Moving Pictures

Hong Kong, China

My time in Hong Kong hasn't been exactly as expected. I was quite excited to get here after watching so many films set in this city.
A friend, a guy from Beijing who I met in London and who works here now generously offered me his couch in his apartment.
The first day was gorgeous: my friend and me went on a boat trip with some of his colleagues and work contacts. "No stay in Hong Kong is complete without a boat trip", he said. So, there was sun and beach and fresh sea food on one of the outlying islands. It almost felt like Malaysia already.
A day later the typhoon hit. We were lucky that only the edge of the storm grazed Hong Kong but the sun was gone. Every day ridiculous amounts of rain would pour down turning bridges to waterfalls and the park next to my friend's apartment block into a swamp. On the way to the MTR we literally had to wade through puddles on some days (flip-flops are useful not only in the sun). Only in the afternoon the weather would clear up a bit. I guess, a stay in Hong Kong is not complete without one of the famous typhoons either.
Now, my friend leaves for work very early in the morning - as early as 7:45! He also has no spare key, so I have to leave with him and can't come back in until he gets back fairly late at night. The only place you can reach by roofed walkways without getting soaked is the nearby shopping mall. And since this is Hong Kong and people have Internet at home there wasn't even any friendly neighbourhood net bar. Imagine my frustration!
The first rainy day I paced myself into a fatigue up and down escalators across the various levels of the mall waiting for shops to open and something to happen, checking the weather at intervals. Then I spent the rest of most of the morning at a little restaurant along with a number of elderly men, who also seemed to have nothing to do, sipping 粥 (rice porridge), nibbling on 油条 (fried dough) and watching the news in Cantonese.
Only on the second day did I find the multi-screen cinema. They had cheap matinees. And suddenly the rainy mornings didn't seem quite as bleak anymore. So I managed to catch M. Night Shyamalan's new one, The Happening, and a very sexy and cool Angelina Jolie in Wanted. I could have become a regular. Besides, the girl at the ticket office was quite cute. They should have Hong Kong cinema classics with Chow Yun Fat or Leslie Cheung in the morning to get me in the mood of heading out. I still want to find the building they used for the roof-top scene in Infernal Affairs. Come to think of it I spent a lot of time in that cinema and only ever ventured out after lunch. Then again, faced with the choice of getting soaked and I haven't been to the cinema for such a long time.

For Your Own Safety

Hong Kong, China

I'm in Hong Kong, at last. I've really been looking forward to this. Sadly, I couldn't just have a smooth, perfect stay. Seems, that would be asking too much.
After a gorgeous boat trip with my friend Mr. T and some of his colleagues to some islands I wanted to get some money. Paying for the trip and my initial Octopus Card (like London's Oyster Card but with more ... arms, I guess) had eaten up most of the cash I had changed on entering. I was left with just a handful of Hong Kong Dollars and a few hundred Chinese Yuan.
When I went to the cash machine in downtown Causeway Bay, however, the machine refused to give me money. Had I gone to the wrong bank or the wrong branch? These things go through your head. Seen globally Hong Kong is a small place, maybe not all local banks allow you to use foreign cards. It was a weekend, so all banks were closed. Over the next day I tried all the various banks and their ATMs that I passed. No, no and no. The machine would always eject my card and print the same little advice slip saying "transaction rejected" and an error code. No reason. Just rejected. Now, there was no way I could already have spent so much as to completely exhaust my funds. And I made sure all the ATMs here have the VISA symbol on them. I had entered my PIN correctly, too. But then what was the problem? I was down to 10 dollars and getting really annoyed. I had been using the card all over China just to be rejected in a much more international place like Hong Kong!
On Monday, I walked into a branch to ask. The manager himself came out to talk to me. I guess, that's foreigner treatment in action again. I showed him the printout and he went to check. Turns out it wasn't their ATM or bank that was rejecting my transaction but my bank in UK, Lloyds TSB, was. Damn it, that meant at least one international phone call to Lloyds's help line. Could they help me make that call? They couldn't since it was not an overseas branch of their own bank but a completely different institution.
By now I had told my friends what was going on. Without any further comment Lingyun had just gone to an ATM, withdrawn 2000 dollars and pushed them into my hands. "Give it back to me when you can." Technically, I hate asking for or borrowing money, especially from friends. I don't want to owe them anything. Makes them seem more like business relations. But what choice did I have? I was damn lucky I had them.
Lingyun also let me use her phone to make the call to the help line. A man picked up, I explained my problem. He would connect me to their fraud department and would I please hold. I held. I was pacing around the lobby of Lingyun's office building at Three Exchange Square. A woman picked up, I explained my problem again. The solution was as simple as it was stupid. Apologising and calling me "sir" she explained that this was one of their "random security measures to protect me against fraud". She would unlock my card right away. Random security measure?! I was calling from Hong Kong, I was thousands of kilometers away from home, my cash was running low and their "random security measure" had disabled my only means to get more money! How did that help me? She was sorry for the inconvenience. Inconvenience my ass! I'm lucky to have my friends here. I didn't say that, of course. Wouldn't have much use anyway. She's just a pawn. So, to prevent further inconvenience I explained I will still be travelling other countries in the region. Could I give her a list of countries to put into their computer system to prevent any further randomness. I was apologised to and called "sir" some more but there was no way she could do that. It shouldn't happen anymore for the next three days, after that I was welcome to call their 24-hour help line for assistance. I was also welcome to pay the fees for the call. She didn't say that, of course. Could she do anything else for me at all today? No, I think Lloyds TSB had already done enough damage. But I didn't say that either.
So, with a lot of things left unsaid it took until this morning to finally make a successful withdrawal. So, it seems I can at least pay back my monetary debt to Lingyun. I hardly dare to think what will happen after I return to China, let alone places like Cambodia where I don't speak the language and don't know anyone either. Then I'll be screwed. I just hope I'll have a telephone handy and enough cash to pay for the call to the help line.
I'm sure my anger is not at all justified and this is all for my own safety. But surely there must also be better ways of protecting me and my money than randomly blocking my transactions and cutting me off from vitally needed funds when I'm abroad. Especially when I'm abroad. Or is this a way to force people to call their expensive overseas help line and make them some additional money? Come to think of it this isn't the first time it has happened to me either. When I went to Malaysia in 2006 my card was also rejected. Thankfully my girlfriend's card wasn't. Oh well, at least we'll be safe. Pennyless but safe.

