Shanghai, China IV

I had to post this. I did not expect to see this ad in a cab in Shanghai.

Take a look closely. These ladies are bit different shaped than the ones in the states.

Shanghai, China III

The next visit was Jade Buddha Temple; there is Buddha made out of one Jade. This view reminded me of temples in Japan especially the smell from incense.
According to the tour guide, yellow, is a special color in China. It is used only for the buildings related to the emperor or temples. This is not the building where the Jade Buddha was. There are different temples for different wishes. For example, there was this temple where people come to wish for a baby boy coming to the family.

In China, there is still the one-child-in-a-family rule (I don’t know the official name in English), so each family can have only one child. If a family wishes to have their family name remain for the future, then they certainly need a boy. So, people are very serious about praying for a baby boy. It was amazing to see people, especially old ladies like grandma’s age, were on their knees to pray for their wish.

The main characteristic of this temple, the Jade Buddha, was prohibited for photos. But it was much bigger than what I thought. It is about 3 meter-tall Buddha made out of one jade.

Doesn’t it look like a scene from a Chinese movie?

Even though we were still within the temple (supposedly a holly place), the sales pitch started again. This time, we were brought to a tea house. We tasted four different kinds of teas. First, a lady pours hot water into this this long cup (about 4cm tall) and distribute to the tea tasters. We take the cup and hold with both hands and warm them by rolling it. Next, the lady pours hot water into the tea pot that already contains tea leaves in it, and throws out the water to wash the leaves. Then, she pours hot water again into the tea pot and pours into the long cup after emptying the hand-warmer water. Finally, she covers the long cup with the shorter (round) one and flips upside down; the long cup is standing in the shorter one. Finally, the cups are distributed to the guests, me, I taste the tea in the short cup after lifting up the long cup. What a long tea ceremony to just taste a cup of tea…
Different kinds of tea leaves are stored in those clear bins. The interesting one to me was the tea that tastes a big sweet even though there is no sugar in the tea. I took a little bite of the tea leaf, and strangely, it is really sweet!
It seems Chinese people differentiate when to drink which tea. When I say different kinds, it is like tea for good night sleep, stress, weight loss, digestion and stuff.

As my tour guide mentioned, Shanghai has changed significantly for the past fifteen years. There are many rich high rise residential buildings for rich or foreign people, but there are still local people who have been living there from a long time ago. Some of the local people used to live in houses, but during the city development, the government moved them into apartments. Or some other people live in very old original buildings. In Shanghai, you can see the both sides; rich and poor, or new and old, mixed into one city.

According to my tour guide, she used to live with her grandparents and parents in a room (not a house or apartment) that was about ten square meters. She said that the size was about our tour bus (perhaps 20 people can ride). And the room was divided by curtains. The room is just a room, not toilet. There was a public toilet outside as well as a kitchen. She said that her mother used to cook in a shared kitchen with neighbors. Toilet was a wooden box with a whole berried into the ground. This was not from a very senior person, but coming out of a 27 year-old woman. It was unbelievable. It really reminded me of China being communist. Now, she says she has two private apartments on her own. What a change!

Regarding income, her mother works as a police woman and used to earn about four dollars a month. Those people who worked in private factories used to make nine dollars a month, so her family was the poor side. But within a few years, her mother’s income has increased significantly and now she earns four-hundred dollars. What about the guys working at the private factories? They lost their jobs during the economy growth (bankruptcies).
She says that the average income now is about four-hundred dollars (I think), but it was definitely much lower than Japan or any other developed countries. And she had a good point. She says that even though there are a significant difference in incomes, Starbucks sells coffee for the same price as any other countries. But the interesting part of this is that people still like to go get Starbucks coffee. I think people are not really after the coffee but the self-satisfaction of the fact that they can afford the three-dollar coffee.

After seeing such city, Shanghai, I thought about Japan after the World War II which is only sixty years ago. I think the situation was very similar to Shanghai. I think that my grandparent generation was dreaming of being rich with the fast developing country, and they were working really hard to get their children to have wealthy lives.

