Yesterday I took the train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, to meet my Mom for two weeks of touring. My first night we basically got to the room and ate dinner. The next day we hit the ground running and went to Kowloon Island to shop and see the remains of the Kowloon Walled City. The Kowloon Walled City was formally the densely populated place on Earth before it was demolished by the PLA in the early 90s. Because it was technically part of British Hong Kong while surrounded by Qing run China it became a manufacturing center, for both legal and illegal goods. The little museum said 80% of Hong Kong's fish balls were made in the Walled City. There are a few things left in what is now a very nice park. My Mom and I then went to the Ladies Market to buy some 100% totally legit designer goods. We ended buy buying two belts from some Chinese lady and two purses from a Pakistani guy. He then recommended us a very good Indian place near by which, while base, was extremely tasty. Finally we walked through the Jade Market where we didn't buy jade, we bought a Chairman Mao watch. Finally we went out to a Cantonese place and had a very interesting fried brisket with a bean sprout and mushroom dish. The food continues to be good here, though I have to get use to eating at places several tears above Lamian.
2 Comments
Two days ago by the time of posting I arrived in the city of Guangzhou, formally know as Canton, for a short visit before meeting my mom is Hong Kong. Guangzhou was a major treaty port and was one of the first Chinese SEZ. Now it is a major trade hub for mainland China in part because of its physical closeness to Hong Kong. The first night in Guangzhou I didn't do much besides get my train ticket, which I later learned was wrong, at around 8:00pm and ate some local specialties, a peanut rice crispy type thing and some candied ginger, of Fenghuang my friend gave me. The next day I decided to see all the kind of odd sites. I got a 24 hour "go anywhere on the metro for one price" cards and I was off First was the Martyrs Memorial Park where there were monuments to Communist revolutionary hero's, Sino-Soviet Friendship, and Sino-North Korean Friendship. I then visited the Peasant's Movement Institute, now a small museum, where many early communists, like Mao Zedong, taught. Interestingly it was a KMT institution that was formed before the KMT and the Chinese Communists split after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Dr. Sun apparently spoke at the Institute a few times. The museum was ok, it was free and has Mao's old office hidden away in a corner so I guess it was worth it. Continuing on, I then went to Xiaobai (小白), home of Guangzhou's African and Middle Eastern migrant communities. To be honest, while I did see more black people (about 10 in total) and sober Arabs (about 30) then I normally do the communities seem small. This may be because they are all off for Chinese New Year (a holiday they don't celebrate, but would get off regardless), the weather left much to be desired so many stayed home, or the size of the communities have been overblown by the foreign media. You can be the judge of that. I moved on to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, an impressive building with a ok exhibit on Dr. Sun but not much else. Finally I got dinner on Beijing Pedestrian Street. I got some seafood noodles that were kind of overpriced and didn't provide me with enough food, I ended up getting some squid sticks form a roast meat guy just to satisfy my hunger/seafood cravings. I then returned back to my room to snack on more Fenghuang specialties.
My posts have slowed down a bit because of Chinese New Year aka the Spring Festival which, rereading this post, I didn't actually write much about. Even though I was actually quite busy most of the day eating, drinking, visiting relatives of my friend, and lighting fireworks Chinese New Year in China is a hard experance to describe. While I can tell you that I ate four large meals, started drinking at noon, tried not to blow my hand off with cheap Chinese fireworks, and watched the CCTV New Year's Gala, it loses something in translation. What I can say is it is a rather crazy holiday, if you wanted to you could do Spring Festival from dawn till dusk. During Spring Festival it seems like every old Chinese lady in the country is in a constant state of cooking and every old Chinese man is giving the foreigner some of his special medicinal corn whiskey out of a terribly large plastic bottle. I can confirm, the food is on point. Interestingly enough, I think many of the dishes are made to be recycled into new dishes. Pig's foot noodles breakfast becomes a protein at the major lunch meal which becomes a soup base for late night dumplings. My friend's father-in-law was especially proud of the wild mountain bees served fried with chillies, apparently they are both expressly expensive and rare. They tasted pretty good actually. One of the major activities is visiting other people's, mainly relatives, houses, all of which serve more food and alcohol. While the food can be refused, your new host will fight you to stay and eat. I ended up eating a second lunch because my friend's brother-in-law put the food out on the table before we could say no. The most iconic image of Chinese New Year is the fireworks, legal without a permit only on the New Year's holiday. They are fun but it is important to note that the fuses are so short they might as well not exist and not all fireworks actually work well. We got a few duds in our batch, this is something you just have to live with. The fireworks are also constant, it is as close as I ever want to come to becoming a resident of Aleppo. Overall I enjoyed my first real Chinese New Year, even with the craziness.
Ok, I know this is late but it is good. These stories are from yesterday but I had some Internet and app issues.
