So after Shilin I sort of packed up my stuff and got ready to leave China. Then I went to the grocery store and- hahaha what?
After that I went out for my last meal with Iuh. We went to my favorite novelty restaurant. It was a sad occasion. That’s why this photo is not very exciting even though I’m in a toilet themed restaurant:
When we split up for the last time I walked around for a little bit in Dongmen (the shopping district with the first Chinese McDonalds in it). It was kind of mopey. However I did get these two pictures of things that I think are awesome, that made me a little happy:
School is over and I have to clean out my desk, that means no more giant OWEN DENNIS sign:
Aright so Iuh and I were able to squeeze in one more meal which was a lot happier. We got this food. It’s one of my favorite Chinese foods in China. It’s peppers, a little bit of pork, cauliflower, and chives. It’s great. I have good memories associated with this food; mostly memories of me and Iuh because I don’t know what this is called and she was the only person I knew who could order it.
We tried to go see a movie, but it was all sold out. However I also saw this sign for what appears to be Russian Toy Story 3? After this we walked around in a park for a little while talking about colored hair and communism. It was a good time. Second last meal with Iuh was a much more enjoyable experience than first last meal:
So, starting to clean out my room before whoever (whomever?) it is that comes after me arrives. I found a bunch of science projects in my refrigerator. I’m just going to say right now, ahead of time: Oh stop it, you’ve found stuff in your fridge too, chill out. I just forgot to clean it. It’s not like it smelled or anything.
Here’s a 4 month old apple:
And yet, here’s another apple that was put into my fridge a mere week later:
Fascinating. I think the reason they’re different is because the first apple got some ice on it once because it was back near the cooling unit.
Remember when I made iced tea within the first week of my moving to China? Well I never actually drank it or emptied the bottle. It looks really cool:
Here’s an orange that shrunk from being able to fit inside my palm to fitting on the tip of my thumb. It was rock hard:
Nude Tanning
Here’s something I saw outside on my last day. I can’t explain it, but I can definitely put a big ol’ wtf on this set of photos. He was just lying there. No one was around except for me and him:
Goodbye Yantian…
Check out this big beetle:
This grid makes this cat look like it exists inside of a 3D modeling program [neeerrrrd]:
Whoop, another gigantic bug as long as my middle finger!
It was exciting and upsetting to leave Shenzhen at the same time. I mean this was my first home out of college. That’s a very formative year for a person. As much as I hated Yantian Gang I still found a certain charm to it. I hate the place but I think a small part of me loved to hate it. Plus I had these great friends who were open to talking about things that other people weren’t. They were curious and funny and they would help me when I had problems. I owe them a whole lot. The amount of me being a dumb foreigner that they must have had to put up with must have been mind-boggling.
For our last night together we went for dinner and then I gave gifts. I gave Helen a big bag of candy and May got a drawing and a little pumpkin-like vase. Then we found a wheel chair and ran around in it. After that we group hugged and I was very happy and sad. I’m afraid I won’t ever see them again. It’s so hard to keep in touch with people in China. I miss everyone I met over there. Probably the top thing I hate most about traveling is saying goodbye to the people I’ve met and knowing that, probability-wise, I might never see them again. It doesn’t help that China blocks so many of the ways that people can keep in touch with eachother (my blog, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.). Sucks. We had a good last night though.
*SIGH*
So many goodbyes at once. Just one after another:
The next day, after my room was finished being cleaned (I have a host of excuses for the guilt I feel on leaving it looking like this)…
… I Hopped a Train to Hong Kong
Not after freaking out about my lost passport for a little while though. Also my luggage handles and wheels broke before I even made it to the bus stop. That’s what I get for buying the cheapest suitcase I can in a Chinese grocery store.
Eventually I made it to the Hong Kong side of the border. In the train station I switched out all my Chinese money into Hong Kong money and I met Wei, the person that got me interested in China in the first place. She looked different, spoke English better, but still held many of the strong attributes I originally associated with her.
Because I got to see Wei once more, years after I had originally seen her and long after we had stopped being able to talk, someone I thought I would never see again much less see in her home country, I have some hopes that I’ll get to see all my Chinese friends again in the future. The odds seemed so unlikely at the time of our last parting that it was a very surprising and unsual experience. I trust that I will see my friends again, but maybe not for awhile. Who knows when.
Wei guided me to my hostel in Kowloon and then we went out for dinner. Last time I came to Hong Kong I didn’t really get to explore and get out much. We just came to see Avatar and have morning tea. This time I got to just kind of walk around and I had Wei there to help if I needed it.
I give you: Hong Kong.
Cooooooool. It’s like all those stereotypical images of Hong Kong I had in my head. This is exactly what I thought Hong Kong was supposed to look like and I got to see it. Well, not quite what I thought it was supposed to look like. Most of my images of Hong Kong come from mid-80’s and early 90’s Jackie Chan movies. So… I mean I guess I expected more brown gradient tinted sunglasses, poofy hair, and Kumites.
