Update from Kunming

Ni Hao (hello) from China!!

I have been in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China for two weeks now – after three weeks travelling across the ocean to Asia. I’ve been silent all this time because my laptop is still in limbo-land, at customs in Guanzhou, now waiting for FedEx to pick it up and deliver it to me sometime in the next week or two. Then I have to get a VPN plug-in so that I can actually access the back-end of WordPress. So! You will not hear from me again until then.

In the meantime, I can tell you that I had a wonderful few weeks on the cargo ship (I NEVER got bored). I will write all about it in my next post. A good friend in Canada is posting this one for me; (thank you Debra for all of your hard work editing and helping me with this blog!!). I will then write about my experiences studying Chinese (Mandarin) and adjusting to a very different kind of travel. We’ll see where we go from there.

Please be patient and hopefully sometime soon I’ll be posting updates about learning Chinese, the city of Kunming, its food and culture, etc.

San Francisco

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San Francisco Seen from Bernal Heights

I arrived in San Francisco in the late afternoon of August 6and took a cab to Bernal Heights, where my cousin lives. She and I barely know each other so it is a complete pleasure hanging out with her, talking about ourselves, family, art, life, and just laughing together. On the first night we walked to the top of the hill and looked at the view of The Mission (just below us on the opposite side of the hill and behind Bernal Heights), downtown San Francisco, the Twin Peaks and the Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland, and Berkeley in the distance. Beautiful!

San Francisco Seen from the Port of Oakland

It is summer time but cool compared to the heat of the east coast in August. I am still getting used to wearing a sweater (or two), pants, socks, and shoes. When I wake up in the morning I cover my head with my “hoodie” to keep my body heat (what little there is) in. Soon I shall be out on the ocean waters heading to Hong Kong on a freighter ship – so I suspect this is a good transition.

The flora in San Francisco belong to an arid world and are made up of succulents and cacti and other magnificent native plants. As you fly into the city you can see that the desert is just outside San Francisco’s door but it still amazes me, each time I get out onto the streets, to see the lushness and diversity of plant life here.

I have been to San Francisco a number of times and am always surprised by the diverse cultures represented in this city. It is heart-warming to walk down the streets of Bernal Heights, for example, and be greeted with a friendly hello as I pass people of seemingly all races. Boston, although changing, is, by comparison a fairly “white” and segregated city.

Lovely Rache

Rache’s Dog, Diego

San Francisco - Mission Chinese Food San Francisco – Mission Chinese Food

Choosing a place to eat in San Francisco can be overwhelming since the city offers one of the greatest dining “scenes” in any city I’ve visited in the United States. San Francisco dining presents you with everything from hip to unpretentious food, world famous to unknown restos, international to “American” fare, and cheap to expensive feasting. Selecting where to eat, if you do not decide to just land anywhere, can be daunting. The city is a food Mecca and I have eaten twice at a local Mexican joint (Taco Los Altos) in Bernal Heights, at the famous Zuni Cafe (with my sweet friend, Maxine), at Mission Chinese Food, at Pig and Pie and, at Bi-Rite Creamery for ice cream (they make an amazing vegan coconut cream sorbet for those of us who are lactose intolerant… or vegan)

As I write about food, and when I walk and eat in San Francisco I am very aware, as I was the first time I visited here, of the number of homeless people living on the city’s streets. According to the San Francisco Public Press, “A “homeless bill of rights” in California must wait until next year for a vote in the full Assembly after clearing its first hurdle.” The San Francisco Chronicle writes, “Ten years ago, San Francisco decided the way to solve its intractable homelessness problem was to spend millions of dollars a year to set up housing-and-counseling complexes for street people — and by many measures, it has been a success…” No matter, there are still too many people without a roof over their heads and there are multiple reasons for this. Some cannot afford rent (this past June, San Francisco was on the top five list of the nation’s most expensive places to live). They may not have a job or income. Many people have physical or mental disabilities and others may have a substance abuse problem. Additionally, there are many who do not necessarily live on the streets but instead end up in shelters, hospitals, “supportive housing,” or even jail. It is not an easily managed problem and solutions are often politically charged and there is, as well, a lack of support in social services. Here is a list of some homelessness related blogs.

It is difficult to add anything else after my thoughts on homelessness. All too sobering. Today, I will check out more of Bernal Heights and tomorrow I head to the shipyard to board my slow boat to China (the Hanjin Lisbon).

