Showing posts with label shenzhen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shenzhen. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Education is truly its own reward
I try not to be one of those people who have nothing to talk about except their work, because these people tend to have boring conversations. But the truth is, I don’t really have much else to talk about except work. Sadly, the time to grow up and be one of those who are defined by their job.
And what a rewarding job that is. Teaching kids day in day out, with no idea how much they’ll retain and how much they care. With few exceptions (the ones that do care, and make it all worth it) these private school one-child policy products don’t really care. Foreign teacher English class is just a recess time for them to yell “Waijiao!” and “Hello!” and not pay attention. They’ll forget what little I’ve taught them the month after I’ve gone. But whatever, a job’s a job. At least I bring some entertainment value in the grueling Chinese kindergarten education system.
The last week-and-a-half has been focused on the simple English sentence “I like to eat _____!” and then pointing at the subsequent sandwich or fish picture, and magically the kids can construct a complete sentence.
And after days and days of conditioning them to say “I like to eat” without processing what that means, I have moved on to drinks. “I like to drink ____!” and then they are to say “water” or “orange juice” or whatnot.
But it can’t be that easy, because then they can’t help but saying “I like to eat-drink tea!” “I like to eat-drink soda!” I can’t get through . . . argh . . . “Bu shuo eat-drink,” I say. “Shuo I like to DRINK!” “I like to eat-drink,” they answer. “EAT-DRINK, EAT DRINK, EAT DRINK.” It’s so frustrating. I am driven crazy. Of course, it’s easiest to just do the job and go through the motions, not give a damn and teach a few nouns to show off to their parents and get a paycheck. But it’d really be nice to know that being a teacher involves true teaching.
In other news, the even smaller preschool kids are learning to say “Please” and “Thank you,” followed by “Xie xie!” And it’s so damn cute I just want to hop up and down. It’s not all bad.
Then the weekend, and I get thoroughly socialized at any number of Shenzhen bars, and then back to the cycle on Monday. But my camera is at the factory to be repaired (another frustrating story), and with my memory so hazy by dawn, hence there’s no record.
Its all quite fun, it really is. Ah, the minor adventures of everyday life. Then I wait on the bus and practice text-messaging in pinyin.
Soon it will be summer, and I’ll have to be all responsible with money and stop wasting it on taxi rides and impulse dvd purchases. I’ll have to fend for myself in the uncertain Shenzhen future. Then I’ll get a new job, and talk about that.
And what a rewarding job that is. Teaching kids day in day out, with no idea how much they’ll retain and how much they care. With few exceptions (the ones that do care, and make it all worth it) these private school one-child policy products don’t really care. Foreign teacher English class is just a recess time for them to yell “Waijiao!” and “Hello!” and not pay attention. They’ll forget what little I’ve taught them the month after I’ve gone. But whatever, a job’s a job. At least I bring some entertainment value in the grueling Chinese kindergarten education system.
The last week-and-a-half has been focused on the simple English sentence “I like to eat _____!” and then pointing at the subsequent sandwich or fish picture, and magically the kids can construct a complete sentence.
And after days and days of conditioning them to say “I like to eat” without processing what that means, I have moved on to drinks. “I like to drink ____!” and then they are to say “water” or “orange juice” or whatnot.
But it can’t be that easy, because then they can’t help but saying “I like to eat-drink tea!” “I like to eat-drink soda!” I can’t get through . . . argh . . . “Bu shuo eat-drink,” I say. “Shuo I like to DRINK!” “I like to eat-drink,” they answer. “EAT-DRINK, EAT DRINK, EAT DRINK.” It’s so frustrating. I am driven crazy. Of course, it’s easiest to just do the job and go through the motions, not give a damn and teach a few nouns to show off to their parents and get a paycheck. But it’d really be nice to know that being a teacher involves true teaching.
In other news, the even smaller preschool kids are learning to say “Please” and “Thank you,” followed by “Xie xie!” And it’s so damn cute I just want to hop up and down. It’s not all bad.
Then the weekend, and I get thoroughly socialized at any number of Shenzhen bars, and then back to the cycle on Monday. But my camera is at the factory to be repaired (another frustrating story), and with my memory so hazy by dawn, hence there’s no record.
Its all quite fun, it really is. Ah, the minor adventures of everyday life. Then I wait on the bus and practice text-messaging in pinyin.