\nThanks to Chinese New Year driving an otherwise very had working people to a degree of laziness I had to set off at 8:30 to get to my 12:30 bus in Zhangjaijie City. While the bus station in Zhangjaijie was less nice than Changsha's, it is light-years ahead of Chiang Rai's. I ate some xiaolongbao (小笼包) and waited for my bus. The bus itself was actually really nice, the passengers sat in the second floor so I got a great front row seat to the madness that the Chinese describe as a road network. After a occasionally peaceful and often nerve-wracking bus ride I made it to Fenghuang County (凤凰县) and met my friend for first dinner. \nFirst dinner was soup, rice, duck with duck's blood rice, egg with some type of wild vegetable, and a fried fresh mini-shrimp pancake (to serve as a balance to the giant shrimp of Thailand). We then walked around Phoenix Ancient Town, where we ran into three dudes who really like me for some reason. I took some pictures with my fan club and continued on. \nAfter quickly dropping my bags off in my room, my friend and I hurried to the nightly Miao cultural show. The Miao are one of China's minority peoples, like the Hui, and I believe are actually in the majority in this small part of China. They have their own cultural traditions, art, style, and language from the majority Han (the group most people think when you say "Chinese people") people. After a torch lit precession and running into my fan club again to the stage the show got underway. There is a very particular style of Chinese tourist show that I have seen on TV but never experance firsthand. While there was the standard dancing and explaining cultural traditions, there were several elements that felt more Chinese. First, there were two different art auctions during the show. While the art was nice my friend told me the prices were greatly inflated. Next, there was a large amount of audience participation. After being somewhat conscripted by my friend, I ended up dressed in traditional Miao women's clothing and entered into a drum contest. I think I totally bombed, apparently no one else thought so since I won. My prize was an ox necklace (apparently the Miao like oxen), some black good luck face paint, and quite a bit of rice wine. I thought they were only going to give me a shot, but when I downed the shot they handed me a flower pot and told me to "干杯" (ganbei: literally "drain the cup" is used as the toast in China and implies you kill the drink in question) that too (which I did) I was aloud to sit down as the One Night King of Miao Drums. Don't worry about the alcohol, Chinese rice wine actually has very little. \nMy friend and I then got second dinner at a late nighy grill (which is apparently another Miao thing) which was good but it apparently wasn't the best. The last major site I haven't seen in Zhangjaijie was Tianmin Mountain (天门山), located a ways from my hotel in Zhangjaijie City proper. After an early morning bus ride, my met my friend of a friend from a few days ago to head on up the mountain. It seemed like the only way for tourists to get up Tianmin Mountain was by taking ether the cable car or escalator, since it was raining we took the cable car. The views of the surrounding countryside and of Zhangjiajie City were quite impressive from that hight. There is not much to say about the Mountain itself, more good hikes and impressive views. Interestingly the rain turned to snow on the Mountain and draped the surrounding mountains in a gray fog. It felt almost Kong-Fu movie esk. To amplify the Kong-Fu feel, Tianmin Mountain has a Buddhist and other Chinese deities temple. Temples in China are always a bit odd. While they have worshippers, unlike many Vietnamese temples, they don't seem to have many monks, unlike Laos and Thailand, and most of the worshippers seem to be Chinese tourists. I think a touristy thing to do in this country is go to temple. The cable car ride down was a bit freaky. The car actually stopped twice for some reason, and crawled along the rest of the time. My local friend of a friend commented that the cable cars were scarier than the glass bridge over the Zhangjaijie Grand Canyon. We then bought my bus ticket to my next stop, Fenghuang County (凤凰县), also know as Phoenix Ancient Town.
Before I start, I combined by posts from today and yesterday because I spent most of my day today dealing with logistics for tomorrow and my trip to Fenghuang County. Also, my feet still hurt from yesterday.
A friend of mine linked a Facebook post about James Cameron's 2009 hit film Avatar. "Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time" it starts "can you name two characters and a quote from Avatar?" It then asks. The answer to both questions, for me, is no. What I do remember from Avatar was how great it looked. Now why am I telling you this? You know all the cool mountain scenes from Avatar? You know where they filmed those? On top of Tianzi Mountain (天子山), Zhangjaijie National Park, P. R. China. To enhance my nerd cred, I decided to visit what the park map called the "Avatar Filming Location." I can tell you, it does look as cool as you think it does. While the rocks don't float like they do in Avatar, the towering pillars of ancient rock are almost more impressive. What took Avatar needed the peek of human animation and computing technology to complete, nature did with only two large chunks of rock pushing against one another and some rain. In order to get to this site I had to use the Bailong elevator (百龙电梯), the Guinness Book of World Records Official Tallest Outdoor Elevator on Earth. While kind of cool, the elevator was not nearly as interesting as the mountains. After exploring the mountain's top, I ended up walking down and accidentally ending up in another section of the park. Unforntually, there was no internal park bus back to the entrance by my hotel in Wulingyuan. I ended up getting a van to Zhangjaijie City where I then got a van Wulingyuan and a bowl of cheap noodles from some random lady in the bus station. The noodles were meh. About two hours later I arrived in Wulingyuan, just in time to get my self a plate of fried rice, a box of cookies, and a bottle of 26RMB wine (about 4USD). I should have went for the 46RMB wine because the 26RMB wine tastes like Manischewitz. Even though I got lost and my legs still hate me, it was still a cool day in the park. Two things. First, the text portion of this post will probably feel a bit disjointed. That is simply because there are only so many ways a man can wrote "I hiked up stuff and ate" before it gets boring. Second, the text sounds like a rant and makes it seem like I am not enjoying myself. If you look at the pictures, I can assure you I am.
