Hawaii: Some Pics

China: Final Thoughts

After a brief last minute shopping stint through Kowloon I headed to the airport to catch my flight back to NYC.  As I took my seat on the luxurious Cathay Pacific flight amongst Chinese nationals decked out in high heels and freshly applied makeup, I had time to reflect on my new understanding of China.

China is very much like the world portrayed in the popular movie the Matrix.  By-in-large the the cities present the people of the country with a very comfortable life, propelled forward by the capitalist forces that they have elected to harness.  While perceptions do make for comfortable realities, harsh truths are veiled from the citizenry.  Locals do not understand the atrocities of their own history.  Fables about past leaders exclude their evil endeavors, leaving the populace to worship falsely benevolent stories.

However, the truth is seeping into the country.  Students study abroad and freely roam the Internet, study Wikipedia pages about China and speak with Western educated classmates.  As a result, the class structure is increasingly divided by more than wealth; the rich also have more knowledge about the realities of their government.

For the most part, domestic policy reflects the hand of the benevolent dictatorship that moves buildings, relocates people and manages industries - all for the greater good.  This leadership has served the majority well (for the most part), ensuring that the populace enjoys the increasing standards of living that accompany modernization.

However, unlike in America the country is focused on only protecting the majority; those who have divergent political views are dealt with quickly and harshly, creating the human rights violations that rival the worst dictatorships.  The majority of the population is unaware of the nature of these acts, as propaganda is used to hide them.  One of our tour guides told us about the religious freedoms enjoyed by the people of China, except for group such as the Falun Gong.  She explained that the Falun Gong burned themselves and their families in religious ceremonies, a barbaric tradition that resulted in the government outlawing the religion.  According to Wikipedia (a source unavailable to the Chinese populace), the religious group is being tortured and murdered for political reasons.

One of my former professors at Columbia is one of America's foremost experts on China.  While he didn't defend the failings of the current regime, he did emphasize the country's trajectory.  In his view there were two paths that communist/ totalitarian states could take when transforming to capitalist/ democratic governments.  The first was the revolutionary approach (as seen in Russia) where the country is suddenly privatized, sending society into a lawless chaos that empowers Mafia type organizations.  The other was the evolutionary approach where through a 100-year transition institutions are created that increasingly reflect progressive social norms.  The argument for evolution is that it enables the society to make a very difficult cultural transition in lock-step with the updated laws.  According to my professor, China is actively evolving.  This theory appeared supported by the increasingly capitalistic nature that I witnessed in China.

Unfortunately, the down-side of the evolutionary path is that it is much slower process leaving the opportunity for continued human rights violations and the potential for a regime to rise to power that is less focused on the welfare of the people and more concerned with a flawed idealism or personal greed.  While I don't claim to understand what will happen next with this complicated country, I am hopeful that the increasing accessibility of information and ease of travel will spread ideas about the inherent rights of man, giving unstoppable inertia to the progressive evolution of the country.  However, I'm aware that I am inherently an optimist, leaving me with a sense of curious anticipation. 

Despite the uncertainty of the future, one thing is certain - I'm glad I had the opportunity to visit China and better understand the Red Dragon.

Click here to see pictures.

China: Day 11

The morning sunlight pushed thick humidity through my bedroom window, forcing me to appreciate the overcast weather that had dominated my stay in Hong Kong until today.

Hong Kong is a place where someone will return your wallet to you; I know because one of my tourist stops from the day before held onto one of my bags for me, enabling me to eventually call and reclaim it.

I began the day at Maxim’s Dim Sum, which occupies the third floor of the City Hall building (which would be called the second floor in Hong Kong – the ground floor is not the first floor to them). The food was exceptional and the carts in abundance ensuring that everyone eats for three.

Later in the day I took the MTR, which is what New Yorkers would call a subway (the subway out here refers to an underground walkway – no trains included). Complete with a destination pricing system, easy to use touch screen kiosks, a sparkly linoleum interior, air conditioning, well labeled exits, an abundance of signs and maps and glass doors that line the track and prevent anyone from falling in, the Hong Kong underground commute is the best that I have seen anywhere. Advertisements and vendors are in abundance, helping to pay for the quality of the facilities and providing easy access to goods and services. It would be great if New York stole a few notes from this tune.

