Of course, there are some things that I love to buy, and if you think just a little about me, you’ll figure it out. I have a weakness for physics books, a weakness that hasn’t really shown itself in China because it’s hard to find books written in English, but in Shenzhen the challenge is far less. A book that costs $100 CAN in Canada (E&M by Griffiths) costs about $5.50 CAN here. Of course I bought it, mostly to have some puzzles to work through on my spare time (Sudoku’s just don’t do it for me anymore – they just feel like work).
Anyway, enough random talk, I’ll walk you through my Shenzhen trip to date.
It started with a plane ride, which was mostly pleasant except for the fact that it landed in a different airport than it was suppose to (due to poor weather). Okay, that’s not so bad, but when they sent us off the plane, well that’s when things got difficult. Nobody could speak English, and I was understanding different stories from different people. Realizing that I could very well screw this up and end up stuck at the airport (I didn’t even have a cell phone, and many of my belongings were in the plane), I took out my most valuable possession (my dictionary), and began working out what I needed to ask about. Unfortunately, the airport people I was talking to didn’t know how to write pinyin (the phonetic writing of Chinese characters), so understanding answers was very difficult, but through some effort, I made it by plane to Shenzhen airport. Oddly enough, a number of the foreigners that I ran into didn’t make the flight back and I assume they took some difficult trip to Shenzhen – without their luggage.
Having survived my first challenge, my brother picked me up and I headed to his house. The next day, and throughout the first week, I helped my brother translate some documents from French to English. It was at times fun (as it was a solvable challenge), but overall it drove us crazy trying to understand the meaning on certain technical terms without significant context. The conclusion: I’ll only translate stuff in the future if it’s of a non-technical nature.
My vacation really started when the weekend came. We headed to Zhuhai for the weekend to see some apartments (as my brother is planning to buy one there), and of course, to have some fun. After looking at apartments, we headed to some mini-amusement park, where we found this “gentle clue”:
along with Poseidon
and some good views
Later that night we went on a boat-cruse. I got to see Macao, but what I liked most were the bridges. I’ll just show you one
After the cruse, we found a dance club where we could fully express our moves. This was the first time Darryn and I had gone to a dance club together, which was another check off of my list of things to do in China. The music was great, and it was another moment reminding me why I came to China. Unfortunately Huangdao doesn’t have such clubs, so my home isn’t perfect.
Rather than getting a hotel room for the night we went to some imperial bath house (I can’t remember the exact name) to soak in some hot springs and then pass out on some beach chairs. The place was very beautiful and you almost felt like royalty there. The only thing is that being on vacation, I don’t have any real stress in my life, so I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate the hot springs.
The next morning we spent some more time in the springs, and then headed off to a Shaolin temple.
This was the first temple that I’ve been to in China, and I always wondered what the experience would be like; I wasn’t disappointed. The place was very beautiful, and watching the monks perform their ceremonies was very interesting. Of course, it would be useless, and most likely disrespectful to take pictures of the monks in action, as it was the experience that was important. None the less I found some things that I needed to take pictures of. One thing was this live turtle on a stone one.
The other thing was the numerous dragons that I found around the temple. I’ll just show you one today, but on some future blog post I’ll likely show you more.
After getting back to Shenzhen, I spent the following week with Guang Li’s sister’s (Guang Xia) family. Guang Xia’s husband is one of (if not the) richest people in Shenzhen, so you can imagine what their place looks like. This brings up the obvious question, what am I doing staying there? It took me a few days to realize it, but it’s because of my mom (who’s never been to China). When Guang Li and TingTing where in Canada, my mom helped them out in a significant way. The end result is a family across the world who endlessly encourages Darryn to bring his parents to China.
Anyway, Guang Xia has two kids, LinLin and JaMing, so I had some people to play with. One of the things I did included going to a place called Happy Valley with LinLin and one of her friends.
The above picture was really hard to take for a few reasons. One, you’re not allowed to bring cameras on the ride, but saying “wo(3) ti(1)ng bu(4) do(3)ng” (I don’t understand what I’m hearing) to the people that give instructions helps a lot. The other difficulty was that the ride was violently throwing everyone around. I took many pictures, but not all of them even had people in them.
Another day I went out with LinLin and a group of friends for a birthday party. They were all heading to America to practice their English, so I was able to communicate to rather high degree with them. Though I must saying, at my age, it’s a little weird hanging out with a group of 16 year girls – most of our conversations revolved around if this or that actress was beautiful, accompanied with numerous questions to determine what western guys found attractive. A lot of girls that I’ve met in China have carried out this same sort of questioning, but it was particularly acute in these 16 year old girls. On an extremely bright note, we went to see transformers (I think partially to be nice to me), which was great fun to watch. It had appearances of some of my favourite aircraft (A-10, AC-130), not to mention a lot of English. I felt like I was in a theater back in Canada, which was a pleasant enough feeling.
When the weekend (14,15) arrived I met back up with Darryn and we went hiking. It was with a bus load of people, so I was hoping to meet some new people, especially since everyone I had met so far in Shenzhen was through friends. The first guy I met I knew instantly was from HK because he talked negatively about the government, something you should hear all the time, but never do.
Anyway, on the bus, we all introduced each other, which was fun, because my Chinese is still so poor, but I got to say the important things like:
-my Chinese is bad
-my name is Gaven
-I’m Canadian
-I’ve been in China for 2 months
-I’m a physics teacher in Qingdao
Unfortunately, the hike took place on the current hottest day of the year, and our path was along an un-shaded river. Not wanting to sweat out all the water and salt in my body, I decided to swim in every sizeable pool that I found to keep by body temperature at a reasonable level. This was possible because the pace of the group was slow enough that I could always catch up.
More unfortunate then the weather was that our leaders didn’t quite know where they were taking us, which diminished my faith in them. Thus, I abandoned the climb to the peak and found my way to a lake (for more swimming) with a small band of mutineers. Of course leaving the group meant that we had to wait for the group to return, which had all the food. After begging the locals for food (which worked marvelously), we set about entertaining ourselves in various ways during the long wait. Eventually someone joined us who had a giant bag of carrots, which a few of us jumped at.
That’s Linda and me proudly displaying what little is left from our massive carrots. On a side note, eating a lot of carrot makes you feel a little sick.
Well that brings you to where I’m at now. In future, I’ll try to be more active with my camera so that you don’t have to read as much. In the mean time, here’s a picture of my brother and I with JaMing (note that we are all wearing polo shirts):
