Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 9:41 AM
Subject: Day 3
Today I had some work to do in our Hong Kong office. I won’t bore you with the details. Following the meetings, we had Dim Sum lunch in a local restaurant – good as always. Dim sum is a style of eating popular in southern China’s Guangdong province, what we used to call Canton. Nothing unusual in the meal this time; steamed vegetables, rice, dumplings, etc… It was fun watching Kevin struggle with his chopsticks.
After lunch our original plan had been to take the ferry into Shenzhen, but apparently the ferry is not running to Shenzhen in the afternoon for now so Kevin, Larry and I are instead riding a bus to the border crossing, about a half hour ride. The bus is a typical motor coach, only a bit narrower. Upon reaching the border crossing, we got off the bus and walked to the Hong Kong departure station. I showed my passport, the immigration officer took the departure card I filled out when I arrived on Saturday, and I proceeded through a doorway where I expected to see the China immigration area, but instead it lead outdoors to another set of bus lanes. We rode this new bus another 10 minutes or so to the China immigration station. It is interesting to note how things change as you enter the Peoples Republic of China. The Hong Kong immigration center was clean, efficient and well designed. The China immigration center on the other hand was dirty, and slow with no attention paid to aesthetics. After filling out forms and showing my passport and visa to the immigration official, we found the taxi line and waited for our turn.
One really sobering note; I am accustomed to seeing crippled people begging in the US, but I have never seen anything as disturbing as some of the people begging in China. I have seen many here missing limbs, I saw one woman in Hong Kong with a growth on her neck as large as her head, and in the current taxi line, there was a man who was contorted in a way I cannot comprehend – he was dragging himself with his arms along the ground on his stomach and his legs were somehow twisted onto the top of his back with his feet near the back of his head. He was pushing a cup ahead of him as he moved up and down the taxi line, all the while chanting something. I don’t know what else to say…
The taxi ride from the border crossing to the hotel was probably the scariest I have ever experienced, and it takes a really bad ride to scare me these days. I am used to aggressive cab drivers here, but this guy sets the new gold standard. Holy $#!%! He had a practice of driving with the cab centered on the white line in fairly heavy traffic and then moving left or right into which ever lane was appeared to be moving faster at the moment – regardless of who may be trying to occupy that lane already. Horns were regularly sounding protest as he cut off one car after another. Upon exiting his cab, I noticed there were no dents so I guess I should just say he is really good. I related this story later to one of my Chinese coworkers who commented “Chinese driver miss no opportunity” I guess that says it all.
In China, they have many words and phrases which they translate into English for commercial purposes, but which wind up sounding really funny to us. On the cab ride to the hotel, we passed by a typically Chinese sounding building, the King Key Palace Hotel. In case you missed the funny part, say that name really fast. I couldn’t help laughing out loud when I saw that. Larry asked what was so funny and I explained it but he did not understand.
By the time we checked into the hotel it was nearly 5:00 PM. I asked Larry to arrange dinner for us and he took Kevin and I to a nearby Chinese seafood restaurant. Larry ordered many items for us (family style dining is the norm). Salmon sashimi – excellent, crab – tasty but really hard to eat with the shell on, a whole flounder, soup, and so on. The whole flounder started to worry me as I saw Larry begin to divide up the fish into portions. Guess which piece I got? You guessed it I’m sure - the head is the part they save for the “honored guest”. I have not yet learned what they give to people they don’t like…
I have been mentally preparing myself for the eating of the fish head as I knew my luck would eventually run out on this. During my first visit to China I was saved by a power outage. My second and third trips I was fortunate enough to avoid seafood restaurants. Not so lucky this time. I am happy to report I made it through the experience without embarrassing myself, making a fuss, or vomiting on my host. It really did not taste like anything but fish and I just tried really hard not to think about what I was eating.
After dinner, Larry left us to meet a friend and I took Kevin to experience the Shenzhen “beer bars” – the series of small bars near our hotel filled with friendly Asian girls hustling drinks and more… I may be a bit twisted, but I had been looking forward to getting Kevin, a pretty straight laced stereotypical engineer into one of these places to see how he would react. I must say he did OK. He didn’t get into trouble or turn his nose up – he played connect four at the bar with a rather cute girl who helped him dispense with some of his unwanted Chinese money (buy me a dlink?). We left after a couple of beers and returned to the hotel. After falling asleep, I was awakened by a phone call from Larry around midnight. Apparently, Larry passed by these bars on his way back to the hotel and saw the whole strip being raided by police – around 50 officers he estimated. He was concerned that Kevin and I might still be there. Thankfully, we called it a night early – I doubt I would have successfully explained my “Engineer in the beer-bar” experiment to the Shenzhen police.
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