My nose

I was taking a walk in the People's Square. Every Chinese city has a People's Square. It's a square for the people. I was accosted several times by groups of Chinese tourists looking to practice some English. The first group was really just two girls from Xian. They were visiting a family member in Shanghai. They were friendly and invited me to drink gong fu tea with them. I declined mainly because it reminded me of a come-drink-tea-with-us scam which it almost certainly was not, but I also wanted to continue walking. I did chat with them in English/Chinese for a little while. The second group was comprised of three people, also from Xian. They were students living in Shanghai for some unclear period of time. They started with a "hello, how are you?" but then moved immediately to "Do you speak Chinese?" That conversation was challenging. The one guy who wanted to do most of the talking was difficult to understand due to a very strong accent, although others later told me that the Xian accent isn't particularly hard to understand and it may have just been this particular guy's background or way of speaking. He mentioned to me that my nose was enormous, for which I thanked him. Apparently this is not necessarily an insult in China, though it sure feels like one. He also caught a look at the freckles on my arm and then held my arm and studied it like an ancient artifact. He spoke at some length about the reasons I might have freckles which as far as I could tell had something to do with water, roots of plans, and something I ate in my childhood. This is probably not correct though it as close as I will ever get to knowing what the hell he was talking about.

I guess I haven't written here since Monday. The internet really drives me nuts here. It's so inconsistent. This is the first time I have tried to do work here, which is probably why I have felt it more than previous visits. I never traveled with a laptop before and now I have one and often during the day I will do several hours of work, though lately I have taken to working offline to the degree possible since there is no other real choice. For most things I need to do, I had anticipated this to a degree so I can still get quite a lot done, but it is still inconvenient in ways I hadn't anticipated. I can't even reliably reach my home server which hosts various important things to which I need access.

The weather has been reasonably nice again. It hasn't been raining at least. It is in the 60s in the mornings, and the 70s during the day. I have gone out to several Couchsurfing events. There was one at a bar in a district called Luwan which was nice. The bar was kind of a dive not unlike one might find in NYC. I haven't been in many of those. Some guests in the hostel are here long term. They go out many nights to various bars around Shanghai. I haven't gone out with them really as they tend towards the swankier, pretentious places which sound even worse than the one place like that I visited. The Shanghai New Rich apparently frequent these joints, although I would at least find that interesting to see since it is novel. One girl I met, an expat from Germany living here for a while, told me that many foreigners come here to "celebrate their wealth." I think that's a good way to describe what I have seen. Also many foreign man seem to be making their way through the Chinese girls without much regard for anything but their own pleasure. The women seem to allow this since a foreign boyfriend represents a status symbol and a chance to permamently increase one's status through marriage, moving to the west, or something like that. These are things Chinese girls have said to me by the way, not entirely my own theories.

I like Shanghai overall. It's an attractive city and it is clean in a way that other cities are in China. There are neighborhoods that exist here which exist in no other city. Some are very high-end, comprised of Lamborghini and Maserati dealerships and every trendy brand of clothing or handbag one can imagine. Others are a fusion of European and Chinese architecture with small cafes and tree-lined streets. As I discovered this week, there are also many poor neighborhoods filled with tiny homes stuffed with several generations of a family, clothes hanging in every direction, people washing their hair in a communal area in the street, and long rows of street vendors filled with people and motorcycles. These places are every bit as China as any other city I have visited, in contrast to the common assertion I hear that Shanghai is not China. That may be partly true, but I didn't have to go far to find the real thing. I read that there are 9 million immigrant workers here and apparently plenty more of those tiny and non-rich neighborhoods are Shanghai natives as well. I'm sure going farther out of the city it is easy to find more of that. Many of the local districts I discovered were one street away from a busy tourist block. The instant change from trendy malls and tourists to food on sticks and no foreigners is incredible.

I did a few touristy things this week. After the rain cleared up, I went out to capitalize on the sun while it was still out. I went and visited Jing'An temple, originally built in 200something AD, though relocated in 12something to its current location. Impressive, but temples sort of blur after you've seen a few dozen of them. That day like many was accompanied by lots of city walking and exploration, in that case with an American girl I met at the hostel. The next day I started out with a Danish girl and an Irish girl I'd met at the hostel. We first visited the Yu Garden, one of those beautiful imperial era gardens built by some wealthy government official. Bridges traverse ponds filled with goldfish too fat to swim and meticulously decorated temples and pagodas fill the place. Next door to that garden is the "old city" of Shanghai for which I had hopes, but the presence of Dairy Queen should give some idea of what the place was really like. All the buildings are constructed in ancient styles, but it is way too packed with tourist shops and kiosks to give even the tiniest semblance of atmosphere. It was really just one more orgy of commerce, though in this case at least a lot of food was there was well. The street food market we found later well outside the "old city" was vastly superior though. After the garden and old city, we wandered. We walked through one of the aforementioned local neighborhoods encountering no foreigners. We eventually made it to the river and walked north along the Bund, taking in the ridiculous spectacle of insane skyscrapers and modern construction that comprise the skyline east of the Huang Pu river. Shanghai is divided into two parts really, west of the river which is Puxi and east of the river which is Pudong. The view from Puxi to Pudong of all the skyscrapers is usually what you see in the magazines when they show you a picture of Shanghai. You can tell by the presence of the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower, the building that looks kind of like a spaceship from a movie in the 50s when they decided to go with the rocket ship look as opposed to the flying saucer look.