One cool thing I found out about HK is that they have this card called the Octopus Card. It’s amazing. It’s like a rechargeable debit card that words on all public transportation and many many super markets throughout the city. It’s accepted all over the place. You know how in the future we’re supposed to have this magic card that we can just swipe anywhere and buy any item or any service? That’s Hong Kong. They have that. So of course what I needed to buy with it was a famously ridiculous Japanese ion supply drink:
I walked with Wei around town so we could go to lunch. This was the escalator to the top of a pedestrian overpass. Hong Kong is riddled with pedestrian walkways through random buildings and over other things. When she showed me her school the sidewalk went through and around all kinds of things. I’m glad she was showing me how to get there otherwise I would’ve been quite lost. Must be really hard to do urban planning in a city this dense and old.
These shops were actually quite pleasant to walk around in. The Influence from Britain and large amount of interaction with foreigners seems to have affected how people do business. For instance they’re not yelling at me or touching me or trying to get me to buy things, they’ll just let me browse at my leisure. I appreciate that.
Whaaaaaat is this fruit? I’ve never seen this before. How does that happen? How often do you see a fruit that you’ve never seen before/isn’t a variation on some other fruit you already know? It looks like a tomato… rhubarb… squash…
When Wei saw this truck she said I had to eat some of this ice cream. I tried it. It was amazing. It’s basically really really cold ice cream that is so aerated that it’s almost like whipped cream. It was very good. Wei said it was a local chain I think:
Some street stuff:
This was my first hint that people in Hong Kong are allowed to do more than people in other parts of the country. A Methodist church? That’s so specific:
Subway on the way to Wei’s. Say that ten times fast:
Her university. I like this building.
I wonder how many pictures I have of people taking pictures?
I didn’t take this picture very well, but I like how they show that the person is a man. A gentleman. A Frenchman:
Next day, I took this picture out a hallway window so I could see down. I like how they hang their sheets. It’s cool looking. I’d hate to drop it though, it’s probably irretrievable:
Obviously this is the floor of my building for hostels:
Or… multiple floors? I had to run down the stairs a floor to try and catch the elevator. There are two elevators, one goes to the odd numbered floors and one goes to the even numbered floors. The elevator kept skipping my floor because it would get overloaded on the floors above me. So I went down a floor to try and grab the even one. I wonder how many hostels are in this building?
The bottom floor of the building is filled with immigrant shops. Everyone down there was from mostly Ghana or India. I of course took this opportunity to eat some wonderful Indian food from this vendor. He was cool for some reason. Really chill guy I guess.
Helen told me about the light show on Hong Kong harbor that they have every weekend. Since it’s summer they have it every night. So I went down there to check it out. It’s “the largest light show in the world.” Which, yeah, I’m guessing it probably is. Basically, all the buildings on the opposite side of the harbor are set to be synched up to music that plays on the waterfront in Kowloon. So you stand on one side of the harbor and the other side has buildings that light up.
Here’s some people sitting waiting for the light show:
Here’s the light show. Even the biggest light show in the world is amazingly cheesy. Don’t care though, light shows are still fun:
This is the star ferry, it’s the cheapest way across the port:
There was a wedding reception going on inside what I think was an art museum. I notice the white guys and the Chinese guys go to separate locations for their smoke breaks:
Ew is this an import brand? Gross word.
Here’s some vegetarian sushi, green tea noodles, and mango mochi I picked up. The mango mochi was soooo good. Wei was telling me about how people in Hong Kong are really into Japan (something most mainland chinese feel the opposite about). I could definitely tell because there were so many japanese import stores and Japanese restaurants. Maybe I should go to Japan. I just hate eating fish so much. It’s gross. That’s my top problem with going to Japan I think. Also that I just spent all this time learning Chinese makes it feel like it would be a waste to go to Japan.
Man Hong Kong is so cool.
AAAAAahhhh Twix! Are you kidding me? Awesome!
I stuck my hand out my bedroom window and took a picture right after Ghana made a goal during the World Cup. My building is not all hostels, apparently it’s full of a lot of people from Ghana that were quite happy wake me up with cheering when their country’s team scored a goal. The whole building was just cheering sounds.
Right after I took this next picture, a woman, maybe in her mid-30’s, came up and asked if I wanted a massage. She didn’t just openly ask though, she got real close and whispered it. I said no because… I mean duh. So I watched her leave. She didn’t ask anyone else on her way down the street, not even the other random touristy or not touristy looking white guys. I felt kind of good about that actually, a bit of a compliment really. That lady had standards and I fit them. Nice.