Soon it will be summer, and I’ll have to be all responsible with money and stop wasting it on taxi rides and impulse dvd purchases. I’ll have to fend for myself in the uncertain Shenzhen future. Then I’ll get a new job, and talk about that.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thrashin in Shenzhen
Thrashin’ in Shenzhen
by Ray H
Among the shops of Shenzhen’s electronics district of HuaQiangBei, one can find more than just discount iPods and pirated Windows XP software. A short walk down the street will lead to Fat Tongues, the city’s sole skateboarding specialty store. Full of shoes and boards and hip hop themed t-shirts, it’s easy to forget that this is China, and an expat might mistake themselves as back in their hometown’s suburban mall.
The owner of the shop goes by Xiao Feng – meaning Little Wind – but like most Chinese he also has a Western name that’s easier to pronounce. His expat friends call him “Thrasher,” he’s twenty-five, in debt, and determined to give his scene a voice in Shenzhen.
Running his own business since he was nineteen, he found local investors and started his own place. “When I started I had no information. Just for three years, push, push, and push more.” Thrasher, who taught himself English from watching American movies, pessimistically describes his industry with a sense of humor. “Business is so bad. (I had) no experience.” And he’s not optimistic about the future. “(Most) only come to my shop to buy shoes.”
Shenzhen had no specialty shops of the kind when he began skating at twelve, and he had to buy his wooded skateboards at the sporting goods market. “Shitty boards,” he says. Even just a decade ago China was decidedly less open, and his parents were not supportive. “I have to hide my skateboard, (when I lived) at home. The culture here . . . the parents stop you. ‘You can’t.’ ‘It’s dangerous.’” Cynical of China’s government and culture, he’s not shy to criticize. “Education sucks. Everyone (is) brainwashed.”
But Thrasher also makes money as a professional skater, sponsored by Gift Skateboards and Shanghai-based Quicksilver. Hopeful to get an Adidas contract soon, he periodically films his own videos for the sponsors. And while there may be no official skate-park in the city, that’s never stopped kids from skating where they want anywhere else. “At the park, Book City . . . not one spot.” Shenzhen, full of young buildings and marble parking lots, even boasting a naive police force that has yet to give out tickets for loitering, has quickly become a haven for skaters across the country. “Every pro-skater comes to Shenzhen,” Thrasher smirks the Shenzhen local.
But when it comes to getting shredded on the street – injuries being a source of price to skaters the world over – Thrasher isn’t a fan of the average Chinese citizen’s attitude. “Chinese people have no respect. If you do something different, they just watching. When I fall, 80% people laugh at me. They don’t fucking respect. ‘You try,’ I tell to them. ‘Motherfucker,’” he laughs.
Still, his shop has survived for the last six years, and is even expanding with plans to build a mini-ramp on the property. While it isn’t easy to set up plans with China’s notoriously bureaucratic local government, it’s obvious that Thrasher isn’t in it for the business glory. China’s economic future may depend on businessmen and entrepreneurs raising the national GDP, but the culture on a whole may be better served by values deeper than high profit margins. Some are in because they love what they do, and that can be enough. “I don’t give a shit,” Thrasher proudly rips. “I just skate.”
Monday, December 15, 2008
China Cultural Review: the Cathays, Pornography, and Bootleg DVDs
China, like any land worth being written about, is a land of contradiction. Simultaneously utterly conservative and yet rushing into modernization, the dinosauric Communist authority waddles far behind the rapid economic development. Somewhere in-between lies the social evolution of the average Middle Kingdom citizen.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the "Special Economic Zone" that began this headlong rush into neo-capitalist moderndom: Hong Kong's experimental sister-city Shenzhen. Founded by the great reformer Deng Xiaoping less than thirty years ago, the Southernmost city boasts a highest per-capita income than Beijing. A city where everyone is from somewhere else, here to make money, and quite a younger demographic. And they like to get off.
As any media analyst of the internet will tell you, as good a benchmark as any of a culture's shifts in attitudes is pornography.
How is media-sexuality represented in Shenzhen? Unlike nearby Hong Kong, with its still British western attitude and laws, there are no Penthouses for sale in the liquor stores of Shenzhen. There are few sex shops, admittedly, but they require immense digging to uncover. No "classy" Hustler Store. No hipster porn scene to shop at with your girlfriend. No erotica section of the bookstore, no backroom of the family video store.
