Debate Time!

Wow, isn't everyone so excited about the Democratic presidential candidates debate tonight in South Carolina? (Included here for your pleasure is the most overexposed photo of the season.) I know! All the fun I've been missing, out there in the Orient. Coverage on other coverage, the candidates' image-making, and lowering expectations.

Spotlight: Me

Three pictures Eric took of me (thanks!) while we were in Hong Kong: At the Victoria Park courts, at Chocolux in Soho, and on the Star Ferry going toward Kowloon (new glasses and all). Click on the arrow to advance.

Chinese Laundry

Learning to do the wash, the local way. We have a machine, but you have to move everything from wash cycle to the rinse cycles manually, as well as to the spin cycle. Then onto the terrace for hanging and clipping. Overall, not so bad. A soothing kind of busy work. And I needed to be self-sufficient when my parents left one week earlier than I did.

If my clothes smell when I get back, gimme a break. I'm a beginner.

Surprise Departure

Earlier today, I was turned away at an internet cafe because I didn't have identification, so I went back to my apartment to dig up my passport. While doing so, I figured I'd take a look at my receipt for Thursday's return flight to Tokyo/Minneapolis/New York. Guess what -- I leave on Wednesday! Oops ... suddenly, tomorrow is my last day.

It's been just about four weeks now, but I could have stayed longer. Obviously the 50-cent bubble teas are a huge incentive, but it's being in a new place, working on conversing, seeing different kinds of things, spending time with my newfound cousin, that I wish I could still have when I go back. Of course there'll be tons of new stuff still to see back in the States. I mean, isn't there a Z train in New York or something?

Anyway, the thing I'll miss most is actually being here. You learn a lot from CNN or Thomas Friedman about what PR campaign they're brewing up in Beijing or the growth of the middle class, but you can also learn some just by comparing what you know with what you see. Chinese people are getting richer by the second, but are they themselves ready for their prosperity? You see the pollution and the disorder, and you're not sure. And how come so few people in Shanghai (and in Hong Kong, too) read books on the subways? Mainly I saw PSPs and cellphones. Some MP3 players, too. Not like the amount of reading going on in, say, New York. And is that a bad thing? And why is the McDonald's here so much better than in the U.S.? Seriously, the spicy chicken leg sandwich is to die for. I suppose there are lots of things I wish I had written down that I could mention here, but I have been a slacker.

And because of that, I must go home and pack. Lots of things... a mini mah-jong set, a panda embroidering, a large stash of counterfeit pens, a 7-Eleven umbrella, and lots of expensive tea, among other things.

Hongkongers Away

Howdy, I'm at Hong Kong airport awaiting my flight back to Shanghai. I just managed to spend 24 of my remaining 100 Gongbi on a bag of Skittles and two bars of Toblerone, the ever-ready staple of airport commerce.

What's neat is that there are all these little internet kiosks lying around so you get online just about anywhere you go, and they're never all taken up. Matter of fact, the machine next to me is free as I type this. Maybe I'll get on that one and multitask...

Anyway this morning David, my cousin, took me out for breakfast since he didn't have a meeting until 11 A.M. Unfortunately we had an awful time ordering (no Mandarin, only broken English was used) and I ended up with an oily fried egg and two hot dogs, while David had the same eggs with two slices of Spam. Yum! Goshdarnit, you improve your Chinese just a little, and then they go and switch the dialect on you.

Alright. Time to go wait for the plane and pop some Swiss white chocolate goodness.

P.S. -- I learned from the South China Morning Post, the premier English-language daily, that a "Hongkonger" is a resident of Hong Kong, and there is no space.

More on Virginia Tech Shooting

The NBC News report on the "multimedia manifesto" that Cho Seung-Hui mailed to NBC News, apparently during the two hours between killing sprees on the VT campus.

TENNIS Everywhere

My first day in Hong Kong I took a nice trip on the Peak Tram, a little piece of the metro transit system that's been running for something like a hundred years -- it's not unlike the Duquesne Incline in good ol' Pitt (except that it's much much cooler; no offense yinzers). Give 'em a few bucks, get on the tram, and watch the dramatic landscape unfold as you climb to the top of Victoria Peak.