An Arm for a Wing

Shenzhen, China

One of my major aims when coming to Guangdong Province and Hong Kong was to try the Cha Shao Pork and Cantonese roasted duck that I learnt to love in my favourite Chinese restaurant in Woking. Would it be even better here? So after my nap in the park and a bit of strolling around I hunted around central Shenzhen for a restaurant that had the characteristic window display. It wasn't that easy, actually. Also, in China there are so many restaurants that you never know how to pick a good one. Eventually I picked one and was shown upstairs. They did have very tasty duck. They also had a slightly intoxicated old man in a corner who was curious about the foreigner who could speak Chinese.
He invited me on a beer, joined me at my table and we chatted - a bit awkwardly on my part since I couldn't often understand him because of his strong southern accent and I needed the waitress, whose Mandarin was clearer, to "translate" for me.
After my meal came the main event: He asked me to arm wrestle him. I'm not very strong, so to save myself the embarrassment I tried politely to decline but he insisted. So, the table was cleared, we aligned our arms, locked hands. "Please Mister Wei", he requested politely (I had introduced myself with my Chinese name), "go easy on me. I am an old man. Do not hurt me." I didn't think that likely but acknowledged. "Slowly", he said. So I gently started to press. I pressed harder. Frankly, in the end I pressed as hard as I could. Just his arm didn't budge. It was like wrestling one of the stone guardian lions. "Mister Wei", he said still smiling a polite smile, "please do not be courteous. You have to try harder." There was no sign of strain in his voice. Then in one easy motion he brought my hand to the table. I do believe with a bit more force he could have broken it. Even so it felt like he was twisting it off. To save myself at least a bit of face in front of him (and in front of the waitress) I explained that I had spent most of my life in front of a computer while he had worked in manual labour most of his. He accepted that and it was time for my getaway.
I would have liked to think that hefting that 30kg backpack around would have improved my fitness at least a tiny bit. Or maybe it has and God knows what would have happened otherwise ...