From the Marine Agent: “Vessel’s updated schedule is : ETA 0400/11 ETB 0630/11 1300/11 Passengers to board vessel AND ETD 1800/11.” If you are interested in tracking the ship just click “Current Vessel’s Track” on the left, under “Last Position Received.” Then, zoom out so that you may see where in the world the Hanjin Lisbon is:
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?MMSI=21172700

So alas, Sunday evening we set a sail! I will not have internet access aboard so shall be silent until after I disembark the ship in Hong Kong, at the end of August. Until then….

Note: There are no photos of San Francisco, as of yet, for this posting. This morning I spilled a cupful of hot coffee on my lap-top which is now kaput and being fixed. Photos will come some day…. after I settle into my new, temporary, life in Kunming.

Hong Kong

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Sunday at Central (Filipino gather with friends to spend the day together), Hong Kong

My last few days of this trip were spent in Hong Kong. It is an absolutely terrific place so it was a very nice way to end my 3.5 months of travel abroad. I was afraid it would be too big a city but I suppose I worked my way up to it by starting in Kunming, going to Beijing, hitting Shanghai, and ending with Hong Kong. I liked Kunming, truly enjoyed Beijing, loved the faster paced and larger Shanghai, and really fell for Hong Kong – it is a large city with heart and soul.

Hong Kong

The greater Hong Kong area is made up of islands and even though places like Hong Kong and Kowloon are composed of a dense concentration of concrete towers and glass sky scrapers there are green mountains and water all around. There is no lack of places to escape from the city sprawl. Hong Kong is clearly old. It was also a British colony so has somewhat of a western feel to it despite the old Chinese ambience, too – a nice balance of both, I think. There are certainly tourists in Hong Kong but the locals are out and about with a vengeance. Part of this, I suspect, is due to the fact that homes/apartments are small so people want to get out and enjoy the city that has so much to offer.

I ate wonderful food, starting the day with congee and shrimp rice rolls along with milk tea every morning for breakfast. I sometimes even ate a toasted bun with condensed milk as an add-on to my breakfast. Lunch was usually made up of noodle soup with fish balls and supper, and twice I had a supper of bbq pork, rice, and Chinese brocolli. I also went for dim sum multiple times and once went to a VERY nice Sunday afternoon high tea at the fancy Mandarin Oriental. Michelle’s friend Carina (I know Michelle from Boston) took me out for dinner one night. I was taken around Kowloon and introduced to the toasted bun with condensed milk by Michelle’s other, long time, friend Pauline; she later treated me to a contemporary dim sum place that had traditional Cantonese fare. Here, you order what you want, beforehand, and then have the food brought to you.

Pauline and I hit the jade, bird, and flower markets, in Kowloon. I got to experience an old-style department store, a walk along Temple Street – a street mall that sells imaginable every type of cheap “stuff” (apparently Temple Street used to be full of street women; now you only notice a few hanging around). We also went to Shanghai Street (the street has a number of stores which carry hardware and housewares) because I wanted to find chopstick holders that double as soup spoon holders (I had never seen this until I hit Hong Kong). When I commented on a terrible smell in the air Pauline said it was fermented tofu and that she has never tried it because the smell is so off putting. Of course I had to give it a whirl and found it (and its accompanying hot sauce) delicious!!! You can taste the fermentation, but just barely. I had tried cold fermented bean soup in Beijing (that you dip fried dough into) and that was truly horrible – to my taste buds, anyway.

The day I arrived in Hong Kong would have been perfect time for a trip to Victoria Peak (it was sunny without a cloud in the sky — unlike the other three days I had spent in the city) but I was up at 5 that morning and did not hit my hotel until 2pm. By the time I had showered and had a bowl of soup for lunch it was 3. So, instead, I just wandered my new neighbourhood, Sheung Wan, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The area is JUST outside the district called Central. Sheung Wan neighbourhood consists of all sorts of dry goods shops — shops selling dried fish bladders for $5000+HKD as well as other dried fish, tea, nuts, dried fruit, etc. There are also all sorts of cheap(ish) clothing stores, magazine shops, and an English language used book store.

Hong Kong

Central includes the financial district as well as very high end shopping malls, both fancy and simple restaurants, and hotels that are interspersed with local and older Hong Kong shops. To get to the Central boat pier you have to go through this area. I had, here, the best rice and bbq pork I’d eaten in Asia and the best noodle soup, too. Neither cost more than $4USD! But, of course, being Central, this is also where I had my very civilized afternoon tea and where I spent much more than $4USD! Definitely worth it.