Still, the oldest profession is barely obfuscated beneath the shadiest of massage parlors. Though most of them quite legitimate - the Chinese do like their spas - there is an obvious subtext to the ones with skimpy outfitted girls in shoddy neighborhoods. But prostitution and hand-jobs are not the subject of this writing.
A culture is as defined by its media as it is by its call girls. Yet China has some ways to go before they have a homegrown media of their own to be proud of. Hong Kong cinema aside, and the occasional internationally renowned mainland film by Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige, the bloody history of this post-Communist nation has stilted the growth of an adequate film/tv/pornography industry.
Hence bootleg DVDs' immense popularity. On every street corner you will find openly sold in flat paper cases: Hollywood blockbusters still in theaters, American B-movies never released in the States, every season of your favorite show, Hong Kong action stars on display, and Japanese anime for the kids; all burnt at home, the studios not making a dime in residuals, and purchase at your own risk because it might not even play when you get home. But this is no problem when several movies over costs ten to thirty yuan, amounting to only a handful of dollars.
This neo-Capitalist attitude of movies on demand, legality be damned, certainly extends to porno as well as the mainstream. Purely for research purposes, this writer felt it necessary to purchase these street-corner illicets. The stack of boxes might innocent at first, but give the seller a second look and he may show you the secret stash underneath.
A random set of discs was purchased, the title in unreadable Chinese. Cute cartoon girls on the cover. Upon going home and inserting into the laptop, it was discovered that for only ten yuan - one dollar something - two discs were in possession a total of eight hours of hardcore animated pornography. Each film with completely random language selections; some with homemade Chinese subtitles, some even English dubbed and bootlegged from the American exports, and most only in untranslated Japanese. This other Asian culture, homegrown and unique, is known for their strange fetishes, and violent sexual images of school girls and dungeons and fantasy and tentacles and animated penises were all presented before the modest 14 inch laptop. Suffice to say, while perhaps not turned on, one can be very morbidly fascinated by these things.
And here in Shenzhen it is against the law to sell such. But, in the spirit of capitalism and modernism, the Chinese do not care. Powered by the dynamic spirit of human freedom, and the still-evolving media technologies of cheap DVD burning, the modern Chinese youth have broken free of past conditionings by society and state, and have joined the global culture. The globalist dream, extending to America's famous export of Hollywood, and Japanese porn as well.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the "Special Economic Zone" that began this headlong rush into neo-capitalist moderndom: Hong Kong's experimental sister-city Shenzhen. Founded by the great reformer Deng Xiaoping less than thirty years ago, the Southernmost city boasts a highest per-capita income than Beijing. A city where everyone is from somewhere else, here to make money, and quite a younger demographic. And they like to get off.
As any media analyst of the internet will tell you, as good a benchmark as any of a culture's shifts in attitudes is pornography.
How is media-sexuality represented in Shenzhen? Unlike nearby Hong Kong, with its still British western attitude and laws, there are no Penthouses for sale in the liquor stores of Shenzhen. There are few sex shops, admittedly, but they require immense digging to uncover. No "classy" Hustler Store. No hipster porn scene to shop at with your girlfriend. No erotica section of the bookstore, no backroom of the family video store.
Still, the oldest profession is barely obfuscated beneath the shadiest of massage parlors. Though most of them quite legitimate - the Chinese do like their spas - there is an obvious subtext to the ones with skimpy outfitted girls in shoddy neighborhoods. But prostitution and hand-jobs are not the subject of this writing.
A culture is as defined by its media as it is by its call girls. Yet China has some ways to go before they have a homegrown media of their own to be proud of. Hong Kong cinema aside, and the occasional internationally renowned mainland film by Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige, the bloody history of this post-Communist nation has stilted the growth of an adequate film/tv/pornography industry.
Hence bootleg DVDs' immense popularity. On every street corner you will find openly sold in flat paper cases: Hollywood blockbusters still in theaters, American B-movies never released in the States, every season of your favorite show, Hong Kong action stars on display, and Japanese anime for the kids; all burnt at home, the studios not making a dime in residuals, and purchase at your own risk because it might not even play when you get home. But this is no problem when several movies over costs ten to thirty yuan, amounting to only a handful of dollars.