It is amazing the fact that there is so much to learn by visiting different countries. Not only looking at “now”, but because there was “then” we have “now”. I would say countries that are currently considered to be “fast growing” are working very hard the “now” which will be considered “then” in the near future. I hope that their children or grandchildren will recognize the efforts.

Shanghai, China II

On Sunday, the next day of arrival in Shanghai, I joined a day tour. I did not research on Shanghai beforehand, so I was not sure what would be the best places to visit. Because this was my first visit in Shanghai, I decided to join the most basic one, the city tour.

The first place was here; not the entire city looks like this but only here. I have a great interest in architecture, so I was pretty impressed by these buildings. In my head, I was comparing with my image of “China” to what was in front of me. I think the real China was more colorful than what I thought.

	It seems this is a famous tea house.
	The famous Shanghai food, Xiaolongbao. The cooks were standing next to each other and making these small Xiaolongbao like a most efficient machine. There were the cook who makes the skin and another that wraps meat in it.

It was pretty impressive to see this many bamboo baskets standing. This restaurant seems to be a great Xiaolongbao restaurant where people wait for a few hours to get in. Unfortunately, I did not get to have any of Xiaolongbao on this trip.

Yuyuan Garden was the nxt stop. There are many beautiful buildings and unique architecture gardens or ponds throughout the garden.
In the garden, there was this wall with a dragon on top of it. The tail of the dragon continues to all the way in the back.

	This whole on the wall is one of the Chinese garden’s techniques that you can enjoy the view through this interesting shape whole. This shape has a role of being the frame of the view itself.
	Chinese buildings have very beautiful and detailed art work.
	This buildings seems to be very famous that if you didn’t see it, then you cannot say you came to Shanghai.
	I enjoy these seems-to-be the “normal” views more. It is just a small garden that has bamboos, but this is very relaxing to me and reminds me of Japan.

Once you step out of the garden, it is a residential area. Chinese New Year is coming soon; mid February. There were so many red items in stores. This one had many bakuchiku and lamptons hanged in the front. Everyone was very looking forward to the New Year's. They will have nine-day holiday.

We were brought to this silk museum.

There were ladies untying the silk threads from cocoons. According to the guide, there were different kinds of cocoons; one with one warm inside or two ore more. If there is only one, then the silk around the cocoon is made out of one silk thread. But if there are two worms inside, then there are two silk threads coming from the opposite sides.

With this machine, they take only the ones that have one warm inside. It is really one strong continuous silk thread. It is amazing. I think the guide said that the thread is about 2000km long. The cocoons in the blue basket in front of the lady are the completed ones; no thread but only the shell. Inside, I could see the worms through the shell. The guide said Chinese don’t waste anything, so they cook them and eat them. She said it tastes like crabs. (She also said that in China, they don’t say everything tastes like chicken but crabs.) The cocoons in the water are the ones in the middle of untying process. I got to touch a string of silk thread. It was surprisingly strong. In this untying process, even though one thread is strong, they combine some cocoons together make stronger silk threads.

At this moment, I didn’t realize, but when we moved to the next room, somehow somewhere, this guide started sales pitch for silk blankets. It was well done. After you see the whole process of making silk threads or blankets, you are really interested in the blankets and most likely would like to experience this “cool in summer, warm in winter” blanket. Most of the tourists were purchasing the blankets. It was amazing to see that. I thought I joined a city tour, but it turned out to be locked-in sales show. I guess it is a part of Chinese cultures.
Anyhow, I was not interested in those blankets, so while I was waiting for others to make the purchase, I was looking back to where I came from. Then I realized that those hard working ladies were just standing there! Believe or not those looks-like innocent ladies were a part of sales process! They were just demonstrating! I felt like I was cheated, but then I realized that there shouldn’t have been a silk thread factory in the middle of Shanghai…

Shanghai, China

A trip to Shanghai from 13th of January through the 19th.

I was very looking forward to the visit in Shanghai for a long time. I thought I could see more of traditional China. In Shanghai, most of the things are very new, but I still can see the traditional Chinese architecture here and there.