I did make it to another vegetarian restaurant the other day which was quite good. That meal I passed with six Couchsurfers. I think I was still the only vegetarian which made for a lot of indifference and complaining about the food and vegetarian food in general. These people all volunteered for the meal, but I think both of my vegetarian meals have been with non-vegetarians who don't particularly care for vegetarian food. I'd like to find some people with whom I can dine who actually appreciate the meals instead of tolerate them. It's not like the food is bad, it's just that they love meat and want to make sure I know that what I'm eating is a sad excuse for food and not possibly comparable to the delicious taste of an animal that was probably killed in a way so horrible that they wouldn't want to watch for a few seconds let alone the duration of the animals miserable life. This reminds me, Mark Zuckerberg was in a news article I briefly managed to read in which he described his new annual challenge that he apparently sets for himself each year. I happen to like that idea by the way. Last year he learned Chinese, or at least began to study it. Once Youtube works again I'll have to go find a video of him speaking it and see how he did with a few hours of study each day for one year. Sticking to something regularly makes a difference. It was always said when I was learning to read music that practicing 10 minutes a day is better than 4 hours every few weeks. Anyway, his new challenge is not eating any meat from an animal he has not killed himself. So he killed a chicken and a pig so far I think. And he also boiled a live lobster himself. The last part sounds pretty awful, but at least I give him credit for the idea of taking responsibility for what you are eating and being aware of what actually went into the meal on your plate. I doubt most of the self-professed meat lovers would ever do such a thing. Sure there are a few hunters, but they are not the ones bitching to me about what's wrong with my diet.

Well, it'd be easy to write more but that seems like enough tangents for one day. Besides, who knows how long my window will be open for me to publish this. Today, headed to language exchange again. The weather is a bit better this week, so I will stay longer I think. Last week was good but drizzly and the meeting was outdoors. Not a great combination. Various plans for the upcoming week. June 6th heading to Hangzhou, June 10th flying to Singapore. Still need to book a hostel in Singapore actually, though I booked something in downtown Mumbai so at least that is ready to go. The hostel booking sites don't work normally, they require some kind of tunnel or proxy which doesn't always work, so I'm kind of at the mercy of the government when it comes to booking accommodation. Makes perfect sense, don't you think?

Beginning a new week in Shanghai

So much happens, it's hard to document.

I just ate my standard Chinese breakfast which has been two vegetable buns and congee with pickled veggies. It costs 3.8 RMB which I think is a pretty good deal. That's 58 cents USD. I think I have had that breakfast or some variation thereof from that place since I found it. I have ventured out to new nearby places for lunch several times. I haven't gotten the crazy potato/vegetable stuffed bread lately, though I might be due for a return. This week I will start to go to vegetarian restaurants a little more. Up until now I have had several restaurant meals but often with people who do not want to eat vegetarian food.

One such meal was with my CS friend Jacqueline and 4 of her friends. They are all expats living in Shanghai, two Japanese and 2 American, plus Jacqueline who is English. They have all been living in China for years. We ate Xibo food, an ethnic minority from Xinjiang province. The food is meat heavy but the veggies and tofu I got were good. The restaurant was completely full of expats. There were a few Chinese but no tables without foreigners, and in fact most tables were entirely foreigners. Prices were also foreigner-friendly. They got even more foreigner-friendly at the Cotton Club, a bar/lounge we walked to after dinner. It had kind of a smoky nightclub feel with a stage. There were three musical acts. The first was a girl from LA singing songs and playing guitar. The second was pretty much a blues band made up of I think all expats, maybe a few guys who were sort of local or born outside of China. The third was a guy from Texas being the frontman for the blues band and playing mostly Stevie Ray Vaughan covers. All the guys looked to be in their late 30s or 40s from what I could tell. Most of the musicians were pretty good. The prices in the bar were what I'd call exorbitant. A beer was the equivalent of $9-10 USD. There was no cheap option. I think a glass of fountain soda was about $7. A can was $8 or more. People seemed to happily pay it. The Texas guy and some of the band members had brought an entourage who loudly encouraged them. A few of the women got up to dance. The bar felt like a cross between a club in New York due to ambience and prices but the band reminded me more of a random Florida blues band. Their first instrumental jam was enjoyable, but it sort of went downhill from there. Like I said though, most of the musicians were decent. The singing varied. What can I say, I'm a tough critic. Also, the expat scene kind of weirded me out in ways I've yet to figure out how to describe.

Another day, I met Yasmine, her boyfriend, and her brother at the tailors' market. That place is a giant building of at least 3 floors, probably more, filled to the brim with tailors' stalls where one can buy pretty much any manner of clothing. More than that though, it specializes in custom clothing. You can go, get measured, and they will make customized suits, shirts, pants, whatever you want. They have magazines with pictures of stylish celebrities and you can point to the suits you like, choose fabrics, then come back in a few days and they will have made the suit for you from scratch. You can go through several fittings to get things just right. If memory serves, a man's suit will cost something like 450 RMB which is like $70 USD. That's for the pants and jacket. It seems like with a little bit of knowledge and effort, it'd be possible to get a whole lot of suits and fancy clothing for a lot less than it would be to buy in the US. As my guide book pointed out (and I agree) this place is "overrun" with foreigners shopping for deals, though there were plenty of locals too.

