I'm home!

Back in the United States! Well, I've really been back for about 9 days now. But it just occurred to me that I haven't updated my blog to reflect that. My apologies.

As you might guess, my last few days in China were pretty awesome. With the project over, we were free to sightsee and have fun as we pleased. We saw the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, some famous temples, and other famous Beijing sites. These were all impressive, but we also had some unexpected great moments. Our last night, we went to a huge outside area of a Beijing shopping mall. We saw some little kids playing with giant helium balloon Frisbee and decided to join them, which made them really happy.

These last few days, I've been in California visiting family. I'm looking forward to coming back to Baylor next week!

Last stop: Beijing!

In a few hours I'm leaving Ningbo, which means I'll be headed to my last Chinese city of the summer: Beijing! I'm excited, especially since I've already been there once (in 2006) and look forward to re-seeing my past favorites. Our final presentation is on August 1, and my flight leaves on the fifth. That means that I'll have three whole days of sightseeing and shopping.

Ningbo is a very nice city of about 7 million people, although I didn't realize it at first. You see, the university that we've been staying at is not actually located in central Ningbo, but rather in a suburb. This means that to get to the more interesting parts of town, you have to take a 30 minute taxi ride (but because taxis are so cheap here, you end up only spending about $5 per cab, each way... you could also take a bus, but it takes twice as long and doesn't save you that much money). Downtown Ningbo has a large public square (and mall) overlooking a river. Surprisingly, there is a large, very European-looking Catholic church/cathedral in the middle of town. The first time I went, they were having a fashion show in the public square, and the selection of Western music that they chose was... interesting. At one point they played "Woo Hoo" (by the 5.6.7.8's) right after "Waka Waka Africa."

Last weekend we made a side trip to Xi'an, a very historic Northern Chinese city which used to be China's capital a few hundred years ago. The trip was very insightful and also a pleasant and much-needed work break. Some of the things we did include seeing the famous Terra Cotta Warriors (there's a lot of them!), riding bicycles around (and not just beside, but actually on top of) the city walls of Xi'an, and seeing a giant pagoda built in honor of a Buddhist monk who made a five-year journey to India to retrieve Buddhist scriptures (a well-known Chinese book, "Journey to the West," is very loosely based on his life).

Funny conversation

Today at lunch I was talking with one of the Chinese students who I've been working with over the past week. I had earlier been discussing with other Baylor students how much I miss eating Mexican food, so I decided to ask the Chinese student whether she had ever had Mexican food. She thought about it for a few seconds and said, "Well, I think I remember eating Mexican food before. I have been to Kentucky!"

I thought about this for a few seconds and realized that while I've never been to Kentucky, I can reasonably assume that it contains hundreds, maybe thousands, of Mexican restaurants. What was surprising was to find out that she had been to America, something that I hadn't previously heard from her. I said, "Oh, Kentucky! That's a nice state. What were you doing there?" Surprised, she said, "Oh no, I meant the restaurant!... Wait, Kentucky is a real place?" I explained to her that Kentucky is, in fact, a real state. Furthermore, Kentucky fried chicken is not considered by most (if any) Americans to be "Mexican food."

What Mexican food might look like, as perceived by the Chinese

I learned something from this conversation: most Chinese people have no idea what Mexican food is. This is hardly unique to China; when I was in England last year, I stayed with a family who had only a vague idea of what Mexican food is and had never had a burrito before (I offered to cook them burritos, and they accepted and enjoyed them). Unfortunately, while many cuisines, such as American and Italian, have become wide-spread globally, Mexican food has not achieved such success, despite being equally delicious.

That said, I'm sure I've said many equally questionable things when discussing Asian cuisine. I've tried a lot of new things since being in Asia which have shattered any notions I had previously had as to what people eat here. I've had both weird stuff (chicken feet, "fish balls") and unexpectedly delicious food (pineapple bun, egg tarts, and Indonesian food come to mind among many others). I suppose that this just shows the value of cross-cultural interaction: I've gained a better understanding of what (and how) food is made in China, and my Chinese colleagues are now more likely to be able to discern the fine line between fried chicken and a chicken burrito.

Hong Kong, visit #2

So... I realize it's been a long time since I've written, and I apologize for that. It certainly hasn't been for lack of topics to write about. Rather, it's been lack of time to do it!

Right now I'm working with Baylor's i5 program. Before the program, I wasn't really sure whether it's more like an internship or a study abroad. Turns out that it's both. We have class from 8 to 12 and then do internship-related activities from 1 until pretty late at night (9 to 11 depending on circumstances), taking a break for dinner. Obviously, this is quite intensive and leaves little room for free time (although we do get weekends off). So hopefully you can understand my long silence.

The project I'm working on is pretty interesting. I can't say too much but it involves very advanced video surveillance software. Got to visit an office yesterday and it was a very interesting experience.