At the top, which is about 1,500+ feet up in the clouds, you get that glamorous view of Hong Kong's business district that you see in that photo I linked to down below. Up there, of course, there's shopping, malls, restaurants -- whatever your heart may desire. I was looking for postcards in a bookstore and I found the latest issue of TENNIS, the one that I finished but never saw come out. It was weird seeing it at all, but even moreso because I was up on some mountaintop in Hong Kong. I guess I kind of miss it. I know, poor me.

A Killer's Face

With all this madness going on about the Virginia Tech shootings, I'm wondering (and I'm sure lots of people are) what, if any, backlash will there be toward Koreans, Asians, or resident aliens in general? This photo is running everywhere, and the South Korean government is already wondering too. Here's how the AP piece tries to "fairly" address the question of nationality:

A South Korean student was also among those injured in the rampage, and Roh instructed diplomats to care for the student and confirm whether any other South Koreans were hurt.

Despite being technically a state of war for decades against North Korea , South Korea is a country where citizens are banned from privately owning guns and where no school shootings are known to have occurred.

However, the country has not been immune from shooting rampages.

In 2005, a military conscript believed to be angered by taunts from senior officers killed eight fellow soldiers, throwing a grenade into a barracks where his comrades were sleeping and firing a hail of bullets.

:: photo from news.aol.com ::

Sweat and Specs

Anyway, scenery's all good and fun, but let's get to the real reason I came halfway around the world: To play tennis in Hong Kong. The only problem was that today it was 29 degrees or so, which is... hmm... nine-fifths... 261/5... 52... plus 32... 84 degrees Fahrenheit, which is alright but still hot, and what felt like about 110% humidity. My friend Eric (from the Brooklyn league I'm playing in) happened to be here the same time as me so we decided weeks ago to meet up and play.

We played from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. (he's an event organizer so the courts were booked about a month ago or something), and it sucked because it was so hot, but it was fun too since I hadn't played in almost three weeks. After that we went back to Eric's hotel and cleaned up, then got some lunch. He had convinced me that I should look into getting some extra glasses (as fashion-accessory-type things, because you know me, that's what I'm all about) since the prices were so good. Eric took me to the store he has gone to for the past two years, in Wan Chai, and I ended up picking TWO pairs of glasses + exam + lenses for... 532 Hong Kong dollars, or less than $70 U.S.! One pair is relatively normal for me; the other is a stretch, but he intimated that they "work" and that "Mel will be proud." We shall see...

Shiny Skyscrapers, Sooty Ships

Besides being busy as hell, Hong Kong is a slick place. Downtown, the buildings are glass and pretty (and phallic); the views -- of the mountains from the buildings, or of the buildings from the mountains -- are amazing; and the infrastructure is so well integrated with the life of the city that people just flow from place to place. (None of these pictures of mine; I haven't been able to use my computer for a while so I'm just ripping off other peoples' pics.)

In the busier parts, subways, malls, convenience stores, covered walkways, residential buildings, and office towers all manage to use the same space simultaneously. For example, to get back to my cousin David's apartment building in Kowloon (not part of Hong Kong island) last night, I swiped my Octopus card (which acts as a transit ticket, 7-Eleven cash, and building security card -- and perhaps five other things?) to leave the subway, stopped outside the turnstile at a candy store to buy mango gummies, glanced next door at a clothes store, left the subway station, took a covered walkway into another building, walked through a mall, took a pedestrian bridge over a huge road, swiped my card again to get into the apartment complex, and finally arrived at the elevators.

What else? Victoria Harbor has lots of ships. Lots of big, dirty-red ships with rig-type devices jutting out from their tops. This makes sense since the place is such a huge port (the busiest container port in the world until two years ago, apparently). It's really a sight from where I'm sitting: the ships, the skyscrapers, the fog-covered mountains rising up behind it all.

I'm not sure what's happening tomorrow but I think the idea is to get away from all the busyness and spend a day checking out Macau, which is about an hour's ferry ride west of here.

No Internet For Me

Alright, well Internet time has been at a premium lately so here's just a quick link to my photo album. In it are photos from my trip with Gideon and Zhe to Zhouzhuang, an ancient town an hour and a half outside of Shanghai; my trip to meet relatives in Jiangxi; and our latest touristy outing, into Pudong to check out the big buildings there!