This neo-Capitalist attitude of movies on demand, legality be damned, certainly extends to porno as well as the mainstream. Purely for research purposes, this writer felt it necessary to purchase these street-corner illicets. The stack of boxes might innocent at first, but give the seller a second look and he may show you the secret stash underneath.
A random set of discs was purchased, the title in unreadable Chinese. Cute cartoon girls on the cover. Upon going home and inserting into the laptop, it was discovered that for only ten yuan - one dollar something - two discs were in possession a total of eight hours of hardcore animated pornography. Each film with completely random language selections; some with homemade Chinese subtitles, some even English dubbed and bootlegged from the American exports, and most only in untranslated Japanese. This other Asian culture, homegrown and unique, is known for their strange fetishes, and violent sexual images of school girls and dungeons and fantasy and tentacles and animated penises were all presented before the modest 14 inch laptop. Suffice to say, while perhaps not turned on, one can be very morbidly fascinated by these things.
And here in Shenzhen it is against the law to sell such. But, in the spirit of capitalism and modernism, the Chinese do not care. Powered by the dynamic spirit of human freedom, and the still-evolving media technologies of cheap DVD burning, the modern Chinese youth have broken free of past conditionings by society and state, and have joined the global culture. The globalist dream, extending to America's famous export of Hollywood, and Japanese porn as well.
Friday, November 7, 2008
God and HK
God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.
God doesn't care if I like mainland China or not. There have been no direct affairs into my life. Sometimes I have minor good luck, sometimes bad, but little happens that is interesting.
As the mainstream Christian/Western theology of Augustine states, God created this world and then let us alone. He doesn't care. He lets it be.
And this is why I don't care to write about Shenzhen. There is no divinity, good or bad. It just is.
Occasionally though, forces in the universe intervene, and you fall in love or have a rotten day or win money or get your shit stolen. Good or bad, you sense the supernatural.
That's why I like to travel. That's when I sense something. At home, wherever I happen to call "home" at the time" nothing ever happens.
So: fuck Shenzhen. Damn my life of walking to work and entertaining small children and minor drama. Oh, I could write about the mainland. I could write and write. About the slightly interesting people around me, the white and Asian alike. The Chinese work ethic than I can't live up to (the teachers here work far more hours for far less money and I don't know how they do it). The babies peeing in the streets like dogs. The beautiful smog. The lack of ADD diagnosis - a good thing - as all these loud brats here would be surely hooked on ritalin back in the dreary States. The vagueness of my curriculum. The mustering of energy.
And the evolution of the world, as predicted by Neal Stephenson (but sadly without the romantic flairs of an anarchic post-governmental structure, most likely) - our future as "Hi-Tech Third World." You know that's how it will be in America, and I assure its closer than ever here.
To those in the know: I swear I live in a bloody burbclave!
And yet there's a freedom here in not carrying my ID, my papers, never ever been carded by bars or by authorities; as opposed to communist America.
The lack of free media. The lack of porn. (As thoroughly documented and proven by the internet, all subsequent information technologies from Gutenberg up are to come with an exponential increase in pornographics. Yet the statist government blocks this natural progression) No porn here, and yet still those seedy massage parlors...
I need to get my own computer already, and do that proxy server thing I've heard about.
Anyways
God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.
But, I flatly refuse.
I came off the train way too early in the morning, after waiting in line at customs and buying expensive train ticket-cards. Hong Kong is basically its own country you see, with money to exchange and declaration lines to wade through. Its pricey there, in Hong Kong dollars.
So then I stepped out into the East Tsim Sha Tsui station, armed with tourist map and printed directions to the underground visa shop where I was to pay the Indian guy and get to stay in the country longer, and it was raining so bad.
Terrible downpour. The worst I'd experienced in years. This is tsunami land, and I'll probably experience worse yet soon, but dammit I was spoiled by California weather all those years.
I was drenched immediately. Rain like this is worse than being submerged fully clothed. Its sticky. It won't end. I'm fragile, I don't like.
So I had to buy an umbrella. Then I went to the Chungking Mansions and went to the travel company where you get to buy visas. There's something strange about it, but that's how it works if you live in Cathay and you're not from there.