14 Hours

Hong Kong, China

What do 14 hours mean to you? My next major stop is Hong Kong. I'm crossing into Hong Kong Special Administrative District from Shenzhen on foot because express trains from Guangzhou or Shenzhen itself are expensive. On foot I can just take the MTR on the other side of the check point.
14 hours is the time it takes from Hangzhou down to Shenzhen by train. It's the over-night train. What I hadn't known is that it's the time students go home for holidays. So when I went to the ticket office at Hangzhou West Station there were no sleeping berths left. No seats either. I must have been out of my mind when I told the clerk to go ahead and sell me a 无坐 (no seat) ticket. How bad could it be?
I also didn't expect that there would be hardly any floor space left either. Imagine this: All seats occupied, some shared by two people, people standing or sitting on most of the available floor space; the over-head racks, the space under and sometimes between seats and a lot of the remaining floor occupied by luggage. Even if you have a seat you hardly have space for your feet. You end up more cowering than sitting, cramped together into a bundle. And thus the train races off into the night.
At times like these I'm impressed with the stoic patience with which Chinese people bear these conditions. Of course, what can you do unless you can afford the expensive express trains? I can't (it's not in the budget) and the other people in the coach can't either. So, what would you do with 14 hours if you had hardly enough space to think?
The first few hours are all very well. You chat a bit, you have a bowl of noodles and some tea, you listen to some music. A cute student girl offered to share her seat with me, so I sat on the corner of her seat for a while - with her soon falling asleep against my shoulder.
The next few hours start getting longer. You're tired because you've been out and about all day. But you can't sleep with nothing supporting your head and only half your butt on the seat. Your neck starts getting stiff. Songs start repeating. I felt bad for taking up the girl's seat. After all, she had paid good money for it. So, I moved to the floor. When you're so exhausted you don't care anymore who might have spit on it. If you wedge your feet under the opposite row of seats just so and lean your head against the edge of the seat behind you like so, it's actually quite comfortable. Just that every now and again you have to move because people want to go to the toilet or to get water. Conversations have died down. Most people have dozed off.
Then time really goes into slo-mo. Minutes drag on like hours. Your music becomes tedious because it's always the same. You feel you've listened to every track at least ten times before. Sometimes you doze off for a few minutes but keep waking up because of the uncomfortable position. You just wish you could fall asleep and wonder how all the other people in the coach do it. You keep glancing at the clock. You're happy when you pass the half-way point. But after an eternity and a half there are still five more hours to go. By this time I had ended up lying rolled up on the floor, my head resting on the small backpack. All reservations about dirt had gone out the window.
The last three or so hours I spent in a daze. I think I actually fell asleep for a while. Then people started waking up again and getting their morning noodles. Of course, this happens just when you feel you've gotten comfortable.
In the end, I somehow managed to drag my luggage out of the train. I even chatted with a girl I had met when helping her with her luggage. She had come down to Shenzhen to see a friend. We decided to have breakfast together but when I came back from depositing my backpack for the day she had disappeared. Just as well, since sleep was the foremost thing on my mind anyway.

What do you mean: closed?!

Shanghai, China

I realise I've started taking net bars for granted. I've come to expect them everywhere and all the time. To give it a more mystical note: they just are. But seriously, most neighbourhoods have at least one; many are open 24 hours or at least until very late. Some people practically live there. After arriving in Shanghai today this habit almost exploded in my face.
I have the good fortune to have a friend in this expensive city, a Chinese girl (yes, another) who I know from my university days in UK. And since net bars are everywhere I had never bothered to write down her phone number nor her address. Get to Shanghai, go online, check your gmail account for the number - that was the plan.
Only when I got to a net bar outside Shanghai North train station they all shook their heads. "You can't go online here." I gave them a funny look. "Is this a net bar?" "Yes." "So, I can use your computers here?" "There's no Internet." I was very close to asking the guy if the Internet was closed today. In the end I gave up and left. There were a few words I couldn't understand. Maybe they were having technical troubles. But hey, there's always the next net bar.
Strangely, the answer was the same. "You cannot go online today." I got a bit impatient. "Do you mean to say that all of Shanghai has not connection today?" "All of China cannot go online." Something in my head refused to understand. "It's because of the earthquake", somebody outside told me. Now that one I know. I was in the damn quake. But that was about two weeks ago and several thousand kilometers away! I went up again to try one more time. It was true, both net bars were surprisingly empty. I could count the customers on one hand. Still, there were some. "How about them", I asked a girl that worked there. "They are not online." I pointed out I had seen Internet Explorer open but she insisted that they were not online at all. In the end, I changed my strategy. I just wanted to use a computer, I told her. It didn't matter if I couldn't go online. To this she finally agreed and I got my token and password. You could go online, of course. But seeing the same background picture on all screens - black with a few lit candles - I began to understand. I've had the bad luck of arriving here during the three-day national mourning period for the victims of the earth quake (the death toll is still rising - we're in the four figures). My friend confirmed this later. During this time the government discouraged or prohibited the use of net bars.
At least I managed to negotiate my five minutes net time and met Charmaine. Otherwise, this might have been a very complicated three days.