After the tailors' market expedition, they decided they wanted to go to the driving range and hit golf balls. They kept calling it the "shooting" range which I explained is something else. So I went along, having never been to a driving range in my life. Having the first one be in China seemed like a good idea. This place was pretty much filled with Chinese guys, some with ridiculous outfits and apparently expensive gear. I didn't realize that modern driving ranges have cameras that record your swing so you can review it after each shot. That's pretty cool actually. I hit a few balls. I got one to roll past the 100 yard mark, that was probably my best. Having tried it, I'd actually do it again, though it seems to me it would take about a billion years to get good enough to be consistent.

It rained and was chilly for a few days. I didn't really enjoy that, though it did make me less annoyed to be carrying around a sweater which I'd not worn since New York. I applauded my foresight actually. Way to rewrite history. Today the sun is out and I am really happy about that. Last night I met a few new friends in the hostel and today I think one will join me for a walk. I was thinking of hitting up a tourist site in Shanghai in the old city. The Old City itself sounds nice, and there is an ancient imperial garden or something that sounds worth the visit as well. I have also begun to arrange some meetups with other Couchsurfers. A lot more has probably happened, but I will continue to document my experiences as I retain them. Also, if anyone has questions about Shanghai or China, drop me an email and I will be happy to try and answer them to the best of my ability.

Getting started eating in Shanghai

I have had three of the best meals I have had on this trip in the last 24 hours. Two of them were from the same place, and all three were within a few minutes of my hostel. Meals is probably overstating it. More like things I have eaten.

The second things were some kind of stuffed bread. One stuffed with vegetables. The other stuffed with potatos and vegetables. They were both kind of spicy. The first and third I got from this other place for yesterday's and today's breakfast. Yesterday was congee with some kind of pickled veggies and some red bean steamed buns to go with it. Today he had vegetable buns instead, with chopped green veggies and I think small pieces of tofu inside. Today's breakfast was 6 yuan. Yesterday's was 3.5 I think. I think the bread thingies were also like 3-5, I don't remember. So let's say those 3 meals costed about 2 USD. Oh, I forgot, there was one more meal...

Last night coming back from a Couchsurfing meetup with two guys from the hostel, we searched for food nearby and found this pretty crowded noodle place in the same cluster of places where I'd bought my stuffed bread for lunch. It was sufficiently packed with people so we took a closer look. They had pre-assembled plates of items to be stir-fried right there in a wok sitting atop a giant flame, and four bowls of noodles to choose from. I chose a plate of what is called dou fu gan, a dried tofu which is quite firm, which she stir-fried with veggies and noodles. My friend got chicken. They normally use pig lard or pork when they stir fry I think, but I requested they leave that out. We took it to go and ate at the hostel down the block. Very delicious, I was surprised by how good it was. That meal broke the bank at 10 yuan, or about $1.50 USD. Even though Shanghai has this reputation for being expensive, and surely I have been in a few bars now where beer and drink prices are basically the same as NYC, it is clear that there are also plenty of places that are not like that. It all depends where you want to hang out. I will probably go to more actual vegetarian restaurants next week where I'm sure I will spend more on meals, but as opposed to back in New York where I don't even eat breakfast very often, I feel like if I could get a couple of steamed buns or congee there as easily as I do here, I might look forward to it the way I do here. I know some will say I can get those things in Chinatown, but it's not the same for a number of reasons. First of all there are tons of places literally a few hundred feet from where I stay here. Secondly everything is pretty much ready, fresh, and I think tastes better than anything I've had like this in NYC. Finally, it's ridiculously cheap.

I met a bunch of interesting people at this hostel, but for now I will only say that it is clearly possible to travel to an incredible number of places, or to travel across the world for a long period of time, and not learn anything at all. They're not all like that, but I see it a lot. I'm glad I waited until I was older to travel. Sometimes I have thought how nice it'd be to have started in my early-mid 20s like a lot of these guys, but I feel like I never could've possibly appreciated the way I do now or had the patience to see it at the pace I do.

Getting started in Shanghai

Maybe I had decided to like Shanghai before I got here. I at least has positive expectations. Even though I haven't seen all that much of the city, I like it here. There is some element, some sense of detail, some little international flair in the architecture, something that reminds me of Hong Kong, and probably many other things that have made me really enjoy my time here so far.

I arrived Tuesday evening at Hongqiao airport, the domestic one without the Maglev technology demonstration train that I was kind of curious to see. It was still large and pretty clean. I kind of compare everything to Hong Kong in terms of cleanliness and efficiency. Not much can keep up, but still, the process of getting from airport via subway and feet to my hostel was easy. The hostel is large and really clean with nice indoor and outdoor communal areas. I'm sitting on a small patio in front of my own room in a lounge chair with various plans and landscaping nearby.

I had dinner with Yasmine the first night at a Vietnamese restaurant in one of Shanghai's ten billion malls. We stuck to English mostly. It's weird to speak Chinese with her since we always spoke English in New York. Back then she spoke Cantonese but no Mandarin. Now she speaks Mandarin well after two years of living here and having a Chinese boyfriend. That said, last night we went out again, this time with four of her friends who are all Chinese and we spoke Chinese for the whole meal. Perhaps that will eventually not merit mentioning but for now I make note of all my Chinese conversations since they make me happy.

I posted on Couchsurfing that night to seek out people with whom to go to vegetarian restaurants and people with whom to trade English for Mandarin. I received various responses but one was particularly interesting. A girl with whom I had almost met via CS during her trip to NYC in 2007 wrote to me. We had not managed to meet then due to her time constraints but we had added each other on MSN and then forgotten how we knew each other. Yesterday she wrote me and said, "Now I know who you are!" and we recalled the whole story. We ended up meeting for lunch and she took me to a lovely Japanese-run vegetarian cafe on a beautiful, quaint street with this sort of old-style and foreigner-influenced architecture. We ended up speaking at length with the owner who was incredibly friendly and insisted on giving us all this food to try. Then we took a short walk around the neighborhood and parted ways before I walked back about 30 minutes through the city to my hotel. I need to do more walks like that but actually my time has been reasonably filled since arriving. I suppose all of this happened yesterday though somehow it feels like longer.

