghai as an accountant and her 30-something year old son, who went to Jiao Tong University and had also wanted to quit after working just 3 years.

When we arrived at Luo Hu bus terminal, near the immigration checkpoint between HK and PRC, it was initially a bit confusing figuring out where to go to get into Hong Kong. It was a bit of a nuisance with all these people trying to offer you rides to HK. Furthermore, it was understandably difficult to get cell phone signal on my Chinese cell phone after I crossed into HK. Luckily, I was able to get signal in the Lo Wu Metro Station once I stepped outside the building. From there, I was able to take the train to a friend's house where I stayed the night.

The next day, we had a very tasty lunch at the Aviation Club, before heading to Mongkok for some mango dessert. We then snacked on cold noodles in a bag mixed with octopus and other random ingredients:



After that, we headed to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. There was a Cantonese Opera section on display, and it was there that I realized I still didn't know very much about the diversity of Chinese musical instruments. For example, the only stringed instruments I had heard of were the erhu, pipa, and yangqin, but on display were more than 10 different instruments beyond that (e.g. the Zhonghu, Yehu, Zhutiqin, Sanhu, etc). I now feel compelled to dive into Chinese music a bit more, as my forays into musical composition thus far have all been based on Western music.