Shanghai is much colder than what I thought. It is very cloudy and dark, so it seems even colder. I was lucky to have the sun out when I took this picture. According to the tour guide, this part of Shanghai is sinking 1 cm every year because all the buildings are very heavy. But they are still building more high-rise buildings. As a matter of fact, they are in the middle of construction for the world tallest building here.

Hong Kong, China

On the 9th of January until the 13th, I came to Hong Kong. Even though the view from my hotel room window was great, the bed was as hard as a rock. I had never slept on such a hard bed before. I regretted that I should have picked a hotel on my own. It was not so pleasant to get up and go to work after having no good night sleep.
On the way to work, there was this area with many butchers one after another. Those butchers are outside both for pork and beef. When I looked at them closely, I found many interesting things hanging down on the wall including something I’d seen before or something I couldn’t even guess what it was.

	In the bottom-middle of the picture above, there is a long beef tail. It is not skinless, so you can see the actual beef tail as is hanging down. Also, right next to it, I think it is breast of cows, but I am not sure.
	In the next store, there were pork legs hanging down. These were pretty impressive to me! and disgusting! Those legs were grouped for long ones and small ones. I guess those were front and back legs. They look pretty gross. Other than those, I saw a pig nose cut right off the face but a long piece up to the top of the head; basically, a pig head but no sides of the face.
	A bag full of beef balls.

Two out of three day stay, I had dim sum for lunch.

	This is the menu as well as the order sheet. First, you write down a number on dishes that you would like. Then, they take the sheet and bring food. It is amazing to describe each dish in such short words. I can understand some of the Chinese characters, but it is hard to identify what those dishes are. Luckily, I don’t have to order by myself. Let the locals do it for me for best dishes!
	Dishes came out one after another. It seemed almost nonstop. Some of the dishes couldn’t make it to the Lazy-Susan (turning table). Of course, we finished them all.

The next morning, I had dim sum again.

Dim sum at nine in the morning at the airport before my flight to the next destination. What I didn’t know when I took this picture was that I felt sick the whole day after this meal. I guess dim sum for breakfast is certainly not for me. I’m Japanese with a Japanese stomach.

This time’s Hong Kong trip was short. And the only thing I can remember is dim sum...

Hong Kong, China III

Breakfast at the airport. Although I really enjoyed the dinner from Chinese restaurant the night before, I guess I didn’t have enough yet. When I arrived at the airport around 8 in the morning, the first thing it caught my eyes was this Chinese breakfast. There were many different kinds of “traditional Chinese breakfast” in the menu, and here is what I picked. The one of the left is I would call it, rice soup. I think they had it named as “conegee”. Basically, it is soup that has rice in it. The soup could be made out of chicken flavor with ginger. It was really good. The one on the right is so they called “beef wrapped in rice sheet”. It is like dumpling skin wrapping grounded beef inside and steamed. It comes with sweet soysauce. It is good. I usually have this at Dim Sum. It’s good to recognize something that I know of. Their menu was totally bzar. I had a hard time ordering breakfast because I don’t recognize most of the namings even though it has English description. Oh, I asked for Xiaolongbao, but they didn’t have it yet. I guess it was still too early for that. At least I tried.

One of the things I learned on this trip is that there is no tax in Hong Kong. That’s why lots of tourists come for shopping! … but what about social security? I asked about it, and the answer was “No.” Well, if they don’t pay tax, I guess it is normal that there is no social security. But something doesn’t sound good to me. When I really thought about it, I realized that those waiters and waitresses in restaurants look like they are in twenty’s. After ordering meals, usually old ladies bring out the dishes from kitchen. They don’t really speak to customers. If there is no pension, there is no income at all, so if you do not have children, then you have to work for the income on your own, no matter how old you are. That kind of made me think. The people who really enjoy about no tax are only tourists in the end?

Another thing that I learned is that there are two kinds of Indonesians in Indonesia; Chinese-Indonesian and Indonesian-Indonesian. Heidi belongs to the first. This conversation started out of nothing. In Indonesia, I remember people eat with a folk and a spoon almost all the time. But when we were in Chinese restaurant, I realized that she uses chopsticks very well, so I asked her who taught her how to use them. She said, “my mom. She’s Chinese.” I was like… “what???” Heidi’s parents are Chinese born in Indonesia. They are 5th or 6th Chinese generation in Indonesia. Since Heidi was a child, her mother told her not to marry Indonesian-Indonesian, and she says it is pretty normal in her country. With Indonesian-Indonesian, the same thing happens. They are not told not to marry a Chinese-Indonesian.