Since being here I also had a good conversation with an American at the hostel who lived in Hangzhou and teaches there who was visiting Shanghai for the weekend. I also met another guest here, also American, who has been living in Asia in different locations for years including Taiwan and Korea. He teaches as well. After dinner last night with Yasmine and her friends at an extremely non-vegetarian restaurant, I met up with Couchsurfers at this insane bar called Zapatas in a nightlife district of Shanghai. It was packed with everyone I'd like to avoid being in Shanghai. That probably sounds elitist but hey, it's just not my scene. Large groups of foreigners who don't seem to be connected with Chinese culture at all and groups of Chinese people who think they are cool. Maybe I'm generalizing and maybe that is local culture, but the music was loud and horrible and the scene out of the sort of bar I'd never want to visit in New York. That said, they had an outdoor area which was better and the Couchsurfers I'd come to meet turned out to be very nice. We ended up eventually going to a karaoke place which was a lot like the one I visited in Taiwan a long time ago. Here, those places are like hotels. You arrive and go to a front desk where you check in and they escort you to your room on any number of floors. The places are gigantic. You pay a flat rate for the room for the night I believe, but it was hard to be sure since none of the local Couchsurfers would let us pay for anything despite fervent efforts. It ended up being four local Chinese, one guy and three girls, two Australian guys in Shanghai for the summer, one guy from Switzerland here for a few months and me.

Other interesting conversations include two women who are friends of the owners of the hostel who work down the block and were hanging out in the common area. Also an interesting conversation with the security guard last night who asked me if there are black people in the US and how come people who are from the US don't all look the same. He also asked how long different people live. The people who work at the hostel are nice, I speak with them in Chinese. Last night at karaoke I spoke with the girls in Chinese mostly, though a few of them clearly wanted to practice English so I did what I could to help. I have received several emails from people interested in language exchange which I will try to respond to today. The internet is very erratic which is frustrating. It's probably a reason I'd find it tough to live here long-term. I think Taiwan or HK seem more likely choices at the moment. That said, Shanghai is probably the most western-friendly and yet culturally-interesting city I have visited in China. I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone who has been here though despite all the time I have spent in China previously, this is still on my second full day in Shanghai.

Anyway, I have a ton of research and work to do on vegetarian restaurants which I'm going to try to do today. I had congee and a red bean bun for breakfast from a place down the street. The guy at the hostel pointed me in the right direction when I asked where I could get something other than the English and American breakfasts they offer here. The guys at the congee place asked if I'm staying at the hostel and I said yes. They said they see all these foreigners all the time but none of them speak Chinese, so they were very impressed and complimentary. This is the style of course but I appreciate the encouragement even though my Chinese has a long way to go. I'm working pretty hard at it here, speaking constantly whenever possible and looking up and writing down new words as much as I can. But about the restaurants, there is this pretty great website called dianping.com which is a Chinese restaurant guide someone turned me on to. They have an Android app too which I installed, but everything is entirely in Chinese. That's not going to stop me from integrating it into MTS in the next few days and using their content to monitor the existence of vegetarian restaurants throughout China. I will play with that today as well. Also later tonight there is a CS meetup in Pudong, the giant financial center of Shanghai which I haven't laid eyes on yet. That's the place with that crazy tower and all those skyscrapers you often see in the news when they show pictures of Shanghai. I wanted to check out the view but didn't make it there yesterday. Tonight before the meetup I'm going to try to go over to the Bund which is the promenade by the water in Puxi, the west side of the river where I am staying. Then if possible I will try to take some kind of ferry of which I think there are many over to Pudong and work my way towards wherever that cafe is where they meet. Couchsurfing has been very useful for meeting locals on all of my travels and here is no different.

I originally booked 6 days in Shanghai. I have since extended to 10 and may extend further. I like being in one place. I like getting to know a city better and not having to move so often. I like this hostel and neighborhood. I like not having to pack my backpack every 3 days to relocate to some new place. I like the people I've met so far and I seem to have no shortage of things to do here.

more Guangzhou

I boiled water to brush my teeth. Some people think that's overkill, but I am not one of those people. Considering that there was just a scandal in China where some company was using chemicals or bleach or something horrifying to change pork so that it looks like beef and then selling it to people, I don't think taking a few extra precautions with the water is unreasonable.

I'd also like to add that mosquitos seem to be extraordinarily patient. Also, certain breeds seem to have the ability to teleport short distances.

I have seen 4 public urinations so far I think. Three were children under the guidance of a parent. One was in the Hong Kong train station on the way to Guangzhou with a parent holding an empty bag from Ichiban for the kid to piss in. Just now I saw a kid pissing into a plant next to the entrance of my hotel in Guangzhou, again at the direction of a parent. Last night I saw a cab driver pulled over to piss on the side of the road, facing traffic.

I have passed my time in Guangzhou counting offenses against humanity, but also visiting with some friends, some friends of friends, some parents of friends, eating at vegetarian restaurants, and acclimating to things I'd forgotten about. In the three or so years since I was last here, it is incredible how much the city has changed and is continuing to change. There are whole new neighborhoods filled with enormous skyscrapers that were not here last time I was, as well as many new subway lines that completely did not exist. It makes me wonder a little why the Second Ave subway is taking so long and why the new WTC is going to take another two years to build. The economic progress made here is impressive. That said, watching how people behave towards each other can be a little depressing, though I suppose that's true in the US too.

