11. Catching up on GuangZhou

We toured GuangZhou on Tuesday but I didn't have a way to post any photos. So here it is, a catch-up post.


First, a picture of the famous GuangZhou Shopping Center, SiLiPu which literally means "the tenth mile area". SiLiPu is filled with old and new shops with a large area roped off from traffic - a typical square-like street that is typical in many Chinese cities. While Beijing has the HuangFuJing Street, Shanghai has the HuaiHaiLu street, SiLiPu is GuangZhou's equivalent.



Since GuangZhou was one of the first Chinese cities to have high rise apartment, it may be interesting to show one. Notice that they are all eight floors high without elevators. The reason is simple, the building code requires that any building with more than 8 floors must have an elevator and since no developer wants to spend that extra dollars, most of the condominiums are 8 floors high; just like in this photo. I've seen the same phenomenon in other Chinese cities, QingDao, in the Shantung province, has the same requirement. But, very quickly, modern skyscrapers replace these 8-story apartments.

The food in GuangZhou is just delicious and reasonably priced. But that's a topic for another catch-up post later.

10. Beautiful Zhangjiajie

This is our second day in Zhangjiajie. Yesterday it was rainy and cold. Today, the weather is beautiful, not too hot, not too cold, just right. Yesterday, we were in the CiLi Area. Today, we toured the XuangZhi area which is only a few minutes from our hotel in PiPaXi. Today's tour is all inside the Zhanjiajie National Park - the first national park of China.

First, a photo from yesterday's trip to Lake BaoFung. This is the mountain lake that I mentioned yesterday. See how beautiful it is:


Using your imagination, you might be able to make out the silhouette of a toad with his (or may be her?) tongue sticking out. Anyway, this area scenic area is filled with such rock formations that jut 1000 meters straight up into the air. Since China has a long cultural tradition of naming everything, each mesa has been carefully looked at by many learned people, and the poets among them would give each a three- or four-word artsy name. When I get home, I'll post a list of such names, not that if it matters at all.

Yesterday, we saw the rock formations buried in misty rain clouds. Today, the weather cooperates so here is a must see photo of Huang Si Jia:



This formation has been named the Five Fingers Rock. The entire area is just stunning. I took the photo from another mesa that is across from this group. Of course, we got there by riding a cable car that takes 50 people at a time up to the peak every 4 minutes. There was a long line but it was worth the wait.

Basically, the whole Zhangjiajie area is just like these two photos. The local natives all belong to the family of Tu (literally meaning earth people). The women dresses in multi-colored cloths and are very fond of singing short tunes (Sang Ge). The food here is simply prepared but the chef in our hotel created a variety of tasty dishes. Two specialties I'll mention are tiny river shrimp the size of your fingernails stirred in a red sauce and JingBian Yu (Golden Whip Fish), tiny fish that resemble smelts that are deep fried till they are crunchy. Yes, we ate the whole fish, head, tail, and all - and it's delicious.

Tomorrow, we'll leave Zhangjiajie and head for ChangDe and a place known as Tao Hua Yuan, still all in the province of Hunan. Stay tuned and I hope the next hotel will also have an internet connection!

Links to Zhangjiajie

While I have not been able to post photos yet, here are the links to where we went:

宝峰湖风光(34张) : http://www.zhangjiajie.com.cn/zjj/zjjnew/bfhfg/index.htm

索溪峪风景区(61张) : http://www.zhangjiajie.com.cn/zjj/zjjnew/sxytp/index.htm

天子山风光(83张) : http://www.zhangjiajie.com.cn/zjj/zjjnew/tianzisan/index.htm

Of course, these are professional photos. But I did buy the book and it costs only $10RMB.

9. Open Our Door and Reach Out to the World

Whoa! This is going to be my first post from China. We traveled to the City of GuangZhou (aka, Canton) via train from Hong Kong on Monday 10/23/06, stayed that night in an airport hotel, and then joined our tour group from the US on Tuesday morning 10/23/06. We spent the day touring around GuangZhou and later, on an evening flight, reached Zhangjiajie in Hunan a little after 9pm. Since I didn't bring my laptop, it was not clear if I can blog on this trip. As it turned out, the hotel that we stayed in (does offer an internet-connected computer for only $10 RMB (~$1.25 US dollars per hour)! So here I am. I can't upload photos yet but may be able to do that tomorrow.

First, what does the title of this blog mean? According to our knowledgeable tour guide, the Chinese words for the city of Zhangjiajie, 张家界, were purposely selected by city elders in 1994 and it was quite a story. Zhangjiajie stands for 3 Chinese words: Zhang (张) which usually represents the Chinese surname 'Zhang' but the word also means 'open' as in 'zhangkai' (张开). 'Jia' (家) is the word that means 'home', but together with the word 'men' formed the phrase, 'jiaman' (家门), which means 'door'. The word 'Jie' (界) is half of the phrase 'Si Jie' (世界), meaning 'the world'. So taken together, the three words Zhangjiajie really were intended to mean the wishes of the local people to open their doors to the entire world, letting their natural scenery be enjoyed by everyone. This is really quite a long-sighted view. No wonder, the Zhangjiajie area has been selected by the UN as a World Natural Heritage Site. It has also been the shooting location of several Chinese movies, one example is the 2002 French-Chinese movie: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (小裁缝).

