Please Mind the Gap (in entries)
It’s now Friday morning for me and it’s my second day in Shanghai. I had previously been stealing some wireless internet in my hotel in Hong Kong but it was very unreliable. Now I have discovered a great internet café on campus at Tongji University, so I shall be making some updates about the past weeks.
2/6/06-2/8/06
It’s been a very long day of traveling. I left that airport at Bradley at 9am after arriving super early and saying some quick goodbyes to Mom and Dad to ensure minimal emotion exposure. No need to get all sappy and start crying at the airport. That’s just not my style. The night/day before I had called everyone to say good-bye. I also spent some time with my Grandma and it was wonderful and it made me feel horrible all at the same time. I felt horrible for not spending more time with her while I was home for so long. It’s funny how you take people who will unconditionally love and support you for granted. I plan to right my ways when I get home… not just with her but with other friends and family members. It’s sad how going away for 4 months with limited contact abilities was what it took for me to realize this. I think there are some simultaneous epiphanies going on for others in my life.
Anywho, back to the report of my trip which is maybe more interesting to read about. For my first 2 or 3 hour flight I met up with Henry to fly to Detroit. There we met up with Adriana, Chris, Eric, Sean, and Steve to fly for 13 hours to Tokyo’s Narita Airport, which I sadly had no time to explore. From there we flew to Hong Kong on a 5 hour flight with Sandy (my new soul sister), Charlotte (my fellow vegetarian), Jordan, and Alex. Along the way I slept, listened to an assortment of Led Zeppelin, Ben Kweller, Zox, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, Pearl Jam, and Fiona Apple thanks to the new mp3 player I got from Bobbo, read ‘Scar Tissue’ (a memoir about/by Anthony Keidis), and watched Dreamer, Zorro, and Yours, Mine and Ours, with the latter being surprisingly good! That was all terribly unimportant. So we arrived, met the rest of the crew in Hong Kong, including my Emily whom I hadn’t even really talked to for all winter break! We took a vastly overloaded bus to our hotel, the Anne Black Guest House at the YWCA in Kowloon; on get this, 5 MAN FUK RD. I am sorry; I still find such sophomoric humor hilarious. It was very clean, close to the subways, and most importantly for me, cheap. My only complaint would be regarding the horribly hard beds. I was very jet lagged and had slept too much on the plane ride so I could not fall asleep until 2:30am that first night. I then awoke at 4:30 am and could no longer sleep. That would be 3:30 pm the day before for ya’ll back home since we are 13 hours ahead here. I spent much of my morning peeping at the apartment building across the way to get an idea of how they live here. I managed to catch among other hilarious sights, a man in his boxers doing what appeared to be exercises. These exercises happened to make him look like he was trying to fly. Eventually my roommate Emily awoke and we began our day.
So with very little sleep I ventured out with the rest of our 17 person crew and explored Hong Kong, following our native Hong Kongese, Walter, just about everywhere from the Delifrance for breakfast, to the MTRs, to the promenade in Kowloon to overlook the beautiful harbor and spectacular Hong Kong island skyline, to the Star Ferry, throughout the central district to look at famous buildings like the HSBC bank and Bank of China, to lunch at Café de Coral, to the world’s longest outdoor escalator , back down to central to catch the MTR to Causeway Bay’s Times Square to shop and attend a banquet, paid for by RPI, before heading back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
I must say the weather was absolutely fantastic! And it continued to be for the rest of our stay there. Hong Kong is at the same latitude as Florida, so it was winter to them but it was sunny and around 70 degrees or so there most everyday.
The MTR is the subway system there which is amazing, as it was so clean, efficient, and convenient. We all purchased Octupus Cards, which worked on subways, double-decker buses, trams, peak trams, smaller buses, ferries, and some stores. Other modes of transportation include adorable red taxis and turbojet ferries.
The promenade in Kowloon is so very Western, with a sort of knocked-off Hollywood feel. In fact, Hong Kong is very Western, at least more so than I would have expected it to be and much more so than Shanghai is.
I was very impressed by the architecture in the central district. It was great to check out these buildings that we had heard about or studied in classes before. HSBC looked very ominous from the exterior but had a unique atrium space and entry sequence. The Bank of China with its unique structural expression emphasized and super green-ness was a little bit of a let down from within as it was dark and rather plain. Beyond the specific architecture of separate buildings, Hong Kong has a unique and refreshing pedestrian friendly vibe which infiltrates the design of the buildings and the interstitial spaces. There are pedestrian bridges and walkways all over and complete public access to many of the lower floors of buildings, creating an easy to navigate network for pedestrians to move through the city. One thing that I will never forget about Hong Kong is their love of escalators. They are EVERYWHERE. I’ve been spoiled now and cannot stand dragging my ass up or down a flight of stairs. I shall get over that quickly though as they are not as prominent here in mainland China.
Speaking of escalators, the longest outdoor one in the world took 20 minutes to complete. It is not just one continuous stair as I had hoped, but it was a really great thing, as it ran down in the morning to bring people living in the mid-levels of this city on a hill to work or whatnot and then up for the rest of the day until midnight. Walking those hills would have been impossible for us out of shape Americans.
At the top of the escalator we got some great views of the city below and a nice long walk through the botanical gardens, past the zoo and through markets. Along the escalator we had also encountered Soho a relatively expensive area of shops, bars, and restaurants. By relatively expensive I still mean ridiculously cheap by American standards. The HK dollar is 1 to our 7.7 American and for the most part you can get a meal for $2US and if you splurge maybe $10US. The cheapness is even more incredible in the markets I shall describe later. We ate at a Chinese fast food restaurant before getting on the escalator where I got the only vegetarian option, French toast with peanut butter, which I would never ever recommend to anyone, but the non-vegetarians seemed to really enjoy their $2 meals.
When we headed over to Causeway bay we had a little free time to explore the shopping areas before our Banquet. It was held at a modern Chinese restaurant and we ate in a traditional Chinese way, all sharing dinner family style. There was a gigantic lazy Susan at the center of a round table large enough to seat 18 people. They brought us all tea, which I have become addicted to drinking with most every meal, along with maybe 18 different dishes. I only partook in 4, sweet bread with condensed milk, tofu with mushrooms, tofu noodles and vegetarian steamed dumplings, while others sampled duck (including its head a la A Christmas Story), various seafood and other meat products. I can’t really remember the specifics because I did not eat them, but some were definitely on the adventurous side. I used chopsticks for the first time in my life (how pathetic I am to have never encountered them) and though I was horrible I have improved. They are great though, and my Mom will appreciate this, because they force you to slow down when eating and to eat smaller portions. I think I may continue using them when I come back home unless I get carpal tunnel. Randee, an RPI alum whom had gone on the very first Shanghai trip and TA’ed on another and was currently working and living in Hong Kong and attended the banquet. She was really fun and gave us a lot of good advice. I look forward to seeing her again when she comes to visit us here in Shanghai.
After the banquet we arrived home quite late and I again, though thoroughly exhausted had trouble sleeping and only a few hours later awoke at 5:30 am.