Today I went to a vegetarian restaurant called Loving Hut for lunch. There are many locations of this restaurant, over 100 world-wide. The restaurants are presided over by Supreme Master Ching Hai, a woman who is a spiritual teacher of sorts with about 20k followers according to Wikipedia. At a lot of the restaurants, there are televisions playing propaganda about her recommended method for reaching enlightenment. On one hand, I'm glad there are more vegetarian and vegan restaurants in the world. On the other, the glassy-eyed look of the servers in most of those restaurants I've visited gives me the creeps. Also, the tea tasted funny and now I am experiencing an uncontrollable urge to apply for a job there.

After lunch I met up with a CSer friend I'd met in New York. We went to Yuexiu park, probably the only tourist thing I have done really in Guangzhou or possibly on the whole trip. I showed her some of the Taiji moves I have learned to the bemused stares of passersby. People still stare at me kind of a lot, more than I remember. I wonder if I just got used to that last time.

As nice as some of the new Guangzhou is, particularly last night walking around the new "Central Park of Guangzhou" (the way Carrie put it), I'm ready to move on to Shanghai and Hangzhou. Those are both cities to which I have never been, about which I have heard much, and that I am interested to explore for myself. So far on the trip I have only been in places that although I like, I have already been, and I think I am craving for some new locales. I fly to Shanghai tomorrow afternoon and I booked an actual hostel which not only sounds comfortable, but where I hope to find a nice common area where I can socialize more easily. I also have several friends in Shanghai who I'm looking forward to seeing. In Hong Kong hostels there is no space for a common area and in Guangzhou I stayed at Carrie's empty flat for two nights and a random hotel in Tianhe for the second two just cause it was cheap and in a convenient location to where I needed to be.

The last night in Guangzhou involved Indian food, some beer, and a couple of nice long walks in what has actually been slightly wet but very comfortable weather about which I really can't complain. I just took a shower and there was nothing between 30 and 1000 degrees. At least the shower was clean which I think I might prefer to reliable hot water. I can learn to enjoy 1000 degree showers if necessary.

Anyway, 24 hours I'll be in Shanghai for the first time. More then.

in Guangzhou

So far I cannot reach Facebook, Blogspot, the primary Google.com, and many other Google sites like Google Reader and Google Language Tools which I often use to translate Chinese. I used an SSH tunnel for 10 minutes through my home machine to access those sites, and now I can't reach that either. I thought it may have just been a crappy internet connection but I connected through another machine and the home machine is still up. This means my home machine was accessible and then blocked. I am not sure how this could be unless they are blocking it because of SSH traffic or something like that. If that is the case, then that's freakin' nuts. Although I experienced this years ago when I was here and I read articles about it periodically, the reality of experiencing it firsthand is still shocking.

I'm in Guangzhou for 4 nights. Yesterday I came on the train from Hong Kong. I talked the whole way with this guy from New Zealand. Nice guy. We talked about Flight of the Conchords a lot. I wonder if New Zealanders are tired of hearing that, but he didn't seem to mind. I guess it makes a change from Lord of the Rings and "Oh, I hear New Zealand is really beautiful." I have been speaking a decent amount of Chinese. I suppose I won't know til a month has passed whether improvement is occurring. I have some new words in my arsenal for the moment at least.

Went to the CS meetup in Guangzhou last night with Carrie and her boyfriend Nick. Smallish group, maybe 20 or so. Talked to a few interesting folks. The cafe where they hold it is in the neighborhood Tian He where I stayed last time I was here. I don't think the cafe was here at that time though Guangzhou has seemingly changed a lot in the 3 years since my last visit. I was pretty hungry after a day of traveling which should've been easy but turned a bit more difficult after a couple of wrong numbers, some difficult Chinese conversations, a long wait at the bank to exchange money while innumerable forms were stamped, and about an hour and a half of me trying and failing to get 3g working on my new Chinese SIM card. It works now thankfully and ultimately I made it to Carrie's old apartment where I am staying. She lives elsewhere now and this apartment is still owned by her parents and therefore vacant. The neighborhod is what I would call "authentic." Anyway, being hungry I was concerned about lack of options at the cafe but was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was owned by a former New Yorker and there was red lentil hummus on the menu. Total score. I've been eating quite a lot of Chinese food and was aching for some variation.

Worth mentioning also was my second CS meetup in HK on Thursday night before leaving. They have a nice group there and a pretty big meetup in a cool and somewhat hidden bar in an otherwise chaotic and drunk-foreigner-filled neighborhood. My last few days in HK I also quite successfully met up with various CSers for nice vegetarian meals. I could've stayed longer in HK actually. I find it to be a pretty comfortable city with enough international influence to feel diverse. It also runs amazingly well. I noticed that especially in the last 24 hours in Guangzhou where the subway was built by the same people but just lacks the little details. In Hong Kong the subway you want always seems to be across the tracks when you get off your train. Everything is immaculate. The Octopus cards are just incredible and easy and fast. It is at least slightly embarassing how much better the HK subway is than ours in NYC, although we still run 24 hours which trumps cleanliness. Also, the walkways always seem to put people in the right place so that the sheer volume of traffic never seems to overwhelm. Maybe the people play some role here. In New York when people try to get on the train before people get off, it always annoys me. In China, they have really taken that to the next level. There is virtually no pretense of creating space for the people to debark. Just two masses trying to mush their way past each other. I wonder about the thought processes of the groups involved but I don't suppose I'll ever know.