That said, despite the busyness, I still love being here. For one thing, I'm surrounded by really great peers and mentors. I really enjoy the company of all the other students (both graduate and undergraduate) on this trip, and I also really like the professors who have come along. Also, Hong Kong is a really amazing city. I believe in an earlier post I talked about some of the things I had seen in my last visit to the city, and I've seen many of those things again, plus a few entirely new things. For example, I saw the Dragon Boat races last weekend, and they were quite fun to watch. Hopefully I will soon get around to putting up photos... but at this point I don't know when I can make time to do it!

We'll be in Hong Kong until Sunday, at which point we will transfer to Ningbo. Should be an interesting experience!

Four days in Suzhou

It's 5:00 AM here in Shanghai, and surprisingly, the sun is up. Ordinarily, being woken up by this would be a bad thing, but since I have to get up in 45 minutes anyways to catch my next flight, I now have plenty of time to update my blog. These last four days have been spent staying with family friends Mark and Karen, who live in a very comfortable American-style house with other ex-pats in Suzhou. While it may not be the most authentic cultural experience, it was certainly a nice break from small apartments and smaller hotel rooms with hard beds (and in case you didn't know, all Chinese beds are extremely firm).

I arrived in Suzhou (via Shenzhen and Shanghai) on Sunday night, which gave me some time to get settled in. On Monday, Mark had a day off, so the three of us went to the Nanshan Bamboo Forest, about 2 hours west of Suzhou. I'm still not quite sure what to think of the park. On one hand, it came across as somewhat inauthentic and contrived, like it was fabricated to appeal to Chinese tourists (but clearly not to Western tourists, as no employees spoke English). It seemed like half the buildings in the park were gift shops. Still, despite the cheesiness, it was still in a scenic bamboo-forested mountainous area, and it did have some interesting things, such as the huge museum of bamboo products, colorful ski lift, and walk-in aviary. The best part of the day was the pandas. The two pandas were fully awake (a rare sight) and were wrestling with and chasing each other, and making panda noises, and generally being very cute. Though I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed the park alone, it was nice to go to with friends.



On Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent most of the day relaxing at home, but I did do a few fun things. On Tuesday, it was extremely rainy, so I focused on indoor activities: I visited the silk museum (interesting, but you probably wouldn't need more than 30 minutes to see everything there) and the Suzhou Museum, which has a large collection of Chinese artwork and artifacts (as it turns out, there are a lot of Chinese things in China). On Wednesday, Karen and I went to Tiger Hill, the most famous attraction in Suzhou. At Tiger Hill, there is a large garden, with many old Chinese-style buildings, surrounding a hill. Atop the hill is a huge pagoda, about seven stories tall. Most notably, it has a slight tilt to it, leading some to call it the “Leaning Tower of China.”



Yesterday, I spent the day in Shanghai. It's a very beautiful city and the largest in China. I arrived about noon at the Shanghai Museum, which is similar to the Suzhou museum but much larger. I was able to view most of the exhibits, and my favorites were the jade, the seals, and the paintings, though all of the exhibits were interesting. For lunch, I walked around for awhile before finding a food court to an underground shopping mall. I bought six Xiaolongbao dumplings (classic eastern Chinese food) for 8 yuan and a can of Coke for 2.5, adding up to about $1.70, a pretty cheap lunch in my opinion (a nice thing about China is that the restaurants are much cheaper than those in the US). Next, I visited the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, which I found fascinating. The biggest thing there is a massive, 1:500 scale model of Shanghai. The model fills a whole floor and is quite impressively done. There is also a round room in which a 360º video is projected onto the wall which simulates flying through Shanghai. At 5, when both museums were closed, I walked a few blocks north to Nanjing Road, a major pedestrian mall flanked with many high-end shops. Not wanting to shop, or to walk the entire distance (and carrying a heavy backpack didn't help), I took the trolley from one end to the other. I then walked to The Bund, perhaps the most well-known feature of Shanghai, a huge promenade overlooking the river. I had a delicious dinner of “Beef with Rice Noodles,” which also has green onions and a sauce similar to soy sauce. I think that may be my new favorite Chinese dish. After taking an hour to watch the river on one side and the European-style buildings on the other, I took the subway to the airport to catch up with the rest of the i5 group.



Today I'm flying to Wuhan to catch the Yangtze River cruise with the rest of the i5 group. I doubt I will have internet access during that time, so I'll be out of the loop for a while. Please pray for safe travels and that the rest of the group will get over their jet lag.

On Macau and Hong Kong

Right now I'm writing from the Shenzhen airport, where I am very hungry. Unfortunately, despite being surrounded by food, I have only Hong Kong dollars and no way to change to Chinese money. None of the merchants I asked accept credit cards, and I see no ATMs. C'est la vie.

