Back in HK from Beijing

To all of you in Canada all I have to say is HAH HAH for your -20 C weather, its 17 C here right now at 8.30 pm.
So last Sunday ( a week ago) I went to Chinese Church, it was interesting, totally different then Polish or Canadian Church. Lucy’s family is constantly taking me out for lunches and dinners and no one will ever let me pay. All I eat is breakfast at home and go to mad restaurants for the rest of the day. Lucy’s family belongs to every country club in Hong Kong so I get to live the HK high life here. Checked out some more markets in HK, they are insane! You can get so much for so little (speaking from a CDN $ point of view) but you can’t be a bit claustrophobic, these markets are jam packed with goods and people and you usually have a narrow corridor to squeeze yourself into between the masses of people and goods. Anyways, my flight to Beijing, Mainland China was leaving at the break of dawn on Monday and nothing was running that early on Hong Kong Island (where I am living for the duration of my trip) so Lucy’s brother offered for me to stay at his vacant 2nd house at Lantau Island (where the airport is) at Discovery Bay so that I could catch my flight on time. There are no cars on that island and only public transportation so it’s a breath of fresh air from the crazy busy HK Island. Anyways, I stopped by the supermarket to grab some tea and found all sorts of interesting things: curry flavoured chips, chicken wing flavoured chips (Q I know you’d be all over that one), ready to go EVERYTHING and strawberry shots of alcohol in toothpaste like tubes for on the road convenience lol.
Anyways, I booked the Beijing trip with a Hong Kong travel group, I was the only white kid there. I told the guide not to worry about me and just tell me when and where to show up in English so I don’t get lost. She spoke a bit of English but it was so broken she might as well be speaking Cantonese. I just read body language and that got me through. Beijing (or Peking in Cantonese) reminds me of Communist era Poland. It was very gray, military like and drab. Mind you its full blown winter there and no city looks pretty mid January but I found Beijing to be really dirty. It looked nice at night cause it was all lit up and you couldn’t see the garbage in the streets. I am used to the cleanliness of Hong Kong so Beijing was mad dirty to me. In HK they drive fast but not unsafe, in Mainland China they drive like maniacs, and there are 100s of bicycles on the road just making the situation so much worse. Everyone has the mentality of “they will stop for me if I go” including all buses and pedestrians. Stop signs and Red lights are a joke, and so are police officers. Crossing the road there is taking a chance with your life. The cops are dressed in Russian style military gear and stand around like Buckingham Palace guards. They literally just stand in public places and don’t move. Bathrooms in China are horrid, you don’t have to ask where they are cause you can smell them way ahead of time. They are completely unsanitary and most of the time they are literally holes in the ground, if you plan to go there, hope you got good balance ( jenn – thank god for open eye festivals and your cottage lol, prepared me for Beijing). I would not drink anything all day til 8 pm (when I came back to my hotel room) in hopes of avoiding the bathrooms at all costs. I think I must have gone through a litre of hand sanitizer when I was there. There are next to no foreigners in Beijing ( saw a total of 5 white people and 2 black guys the whole time) so I was pointed at a lot. People aren’t as nice there as they are in HK. They don’t seem to like to take care of themselves or their surroundings and liked to walk into me a lot (whether it was for pick pocketing purposes or discriminatory purposes is beyond me). They also think that horking, drinking and smoking is acceptable everywhere, even in museums. Men liked to point and sometimes follow me, the women just asked for money or for me to buy stuff. If I kept my hood on my head and didn’t look up then people left me alone, if my hood fell off or my blond hair poked out it was instant pointing and staring. I was fine in touristy areas, but on the streets, I would not survive 20 minutes on my own. No one speaks English there, some speak Cantonese (Mandarin is spoken in Mainland China and Cantonese in Hong Kong, the languages aren’t even close to each other), so if I got lost (and thank God I didn’t) I would have a lot of trouble finding my way anywhere. And as you all know, I always tend to wonder off on my own. I know now why Hong Kong people distinguish themselves from Mainland China people, its 2 very completely different people and societies. Anyways, the weather was cold! It was – 7 C most of the time and I know that’s not that bad but spending 10 hours outside a day made it cold. The people in my group were nice to me, although spoke Cantonese to me 90% of the time. I would guess what they were saying by their body language and answer back in English. It wasn’t til the last day that they realized that I actually wasn’t from Honk Kong and apologized for not speaking English more. I have no clue what I have been eating for the last week as no one could tell me the names of anything in English, all I know is that I ain’t sick yet so whatever sea creatures I been eating can’t be all that bad. I got to see a lot of things when I was in Beijing: Temple of Heaven, Tian’an men square, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Bai Hai Park, Ming Tombs, The Great Wall, Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum etc. I also got to go to a few Chinese markets (some funky crazy food on sale on the streets), got to go to 2 traditional Chinese medicine shops, a jade shop, silk museum, a Chinese “changing of the faces” show and a tea house. I also took a rickshaw ride through Beijing streets but I nearly had a heart attack, I never want to set foot on a Beijing Road ever again. Since the year of the rooster is coming up, there were roosters EVERYWHERE I looked. All in all, the trip was good, scary at times, but despite all my HK Friends’ premonitions I survived China lol. I am very very glad to be back in safe and warm Hong Kong!
Yesterday I went to MOng Kok with Angela, it’s a crazy shopping area with seas of people on the streets. Its soooo easy to get lost there and you have to watch your stuff like a hawk. I went for dinner with Angela’s family. Hong Kong people gather before the Chinese New Year so there was about 16 people around the table. They were trying to make me eat some funky stuff but my “ I will try anything once” attitude went out the window when they tried to make me eat fried fish skin and chicken feet lol. Afterwards we hit the bar district on Hong Kong Island ( 10 -15 minute walk from Lucy’s house). Its crazy, tons of people and light and music. It looks like a festival but its like that every weekend. The streets are shut down and no cars are allowed within the district. It felt more like Canada since I saw people of all nationalities and cultures as well as bars and clubs catering to all sorts of western and asian tastes. Today I went to Stanley Bay (on the south side of HK Island, I am on the North) with Angela, her bf and friends. Its mad humid out (at 95% right now, Toronto is about 60% in the summer) so it drizzles a lot. Tomorrow I am off to Ocean Park (amusement park), should be good.
Anyways, that’s the end of my weekly essay. I should be sending some Beijing photos soon.