The scenery we saw today were just like those misty mountains one would see in a Chinese watercolors painting. There is a waterfall that spewed out from the midst of rock formations, just like from the scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. The entire area is dotted with soaring peaks with spotted fine needle pine trees. The mountain lake is large and pure, as it was raining when we were sailing on it; this would have been a scene from our imagination. But too many tourist are there already, including us! But the natural beauty has not been spoiled.

I hope I can post some photos later.


Originally

8. Amazing Library 2

I forgot to include a photo of the library before so here it is. Also, the library has 11 floors. Previously I said there were 10 floors, that is because I've been confused by the floor naming convention in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, the first floor is called 'ground floor', then the second floor is called 'first floor' etc. So a building with eleven floors will have the top floor labeled '10th floor'. If you think that this is confusing, wait till you step inside any building's elevator and try pressing the number 6 to reach the seventh floor!

7. The Long and Short of Cheung Chau

Cheung Chau 长洲 is one of the so-called remote islands of Hong Kong. While the Hong Kong main island, the Kowloon pennisula, and the New Territories including Lantau are where almost the entire population of Hong Kong resides, there are a few populated islands - Cheung Chau, and Lemma Island are the two largest.

We visited Cheung Chau yesterday. The ferry from Hong Kong to Cheung Chau took a leisurely one hour through very calm waters. Since it's still steamy hot (at least to us), we paid the extra $6HKD for luxury class seats, i.e., it's air-conditioned! The total fare is $17.50 HKD, not bad for a short cruise through the harbor. For our return trip, we took the 'Speed Boat' which cut the trip time to a half-hour and the fare up to $22.00 HKD - still very cheap by US standards.

The photo is the old Cheung Chau pier which now seems to be just a place for old folks to hang out and enjoy the sea breeze. I thought the sampans parked along side look really cool.

We strolled around the island faithfully following the tour map provided by the Hong Kong Tourist Association. It took us up and down the island, through the beach where there were only a few bathers since this is a week day. The rest are small one-car wide streets lined with smelly shops that sell dried sea food and baked goods. We also see some of the temples, here's a nice looking one:



It is actually right smack in the middle of the island at the peak. The god worshipped inside is the most famous general in historic Three Kingdoms period - General Kwan who is now worshipped by businessmen and policemen as their patron saint.

Cheung Chau was supposedly, at least from what I've heard, a very nice weekend resort with luxurious cabanas and hotels. Alas, we didn't find any. Instead, the hotels and buildings everywhere seem run-down and neglected. It seems the booming economy of Hong Kong has passed by Cheung Chau. I feel sad. I went there when I was a teenager and enjoyed the trip a great deal then.

Luckily, just when we were ready to sail back in the late afternoon, we came across these wonderful kindergarteners. The teachers were taking them on a field trip to purchase fruits from the fruit stand. They were totally cute. See for yourself!

6. Skyscrapers Dressed in Green

Anyone walking around Hong Kong these days can't escape seeing many skyscrapers wrapped in green. No, those are not Halloween costumes for buildings. Rather, the buildings have been covered up so that repainting and maintenance work can be done. The green plastic is a net of scaffoldings that keep the dust in.

Apparently, many buildings in Hong Kong have never been repainted since they were originally built in the last century. During these long years, the residents had also altered the design, adding rooms to what were supposed to be verandas. My understanding is that there is now a Hong Kong government initiative to get these building to revert back to the original architecture and adhere to building codes. So, everywhere, you'd see buildings dressed in green. I think this is a good development. In a few years, Hong Kong may look great again.

5. Shanghainese Dishes in a Cantonese Town

Since we arrived in Hong Kong a week and a half ago, the food here has been great. Without any particular planning, we seemed to end up eating at all the Shanghainese food restaurants here. Guess what, even though Hong Kong is famous for Cantonese food, Shanghainese food has also come a long way - and our taste buds told us that this is not the old Shanghainese food.



So far, we've been to Xiao Nan Guo 小南国 on Hennessey Road, Lu Yang Chuen 禄杨春, and Xin Ji Si 新吉士 in Wanchai. The best dish so far is a 'dandelion wrapped in tofu skins' dish. Only the Shanghainese would eat dandelion leaves as a delicacy. In this dish, the leaves are boiled, seasoned delicately, and then wrapped in a very pure tofu skin. The whole thing is rolled up and then sliced into sections, very much like how sushi is cut. The whole thing tastes very clean and light, the look is appealing, white rolls interspersed with dark green. I was impressed. But I don't have a photo so you will just have to come here to enjoy it. (Since this post, we went to the restaurant again and I took a photo of the dandelion dish.)I understand that these restaurants all have branches in Shanghai (or really, I should say that these Shanghainese restaurants all have branches in Hong Kong). I do have one of the restaurant's entrance shot though.