After too much walking, I stopped in at a local smoke filled Irish pub, where I discovered that happy hour is Hong Kong is an all day event. Drinks are discounted from the late morning to nine to eleven PM depending on the venue. The pubs also differ in that they charge you if you eat any of the ‘complimentary’ nuts that they will set on your table without a request.

After a bite to eat and heading to the horse races, I called it a night.

China: Day 10

The metropolis that is known for both shopping and dining, is nestled into lush tropical hills, and is home to both an in-city horse track and numerous photo-worthy beaches; Hong Kong has everything but ski slopes and sidewalks.

With rails that eliminate j-walking and an incomplete set of overpasses and sidewalks, city planners have denied pedestrians easy access to many parts of the town. As much as New York is a walker’s town, Hong Kong isn’t.

The day included a visit to a popular tent based outdoor Stanley market, a climb to the City’s popular Victoria peak and a walk through local bazaars that pair blood drenched butcher shops next to quaint shoe stores.

Medical masks cover the smiles of an occasional local, who seeks to dodge the next outbreak, avoid an asthma attack or just seem fashionable.

For dinner I took a Ferry with some friends that I bumped into to a local island called Lamma where the lazy susan atop a large round table was weighted down with the day’s catch prepared Chinese style. Pepper and other spices infiltrated by pores, delivering rich flavors that impressed all.

The tables next to us were occupied by locals wearing red t-shirts inscribed with “North Lamma Friendship Club”. They drank heartily and appeared to proceed with a dramatized version of a white elephant gift exchange to celebrate the birthday of the goddess of the sea, a local favorite. The festivities ended with an eight foot tall brightly colored bamboo and paper edifice being burned on the beach to ensure that fish would be caught in abundance in the coming year.

China: Day 9

A taxi ride and a two hour flight brought me back to Hong Kong, an island that is geographically a short distant from the Mainland of China, but culturally, economically and socially a world apart.

When the government regained the cluster of islands from the British in the late nineties, they agreed to maintain for fifty years the social and economic freedoms that created the fabric of the thriving colony terming the policy ‘one country, two systems’. What remains to be seen is whether Hong Kong will become more like China or China more like Hong Kong in the interim.

Deja vu set in as the refreshingly sophisticated airport greeted me and quickly loaded me onto a bus that acted like an over-sized taxi and dropped me at the doorstep of my hotel.

The town is a nexus of East and West. Chinese dominate European styled streets and bamboo scaffolding engulfs signs written in English. Both cuisines perpetuate and most people speak at least a little of each tongue.

The downtown of Hong Kong resides on a waterfront and stares at an extension of the city that has crept into Kowloon, a neighboring island. I suspect as the landlocked space constrained financial district continues to grow, Kowloon will increasingly mirror its grandeur. However, in the meantime the urban town is home to thousands of high-end shops and restaurants that provide facades to the bottom two floors of a mixed batch of modern chic buildings that rub shoulders with an older variety that appears ready for renovation. A stones throw from a ten dollar massage parlor, the Peninsula Hotel wears Bentleys and Lamborghini’s in its small driveway like an actress wears diamond earrings and a crystal necklace, highlighting the excessive opulence of the ruling elite that built this colony or at least have decided to come to visit.

China: Day 8

Eight has historically been considered a lucky number to the Chinese as it is expected to bring prosperity, leading many Chinese to buy houses with an eight in the address or to prefer windows that have eight panels. However, our tour guide in Shanghai informed us that the number eight is falling out of fashion as several unfortunate events, that went unmentioned, occurred on an eight, raising significant skepticism about the inherent merit of this number.

I would say my eighth day in China was pretty lucky – the weather was nice and the day fun. Hangzhou, a nearby town known for its enormous West Lake, which is complete with traditional Chinese gardens, islands, a temple and a pagoda (a tall building on a hill), welcomed me after a short train ride in the morning. Locals shared boat rides with me to the scenic islands where exotic plants and stone structures provide ornate playgrounds from colorful birds.

Lunch was provided by a well known island restaurant named Lou Wai Lou, which demonstrated China’s ability to create effective tourist traps as the acclaimed food did not justify the excessive price points. The restaurant, like many in China, had too many servers. The oversupply of labor appears to result in an abundance of waiters, tripping over each other, miscommunicating, but meaning very well.

The bathrooms were designed for tourists, as demonstrated by the Western style toilets which are not the common form in China. The typical is a hole in the ground with a frame that’s reminiscent of a toilet seat. To operate one of these, one needs to be able to squat low to the ground, finagle their clothing out of the line of fire and maintain their balance – an exercise I carefully avoided.