I wonder if other people talk to the mosquitos when hunting them in a room in some other country. Now it's still early, but last night I was up a few times in the middle of the night trying to track mosquitos somewhere in this room with a towel or some other killing implement. Little bastards.

There were a few other things I'd made a note to write about when the opportunity next arose. I think the main one was that a few nights before leaving HK, I'd been hit on by a prostitute. This happens somewhat regularly in bars in Hong Kong but what was unusual about this occasion was that I was in 7-11 at the time, looking at the Chinese stomach medication. She initially asked if I needed help choosing medicine before asking where I was staying. So rarely do you find a doctor these days willing to make housecalls.

I hope I like Shanghai cause I'd like to stay still for a while an settle in. I moved hotels 3 times in Hong Kong and I'm only in Guangzhou for 4 days. It all feels like too much uprooting for a short period. The hostel I booked in Shanghai for the first 6 days got impossibly good reviews, is in a good neighborhood, and is very reasonably-priced. If it is as good as it sounds, hopefully I will just feel like extending and stay there for a while. Hangzhou is near to Shanghai and is by all accounts a beautiful and relaxing city which also sounds like an appealing place to pass time. I'm still deciding on Beijing. On one hand I'd like to see what has become of it since I have not been since before the Olympics. On the other hand, maybe just too much to deal with. These decisions will be made later. That's when all the best decisions are made.

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I met some guy at the CS meetup on Thursday who claimed to make $1500-2000 a month just from his travel blog. I don't know much about what he does beyond write about his travels or how he promotes it, although he had a lot to say about SEO and other buzzwordy sorts of things. He asked me how I'm monetizing my own site and expressed shock at the "number of pages" I have on More Than Salad and that I was not yet making enough money to cover my travels around the world. He did have an interesting story involving leaving home at a young age and traveling non-stop for years. He lives in Thailand now, originally from Ireland, and had various adventures of all sorts living in loads of interesting countries. He was with another CSer who was an American living in Korea and they were passing through Hong Kong en route to Macau for a vacation of sorts though I didn't manage to get the whole story before pulled away into some other strange tale of adventure such as one often runs into at Couchsurfing meetups.

Last night I met up with two Couchsurfers and two of one of their friends for a vegetarian meal. I have begun to organize more vigorously vegetarian gatherings, specifically lunch and dinner at a different restaurant each day until I leave. It took me a while to settle into Hong Kong and get sufficiently over jetlag and so on to be able to effectively gather people, but now I have figured out that the best way to do it is just to post a time and place and people will either show up or not and not to bother trying to come up with a time and place that actually works for everyone. In last night's case, originally only person had confirmed and as I was walking to the restaurant to meet that person, they had texted me and bailed.

As an aside let me say that I have a SIM card in HK for the first time that supports data/internet access and it has been awesome. I have this new More Than Salad app for my phone which enables me to see a map in real-time of all vegetarian restaurants in proximity to my current location. I'm releasing on the Android market soon, maybe this week actually. I also can look things up instantly which is important for all the research I'm doing and useful for travel as well of course. Finally and most importantly, I installed Skype on my Android phone and was able to use it to call my mother for Mother's day for free, from Hong Kong. I think the quality is better than a normal phone call, it's free, and I can use it basically the same as my normal phone. A lot of people seem less amazed by that than I am.

So as I was saying, the person was busy at work and bailed, but we renegotiated a later time during which 3 more people texted me and were interested, and I ended up spending an hour in the park doing Tai Chi before meeting up and all of us enjoying an interesting vegetarian meal at a restaurant in Kowloon called Gaia, a sort of modernish Chinese/Buddhist vegetarian place inside of a mall.

I didn't have anything really focused to add here about what I'm doing and I've sort of digressed, but the actual real point was that in an experiment in monetization, I have added the hideous ad block you see at the top of this entry. I figure it is not too obtrusive and certainly can't hurt. Since there is now quite a lot of content in this blog, people seem to find their way to it randomly and who knows what useful or trivial thing they might uncover. Maybe I should add more pictures though...

HK more

People in HK and I suppose in China too do not walk on the grass. In parks, there are paths, and everybody stays on the path. There aren't actually fences or anything to prevent one from going on the grass, but everybody is content to remain on the path anyway. One Chinese friend tells me this is because if people were to walk on the grass, it would quickly erode since it could not handle the sheer volume of people who would be walking on it. You know how people go an lie on the grass in Central Park? Don't have that anywhere as far as I can tell. I will keep looking.

I'm in Hong Kong. I slept almost 8 hours last night which is a record. My friend Carrie from Guangzhou was here from Saturday til Sunday night. I forced her to eat vegetarian food, we were up on a roof garden on Hong Kong island drinking a beer, and we went to Lamma Island for a walk yesterday. After the debacle of the previous hostel giving away my room, I dug up another room not too far away in a sort of newish area adjacent to Mong Kok which may or may not be considered part of it, called Tai Kok Tsui. Very local from what I can tell. Carrie and I had breakfast (well she ate and I watched) at a very simple hole-in-the-wall breakfast joint on the street nearby, but the food was more Hong Kong style than traditional Cantonese from what I can tell cause they had things like toast and cheese instead of more traditional Chinese fare. It reminded me of this old place called the Rainbow Cafe in Chinatown which had similar Hong Kong style cuisine which mixes Chinese with Western. Oh yeah, she also had spam which I learned how to say in Chinese and translates as the optimistic "lunch meat." So I'd found this place where Carrie stayed for one night and I stayed one additional night to avoid moving yet again which I will do today instead. I found a place back in Tsim Sha Tsui which is affordable and will be down there for the 4 more nights of decided to spend in HK. It is indeed more expensive here than it was 3 years ago and I'm ready to move on to Shanghai so I can actually speak more Chinese and also get more bang for my buck.

