Last Days in Zhuhai

On Tuesday Mi took us to Guangdong Province Regional Agricultural Research Center and Gardens in Zhuhai.  The center was a large complex of greenhouses and gardens where vegetables and flowers are grown using different techniques to try to produce the best results.  It appeared to be government-funded as there is a communist party hall there also.

Cindy had wanted to get some photos of groups of school students before we left China, and she got her wish.  Busloads of school children were unloading at the garden, and the students were excited to see us (we’ve seen five Westerners in Zhuhai since we’ve arrived, and four of those were at Jinan University).  “Hello”, “Please to meet you”, “What your name?”, “Hello, hello” over and over….  It was fun being the center of attention for a few minutes, but it was much quieter once we left them behind.

We then went to the large Pu Tuo Buddhist temple complex on the edge of Zhuhai.  After walking around the buildings and viewing the various statues and architecture, we ate lunch at the hot pot room at the temple vegetarian restaurant.  We each selected ingredients to add to our own hot pot of water, and then ate the veggies, noodles and mushrooms as they cooked. 

Rain started as we left the temple.  Super typhoon Haiyan unfortunately caused overwhelming property damage and deaths in the Philippines.  The storm lessened in intensity after moving to Vietnam, but then swung back to the east, giving the Zhuhai area cooler temperatures and lots of rain and wind.

We are leaving China tomorrow.  We are sharing a few photos of interesting English phrases we’ve seen on t-shirts or signs:

"You have to do so cuz I am UR King"

Sign on the home products aisle in our local supermarket

We also read the following on our ticket to Zhuhai Agricultural Research Center: "Please follow pubic order and pay attention to pubic hygiene."

Bye for now!

Paul and Cindy

Wai Lingding Island

Last weekend we took a boat trip to Wai Lingding Island with Paul’s colleague, Mi, and Mi’s four-year old son, Eric.  The boat from Zhuhai’s Xiangzhou Harbor was packed with extended families – parents, children, grandparents – as well as a number of young couples and groups of workers taking a weekend holiday.  Lots of people brought snacks of dried seaweed, little sausages, juice boxes, and other treats.  The boat attendants handed out little bags for the trash from the snacks.  There was lots of excitement and laughter when the boat lurched over some big waves.  About half an hour later, there wasn’t as much laughter – many people were running to the attendants to get the bags and use them for a different purpose.  The rough water (from the far edges of Typhoon Haiyan) left crying little kids, embarrassed young lovers, worried grandparents, and a mess that the pretty young attendants were left to clean up after we docked.  Fortunately the four of us weathered the seventy-minute trip well.

Wai Lingding Island is one of several islands that are part of the city of Zhuhai, even though the island is much closer to Hong Kong than to Zhuhai city.  The island, as are many around the world, was focused entirely on fishing, and now its business is split between fishing and tourism.

We saw two larger tours led by a person with a flag, but otherwise visitors were mostly family groups.  We appeared to be the only non-Asians on the island (we’ve seen five other Westerners in Zhuhai in three+ weeks.)  Our accommodation was modest but up on a hillside, with very nice views of the harbor and the sea.  The island itself has some interesting rocks as well as several good beaches.

That afternoon we walked from one side of the island to the other on the No. 2 Greenway (slightly misnamed, as it’s a concrete path.)  Paul got his feet wet in the South China Sea.  We also stopped at a fish market with some very interesting sea creatures.

Saturday night we walked around the village, and then watched (on TV) a soccer match between a team from Guangzhou, China and a team from Korea.  The final score was a 1-1 tie, but the Chinese team erupted in celebration.  We didn’t find out until talking to Mi the next morning that this was because the match win went to the Guangzhou team because Korea had the home field advantage.

Rain and wind from the typhoon made for difficult sleep that night.  We got up fairly early, had breakfast, and walked up the mountain in the center of the island, fighting wind and intermittent rain.  Near the top we explored a “stone park” – a series of walkways and cut paths through a boulder field on the edge of the mountain.  It was quite windy up there, making walking on the rocks a little scary, but the views from the top were worth the trek.

We decided to skip lunch after the previous day’s boat trip.  Loading was delayed as the boat was rocking in the harbor and the gangplank was swinging back and forth.  The boat staff literally grabbed each passenger and threw them over the gangplank into the boat.  We were worried we’d have a repeat performance of the previous day, but the ride was actually much smoother (long swells instead of high waves) and no one we saw got ill.

It was fun traveling with Mi and Eric, especially because partway through the trip, Eric got more at ease with the two tall curly-haired white-face people, and he would even play a bit with us.  Once again we found that making connections with people is part of making a connection with a place.  

Life in Zhuhai

 

We realized that we should make a post about our general life in Zhuhai, our home city for this month in China.  We are staying at Jinan Gardens, a university apartment complex for faculty.  The rock above marks the entrance at the main gate, and says Jinan Gardens.  Paul’s colleague is Mi.  Mi, his wife Sprina, and their son Eric have been great hosts.

