I'm baaaa-ack!

Trina reports on China

Fourteen hour flight, but with good food. Hong Kong was obviously the
inspiration for Bladerunner. It's a sci-fi futuristic city on a tropical
island, but mixed in with the skyscrapers that light up fantastically and
change color at night, and the sidewalks with colored lights imbedded in
them, and the fountains that play colored water symphonies to music, the
outdoor escalator that takes you right up to the top of the island (and I
kept singing "See ya later, escalator"), are the old grimy monstrosities
that house thousands in tiny teeming rooms. The heat and humidity are
exhausting (I kept singing "Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Noonday
Sun") and the travel books say the weather *improves* in October, so
what must it be like in Summer? Yet the women are fashionably attired in
little embroidered lightweight, 3/4 sleeve sweater sets and skirts made
from old jeans and embroidered denim and giant platform shoes. The food
is to die for! I had congee for breakfast -- rice cooked into a gruel
with stuff added and much more delicious than it looks -- and promptly
got lost in the enormous building that housed our restaurant. Finally a
cleaning lady took my hand and led me back to Steve, my waiting b.f. I
started to hug her, but a certain stiffening made me realize that they
don't hug in China, (Obviously, this is only in China, because I
distinctly recall hugging Herb, and he was fine about it) so I shook her
hand. The next day we had glorious dim sum that came to a total of about
$4 American for everything. But you have to watch what you eat. The old
lady sharing our table was eating chicken feet!

You go everywhere by ferry, because it's all islands, except of course
for the mainland. All the ferries are fun and cheap. It's 5 minutes
from Kowloon to Hong Kong by ferry and costs about 12 cents.
Transportation is incredible! You buy this thing called an Octopus card
for about $10 American and use it for everything: ferries, subways,
trains, buses, even some fast food restaurants, and you just keep adding
money to it when you use it up. Alas, the subways and many restaurants
are air conditioned to polar temperatures! We took a tram straight up to
Victoria Peak, from whence you can see the whole world. getting around
was a coinch because signs were in Chinese and English. I started
learning a pitiful few words in Chinese: two ways to say thank you, also
good morning and good day. I also learned how to say "Please stand back
from the doors", because a voice recited that over and over on the
subways.

By the time we got to Guang Zhou, which is mainland China, my attempts at
asking where the bathroom is were reducing people to gales of hysteria.
It turned out that I was reading from the wrong line in my phrase book
and telling them that my luggage was lost! (This is true, I didn't make
it up!) If Hong Kong was cheap, Guang Zhou was practically free -- we
started to think they were gonna just GIVE us stuff! We stayed at a 5
star hotel for $80 American a night, and I kept thinking that when they
found out who we REALLY were, they'd kick us out! The place was so
luxurious that they had uniformed women on each floor who, the minute
they saw you leave your room and head for the elevators, would actually
push the elevator button for you so it would be waiting when you got
there! In Guang Zhou we were superstars. We'd walk down these little
alleys where everyone was hanging out on the streets and they'd all shout
"hello!" at us (the only English they knew) and we'd shout "hello!" back
and the little kids would stare and giggle. Everything was in Chinese
only, so in restaurants I had to point to things that looked good. Then
the staff would stand back, but from the corner of our eyes we could see
them watching us eat, waiting to see our reaction to the food, whether we
could use chopsticks. Sometimes I made a mistake when pointing, like
when they gave us this stuff we kept telling each other was squid, but
we're pretty sure was really pig's innards, but we gamely ate it. Every
park was full of people practicing Ti Chi.

It was disappointing when we got to Macau and weren't superstars anymore.
The bus from Guang Zhou to Macau cost about $7 American and dumped us in
this dank underground bus shelter with puddles on the ground. We didn't
have a clue as to where we were, and wandered upstairs and out, to some
kind of terminal where people with luggage were milling around. Some
guys offered us a taxi to Macau for about $40 American, and that's when
we realized we weren't even in Macau yet! We still had to do the
immigration, border crossing thing, and THEN we were in Macau and a taxi
to our hotel was about $3 American. Macau is a sleepy tropical island
with all signs in Chinese and Portugese, so if you even know a smattering
of Spanish or Italian you can get by. Lots of good Portugese and Chinese
food, and sometimes a combo of both, very cheap, lovely old Catholic
churches and village squares, with great street markets, good coffee and
pastries in the morning and a beautiful Rennaisance ruin on a hill. I
even found a flea market, but no thrift shops, because at those prices,
who needs'em?