Relax

Back from Chongren with my mom, a rural town in Jiangxi province, where I met a great-aunt, seven uncles and aunts, eight (more?) cousins, and one baby cow who I never knew existed before. Lots of listening. Lots of Chinese. Lots of boredom, food, and tea. But endlessly fascinating... More to come. For now, taking in the clean, luxuriant environs of Shanghai.

Roaming Through Hangzhou

In Hangzhou, the famed West Lake is picturesque and serene, and the surrounding scenery is hard to beat. In other parts of town, rows upon rows of tea plants cover the rolling hills, and workers labor for hours in the sun plucking leaves one by one. A half a kilogram of these leaves, dried and pressed, may later go for hundreds of U.S. dollars. Downtown, huge department stores line the main avenue, cabbies jockey for riders, and well-dressed shoppers wander in and out of boutiques on smaller side streets.

But not everything has been so great and sophisticated here. We just went through a ridiculous amount of trouble trying to recharge my SIM card. Not only did we find out that we're roaming since we're now in Zhejiang province, but we bought our cards in Shanghai so for some unknown reason we can't recharge them in Hangzhou the regular way -- by buying a refill card at any newsstand on the street. So we had to find a China Mobile store, where they helped me out. When we found a China Unicom store for my mom, they said they couldn't help her because we need to be in Shanghai. Grrr.

:: photo from chinadaily.com.cn ::

Britain, Iran, What?

Wait, what's going on in Iran, British soldiers, whata who where? Huh? I feel like I'm in a bubble.

Photos for the Road

The parents and I are off on a quick one-night trip to Hangzhou today -- a three-hour train ride that's more than cut in half thanks to the bullet train (!) -- but before that happens I've a few pictures to show. There are more to see here, if you're interested.



Napping in the sun on Wanping Dong Road, 10 am Tuesday.

At a massive market down an alley, vendors hawked, from left, unidentified small birds, frogs, and huge frogs. Yes, for eating.



In the park at Renmin (People's) Square, right at the center of Nanjing Road. Think of (Renmin Square + Nanjing Road) as (Times Sq + Museum Mile + SoHo) divided by 3, plus a dash of Central Park.

Chinese Sign of the Day

Gideon & Zhe joined the parents and me at an Western-food joint today, Bull Fighter. In true American fashion, there was the salad/fruit/ice cream bar -- and it was in a dazzling array of (seven) ice creams that we found today's selection for the Sign of the Day.

Now that's a flavor I can get behind. And technically, it's more or less correct.

TENNIS in China?

Passing by a newstand on Wanping Nan Road today I spied a Chinese tennis magazine. On the cover was the dramatic line FEDERER VS. SAMPRAS declared in bold type. To my surprise, on the top left corner of the cover it said that it was produced in conjunction with "Mei Guo [U.S.] TENNIS MAGAZINE" -- i.e., our friends at 79 Madison Ave., 8th Floor, New York, NY 10016. I'm totally in the dark, although I remember Tony saying at some point that stories are licensed to various other publications in other countries... ?

I'd never heard of it before, but flipping through I found a mix of stories that we ran in our magazine in the last few months, as well as the Chinese staff's own pieces. Here's a sampling of TENNIS, Chinese-style.

The magnificent cover. Inside there's a comprehensive comparison of the two, with breakdown of strokes, stats comparisons, and a detailed recount of their famous fourth-round encounter at Wimbledon in 2001.

"Court Coutre" in all its splendor. The photos looked like they were scanned from the print magazine.

Everyone's fave section, Court of Appeals. I wonder how the translation came out? Figuring out wording in English was hard enough.

Small But Exciting Happenings

Today, Monday, I did not do much. But there were a few minor developments quite worth mentioning.

1) Getting closer and closer to Hong Kong tickets. A travel agency quoted us hundreds of U.S. dollars for a round-trip to HK, and then slapped on a 500 RMB ($65ish) fee for using an American passport.... So I called up Gideon and he found some crazy discount websites that has dozens of flights per day to Shenzhen (a short train trip across the border from HK) for as little as 420 RMB one way, or about 1,100 RMB roundtrip after taxes, for a total of about $150 -- but we called and I can't book until six days before the trip. You know those Chinatown buses in New York? I've realized that that's how much of the transit works in China, including the domestic air travel. The site is shakg.com -- let me know if you know something about it that I don't, because in one week I'm booking.