Xin Gi Si is a very nicely decorated restaurant with great services, but at a price. We had lunch there with about 10 of our relatives and the bill totaled over $1500 HKD (~$200USD)! But for that, we got to taste interesting dishes such as 'drunken crab' (raw crab marinated in wine), salted vegetable with stirred-fried rice cake, and then 'June yellow crabs' (crabs that are only available in June of every year - sort of a soft-shelled crab, all cooked in a black bean sauce.) Then of course, there are the very juicy pan-fried buns (with pork stuffing) that when we bite into one, all the juices squirt out and almost ruined our shirts!

4. Star Ferry and Hong Kong Haze

We took the Star Ferry from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui last week. I was troubled by how run down the Start Ferry Terminal has become. (Later, I learned that the Star ferry will be closed in November 2006). Years ago, both sides of the ferry piers were the heart of the city, always crowded with people eager to get across as fast as possible. Now, it's not even one-tenth it's former self. Only a few us tourists with cameras now ride the ferry. Everyone now takes the subway to cross the harbor or drive through the 3 tunnels. Here is a photo from last week:




While the ferry looks pretty much the same, not so about the air quality in Hong Kong. I used to remember that the air was crisp, the sky was blue and the sea was green. Now all we have is that the sea is dirty green and there is a haze covering everything, it is almost as bad as the smog in LA. When I look up at the sky during the ferry ride, there is no sun, there is no sky, just a grey haze. Very sad.

We crossed the harbor again today and this time we went from Tsim Sha Tsui to Wanchai. The ride is still very pleasant with a gentle breeze slowly rocking the boat. But the haze is back today, and it's getting worse.




The very tall building is one of the newest office towers in Hong Kong, it's the International Finance Center 2 (IFC2, IFC1 is a smaller skyscraper just next to it). This photo was taken this afternoon at 1:11pm... I am really disappointed that the haze has ruined an otherwise most beautiful harbor. Our friends told us that most of the air pollution are blown over from ShengZhen and GuangZhou and there is precious little the Hong Kong government has done or can do. In his Letters to Hong Kong report yesterday, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Donald Tsang has not proposed any long term solution other than some minor remedies - a 3.2 billion HKD package to retro-fit old commercial diesel vehicles with liquid natural gas on a voluntary basis. Yes, that's a 3.2 billion with a 'b'! Makes you wonder what does the news item mean.

3. Shopping for stuff and for food

Shopping of course is Hong Kong's premier attraction. I'll just post two contrasting photos, one, at an upscale shopping mall and another, at an outdoor food market.



This is the entrance to The Times Square in Wanchai. No, it's not the New York one, it's the Hong Kong one. This is actually an older indoor mall that has been one of the first upscale malls. Now there are many even grander ones. We walked through the Pacific Palace today and it is huge.



This second photo is taken at an outdoor market just a block from Times Square. This is where we can buy fresh produce, live fish, live chicken, and watch the butchers carve up an entire carcass right on the street. The meat is hung on hooks. See how the shoppers are all female and there is one who looks awfully familiar!

2. Hong Kong's Amazing Central Library

As we stay quite close to Victoria Park in Hong Kong, we are also very close to the Hong Kong Central Library that is just across the street - and it is an amazing place.



The Central Library is a modern high rise with 10 floors. Right inside the lobby, it has an open forum very much like the renaissance Center with escalators and elevators. There is also a mini cafe on the first floor offering drinks and sandwiches. But the coffee there is very expensive $20 HKD (~$2.80USD) and not very good.

The amazing thing about the library is that on every floor, there are carrels that have LAN outlets wired to the internet. Anyone with a laptop can plug in and use it for free, under air-conditioned and quiet surroundings. There are also plenty of PCs available for free; all one needs to do is sign up for it and you can use as long as you need.

That photo was taken when I was on the fifth floor looking out the window. The fifth floor is a particular favorite of mine since it has all the newspapers and magazines of the world available and also has an extensive map library. The covered walkway is an outdoor escalator that allows pedestrians to cross over the road without having to actually cross the road. Such outdoor escalators are quite common in Hong Kong.

1. Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday, October 5. The next day, Friday, October 6 is the mid-autumn festival, the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. In Chinese tradition, this is the time to celebrate by sitting outdoors, eating mooncakes and basking in the bright moon light. I have not been home to Hong Kong during mid-autumn in more than 39 years and so this is the first time I am spending mid-autumn festival in Hong Kong.


This is a photo I took of the moon outside of the Park Lane Hotel in Causeway Bay looking up from the front of the hotel. Supposedly this year, Hong Kong is experiencing the closest distance to the moon ever. But obviously it is still quite far!








For the first time ever, the Hong Kong government sponsored a free lantern festival in Victoria Park for all to enjoy. Since we are very close to the park, we walked there late at night on mid-autumn festival day. The park was crowed with people and there is an elaborate lantern display of Tang Dynasty poets in paper lanterns. The photo shows dragons made of paper lanterns.