Paul has been teaching in Mi’s “Software Analysis and Design” course each Friday afternoon, and also has had periodic meetings with students and faculty at Jinan University.  He takes the university shuttle bus there which is quite convenient and easy.

 

We attended one day of the university “sports meet”, a university Olympics held every two years.  Students and faculty compete in various events, including running between 50 and 1500 meters, shooting baskets, team rope jumping, long and high jumps, shot put, and a hackeysack-like game played with a shuttlecock.  Mi’s school faculty team placed 3^rd in the rope jumping event, and took 2^nd place in the faculty competition overall.

 

A Jinan University business professor who has been at University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire asked Cindy to talk with her freshman students to give them practice with English.  Cindy met with them one afternoon this week.  The students were happy to talk, and especially pleased when Cindy described Paul as tall with long blonde curly hair, as some of the students had seen him at the sports meet.  Of course students wanted their photo taken with Cindy.

Some of the roads here are torn up as work has started on a mass transit system (some sort of electric tram or cable-car system) – right now the only mass transit in the city is buses.  Most roads have their own street cleaner person riding a bicycle – they seem to work hard.  We’ve seen a number of people carrying plastic bottles that they’ve filled with water from mountain streams (there are several mountains in and around Zhuhai.)  Lots of people bike with their children in tow, going to school and market.  Bicycles and tricycles are also used by food vendors and other workers.

Which was on the bike first, the chickens or the eggs?

We’ve seen some wildlife in the city (quite a few butterflies and dragonflies, plus a few species of birds), but the only wildlife photo we have been able to get is a beautiful dead butterfly.  Hopefully we’ll see more wildlife when we travel to an island off the coast this weekend.  

Hong Kong

Paul didn’t teach on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we decided to take the seventy minute ferry from Zhuhai to Hong Kong.  We landed on Hong Kong Island, which was very busy on the main streets along the harbor.  We actually blended in for the first time in weeks – there were lots of Westerners, some speaking English.  There were many business people rushing around the downtown streets, but you see families as well.  We followed a walking route through some interesting neighborhoods, visiting Man Mo temple and an antique and shopping district.  We also spent some time just watching the people on the street.

Man Mo Temple

We ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant located in a small alley off a busy street – we’d found the restaurant through HappyCow.net, a world-wide vegetarian restaurant site.  It was quite small, with only a few round tables with tiny stools.  A few spaces opened, and we sat down.  A woman next to us helped us order from the numbered list posted by an opening to the kitchen.  It turned out the woman is a marketing officer for the Thailand tourism authority in Hong Kong.  She kindly helped us navigate the restaurant, showing us where to get rice and soup from large containers near the kitchen.  A man and woman sitting next to us were talking in Chinese, but then the man spoke to us in perfect English – he’d grown up in Portland, Oregon.  We had a nice conversation with the three of them while we ate.  The man was surprised that we had found the restaurant – apparently not many Westerners make it down the alley.  The food was very good, and we too quickly said goodbye to our three new friends.

Fook Luk Su vegetarian restaurant, No. 8 in the alley

We took the double-decker tram through town and back – it was fun to see a variety of neighborhoods as well as many more people, especially from the top of the tram.  We then took the Star Ferry, an old ferry line running since the 1800s, over to the Kowloon peninsula and walked to our hostel.

Star Ferry

That night we walked along the promenade on the Kowloon peninsula, including walking down Avenue of the Stars, a walkway with hand prints and statues related to Chinese film stars of the 1960s era.  We watched the Symphony of Lights, a laser light and sound show involving sophisticated lighting systems on a number of skyscrapers on both sides of Victoria harbor.

On Wednesday we took the MTR (subway system) to Lantau Island, and took a local bus up a mountain to Lan Po monastery, home of the Tian Tan Buddha, the largest sitting Buddha statue in the world.  At over 100 feet

tall, it’s visible from airplanes landing at the nearby Hong Kong airport.  There is a cable-car going up, but we decided to go earlier on the bus to miss the crowds.  This turned out well, as we were able to walk up the stairs and visit the statue with few other people around.  Later there were many people posing for photos in front of the Buddha statue.  We ate lunch at the temple’s vegetarian restaurant, and headed back to the city for the ferry ride home to Zhuhai.

 

 

Our day was not to be over yet.  After getting off the ferry, we took our regular bus 99 back to our apartment.  We managed to hit rush hour, so instead of a 45 minute ride, the trip took 1½ hours.  The trip was crowded and bumpy, with many starts and stops.  We were back to standing out as the only two non-Chinese on the bus.  Two high school girls shyly talked to a woman who then talked to us in English.  The girls wanted to take a photo with us.  We agreed, and then took a photo of them.  We talked more to the woman who was translating for us, and it seemed like ten others were watching and listening to us talk and laugh.  It was a good end to a good trip.