The plan is to go Friday to Guangzhou by train, spend the weekend there, then on Tuesday I booked a flight to Shanghai as well as a place to stay there for about a week. I have several old friends in Shanghai and I have never been to the city, so I'm excited for the visit there. I'm booked through the 23rd of May and haven't decided where I'd go next. It depends how much I enjoy Shanghai I suppose. The nearby city of Hangzhou is a strong possibility for at least a few days. Suzhou is also very close and possibly a day trip from what I have heard. From what I understand it is a city filled with canals and other traditional-style homes and so on, but that may also mean that it is pretty much just for tourists. As for other possibilities, still considering Beijing though I think next I must look into how I'm going to get to Singapore where I must definitely arrive by around June 10-12 or so and from where I will pick up my already-booked flight to Mumbai on June 17th. Between my last booked day in Shanghai and then, there are about 2.5-3 weeks. It sounds like a lot, but I'm trying to pace myself and not go to too many places. Moving around too much can quickly get tiring. I'm looking forward to Shanghai where I will stay in the same place for one week and can focus on work and seeing my friends without the additional hassle of moving places every few days. I will try to do something similar for the rest of the trip whenever possible.

And so things take shape.

A few days in

I moved to Mong Kok. I'm not sure why. I was here once and I remember it being local and interesting. It is also utter chaos. Hong Kong is supposed to have this incredibly high population density, one of the highest in the world, and I don't have much trouble believing that, but in most parts of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon in which I have spent time, I never felt it to be substantially more crowded than New York or any other place I've been. Tonight, which happens to be Friday which may or may not provide an extra kick to the size of the crowds, I really felt on the verge of being overwhelmed. It's the kind of crowd where when you get to a big intersection, there's the crowd on your side and the crowd on the other side, getting bigger and bigger as you all wait for the light to turn, which in Hong Kong involves a series of beeps not unlike a patient on a hospital show going into cardiac arrest, and then these two enormous swimming pools filled with people just sort of charge each other like a battle with cellphones and shopping bags instead of broadswords, though I would have found use for the latter.

The crowds are not only enormous here creating a steady stream of traffic on the sidewalk into one must merge swiftly and decisively, but people pay zero attention to what's going on around them. I was thinking about this as I saw people stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk to pursue their cellphone conversation more intently, or turn around backwards to stop and talk to their friend behind them, or any number of comparable behaviors. People don't become aware of it either unless verbally notified. They seem genuinely oblivious. People are also constantly moving in and out of streams of people, pushing, jostling, getting directly in front of you if you're on line. I think this must have to do with growing up in a place with this many people and just getting used to having no personal space ever. On the New York subway once a while during rush hour you are shoved a little too closet to someone for comfort, but even if the train is relatively empty in Hong Kong, people will just stand what I find to be uncomfortably close, though I think I realized over the course of the last few days that it is ridiculous to get upset when somebody is freelancing the sidewalk in front of me, zigzagging in any direction for no particularly apparent reason, preventing me from moving forward. If I got upset every time somebody did something that shows they are completely unaware of me or my desire to share the sidewalk with them, I'd probably get to see the inside of a Hong Kong psyche ward, which would make for a good blog entry I bet.

We in the US of course have a massive consumerist culture, but here, it just feels more. More of everything. I saw a woman today wearing a shirt that said "Get Rich and Spend Money" in huge letters on the front. She was maybe 40ish. It didn't seem to be an ironic statement, but who knows. I passed a store called "Trendy Bear." On my way to vegetarian shenanigans this evening, I walked through a shopping district that reminded me of the feeding frenzy described by Robert Shaw in Jaws. I guess we have all of this too, but here it feels like there is an intensity to the spending and desire to acquire that we either don't have in the US or I don't notice as I do here. I also walked down a street similar to 5th Ave filled with fancy brand names likes Gucci and Prada and they actually have lines to wait and get into department stores. Long lines in which people stand and wait. I saw a Lamborghini on that street too.

So all of this said, there are some crazy things they pull off here which I have no idea how we could ever accomplish. The subway stations here as I said years ago, are immaculate. Not only are they incredibly clean and well-designed, including labeled exits telling you what significant streets and landmarks a given exit will dump you at, but also tons of shops and things to buy down in the elaborate subway stations. Of course you have your 7-11 or what-have-you, but today I passed this shop which really summed it up, which was a really nice bakery with fancy desserts. It's all clean and bright and crisp, the polar opposite of the NY subways which although I love for running 24 hours, look like the world has gone up and the only thing left are rats and garbage. Alright, I give a few stations credit for making effort with sculptures (like the cool little men at the 8th Ave L train) or the tiled murals you see around, but still, can you imagine there being a confectionary or a shop selling electronics in a New York subway station? It's not like there are even many cops around in the stations. Also, they have tons of staff down there including people cleaning on a regularly basis. Also, yesterday I saw a freakin' ipad, sort of embedded in this wall unit, along with several other terminals which have free internet. Nobody had cracked the screen or written obscenities on it. So although there is this constant, unending explosion of people, somehow they all have some large degree of respect for the city and for the laws. Either that or they know if you try to steal the iPad you spend the rest of your life in Mongolia mining raw materials for the new high-speed rail between Beijing and Shanghai.