So the top way to get my blog blocked forever and ever is to post the following two pictures. This is what blew it over the top for me that Hong Kong is under a completely different rule set than the rest of China. Wei and I were getting ready to go on the star ferry and cross the harbor when she pointed out these pictures to me. I’ve gotten so used to not being able to read signs that I’ve started just not noticing them. So when she pointed these out I was amazed. Wei says they’re anti-government protestors. I’m not sure how to analyze that phrasing in comparison to home.
Freedom of speech is probably the right I care the most about (lol artist). As far as I’m concerned, if you have freedom of speech, the other rights will fall into place because you can talk about them. Therefore it’s the most important US right. Anyway, I don’t know what to think about the phrase “anti-government protestor”, I mean we would just say protestor. A protestor is a protestor. Most people would agree that if they’re mad at the government it doesn’t mean they’re anti-the government (except lately I guess, there’s a lot of unrest in the US right now and strong rhetoric is very common at the moment). I mean protesting is just something you’re supposed to do when you want the government to change. Doesn’t mean you hate them, just that you think they could do some things better. I’m sure that if I brought this up with someone here they would just say “well it’s different in China”. Maybe so, maybe not though.
Anyway, the top two things I’m not allowed to talk about in China are about to be shown in the following two pictures, in Chinese:
Going on the ferry across the harbor. I don’t know what it is about ferries that feel awkward. Maybe it’s because when I get on a boat I feel like I’m supposed to be like, getting on a boat to ride around for awhile and instead I’m just getting on to get off. I don’t know. I guess it feels like big boats are supposed to be doing something big and important but instead it’s just shuttling me around.
Star seats:
The docking station (is that what it’s called in nautical terms? I only know sci-fi terms in reference to anything having to do with a ship):
Here’s a cool building from where I just was near Kowloon:
Also what appears to be… a… transformer? A zord?
It was so hot that day that when I stepped out from the shade to take that picture and stepped back in I was covered in sweat. Wei was smart and stayed in the shade but I’m a tourist so I do stupid stuff.
We decided to go up to a mountain so we could get a good view of the city, but to get there we had to go through this shopping mall and head up the road a ways.
Oh hey, here’s on of the buildings that was all lit up in the light show last night:
Whoa, this building is awesome. God buildings in the US are so boring:
We opted not to go up the mountain when we realized how many people there were in line. Instead we got onto one of the coolest novelties about this side of Hong Kong, the thin double-decker trollies:
I of course demanded that we go sit on the upper floor. So there we were, windows open, riding around Hong Kong on the second floor of a trolly. Awesome experience:
Everyone on this bus was yelling and hitting their hit sticks together:
Here is a strinkingly well-composed photograph I took as I walked down the stairs to get off the trolly:
Alien tower:
Walking through the park, looking at the guy playing with his little toy boat in the pond. I can’t see myself spending money on a toy boat. It would only be useful to play with when I went to the park. I’m not at the park most of the time though so it would just sit in my apartment on a shelf somewhere… :-(
When we walked past the Hong Kong library I wanted to go in pretty badly. I wanted to see what their library was like compared to Shenzhen’s:
Oh I see it’s just as crazy. This is a library.
Their computers have little pen inputs so you can write in Chinese. I tried writing my name but it didn’t work. Apparently my name has too many strokes in it.
Out the window of the library:
Thanks for telling me?
They had those little signs on a number of different things. They had one on the entrance door handle too. Basically anything that people touch a bunch had these little signs on them. Didn’t have them on the books though. Do they not clean the books? Wait, do they purify the air in that place? I mean there’s so many people that go through there every day. Why did they have to tell me they clean that one thing specifically? It only makes me more concerned about all the things they don’t have signs on.
Anyway, the sun sets on my final day in Hong Kong:
Here’s that cool pedestrian overpass again:
I happened to meet some of the people from my teaching program in Hong Kong. Twice. Weird. They invited me and Wei to go see a movie. Just so happened that they invited us to go see it in the same theatre where I went to see Avatar with Helen and May. Lots of coincidences at once.
We opted out of seeing the movie and went down to the harbor instead.
I said goodbye to Wei and went back to my hostel to pack. Felt a lot more okay to say goodbye this time versus when we parted in Yellowstone. Here’s another shot of the bottom of my building:
Something I never showed you in the beginning was the size of my room in the hostel. It’s pretty spacious as you can see. Also yes, I did have a bathroom:
I figured out how to get on the express train to the airport. It was a huge hassle with my broken suitcase, but I still made it without missing the train or my flight. Goodbye Hong Kong…
… and hello airport Burger King? Why doesn’t US Burger King do this?
At the airport:
Maybe this awesome guy is where I got the idea for wanting red converse shoes and a suit coat:
The tarmac is made of brick. How’s that for unnecessarily decorative and labor intensive? Oofda (how’s that for a word my students won’t know?).
Hey… maybe that ship is coming from Shenzhen.
Goodbye China…
… and goodnight.