\nToday I made it is to the Zhangjaijie National Forrest Park proper. For the confused, Zhangjaijie is actually two interlinked entities. Zhangjaijie City, which I have been exploring since the 19th, and the Zhangjaijie National Park which has like five different titles. Today I got into the park. After slightly confusing the staff trying to get another student discount (which I did get by the way) I entered the park. It is weird to think that the Chinese government now probably has more information on me than the American government. I had to give whatever the Chinese call the National Parks Service my fingerprints to enter the park. The US dosn't even have my fingerprints but now the Chinese do. I basically spent the whole day hiking around, taking in the scenery, and eating from moderately sketchy food vendors. The paurk has an internal bus system for anyone with a pass that I made good use of today getting from place to place. My only issue with the buses is that they are basically unlabeled and in order to get anywhere you have to ask a staff member do direct you to the right bus. \nSome time ago I read a headline on /r/NotTheOnion that was something like "National Parks Service Warns Tourists not to Take Selfies With Buffalo" and thought that it was a dumb thing to warn people about. After spending a day watching tourists interact with Zhangjaijie's many monkeys, I see why the National Parks Service needed to make that warning. Monkeys are actually viscous basterds with sharp claws. I can't tell you the number of tourists I saw really messing with the things. \nFor dinner I think I found the Sochuanese restaurant. I got some beef noodles that the lady said was "a little spicy." I don't know her definition of "a little" but they were certainly at my spice level. Furthermore I could feel the Sichuan peppercorns and see the many brightly collared chillies. The noodles were good though. Today I started form the bottom and now I'm here. With a local friend of a friend as my guide I ventured down into the Yellow Dragon Caves (黄龙洞). According to People's Daily, legend has it that a dragon actually lived in the caves at one point. From the size of the caves, I could see how the primitive man could draw this conclusion. Normally the caves are lit up with LED lights of all colors. While this was true for part of our journey, the power in the caves kept failing, forcing us to use our phones as light sources if we wanted to continue on. One old man became our caving buddy after he, somewhat rightly in my opinion, assumed the caves would be lit so didn't bring an extra light. It was interesting to see the caves as ancient humans once did, as in hardly see them at all. After a quick lunch we headed off to the Buzzfeed famous Glass Bottom Bridge that spans the Zhangjaijie Grand Canyon. Before we could enter, we had to fight with the staff to get my student discount. The normal reason for rejecting foreign students for the student discount is they don't have a student ID from a Chinese university. Much to their surprise, I actually have a Chinese student ID so they gave me the discount. While Buzzfeed liked to show images of terrified young Chinese women grasping to the steel for dear life, that wasn't the case. The Israeli engineers and architects who made the Glass Bottom Bridge made it feel super secure. Other than me, the Bridge consisted of entirely happy Chinese people of all ages taking fun photos. The large number of people on the bridge helped add to the sense of security. Finally, there is also less glass on the world's longest glass bottom bridge than you would think. After getting back to Wulingyuan, where my hotel is, and parting ways I had some not bad duck noodles. They only cost 13RMB, or about 2USD, so almost anything would have been not bad. But the noodles I got were actually pretty good.
From Changsha I spent most of my day on a bus to Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is basically Chinese Yellowstone. It is China's oldest and best preserved national park. I will be spending some time in Zhangjiajie park, Wuyingyuan (where my hotel is) and Pheonix Ancient Town (凤凰县). I will be spending Chinese New Year here so look foward to some great photo to come.
My last two days weren't super exciting. I basically walked around, ate, and tried to get bus tickets to Zhangjiajie. The guy I was originally trying to buy them from went AWOL so I had to go to the bus station to buy tickets myself. The food in Changsha has been interesting, they seem to do a lot of roast meat. Last night I bought a whole, albeit small, roast chicken from a storefront. For dinner tonight I had a slightly different type of roast chicken. To be honest, the one I got from the random storefront and ate with gloves was better though the roast chicken I got tonight came with a rather interesting soup that I think was fruit based. The most interesting thing I ate, for me at least, was the soy sauce brazed noodles (红烧牛肉面), which is also one of my favorite dishes at Lamian in Shanghai. The lady I got lunch from does it very differently from Lamian. It was spicier, less soupy, had thicker noodles, included peanuts, and included pickled radish. While it was warming and did hit the spot I like Lamian's a bit more.
|
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
November 2021
Categories
All
|