In an effort to be more accommodating to tourists the country is increasingly incorporating English into its signs, creating a new dialect built upon poor English fundamentals. Subject-verb agreement and run-on sentences are rampant, leaving an opportunity for native speakers to help with translation.

An elevator trip to the sixth floor of the pagoda that rests atop a peak overlooking the West Lake, demonstrated an innovation that I hope will make the journey to America. After accidentally pushing the button for the wrong floor, I found that by pushing the button a second time, I could de-select that floor, saving the time that would have been wasted on the stop. This innovation could foil the ‘push all of the elevator buttons’ prank for children across the country.

I returned to the hotel in Shanghai after riding on the state-of-the-art train that connects the two cities. Surpassing the Acela Express trains that zip between New York and Philadelphia both in quality and comfort, this elegant addition to the regions infrastructure serves to highlight the increasing quality of life in China.

China: Day 7

Most people that I know who went to China never escaped from the tourist bubble. Flight attendants cared for them in the air and tour guides shepherded them through the cities; they stayed on the paths that were carefully designed for them by travel companies to both satisfy tourist expectations and generate healthy profits. Unfortunately, what these tours show their customers are not always a reflection of the everyday realities of the lives of the locals. The good, the bad and the interesting are hidden from sight. This is especially true when it comes to food.

Before coming to China I was told by many to expect the food to be terrible. While I understand why other people probably didn’t enjoy their daily fare, they probably never really had genuine Chinese cuisine. Having both followed the tour guides and hung with the locals in both Beijing and Shanghai, I believe that the restaurants on the bus tours are the absolute pits. While they claim to be quality authentic establishments, they aren’t really either.

There seem to be two ways to eat the local fare in China. One way is to dine at the nice Chinese restaurants that don’t cater to Westerners. While these are difficult for tourists to track down, the food is as nearly as awe inspiring as the items on the menu. Fancy menus will provide many choices including all of the dishes common in America in addition to the meal options that China is fabled for. Some of the more exotic attractions included: oiled bullfrog, sea intestine, pig’s face meat, duck feet, sea cucumber, braised bird’s nest, braised shark’s fin and cow stomach. I’m sure that list only scratches the surface of items that will give any American pause, but suffice it to say if it is part of something that moves, the Chinese have probably found a way to cook it.

Of the list above, I tried duck feet and cow stomach. While neither was terrible, neither did much for me either. Frankly, I thought they were rather boring.

As any Westerner would, I thought I was being quite adventurous by taking a bite of these two dishes. However, I was caught off guard when my local hosts asked me why it was so outrageous to try these foods – Americans do eat plenty of animals. While I responded by making the point that we are only accustomed to eating animal muscles, I left the meal wondering what made one body part less savage to eat than another. The jury is still out.

However, while these top notch restaurants have large and varied menus, it’s worth noting that rice is rarely present on the table. The Chinese consider rice a filler food, just as water is used to dilute down your fountain drinks, rice is used to lower the average cost of a meal. The nice restaurants don’t serve much of it and the cheap ones don’t server much else.

The other option is to take a seat at the dingy looking restaurants that usually have some variety of carcass up for display behind the grimy window that faces the street. This marketing tactic serves to attract the locals who recognize the foods and to scare away the tourists who like to believe that the food on their plate doesn’t actually come from animal bodies. These establishments are for the commoners and the prices are set to match. The ambiance is that of neglect and the entrees are presented as poorly as coleslaw at a run down diner in NYC. Despite the lack of pleasantries, the food is tasty and even one trek into a local joint can shed a sun’s worth of light on what it means to eat as a citizen of China.

Regardless of whether or not your dinner has a lot of rice on the table, there is one thing that is usually not included: napkins. Wet-naps, wet towels or bowls of lemon water appear the common attempt at a substitute; messy eaters probably leave the restaurant wearing a small piece of an appetizer.

Another expectation was broken during the trip; low-end American fast food chains are positioned as mid-tier establishments in China. KFC is hugely popular and serves excellent duck wraps and Pizza Hut is a sit down restaurant with a full menu, including an array of seafoods and non-pizza items.