Its Hong Kong, such diverse and international flair, and I waited in line behind the Africans and Hindis and Canadians. I like international towns. Again, Hong Kong is so different than the mainland.
And then it turned out that I didn't bring enough money. I was several hundred Hong Kong dollars short. And this was after exchanging every cent (yuan) I own. Apparently American passports are the priciest of all. I don't think being born in Israel helps either. And though its a six month visa, its only two months entry and I have to leave at least once a month, and that means every two months I have to do this all over again.
I had to go to a payphone, in the rain, and call my "boss" person. I didn't even know how to call long distance, I had to figure this all out asking random people. People speak English there though. So different. And, armed with no working cell phone here, I had to call a friend of a friend to borrow five hundred HK dollars from. Meet at a trainstop at 5:00 - hours and hours later - with no phone and hope it works out.
To do this visa thing you have to stay overnight. You pay extra just to get in processed in one day. I mean, I couldn't even go back and forth if I wanted to but I had to get in by the next day. Thankfully, Indian dude was nice and let me pay partial. They say because of the Beijing Olympics it was even worse a few months ago, but I hope they make the rules easier soon. What's the harm in just letting me stay in your damn country?
Soaking wet and stressed from the bureaucracy, I now had six hours to kill. Fun times. I know no one in this city. I'm almost totally broke. Ah yes, and I mean that with no sarcasm, its a good feeling and it was the time to explore.
Fed by cheap Indian food, with the rain mercifully having let up, I wandered. I took out my tourist map and train cartograph and scribbled places of recommended spots. I epically window shopped at Nathan Road. I looked outside the museums, and found a public library (a public library! They don't have those in the communist mainland), and I peed and read magazines and checked my email.
I found Avenue of the Stars. Its a bootleg Hollywood starwalk, but actually nice. With a statue glorious of Bruce Lee; and starprints of such Hong Kong cinema stars as Wong Kar-Wai, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan. I think I may have recognized more names than the outdated 1940s stars on the LA Boulevard.
Kowloon park where the junkies bug you and the birds are beautiful. Harbor City mall where everything is far too expensive for me to have a chance of buying anything. Took the train to the other side, Central HK island, found North Point. And many other places that I can neither pronounce nor recall how to spell.
I love Asian cities. They're so ridiculously huge. While the biggest thing in America is probably Times Square, compact crowds to drive you mad, a proper Asian city seems to have dozens of Times Squares. I can only speak for Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Osaka, but none of those are even the biggest cities of their respective countries. Everywhere is a downtown, multistory, gleaming lights, rotting future. I like this cyberpunk science fiction landscape.
Hong Kong is an amazing country. As said, its basically its own country. Sorta China, not Britain anymore, its own thing with its own money and travel rules. Ethnically diverse, helpful to English speakers, but still weird and Asian. I can eat food. I'm not stared at as the only white guy (or at least, less so). And a diversity of landscapes: mountains and beaches and inlands.
I say this everytime I visit a new city, and I always mean it, but I really want to move here. Its so expensive though. But how did all these other people make it? Like, how does that guy from New Jersey working at the fast food place afford rent and travel? I need sponsorship, or something. I need an in.
And so at 5:00 I went to the last stop of that line at Chai Wan or somesuch, and met this lady and borrowed money. I get paid on Monday and have much to de-lend. Then I went all the way north to Tai Po market to meet at the couchsurfing.com pad I was to stay at. I played some video games up there, searched the new area, met some Austrian chicks that were also staying, ate junk food and so on.
Next day was shorter. I had a good couchsurf, wrote a review, and parted ways with the other travellers, and made my way back to East Tsim Sha Tsui. I paid and I made it. Another near miss for Ray. But it always works out. Who knows how close to deportation I was. It would have sucked, because all my stuff is back at the apartment. Ahhh... these minor adventures... like that time waiting in line in Israel to make sure I wouldn't be drafted just for being there, and when I forgot my passport but they still let me out of Mexico, and when that British guy yelled at me at Heathrow for having a ripped up passport and said he didn't have to let me in (I still have that same passport, but I've glued it since then).
The bureaucracy isn't over yet. I didn't get a receipt. I am a special kind of idiot, although this, unlike the weather and the economy, can only be blamed on me and not God. So I've emailed and called back and forth to get a scanned jpg version of receipt, and I might get reimbursed, but I still have much stuff to work out.