Chinese-Indonesians are usually Christian or Buddhist. Indonesian-Indonesians are usually Moslem. The interesting thing is that the government is not allowing a couple to get married from different religions. Heidi says this rule came out when the government found out that the ratio of Christianity had been increasing. Because the government supports Islam, they are trying to keep the ratio as is or more. Therefore, they are not allowing different religious people to get married. Therefore, most likely, Chinese-Indonesians will carry Chinese-Indonesian children in the future and the same with Indonesian-Indonesians. They won’t come across each other. I personally think that because of this culture (separate themselves from each other), the gap between rich and poor won’t be smaller, or it’ll take a long time to get it small. Usually Chinese-Indonesians own business and therefore rich where as Indonesian-Indonesians are the other way around.

I was born in Japan, and I was raised in such a culture that I believed it was “standard”. And I had this idea that it is standard in any other countries, but after thirty years of my life, I realize it is not the case.

I learn something on every trip.

Hong Kong, China II

Heidi and I were looking for MTR (Hong Kong Subway) station, so as soon as we saw this sign, we went down the stairs, no question. Guess what? We did not find the entrance to the subway. We were so confused, and went back and forth make sure that there is no subway station. Finally we realized that this “subway” means “underground path”. So, this was just a path to go across the avenue underneath the ground. Great. How confusing! The actual subway station was about a few blocks away from here. No street sign to it.

Can you see this? (Click on the image for the larger view.) This is the scaffolding made out of bamboo! I thought this was so Asian and very old style. At least, I haven’t seen this in Japan. I wonder if Japan used to use bamboos for scaffolding as well. Heidi from Indonesia says that this is normal in Indonesia. She says bamboo is very strong. I can understand that, but they use bamboo for even higher than 10 stories buildings! I would not want to get up there!

There are so many people in Hong Kong. I realized this when I was here last time, but oh man! People are everywhere! And what’s irritating is that they walk slow! To me, so slow. I’m used to Osaka and New York pace, so I cannot walk behind slow walkers… When there are so many slow walkers on the street, you know how it is like. Oh man!

The last night in Hong Kong, I enjoyed Chinese food. Heidi suggested for Korean food, but I had to say NO! The one in the front is steamed sticky rice with pork. This is really sticky, and this was so good! The one in the back is fried boney chicken with lots of chili. Okay, we are the one ordered this, but what are we supposed to eat? There are more chilies than chicken on the plate! It was good though. Oh boy. Heidi was eating the whole chili here and there. I just couldn’t watch. It’s just painful when I think about putting that in my mouth. But I guess Indonesians are used to hot food. She says that if she doesn’t have spicy food at least once a day, she doesn’t feel like she had a meal. Well, that’s why we ordered this dish. Of course, I again ordered Xiaolongbao. I am in love with this thing!

This time, I arrived on the 30th of September until today, 5th of October; the total of 5 day stay in Hong Kong. I really enjoyed the trip again. I am going home this morning departing at 10:30am to Amsterdam. I am not looking forward to the 12hour flight, but I am to go home. Next time, I would like to go to Shanghai or Beijing for some change!
The picture is day-time Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, China

I am back in Hong Kong!

The view from my friends’ apartment on the 37th floor in Pok Fu Lam. The view is fantastic! I would love to live in a place like this. They also have nice facilities in the building, and one of them is the gym. Today, we went to work out together. This was the first time for them to try the gym since moving into this place a couple of months ago. So we all were particularly excited.
It's been about a month since I started jogging, and I love doing it in Amsterdam. The view is fantastic while jogging. Today, I had this ocean view in front of me. It was pretty nice. I also realized that it is much easier to jog on a treadmill. First of all, there are no bridges like in Amsterdam. And also, you don't have to kick the ground to go forward, so it is much easie And there is no wind to make you breath harder. So… I jogged the farthest today; 4.5miles (7km) for 45minutes straight! I was surprised myself.