Anyway, beyond social observations, I went to the park in Kowloon again at 5am to do taiji with the senior citizens. It's pretty atmospheric. I did a bunch of work in the morning hours, eventually went out in the afternoon for a while with my friend Mafa who is originally from Beijing and doesn't speak much English, so I had a chance to speak Chinese which in Hong Kong is somewhat uncommon. I later moved to this hostel only to find out that they actually pay attention to the arrival time you specify without thinking on the online reservation from and that if you do not arrive within two hours of it, they will in fact give away your room to the next person to wander in off the street. So I showed up and they had no room. They were pretty nice about it, and ultimately decided they'd give me a 4-bed room for the price of my original room, which was thoughtful of them, and as it turns out the room is actually quite nice and clean. I would actually stay at this hostel again despite the difficulty with the reservation. They did in fact say that in their emails, I just didn't look carefully because I'd never encountered a policy like that. Apparently they have a lot of no-shows which is why they do it. So after moving, I was tempted to fall asleep but I fought it and went out to some Japanese vegetarian place that's new in the hurricane of commerce that is this neighborhood. Now I am back and it's 10:30pm and I'm proud of myself for making it this far without napping today. I plan to sleep well tonight and hopefully later than 5am so I can be on my way past the jetlag.

More to come. Probably a lot more.

Return to Hong Kong

I haven't been here in over 3 years I think. I am too jetlagged to write in a lucid manner, but here are a few things I wrote down on the plane:

- A/C power on the plane is awesome. I have had my laptop plugged in this entire time and due to foresight on my part, have been doing all of this work on my website while offline. For those wondering I have a local development environment on my netbook, which actually has a really long-lasting battery, but completely unlimited time is always better cause the battery ain't gonna last 16 freakin' hours which is how long this flight is.

- People are disgusting. I don't understand why public toilet seats have to be completely soaked with others' urine. In the airport and on the plane. I mean, if you're a guy who is standing or a girl who is hovering (or some combination thereof) then lift up the seat. Use your foot, I know, I don't want to touch it either. Your shoe is already touching the ground so it's the same difference. When I leave a public bathroom whether I sat or stood, it doesn't look like a garden sprinkler went off in there.

- Babies should be banned on planes, or airlines should have non-baby flights. That said, congratulations on reproducing, you seem to be doing a bang-up job.

- 16 hours is pretty long.

- Those inflatable neck-hugging headrests? You look ridiculous when you walk around the plane with one on.

- Cathay Pacific's in-flight entertainment system television and movie selection is ridiculous. They had many seasons of maybe 20 American shows, plus maybe 50+ movies including new ones in the theater and old, random ones like Tron and 12 Angry Men. That said, they could not give me a bottle of water, though I thought it was funny when she offered two glasses instead.

I left New York at 3pm, on time. Arrived in Hong Kong 7am EST, 7pm local time in HK. Maybe we landed an hour earlier than that actually. Apparently we saved some time due to wind of some kind. All airport logistics on both ends were simple. No lines, no waiting, pretty easy. Upon arrival I took the Airport Express in Hong Kong into the city, a train that is so fast and for which buying fare is so trivial that it is embarrassing we do not have anything remotely comparable in New York. I bought a new Octopus Card, which is an RFID based card that you can use for pretty much all transportation plus in convenience stores and fast food stores. Another thing we don't have. In fact, tons of things make our systems look antiquated.

I forgot how crazy the city was. when I got out to walk from the train station to the subway, it was very humid and the car and human traffic was a little overwhelming. It was nice to see the scenery of downtown Kowloon again. I forced myself to stay awake until about 10:30pm and then fell asleep, making it until 5am which I considered pretty good under the circumstances. When I finally got up, I went to Kowloon Park nearby and jogged. I was actually far from alone, there were a decent number of people out there at 5:30-6 or whatever it was. Also several large groups of old people doing exercises, calisthenics, kung fu and tai ji. They all seem to be in pretty good shape. I did my own taiji in the vicinity. It seems to be that some people stick with the group and follow along, others just sort of are off doing their own thing. The park is pretty full with people doing that. It's quite empty on the sidewalks on that hour by contrast.

I got my cell phone working with a local sim card which is not really noteworthy, but this is the first time I got prepaid data service on my phone. Now i actually have internet on my phone which is as fast or faster than the network I use at home. This enabled me to fire up the brand new soon-to-be-released More Than Salad android app which is working like a charm. I went to a few restaurants but tomorrow I will work in earnest on the Hong Kong section of the site. I did manage to have one great meal at Branto Vegetarian Club, one of my favorite Indian restaurants in the world.

I took a nap this afternoon for about 3-4 hours I guess from which I just woke up. Now I'm going to go to a Couchsurfing meetup in Lan Kuai Fong, the first I've been to in HK. Apparently 40 people rsvp'd. I met a few CSers last time I was in Hong Kong, but there definitely weren't gatherings like that back then, so I'm looking forward to checking it out and socializing a bit, even though my body is all kinds of out of whack. This will also be my first visit on Hong Kong Island in a while since I pretty much stuck to Kowloon. It was pretty foggy today so I'll probably just take the subway though it is tempting to take the Star Ferry across the harbor instead just for the view of the skyline.

Much more to come, hopefully in a less stream-of-consciousness fashion.