And then I caught a cold. No doubt from the rain I wasn't used to. Last night I had the worst sleep ever. I couldn't breathe. All night in a cold sweat half-awake with interrupted fever dreams. I felt like that scene in Trainspotting. Should be a fun weekend now.
Oh yes. And the voting. I must say there is a part of me that's glad I'm not in America and not forced to be a news junkie. Doesn't seem real. Well, good for Obama. There's not much I feel inclined to say. He's a lesser evil but he's no Messiah. I'm not comfortable with it. But whatever, much has been written already.
I wish my land the best, but I just hope America can stay cynical. Its our greatest cultural strength.
I mean, if we can't hate the President, than just what's the point?
So... America and all that... but I'm not there...
God doesn't care if I like mainland China or not. There have been no direct affairs into my life. Sometimes I have minor good luck, sometimes bad, but little happens that is interesting.
As the mainstream Christian/Western theology of Augustine states, God created this world and then let us alone. He doesn't care. He lets it be.
And this is why I don't care to write about Shenzhen. There is no divinity, good or bad. It just is.
Occasionally though, forces in the universe intervene, and you fall in love or have a rotten day or win money or get your shit stolen. Good or bad, you sense the supernatural.
That's why I like to travel. That's when I sense something. At home, wherever I happen to call "home" at the time" nothing ever happens.
So: fuck Shenzhen. Damn my life of walking to work and entertaining small children and minor drama. Oh, I could write about the mainland. I could write and write. About the slightly interesting people around me, the white and Asian alike. The Chinese work ethic than I can't live up to (the teachers here work far more hours for far less money and I don't know how they do it). The babies peeing in the streets like dogs. The beautiful smog. The lack of ADD diagnosis - a good thing - as all these loud brats here would be surely hooked on ritalin back in the dreary States. The vagueness of my curriculum. The mustering of energy.
And the evolution of the world, as predicted by Neal Stephenson (but sadly without the romantic flairs of an anarchic post-governmental structure, most likely) - our future as "Hi-Tech Third World." You know that's how it will be in America, and I assure its closer than ever here.
To those in the know: I swear I live in a bloody burbclave!
And yet there's a freedom here in not carrying my ID, my papers, never ever been carded by bars or by authorities; as opposed to communist America.
The lack of free media. The lack of porn. (As thoroughly documented and proven by the internet, all subsequent information technologies from Gutenberg up are to come with an exponential increase in pornographics. Yet the statist government blocks this natural progression) No porn here, and yet still those seedy massage parlors...
I need to get my own computer already, and do that proxy server thing I've heard about.
Anyways
God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.
But, I flatly refuse.
I came off the train way too early in the morning, after waiting in line at customs and buying expensive train ticket-cards. Hong Kong is basically its own country you see, with money to exchange and declaration lines to wade through. Its pricey there, in Hong Kong dollars.
So then I stepped out into the East Tsim Sha Tsui station, armed with tourist map and printed directions to the underground visa shop where I was to pay the Indian guy and get to stay in the country longer, and it was raining so bad.
Terrible downpour. The worst I'd experienced in years. This is tsunami land, and I'll probably experience worse yet soon, but dammit I was spoiled by California weather all those years.
I was drenched immediately. Rain like this is worse than being submerged fully clothed. Its sticky. It won't end. I'm fragile, I don't like.
So I had to buy an umbrella. Then I went to the Chungking Mansions and went to the travel company where you get to buy visas. There's something strange about it, but that's how it works if you live in Cathay and you're not from there.
Its Hong Kong, such diverse and international flair, and I waited in line behind the Africans and Hindis and Canadians. I like international towns. Again, Hong Kong is so different than the mainland.
And then it turned out that I didn't bring enough money. I was several hundred Hong Kong dollars short. And this was after exchanging every cent (yuan) I own. Apparently American passports are the priciest of all. I don't think being born in Israel helps either. And though its a six month visa, its only two months entry and I have to leave at least once a month, and that means every two months I have to do this all over again.
I had to go to a payphone, in the rain, and call my "boss" person. I didn't even know how to call long distance, I had to figure this all out asking random people. People speak English there though. So different. And, armed with no working cell phone here, I had to call a friend of a friend to borrow five hundred HK dollars from. Meet at a trainstop at 5:00 - hours and hours later - with no phone and hope it works out.
