Alex in China

Hey-oh! We’ve just returned from a four-day trip to Hong Kong which is the reason it’s taken me so long to get a post up. I had this plan to find internet and write up posts daily since there was so much going on but it didn’t work so I’m writing it all up tonight!

Hong Kong is most likely one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to. Take Hawaii and New York City and combine them and that’s pretty much Hong Kong (except I think Hong Kong is bigger than NYC). Even with some rainy weather every once in awhile, Hong Kong totally blew me away. Plus we had our own amazing tour guide, Ben Petty, who is a director at the new Confucius Institute of A&M and also one of the funniest guys alive. Ben lived in Hong Kong for 25 years so he knew how to navigate the city with ease.

After arriving in Hong Kong and grabbing some lunch at a restaurant, Ben brought us up to a famous place called The Peak where you have a birds eye view of the city. We arrived around dusk and were able to watch the skyline light up like a laser show until the entire city was glowing. Afterwards we went out for Korean BBQ and strolled through a local night market (the first of many) and passed out for the night.

For anyone who’s a Jackie Chan fan, we actually were living right down the street from Jackie’s HQ and got to admire it’s large walls on a daily basis. We never actually ran into Jackie, but I guess that’s the next best thing!

Hong Kong is a crazy place with a very interesting situation. Back in 1997 it was handed over from the British to the Chinese (I’m giving the very abridged version of the story) and is now officially considered part of China. In actuality, it’s pretty much a completely separate country. We had to go through international customs going into Hong Kong and it was pretty obvious that the people there considered themselves slightly above those in mainland Chinese. There were also the obvious legacies that the British left behind like double decker buses, driving on the wrong side, and a large number of English people.

Our next day in Hong Kong seemed like it was going to be rough as it started raining and wouldn’t stop but ended up working in our favor. We were visiting temples and the rain helped get rid of any crowds there normally would have been. The Buddhist temple we visited first was one of the most peaceful places I’ve seen in this crazy country. It was built only three years ago and had some amazing architecture…no nails used on any building. The next temple we stopped at was Taoist and almost the complete opposite of the first, hectic and chaotic (yet still beautiful). There were idols everywhere and people running around with incense to give to the god of their choice.

Now here comes my favorite part of the day, our excursion to a wild monkey colony outside of the city. We took numerous buses to get here but it was well worth it. As soon as we had gotten off the bus and hadn’t even entered the colony yet, we were greeted by two monkeys chasing each other down the sidewalk. The thing you have to understand about these monkeys is that the males can get extremely aggressive if they feel like you’re challenging them and apparently staring them in the eyes is the sign of a challenge. Well after a nice ten minutes of watching the female monkeys and looking away from the male monkeys we found ourselves walking into a very large crowd of them who had just eaten. Everything was going fine until we saw the alpha male raise his back and slowly start to trounce over to us. We all started to back up against a stone wall, looking at various bushes and clouds to avoid his gaze but apparently it wasn’t working. I look down and see the monkey making his way faster for Joel, Aaron and I. This is right when things go crazy. Joel grabs me and throws me in front himself (thanks roomie!) right as the monkey makes a noise and starts to thrash his arms. I try to jump away as I feel a furry hand hit my arm and turn to see the monkey grab Aaron’s poncho and violently pull it away. Luckily this seemed to make him content as he checked out the poncho for a moment and then backed away (not without taking his eyes off of us). We decided it was time to go as we were “escorted” out of the area by our new friend and a few of his cronies.

We finished the night at a formal restaurant where we were being treated to Peking Duck, a delicacy in China. Wow! Peking duck has this amazing flavor that is amplified when you wrap it with this special sauce and onion they give you. It was an impressive meal with good entertainment and even better food. My grandpa asked me recently what the most exotic food I’ve eaten so far is and I think I have a better answer now after this meal…chickens foot. I’ve been pretty good about not being grossed out by foods here but that just threw me over the edge. It’s literally a cooked chickens foot, you can see the claw shape! I ended up eating one just to say I did but I don’t think I’ll be ordering it again any time soon

Our last day proved to be just as exciting as the others except with a new theme for the day, markets. Markets are one of the coolest things about Chinese culture, you can buy anything you can imagine for prices you’ll never find anywhere else in the world. But like I said in another post, you really gotta know how to haggle or the merchants will destroy you. We had five markets on the agenda and each one had it’s own unique personality. The first two were pretty self-explanatory, the bird market and the flower market. Old men in Hong Kong love to buy birds, teach them how to sing, and then compete on who’s bird can sing best. The flower market was a street covered with merchants who sold all kinds of exotic flowers from around the world. I love to garden our backyard in college station so I was having a blast checking out all the plants, even though I knew customs would kill me if I tried to bring one back.

The Jade market is famous for selling…well, Jade. Jade is very common in China so it sells for an amazing price compared to the US where it can get pretty pricey. I picked up some things that caught my eye (maybe some gifts?) and had a good time haggling with the merchants who were pretty good sports. After Jade, we headed for Stanley Market which is known for clothing and also it’s large masses of British people. This was the first time I’d actually seen more Caucasians than Asians and it was kind of weird. I didn’t buy anything at Stanley but it was worth checking out just for the British accents. Sadly, I don’t remember the last market we went to but it was a night market (only open at night) and was probably the most fun of all of the them. At some point Joel, Aaron and I got pulled into a shady apartment to check out a selection of fake designer goods and had to make a run for it as the merchants were getting too aggressive with rocket prices. Several purchases and angry merchants later, we were heading back to the hotel to get some rest (but not before watching a Jackie Chan movie).

And now we’re back in Qingdao! It’s good to be back on the coast again, I was starting to miss the 75 degree weather. We just took out Professor LaPastina (we call him Tio, but that’s for another post) and Ben Petty for a nice father’s day dinner. Being on the subject of Father’s day….Happy Father’s Day Dad!!! Dad is actually in Greece right now with my mom on a cruise so I’ve got no way to communicate with them till they get back but I’m planning on writing up an email anyways once I finish this post. Actually, that seems like reason enough to finish up so thanks for reading! Also, thanks to everyone who’s been writing comments, I always look forward to reading what you all write after I put up a new post! -a

(I just uploaded this video of us in Hong Kong and also put a video of the monkeys up above, let me know if they don’t work)