The Sensitive Side

Wuhan, China

This is about another French guy, another fellow traveller who was my roommate at the hostel in Wuhan. Compared to his macho-countryman in Xi'an, however, he was very different.
We met in the morning when getting up and decided to hang out and explore the city together. We went for spicy noodles - a specialty since Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province, which is known in all of China for its exceedingly hot and spicy food. Suffice to say breakfast was fiery. We spent the day walking around the city, around the lakes where the university is, through the old town to the river. We talked about many things and, watching lovers by the lake, I was surprised that we could also talk about matters of the heart, relationships and love - topics that I've always shied from discussing with other men because there is always the pressure of seeming cool or "manly". Relationships and especially feelings aren't things that men talk about - by convention. But with him it was different. We saw couples by the lake and remarked on how travelling can be lonely sometimes. He asked me if I had had any relationships while travelling. He had heard other travellers talk about it but he had had no luck. I told him about my feelings, of how I missed Vero, of how I was unsure of how to go on. The topic came naturally and I felt comfortable opening a bit - even though (or maybe because) he was a stranger I hadn't known before this morning. I felt that from him I didn't need to fear judgement or ridicule. It was a relief to speak that freely.
Late at night we were still sitting on the bank of the mighty Yangzi River having a beer and he told me his sad tale - of his girlfriend in France, who he had told not to wait for him because he'd be away for 6 months and how heart-broken he had been when he had read her email saying she had, in fact, not waited for him and was seeing another man.
In the end, I never did get his details but in a way I would still like to tell him thank you. I wish there were more guys like him around.

Halls of the Dead

Yangzi River, China

The first day was all about the dead. Even before we entered the first of the Gorges we stopped at what was announced as the "City of Ghosts". What was this? The Lonely Planet didn't have the answer. I had to trust the guides. It was to be a large Taoist temple complex dedicated to the god of the underworld. That sounded cool. Besides, who wouldn't like to be able to say: "I've been to the City of Ghosts"?
I was a bit disappointed with the guided tour. My Chinese vocabulary is still quite limited when it comes to culture and religion. The tour guide just went through her regular routine - in machine-gun-Mandarin. It seemed to be more of a nuissance to her having a foreigner in her group. When she was giving out the tickets outside the entrance she called all Chinese tourists by name. When I told her my Chinese name (under which I was registered) she didn't even listen, just said to her colleague: "Give the foreigner his ticket." Had I heard that right? It may be a small thing but it upset me. So much that I wanted tell people about it but my phone had run out of credit.
The attraction itself was a mixed experience. Ways up to the temple buildings were lined with bizarre, otherworldly guardians of the dead. I loved taking pictures of them and would have loved even more to be able to ask someone about them. The temples themselves, however, were far from spectacular. Workers were rude and much of the grounds had been converted into a cheap underworld freak show made up from (now broken and decayed) paper mache stand-ups. There was even a ghost ride but that was just too cheesy. How much had I paid for this again - 80 RMB??

The next excursion was late that night and, sadly, quite a waste of time. This was to be the Temple of Zhang Fei, ally and oath brother of Liu Bei during the period of the Three Kingdoms. After his assasination his body was buried here while his head rests somewhere in Sichuan Province. A common thing in those days apparently to bury head and body seperately. This was also where I first met Jacques.
We arrived so late that it was already pitch black outside. Photos were difficult because of the lighting, some of the temple was already closed and it was not really a historic building either. Aside from a pretty sculpture of the "oath in the peach garden" and a few lessons on Three Kingdoms history there was not much to gain from this place; after half an hour we were out again.
The way that led up to the temple was lined with souvenir sellers. That wasn't so surprising. They would offer you anything from rusty confiscated Japanese swords to plastic toys for kids. What I found interesting was that a lot of sellers here offered volumes of erotic pictures, Chinese centerfolds. I can't remember seeing them for sale anywhere else and certainly not this openly and in such numbers. They didn't even looks like the kind of smut you'd expect to be sold under the counter. Something like you'd expect to see in the Playboy magazine, I guess. It was interesting to observe how other tourists would discretely peek at them. Few would probably admit to picking one up, so I won't either.

Afterwards me and Jacques still spent another hour eating some food bought at the landing, drinking a beer and getting to know each other. I knew I was going to regret this - the next day would start very early.