Another cuisine stereotype was addressed during the trip. Upon passing a construction site in Beijing, I mentioned to my friend (who was born and raised a local) that the workers appeared a bit skinny. They typically work without shirts in response to the humidity, baring hints of their rib cages for all to see. He responded that the very low wages made this career particularly difficult in China, leaving many underfed. He continued to state that they are the reasons that there are no dogs in the City – the workers can’t afford other sources of protein and do in fact eat strays.

While the poor are underfed, an upper-class Chinese host will never let a guest be anything but the opposite. Tradition calls for hosts to order enough food to feed everyone at the table and the past three generations of their families, ensuring that many of the plates remain full when the night ends. Additionally, customs requires that checks are summoned and paid discretely, ensuring that the host covers the bill and the guest feels sufficiently guilty. These norms make for extremely generous hosts and wealthy restaurant owners.

Aside from over indulging on food, day seven included a trip to a local Jewish temple-turned-tourist museum that tells the story of Chinese hospitality to 30,000 Jewish refugees during the second World War and a quick stop back in Shanghai’s Old Town.

China: Day 6

As I passed between under the mustard yellow arch, the world transformed from seedy streets to the oasis of the Jade Buddha. Past the entrance man-sized urns imprisoned flames and spewed ash, enabling worshipers to light reeds of incense which they used to pray to Asian gods carved in wood, melted out of metal and chipped out of Jade. Yellow robed monks patiently sat watching the worshipers be photographed by the intruding tourists that paid no reverence to the unfamiliar icons. Cleverly designed for all visitors, Buddhists found peace and tourists found site and the opportunity to pay numerous tithes for the privilege.

From the temple I caught a tour of Shanghai that included the Yuyuan Garden, an ornate estate that has since been transformed into a magnet for tourists; the old town, where the locals congregate in mass to eat, buy food and socialize; the Bund, a promenade with a view of the glittering downtown Pudong quarter; and the French Concession, where the birthplace of Chinese Communism has been transformed into a chic promenade that smells of capitalism.

After learning more about Chinese society, it’s become quite clear that communism in it's pure or traditional form is not the appropriate classification for their nation. Rather, it appears that their economic system is a; socialist version of capitalism; the state runs more public industries than the government does in the US, but the citizens have a structure in which they can be enterprising and obtain disproportionate wealth. And the political decision-making appears totalitarian in nature; the governing body, the Communist Party, unilaterally makes decisions and remains unchecked.

Our tour group was small and our guide offered telling comments about the perspective of the citizenry. She wanted to have access to websites and more information than was available, but found it hard to comment about the inaccuracy of the media they do have access to. "Why does CNN think it knows more about our country than we do. We call it China Negative News."

Trash cans appear to be a Western innovation. Individuals at terminals or other public venues are expected to hold waste until they encounter someone making a collection, often identified by the trash bag that they are carrying. However, spotless streets, sidewalks and terminal floors confirm that this technique is effective; the locals must have deep pockets, as there are few trash people.

Desert winds carried the dust from the barren patches between buildings into the toxic air, creating a concoction that seared by eyes throughout the day making them a patriotic Chinese red and ensuring that I ended my night a bit early.

China: Day 5

I woke up early to head to the airport.

The older terminal of the Beijing airport squelched some of the awe I harbored after seeing the modern behemoth that initially welcomed me to Beijing.

In the terminal I competed for my spot in line, as it appeared the locals felt comfortable entering the queue at any point other than the back. Waits are avoided by approaching the front of the line from the side. The experienced gracefully arrive at the window during the transition between customers and immediately engage the teller to increase the awkwardness of stopping them. The less skillful stand to one side of the person currently being served, avoiding eye contact with the next person in line. It seems that the best way to combat their efforts is to call attention to them; a loud exclamation accompanied with pointing seems to restore the natural order.

The Chinese have simplified airline safety, rather than having the equivalent of America's complicated rules about which liquids are permitted on the plane and the hoops that must be jumped through to have them approved, no liquids are allowed resulting in my having to check a second bag.

We departed with ease. As we descended towards the Shanghai airport we passed through the rolling floor of smooth clouds below us to emerge into a single giant cloud that had no shape, no structure and produced no rain. Shanghai, like Beijing, was enshrouded in the white toxin.

Combining the automotive infrastructure of Los Angeles with hundreds of New York scale skyscrapers that pepper the landscape, Shanghai accommodates twenty million residents in a manner that is incomparable to any American city. Despite its spacious nature, congested above ground highways and packed sidewalks reign the day. Negotiating by foot is complicated not only by the crowds of on-comers, but also by the occasional weaving vespa that has taken to the higher ground.