... after this work out, we went for dim sum, and we all ate like pigs.

Hong Kong, China

On August 20th, 2006, I arrived in Hong Kong and stayed there for six days. My first feeling about Hong Kong was it is very similar to Japan. Probably because Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997, people did not look like the typical Chinese figures; like the way they dress, their hair styles are very similar to Japanese ones. Also, shopping malls, subway systems and underground shopping areas were very similar to Japan’s.

There are a lot of people in Hong Kong. The precise number of their population is about 7 millions. That’s a lot of people in that small piece of land. So, in and out of the city, there are massive amount of residence buildings, and each one of them is very very tall. The each apartment is not that big. As a matter of fact, my hotel room was the smallest one I’ve ever seen. There is a bed, and that is it. Probably the whole room was 2 meters by 3 meters including a bathroom.

The first day to work in Hong Kong, someone came to pick me up at my hotel, and he brought me to this local restaurant. According to him, people in Hong Kong come to local restaurant and have breakfast including rice soup, sandwiches, noodles etc. And what’s worth, it is very cheap! I think the sandwich he recommended (in the picture) cost about 1 dollar. This was a looks-like-SPAM and scrambled egg sandwich. It was pretty good.

My friends in Hong Kong took me to a floating restaurant, called JUMBO. This was the first time for them as well, so it was kind of an experiment for all of us. The reason the restaurant is on the water seems something to do with the taxation. Perhaps, if this was built on land, the tax (property tax?) would have been much higher. Anyways, because it is a floating restaurant, we had to take a boat to get there. It was fun! The course we had start with shark’s fin soup, abalone with nappa and five more dishes, and deserts. It was A LOT of food, and I couldn’t even touch the deserts!

I think this was very Chinese, or more like I felt that I was in Asia. This is a street that I take to go to work. This is not a back road or anything. This is an official street that people take. This street or side-walk is made right below the high-rise apartment building. The space from the ground to the ceiling is about 2 meter high. So, typical Asian people can go through here, no problem. But any Western peoole would feel uncomfortable. I walked with a Swedish person, and even though his head did not reach the ceiling, he was putting his head down, just to make sure that he did not hit his head.

The food that I enjoyed the most in Hong Kong was dim-sum. I love dim-sum! And they taste sooo good! The typical dim-sum that I know of is from China town in New York. And there is a big difference between that and this. There are no old ladies with pushing the dim-sum carts! I was told that it is an old style, and you don’t see it anywhere in Hong Kong, or maybe in China any more. I suppose some place like China town all over the world has a stopped-culture from China when mainland China is changing their culture every day.

	(top-left) Sweet buns, (top-left) Shrimp steamed dumplings and (front) pork buns.
	Xiaolongbao (Sho Lon Po in Japanese) is the best! Not in this particular restaurant, but I was lucky to be treated for the best Xiaolongbao in town! Basically, it has ground pork with vegetables inside with tasty soup. As you can see, there is a leaf of Chinese cabbage at the bottom of the basket. It is necessary so that the skin doesn’t stick to it; therefore, the juice inside is still kept within until it is in your mouth! oh, delicious!
	At dim-sum restaurants, there are a small bowl and a plate. When I was brought there for the first time, I was using the plate during the meal and kept the bowl for when soup is served. The second time I was there, I realized that Chinese people keep their bowl on the plate. It’s strange, huh? so I asked. Okay, the answer is… when you have Chinese food, you have fish bones or some garbage, right? Chinese people like to separate them from food. Understandable. What that means is that people use the bowl during the meal, and use the plate as a disposal space. Wait a minute! So I was using the garbage plate as a eating plate the last time… ouch! Okay, why didn’t this person tell me from the beginning!!

Every time I travel to different countries, I really am thankful for the opportunities that I have. That is because I am there not as a tourist, but a local visitor, so I get to visit places that typical tourists wouldn’t even know about. Okay, I also get to eat something not really eatable some times. But I feel that I am in the culture that is close to the local people live in.

… Of course, as always, I really enjoyed the food here! Hong Kong was delicious!