It was a cloudy the day I went up by tram to Victoria Peak to see the view of the city and islands from up high. I walked around the park and for a very short while the clouds cleared so I was able to get some good views, after all!!

Another day, I took a boat to Lamma Island and hiked for almost two hours around one section of this island. My intention was to do the two hikes the island has to offer but it was over 30C with 100% humidity; my body would not have been happy with more hiking. Part of travelling far and long is knowing when to take a break. Lamma Island is sparsely inhabited, has two small residential and tourist areas and otherwise is green with hiking/walking trails. So the hike, although cut short, was worthwhile.

Lamma Island

Finally, one other Hong Kong outing consisted of a tram ride westbound, looking around and taking photos from the top and front of a double decker bus. There is so much more to do in Hong Kong but unfortunately I just did not have enough time. This was true for Beijing and Shanghai, too. I guess I’ll have to return to these places!

I had an absolutely marvellous 3.5 month trip, met mostly marvellous people, ate mostly marvellous food, enjoyed the mostly marvellous countryside, and feel that I gained greater insight into Asian culture, as a whole. And of course, how I love Hong Kong!

Shanghai

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Shanghai

I arrived in Shanghai after a five hour bullet train ride from Beijing at 310 km/hr. The ride was so smooth and unlike the American Amtrak Acela train – it puts the U.S. rail to shame!. Shanghai is SO different from Beijing. Beijing is steeped in the past and Shanghai is about the present and future. Unlike the Beijing apartment complexes that are identical and look like they were just plopped down, Shanghai consists of apartment complexes of varying styles and skyscrapers of every size, shape, and material. This city has a very different feel from the nation’s capital.

The first day I walked the Bund which is made up of buildings from colonial times. It was originally a towpath for barges – and barges galore still populate the Huangpu River. It was transformed into the banking area and the Bund is where the majority of art deco and neoclassical buildings were built in the early 20th century. Today, it is filled with fancy shmancy hotels and retail stores like Cartier. Across the river is the Pudong area where they have built, in the last 20 years or so, the futuristic part of Shanghai. This includes the site of the famous Oriental Pearl Tower. I also walked along Nanjing East Road which is a pedestrian mall with simple stores, primarily, but some fancier stores too, and Chinese delicacies and tourist shops. Nanjing East Road is where the first department stores in China were opened in the 1920s. There are still many neon signs from the bygone days that mingle with the contemporary shops.

Shanghai

I stayed with my new Italian friends, Laura and Luca, who I met in Yunnan Province and whose company I enjoyed very much. Their children, Vanni and Ada, are a pleasure and Luca has a great sense of humour. I spent time with Laura talking about the arts and exploring parts of the city when she could join me. I was so fortunate to have met such gracious and welcoming people. My whole 3.5 months in Asia, in fact, was virtually nothing but pure pleasure and wonderful people. I was very lucky.

One of the only sour notes was that on my first day out and about in Shanghai I was scammed. I kind of realised it was happening but I do believe that one tends to doubt oneself. And the funny thing is that I had approached these people. Had I not done so I would not have lost $320USD. I read in the guidebook, after the fact: Beware of English-speaking students asking you if you want to walk around and spend some time together and then wanting to take you to a tea house… Two days later I knew better when I was approached…

On a happier note, I took the time in Shanghai to go to a few museums: The Shanghai Museum and the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum. I tried to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art but they were closed and in between installations; that was a disappointment. I went to M50 where, unlike at the very vibrant Art Zone 798 in Beijing , I saw a lot of mediocre to bad art. There was though, one truly wonderful exhibition, “Across the Waibaidu“, at Island6 Gallery. I also spent time wandering The People’s Square and Park as well as the Yuyuan Gardens.

Shanghai

Shanghai

I had the opportunity to dine with the brother of a friend and his girlfriend. In typical Chinese fashion they treated me to quite a feast and it was nice to get to know them a bit.

Shanghai

On my final day in Shanghai Laura and I went to the French Concession. As the Lonely Planet says: “Once home to the bulk of Shanghai’s adventures, revolutionaries, gangsters, prostitutes, and writers, the French Concession is the most graceful part of the city. Today a residential, retail and restaurant district with atmosphere tree-lined streets… The cream of Shanghai’s old residential buildings and art deco apartment blocks, hotels and edifices are preserved here… The district naturally tends toward gentrification, but it’s also a trendy and happening enclave, excellent for random exploration…..” The neighbourhood was excellent for walking and exploring and I was tempted into splurging a bit.