Towards the end of an hour-long walk past the shops on the popular Nanjing Road I arrived at People's Square, a city center of sorts, complete with a park, subway entrances and a museum. There I noticed one family's toddler was modeling something that doesn't exist out West: children's potty pants. Toddlers appear to wear otherwise normal pants with a slit from their waist to the ankles on both sides enabling them to go potty at any time. More often than not these were worn without diapers raising questions about the destination of their excrement. That said, both the kids and the sidewalk appeared clean, leaving their usage a mystery.

The square was adorned with advertisements, much as we would see in Times Square or in and around a typical American mall. What was surprising about these often multi-story banners was that they depicted Caucasians and US celebrities promoting shoes, a watch or a pen. The Chinese were no where to be found, except in the occasional ads that featured Jackie Chen or Yao Ming.

After the trek I headed to a run-down building clearly built before Shanghai's current renaissance to watch a local acrobatic troop. The theatre inside matched the exterior. A simple wood stage was complemented by dusty felt curtains and flip-up metal chairs that were bolted to the bare cement below. The acrid smell confirmed that the room's age matched its amenities.

Fortunately, the quality of the venue was not indicative of the quality of the entertainment. I would like to say the contortionists that tangled themselves into inhuman shapes while balancing lit candles on all extremities and the girl who was able to kick three bowls at a time and catch them on her head while riding a ten foot tall unicycle were the main attractions, but they weren't. Ultimately, the second prize went to the boy who completed a one-armed handstand atop a wobbling stack of wood chairs that left him twenty five feet above the unpadded stage.

First prize went to the finale, where the demonstration of skill, desperation and seeming foolishness began by an unveiling of sphere cage with a fifteen foot diameter. Immediately thereafter a motorcyclist drove into the cage and with his wheels against the metal he began driving around the sides and doing loops that left him up-side-down at the top of the cage. It was an impressive act and would have been enough. However, our entertainers were determined to make an impression. A minute or so later, another motorcyclist entered the dome and the two rotated between chasing each other and dodging each other while one drove vertical and the other horizontal. That would have enough. However, four more motorcyclists eventually entered the gauntlet, leaving little room between their tires and their graves. It was truly incredible that all six emerged at the end of the act; I'm sure there have been practice sessions where that was not the case.

The evening ended with this adrenaline rush.

China: Day 4

Day 4 was set aside to hang out with a former classmate of mine who is from Beijing. He picked me up at Noon and took me too the Hyatt, a top of the line hotel (even by US standards) that is largely patronized by Westerners coming to town for business. The first floor housed a restaurant cleverly named Made In China where we enjoyed an exceptional meal and met one of my classmate's old friends.

From there we traveled to my classmate's medical device and water bottling factory, located in the country side an hour outside of Beijing. During the drive we encountered a street where spray paint symbols indicated that the government was widening the road by demolishing the store fronts on both sides and rebuilding them further apart. I imagine both that it doesn't take long for the government to set such a plan into motion and that the permission of the store owners is not required.

The country side was lush, but populated with plants that seemed less exotic than I had imagined; plants do not appear to have evolved very much since before there was an East or a West. We could have been in tropical regions of the New World and not known the difference.

Uneven cheap plastic tiles made up the floor which merged with the chipped plaster walls of the five factory buildings, reminding me how much Chinese construction had improved since they began renovating Beijing. Shortly after a brief site tour and taking a photo with his mom, we were dropped off at the base of the local Phoenix Mountain to do a short hike up a newly paved tourist trail that passed the Immortal's Cave, a local religious site, and included several vantage points, where one could see as far as the smog would permit.

Upon our return to the factory we were escorted to the in-house massage laboratory where men in white coats treated us like the experiments and began demonstrating age-old Chinese massage techniques. The highlight was the human torch, where towels were layered on my bare back, sprayed with alcohol and lit on fire, creating a rudimentary, and more dangerous, version of a heating pad.

To my surprise it appears that a widespread faith in Chinese Medicine prevails, even amongst those who have Western educations. The locals take great pride in the ability of jasmine to reduce your body temperature and cure warts, green tea to enhance your sex drive and oolong tea to cure cancer and enhance vision.

Having now met people both in and out of the City, I concluded that in general people are very happy in China. While the American lower class would be wealthy in China, it appears that wealth is not a prerequisite for happiness; crooked toothed smiles are commonplace.