Before I say too much more, let me say that some friends and I have set up a Photobucket so that you can see trip pictures. A picture is truly worth a thousand words, so I suggest you check it out. http://photobucket.com/fbcmacau (I've password-protected it for safety, please email or FB-message me for the password)

I just left Hong Kong, and before that, Macau. Both cities were quite nice, in different ways. Hong Kong's downtown is slightly more dense than Macau, but both are very vertical, with hundreds of high-rise buildings. The most notable thing about Macau is how small it is; you could feasibly walk from one side to another. Not that you would need to, because the bus network is quite extensive and frequent. We still ended up doing quite a bit of walking though. Because of its Portuguese heritage, Macau has an interesting blend of Chinese and European architecture, so there's lots to look at while walking or riding the bus.

Another great thing about Macau is the abundance of high-quality bakeries. There is one on just about every corner, and they sell (quite cheaply) some of the best pastries, muffins, and other baked goods I've ever had. Most famous is the egg tart, which is, as the name might imply, a tart filled with egg custard. Delicious and filling, they make a great breakfast.

Where Macau has historical colonial buildings (and casinos), Hong Kong has dazzling, massive, and cutting-edge skyscrapers. A popular way to take in these architectural marvels, which we did on Thursday night, is to take the tram to the top of Victoria Peak, where on a pleasant day you can see Hong Kong in its entirety. Even more impressive, in my opinion, is to see the Symphony of Lights, a nightly 15-minute light show which is view from the north side of Hong Kong's harbor. The building lights, as well as lasers and spotlights on top of each building, produce a light show which is choreographed to dramatic music. If you can't see it in person, I'd recommend watching a video to get an idea of what it is like.

In both Macau and Hong Kong, we went to Cantonese restaurants and were served dim sum, which consists of a wide variety of Cantonese dishes served family-style. Some of these dishes include dumplings, spring rolls, noodles, and fried rice. On one occasion, I actually ate chicken feet (the only “weird” food I've had during my stay here), and though they weren't disgusting, I didn't think they were that great, although others liked them. There's also a wide variety of other Asian cuisines-- we've had Vietnamese, Thai (several times), Indian, Korean, and others I'm probably forgetting. Overall, I really liked both cities. I'm looking forward to returning to Hong Kong on July 3-15.

Update: Got some much-needed grub on the plane, made it to Shanghai (only 90 minutes late), and now I'm sitting contently at a family friend's house in Suzhou.

On Casinos

After spending 10 days in Macau, it would be hard not to talk about the casinos. From what I am told, Macau, which is only 11 square miles, has 36 casinos within its borders, and those casinos employ 14% of the local workforce. So it's no surprise that Macau has earned the nickname “The Las Vegas of Asia” (in fact, Macau casinos take in over five times as much money as those in Vegas). The casinos, by offering very high salaries, attract many young Macanese people who would otherwise go to university or pursue other careers, but many of these employees become dissatisfied with the menial nature of the work after a few months. One of our hosts told us about how she has been ministering to the casino employees, and also to the sex workers who hang around casinos looking for “work.”

Surprisingly, and despite popular reputation, casinos are not the main draw for tourists to Macau. According to a survey, the most popular reason to come to Macau is for the historical attractions, followed by shopping. Macau has many interesting historical sites which show how its people have blended eastern and western cultures. There is a lot of interesting and colorful Portuguese architecture in Macau, and for many tourists, it is a way to see European culture without leaving Asia. Macau also draws many wealthy Chinese people who desire high-quality, authentic, name-brand products. Although counterfeits abound in China, they are virtually non-existent in Macau, driving Chinese people desiring non-counterfeit products to Macau's many outlet stores.

But even if Macau did not have historical sites and shopping, and even if you did not wish to gamble, it would still be worth visiting Macau just to marvel at the opulence and grandeur of the casinos. We walked through six casinos: Grand Lisboa, MGM, Wynn, the Venetian, City of Dreams, and Grand Emperor. All of these are furnished with gold, ivory, crystal chandeliers, and fine wood, and each contains an extensive collection of fine art and sculpture. In addition, they generally contain a wide selection of name-brand stores (as I said, upscale shopping is big in Macau), many restaurants (of all price levels), and a five-star hotel. In addition to dozens of breath-taking statues and artwork, they often have other interesting attractions: one casino had a walk-in butterfly enclosure, where you might have two or three large butterflies land on you, and another had a well-choreographed musical fountain. The Venetian, an Italian-themed casino, designed its corridors to resemble European streets, with colorful facades of buildings lining the walls and a canal running through the center of the corridor. You could travel through the casino either by foot or on a gondola, with a red-and-white-striped gondolier serenading you with Italian opera.

It's hard to describe the casinos without using pictures, so I will soon be uploading them and posting a link here to see all of my photos from the trip.