Shanghai, so different from Beijing. How I love Shanghai!

Beijing

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How I Love Beijing!

Beijing

The flight from from Guilin to Beijing is 2.5 hours and as we approached Beijing I could see a ceiling of smog. I have been told the city’s population is over 20,000,000 which is hard to fathom. It is a huge city and when you fly toward the airport you see apartment block upon apartment block one next to the other — a whole skyline of them. I couchsurfed in the old city centre, in a hutong. Hutongs are narrow alleyways that zigzag inside Beijing’s 2nd ring in the centre of the city. They consist of one storey buildings/dwellings with courtyards that are hidden behind the entrance-ways. The city centre is full of young and old people, small shops, and lots of cafes, food stalls, and cheap restos. There are not many tall buildings here and I was situated in the northeast corner of the Dongcheng District which includes Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and many other such sites (these are all more toward the middle and south of this district).

My Couchsurfing hosts took me, a Russian tenant of theirs, and her visiting mother to the Great Wall on my first full day in Beijing; on the way we stopped off at KFC to pick up chicken to eat when we got there. This felt like a bad omen. BUT! They made up for that by stopping at a halal resto with typical Beijing snack food when we returned to the city. We ate savoury as well as sweet dishes: fermented soybean soup that you dip fried dough into (not the tastiest thing I’ve eaten but I did not hate it) , sheep’s intestines, a mung bean custard, a few cold noodle dishes, a kind of very soft thick grit-like soup that you mix with what tasted like a ground sesame seed sauce, and more….. The table was filled with these Muslim specialties – a “cuisine” that is called hui cai and which often includes mutton. My first real Beijing food experience was exactly what I had hoped it could be and quickly erased the memory of KFC at the Great Wall.

The Great Wall is surrounded by mountains. I was surprised that we didn’t see more tourists when we were there. We went there via the Mutianyu entrance (the one President Clinton went to — though not President Reagan or the Queen of England). We took the chairlift going up and walked down. There is a chute/slide that one can take down and I would have loved to try it but my hosts wanted to walk down.

Great Wall Chute

Xian Hong and Zhen Ou — my hosts – speak very little English so our attempt to talk to each other was pretty funny. Luckily we each have patience and a sense of humour so we laughed a lot!! They were SOOOOOOO generous of their time – taking me around to various sites, essentially taking me under their wing. The two of them insisted on treating me to everything and were unbelievably kind. There seemed to be nothing I could do to repay them… but I came up with an idea. I took them, my friend Xiao Xi, who I met in Shuhe (Lijiang, in Yunnan Province), and the Russian women, out for Peking duck and I bought Xian Hong two Cordon Bleu cookbooks (in Chinese) since she has been to France a few times and mentioned how she’d like to learn how to cook French food – particularly dessert. I also bought her a Chinese dessert cookbook and got the two of them flowers. It wasn’t easy to find a way to treat them, but I was pleased that I succeeded.

On the second day of my stay in Beijing , Xian Hong and Zhen Ou took me to Art Zone 798 (which I had mentioned wanting to visit). Art Zone 798 used to be an electronics warehouse that was built in the 1960s in conjunction with East Germany. Now it is filled with galleries, small and large (including PACE Beijing and a North Korean museum) as well as shops and studios. Ten years ago it had mainly studios with some galleries but rents went up and many artists had to move elsewhere (about 4km away to a new artists’ district).

Beijing, Art Zone 798

We started at Zhen Ou’s brother’s studio, A-One Design Studio. His brother, Professor Shi also teaches at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is a well known designer in both China and elsewhere and his wife helps him but is also an interior designer. Here is an A-One Design Studio lecture given by Shi: http://spaces.kisd.de/netzradio/2011/01/18/a-one-design-studio/. I went back to the studio a second time and spent the morning listening to Chinese music with Professor Shi, talking about art and design, and using an app that has voice recognition and translates accordingly. This tool was very necessary since his English is not good and my Chinese is worse. He is a man who appears to love life and I was pleased to have the chance to meet him and even join him for lunch. Here is a video created by one of the student interns at A-One studio: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzg3MTk3ODQ4.html (please click “Turn Off Chinese” to access this video)

The week I arrived in Beijing coincided with May Day which is a four-day celebration in China. The streets were more crowded than usual so, since I am not inclined to visit places just to tick them off a list, I did not go to the Forbidden City. Instead, I spent one day walking around Beihai Park and the lake in the middle of Beijing with Xiao Xi. She and I went to the Temple of Heaven and the surrounding park and then we went taste testing teas with Xian Hong before going out for supper.