2) I got in touch with the Shanghai Racquet Club, thanks to Andrea from my Brooklyn tennis team. She worked at the ATP Tennis Masters Cup a couple of years ago so she knew some people here. Maybe this week I'll be able to make it in and hit with some of the juniors there. Sweet.

3) I got a haircut at one of these trendy, two-level salons today. The wide, glass double doors are attended by two cute girls dressed in coordinating outfits, and funky hairstylists work their magic inside to a soundtrack of dated American Top 40. For 40 yuan ($5 US), a girl (dressed in the same matching blazer and skirt as the girls working the doors) washes and conditions your hair, then gives you a mini-massage -- shoulders, arms, neck -- in the barber's chair until the hairdresser shows up. I guess I spoiled the fun by asking him to just fix up the mess on top of my head, but I probably would've regretted going with some elaborate swept-back, propped-up blow-dried style that all the cool Chinese people are doing now. Maybe next time.

Haggling for Harry

It was night-market night last night. Gideon and Zhe had me meet them at Wujiang Road, at around 6 pm. On Wujiang Road, styrofoam containers and skewer sticks litter the ground, hungry visitors are coming at you from all directions, and 5 yuan goes a long way.

There were vendors everywhere selling clams, oysters, chicken-leg skewers, fish balls and squid on sticks, potstickers, fried bao ze, milk tea, fresh juices, CDs and DVDs, and various other goodies. It was all delicious, except I think one clam I had was still a little bit cold. I'm still standing though, so I think I'll be okay.

One highlight of the walk down Wujiang Road was the book vendor. As I approached I noticed she had the U.K. edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I had spied in Shanghai Book City on Saturday for a normal (but exorbitant for China) price of 100-plus yuan. (I'm not talking the Scholastic version we get in the States, but the much classier Bloomsbury version.)

Anyway, inspired by our guide from Friday, I asked her how much. She said 25, and I said 12. She then came back with 20, and I said 15. She said you'd have to pay much more in bookstores, and offered 18 (although, if she was willing to sell it for 18 yuan, there must have been a defect or something). I said 15 again. She said no, and I started to walk away. She protested, and I came back. She insisted that she couldn't sell it for 15. I said 15 and turned to walk away again. Before I took two steps, the book landed next to me on the table. 15 RMB = $2 U.S.!

Plus, the Pizza is Better

Last night my friend Indhu asked me online if I'm glad that I'm not in New York anymore. Well, I'm going back to New York in three weeks, but I'm going to answer the question anyway.

In some ways. Obviously costs are so much lower here, and it's nice that people aren't too caught up in formalities -- in this kind of city you're going to have to push and shove once in a while, so no one takes offense. The subway is clean and fast (though it closes early), and you could people watch forever. But I wouldn't mind being back in the city because...

... you hear English, and many other languages. Here it's Chinese (or Shanghainese) all day, every day, which is fine -- especially if you're trying to improve your Chinese -- but the huge mix you hear in New York constantly reminds you of how many different kinds of people there are.

... there is a relative lack of smells in N.Y. Yes, counterintuitive, but I swear there's something awry with the sewage system in Shanghai. Often things are fine, but other times, for a block at a time, you feel like you're in a garbage heap. Major streets aren't as bad, but then you've got the blanket of pollution from the tons and tons of cars. New York, on the other hand, has so much water surrounding it that the place clears out relatively well.

... there are manners. Westerners like them their manners, and for good reason: They can make things more pleasant. Probably everyone would be better off here if people wouldn't hack and spit indiscriminately and drivers weren't mowing down bikers (and bikers weren't mowing down peds) on every corner.

But things are looking up! With the Olympics coming soon, they're starting with spitting.

Very-Chinese Photo of the Day

At a food market on Tian Yao Qiao Road, a few minutes from our apartment.

A Kitty, A Kiddy Person, and More

Some photos from Friday and Saturday (and more here):

A cat at the Zhu Jia Jiao ancient city on Friday.

Is there an Adulty Person boat too? (Saturday on Nanjing Dong Road.)



Outside of the Tu Yu Guan today, Shanghai's giant sports complex. One of the few pictures in which my mother is smiling willingly.