To do this visa thing you have to stay overnight. You pay extra just to get in processed in one day. I mean, I couldn't even go back and forth if I wanted to but I had to get in by the next day. Thankfully, Indian dude was nice and let me pay partial. They say because of the Beijing Olympics it was even worse a few months ago, but I hope they make the rules easier soon. What's the harm in just letting me stay in your damn country?
Soaking wet and stressed from the bureaucracy, I now had six hours to kill. Fun times. I know no one in this city. I'm almost totally broke. Ah yes, and I mean that with no sarcasm, its a good feeling and it was the time to explore.
Fed by cheap Indian food, with the rain mercifully having let up, I wandered. I took out my tourist map and train cartograph and scribbled places of recommended spots. I epically window shopped at Nathan Road. I looked outside the museums, and found a public library (a public library! They don't have those in the communist mainland), and I peed and read magazines and checked my email.
I found Avenue of the Stars. Its a bootleg Hollywood starwalk, but actually nice. With a statue glorious of Bruce Lee; and starprints of such Hong Kong cinema stars as Wong Kar-Wai, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan. I think I may have recognized more names than the outdated 1940s stars on the LA Boulevard.
Kowloon park where the junkies bug you and the birds are beautiful. Harbor City mall where everything is far too expensive for me to have a chance of buying anything. Took the train to the other side, Central HK island, found North Point. And many other places that I can neither pronounce nor recall how to spell.
I love Asian cities. They're so ridiculously huge. While the biggest thing in America is probably Times Square, compact crowds to drive you mad, a proper Asian city seems to have dozens of Times Squares. I can only speak for Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Osaka, but none of those are even the biggest cities of their respective countries. Everywhere is a downtown, multistory, gleaming lights, rotting future. I like this cyberpunk science fiction landscape.
Hong Kong is an amazing country. As said, its basically its own country. Sorta China, not Britain anymore, its own thing with its own money and travel rules. Ethnically diverse, helpful to English speakers, but still weird and Asian. I can eat food. I'm not stared at as the only white guy (or at least, less so). And a diversity of landscapes: mountains and beaches and inlands.
I say this everytime I visit a new city, and I always mean it, but I really want to move here. Its so expensive though. But how did all these other people make it? Like, how does that guy from New Jersey working at the fast food place afford rent and travel? I need sponsorship, or something. I need an in.
And so at 5:00 I went to the last stop of that line at Chai Wan or somesuch, and met this lady and borrowed money. I get paid on Monday and have much to de-lend. Then I went all the way north to Tai Po market to meet at the couchsurfing.com pad I was to stay at. I played some video games up there, searched the new area, met some Austrian chicks that were also staying, ate junk food and so on.
Next day was shorter. I had a good couchsurf, wrote a review, and parted ways with the other travellers, and made my way back to East Tsim Sha Tsui. I paid and I made it. Another near miss for Ray. But it always works out. Who knows how close to deportation I was. It would have sucked, because all my stuff is back at the apartment. Ahhh... these minor adventures... like that time waiting in line in Israel to make sure I wouldn't be drafted just for being there, and when I forgot my passport but they still let me out of Mexico, and when that British guy yelled at me at Heathrow for having a ripped up passport and said he didn't have to let me in (I still have that same passport, but I've glued it since then).
The bureaucracy isn't over yet. I didn't get a receipt. I am a special kind of idiot, although this, unlike the weather and the economy, can only be blamed on me and not God. So I've emailed and called back and forth to get a scanned jpg version of receipt, and I might get reimbursed, but I still have much stuff to work out.
And then I caught a cold. No doubt from the rain I wasn't used to. Last night I had the worst sleep ever. I couldn't breathe. All night in a cold sweat half-awake with interrupted fever dreams. I felt like that scene in Trainspotting. Should be a fun weekend now.
Oh yes. And the voting. I must say there is a part of me that's glad I'm not in America and not forced to be a news junkie. Doesn't seem real. Well, good for Obama. There's not much I feel inclined to say. He's a lesser evil but he's no Messiah. I'm not comfortable with it. But whatever, much has been written already.
I wish my land the best, but I just hope America can stay cynical. Its our greatest cultural strength.
I mean, if we can't hate the President, than just what's the point?
So... America and all that... but I'm not there...
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