Beijing, Dancing in the Park

I do love Beijing. I particularly love the area I stayed in since it was so central to everything including buses and the subway for destinations that were beyond walking distance. Mind you, as I mentioned above, my hosts did tend to take me places; every morning they called me from their home (I had my own tiny apartment in the hutong, while couchsurfing) to ask what my plans were and the next thing I knew they, by some coincidence, were on their way to see me and show me around! If i lived in Beijing this is the area I’d choose to live in.

Beijing

Other food I ate: donkey; shuan guo — a broth kept hot under fire in a copper pot with a cone in the middle with mutton and vegetables added to it and a sesame seed sauce that has a little chili mixed into it.

A couple of observations:

In Beijing, waiters and waitresses stand looking over your shoulder until you have decided what you want to order
In China: babies’ and toddlers ‘pants are not sewn all the way to the crotch to make for easier diaper changing and toilet training which is done on the street (sometimes in a discreet place, sometimes literally on the street — in either case it is a brilliant design that should be adopted in the west!)

China: Guangxi Province

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Xingping

Xingping

Chinese tours walk by in what seems to be the hundreds – up and down the streets, going to the water to ride a boat on the Li River, or heading back for lunch and their buses. The hostel in XIngping in Guanxi Province and just south of Guilin is on the main thoroughfare (albeit very small) and between the people, cars, trucks, and motorcycles and the noise is unbelievable. Drivers in this country seems to LOVE honking horns as they pass every moving thing – although the same was true in Vietnam.

I hiked along the spectacular karst mountains in the area as well as the country roads surrounding the town. Xingping is small and very walkable. It has a market that I visited and at which I ate lunch several times. I also found a few places, introduced to me by Li Ya and Baozi (two young women who worked at the This Old Place International Youth Hostel and with whom I became friends), that I frequented almost daily. Here is a recipe for ginger milk tea which I drank every afternoon in Xingping and which I now make and drink at home in the U.S.

XIngping

I had plans to stay in Xingping for a few days but loved it so much that I used it as a resting place and spent over a week there. It is truly a lovely region. You can, as I did, hike around the mountains but also walk along pathways or even do some real mountain climbing. It is easy to get into the countryside and see the many farmers (the majority of people here are farmers or are in the tourist business) pick vegetables or fruit, plant seeds, work in the rice fields, and tend to their crops. Depending on the clouds and sun on a given day the mountains appear otherworldly. And of course it’s so much fun to be asked/told, “hello, bamboo!” This is an invitation from those working in the tourism industry for you to take a bamboo boat ride along the Li River. I learned to cut the women short when I received a “hello” and not allow them to continue on to “bamboo.” Instead I quickly had to say “bu shi, xie, xie.” Thank you but no.

XIngping

XIngping, People Preparing for a Funeral

One day I spent three hours in the market, going up and down the stalls, taking photographs, “talking” with people, and checking out and buying food for lunch (not knowing what in the world I was buying/eating). I was invited by three men to join them for tea and I accepted. They did not understand a word I said and I did not understand them but we had a hoot sitting and attempting to talk with each other. They laughed every time I answered, “bu mingbai” — I don’t understand.

XIngping, Woman Carrying Goods from Market

I discovered that despite *completely* adoring Lao, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Thai food — as well as the variety and excellence of food in Singapore — Chinese food remains my favourite. It’s such a big country and every region has its specialty. As my friend Michelle has said multiples times, I must have been Chinese in another life. And the Chinese people I met were uniformly surprised that I – unlike most tourists – ignored western food and ate what the locals eat.

There are three things, though, I may never get used to in China: 1) the retching sound just before a big gob of spit comes flying out of a mouth (mostly men) and onto the street; 2) people smoking everywhere (mostly men) and; 3) trash thrown with abandon on the street — all of the time (everyone). I have to admit, though, that even I ended up throwing garbage onto the street when there was so much of it around me and I could not find a container to throw it in. Maybe I am getting used to that!!??!!! 😉

Tamar Granovsky | Wanderings Afar and Near

A Periodic Narrative on Photography, Travel, and Culture

Update from Kunming

San Francisco

Hong Kong

Shanghai

Beijing

China: Guangxi Province