I have never done so much shopping in my life! I bought: in Hong Kong,
on Victoria Peak, a Chinese style blouse of vibrant lavender raw silk,
$12 (I won't say American anymore, but all the prices are the equivelants
in American dollars); at a street market, two pairs of sandals, about $5
and $6 each, and a pair of embroidered denim jeans, $4. In Guang Zhou,
at the Guang Zhou museum, two dragon pins @ about 25 cents each (Steve
brought a set of brushes for about $12), at the Temple of the Six
Banyans, a little brass Quan Yin for $3 (Steve bought two lions for $3
each); and in Macau at a street market, a Chinese style blouse of tie-dye
and red ebroidered trim (gorgeous!) for about $6; a jade turtle necklace
that looked ancient (except the guy had at least 6 of them) at another
street market for $4. Then there was the Proletariat Heroine of the
revolution: in Hong Kong we'd found this great ceramic shop just off the
escalator that was jammed full of Communist Chinese ceramics; tons of
Maos, and heroes and heroines of the revolution in singles and groups,
and even Mao surrounded by little happy revolutionary children, and Mao
with Sun Yat Sen and sometimes Chou En Lai. But the prices were highish
(by Hong Kong standards), even though Steve bought a bugle-playing
Heroine of the Revolution for about $15, so I thought I'd look
elsewhere, and sure enough, on the street of flea markets in Macau I
found a beautiful Heroine of the Revolution in her army uniform and
holding the Little Red Book for $9, but she let me have her for $8 .(you
can bargain!) The impression I got is that Mao is now an icon like Frida
Kahlo, James Dean and Che Guevara, and that the Red Guard and the
Cultural revolution are nostalgia and collectibles.

Another 2 hour ferry back from Macau to Hong Kong, and this time for our
last two days we stayed next to a Tin Hau temple, and the Temple Street
Night Market. Tin Hau is the goddess of the sea, and since we were on
all these islands surrounded by water (much fishing! Fresh fish!), it's
a natural to have temples to her. The story goes that once she came down
to earth as a beautiful but penniless young woman and asked for passage
to one of the islands, but no one would take her on board except for one
poor fisherman, for free. Then a storm sprang up and all the boats sank
except for the poor fisherman. There were also temples, of course, for
the Buddha, including the biggest outdoor Buddha in the world, on Lantau
island, where we also vitisted an ancient fishing village with the houses
on rickety poles, where people live the way they've lived for centuries.
And Kuan Yin temples! On Hong Kong, at Stanley Beach, we went to this
Kuan Yin temple (they call her Kun Yum there) where a ceremony was in
progress and the randiantly smiling, shaven -headed female priests
invited me to join it, which I gladly did, even though I of course didn't
have a clue as to what they were chanting. And in Macau there's a big
statue of her in the harbor, Liberty-like.

The Temple Street night market is a must-see, and I finally shopped
myself out that night, buying jade charms and brocade pillowcases for my
daughter, Casey. Steve bought an aloha-style shirt with dragons on it
and a blue and gold brocade jacket which he will look fantastic in. And
the food! All around the market (and all over the city, really) there
are stands cooking food on the street, and you eat at tables set up on
the street, with everything going on around you.

We spent our last day on the island of Lamma, which made me think that
Bali might be something like it - a very underpopulated tropical island
with great almost empty beaches and a nice hike from one village to
another -- missed the 5:30 ferry back to Hong Kong, took another smaller
6 PM ferry to another part of Hong Kong, where two different friendly
people showed us how to get the bus back to our hotel (did I mention that
everyone was helpful and polite and friendly?) where we just had time to
gobble down some deepfried shrimp pancakes at a stall in the temple
Street night market, and finish it off with a wonderful fruit dessert
(all over Hong Kong and environs they sell these yummy fruit desserts and
drinks -- delicious and even good for you!) before grabbing our luggage
and getting to the ultra modern airport on their brilliant and clever
ultraspeedy airport trains. After a 12 hour trip, we arrived at the
dumpy, depressing San Francisco airport and I thought, Jeez, we're in a
3rd world country!

Slept till 1:10 PM today, jet lag all gone. Hope this wasn't too long
and boring.

- Trina