2 weeks of classes and I’m already visiting another country

So we had a long weekend thanks to the Mid-Autumn Festival. Kelly, Cinja, Logan, Iga, Mark, and I decided to take advantage of this long weekend and go to Taiwan. Mid-Autumn festival is sort of like the Chinese Thanksgiving. It’s a time for families to come together, eat moon cakes, and reflect about their ancestors.

So Thursday, instead of going to class, we all hopped on a flight to Taiwan. The HK airport is the best airport I’ve ever been in. So much to do and everything’s so efficient. The flight was alright, over before I even got bored. We land in Taiwan and it’s sweltering heat just as back in Hong Kong but the air just felt different. Little did we know that was because a typhoon was coming.

We didn’t have much time that first day since we didn’t get settled until early evening, so we decided to just check out a night market and a bar. We thought about Karaoke, but the only ones we found were all you can eat buffet dinners and the karaoke room for 4 hours at time. We would have had to go while famished in order to get our money’s worth. So we just wandered the night market and looked around for a bar to hang out in and relax. Turns out the area we were in was a special school zone so there were no bars and no drinking outside allowed. We were told this right as Logan was drinking a Tall Boy, so he had to chug it right then. We eventually got out of the special district and found a nice “Irish” Pub. It had a dart board and fairly cheap drinks, so a good time was had by all.

Woke up early the next day to get a head start on fitting everything in before the typhoon came. Went to the Chaing Kai Shek Memorial Hall and it was deserted (like almost everything we saw that day), Martyr’s Shrine for the changing of the guard, National Palace Museum, and Taipei 101 for the view.

Chaing Kai Shek Memorial was a wide open courtyard with gardens and a couple large structures – one housing the large memorial statue and the below ground museum. His statue was so happy, not the typical stoic pose that I’ve seen in memorials before. Below the main hall is a museum that houses his old belongings of note - anything from his old Cadalliac cars to his porch seat. His body used to be housed here too, but earlier this year his body was moved to an older town. I think it was moved since the Taiwan feelings towards Chaing Kai Shek have soured a bit since he held power.

Then we headed to the Martyr’s Shrine, and luckily caught the changing of the guard. It was my group of CUHK exchange kids (US, Canada, Australia, Germany) and everyone else there was Japanese. The Martyr’s Shrine was built for all the men who died while fighting for the Republic of China, either against the PRC or against the Japanese invasion that occurred later. For every fallen soldier there is a plaque of wood on the wall. There are at least 2 structures where every inch of wall space was taken up by these plaques. The guards are not to move and guard both the main gate and the gate of the largest building within the field. The changing of the guard ceremony itself took almost 20 minutes. After the main guards were changed, in their walk back to the largest building, they did an impressive gun/drill demonstration. It was really neat, especially since we could be right up next to them. Then they changed the back guards and they did a gun/drill show again! As soon as the changing of the guards ended, all the Japanese tourists headed on to their buses and there were seriously less than 10 people there. It was nice to go to a tourist place and have it be deserted.

We went to the National Palace Museum as the last day trip stop. We had 2 hours from when we got there to when we it was closing, so we had to be really efficient. We ran through there – lots of Chinese porcelain and intricate jade and ivory work. Last stop of the day was Taipei 101 and while it was still a bit rainy, we had an amazing view of the city. Taipei 101 may not be the tallest building in the world anymore, but it still has the fastest elevator in the world! To go up 90 flights took less than 45 seconds!

The rest of the trip wasn’t as eventful as this first day, thanks to the typhoon. A lot of hanging out in the hostel and watching movies and Asian television. At night we would brave out into the weather and spend some time in the bars. A lot of places were either closed or deserted, but we found one that we liked and went to the few nights we were there. The best night was Saturday. Walked there during a lull in the storm to grab dinner and drinks. After eating, we decide we’ll just hang out and drink until another lull so we can walk back. More than 5 hours and NT$10,000 later, we cave and grab a cab back to the hostel. That night was just epic on so many levels.

The typhoon passed in time for us to check out the hot springs on our last day, which was very relaxing and totally worth the US$1.25.

Photos: Guy at a night market burning a candle in his ear, the group (minus me) in front of Chaing Kai Shek Memorial, the changing of the guard, Me in front of the National Palace Museum, Taipei 101. More are on facebook, of course.

Upcoming blog posts: Day trips to Big Buddha, Disneyland, Victoria Peak, and Causeway Bay. I’m also leaving for the Philippines on Thursday, so hopefully I don’t get rained out there too and have some good stories to tell.

One Night in Macau

Delayed post, but this week or so has been hectic with getting classes settled and traveling.

Macau…what an interesting experience. Getting there was a chore with our huge group of about 20. A lot of the morning was spent waiting around for others to come. Waiting at the train, waiting at the MTR, waiting at the Ferry stop, waiting…waiting…waiting. I pretty much spent 10am until 1pm (when we got on the ferry) standing around waiting. I don’t think I’ll be traveling with such a large group again, or at least for a while.

So finally we arrive in Macau! Only a 40 minute ferry ride (which cost about US$20) and I’m in another country. New stamp on my passport! The first sight of Macau was just a long bridge connecting the island to the mainland (one of the longest bridges in the world) and large casinos. We reach land, walk around, and it is a hodgepodge of old Portuguese architecture and then the fake casinos and attractions similar to that in Vegas.

A walk through Fisherman’s Wharf found a beautiful koi pond, a temple type building that was actually a casino, a military themed kiddie park, and Portuguese style buildings. The street performers perfectly exemplified the mixture: one group had a mime, 2 flamingo dancers, 2 belly dancers, and a mariachi band.

We walked along the coast and found a statue, but I couldn’t find out the cultural significance because the museum attached was closed on Fridays. Walked by the Wynn, which looked just like Vegas. The only casino that really looked like something new was the Casino Lisboa, which is the oldest casino in Macau. It has a very modest front building, but from the side you can see the Grand Lisboa which is a massive egg-like structure covered in gold sheath in the day and lights up entirely at night. It was the most impressive casino I think I’ve ever seen. Inside the limits were too high and they didn’t really have many shops or attractions so we didn’t see much.

We met up with the whole group at the Ruins of St. Paul. It was once the biggest church in all of Asia but burned down so now all that remains is the front façade and the stone steps leading up to it. It was really neat to see this touch of Europe in a small Asian country.

We found a small hotel room for the night, 6 people to 3 twin beds for US$10/each. Not the best of situations, but it was so worth it for the shower and bed. A quick run through the casinos for dinner and gambling yielded delicious pasta (real Italian pasta! Not just some asian interpretation of it!) and HK$300 in roulette winnings. That $300 pretty much paid for the trip. Love it!

The bars were too expensive for us in the casinos, except for ladies night with free champagne, so we ended up going to club 7-11 and playing 10 fingers in a park. I love that we can just drink in a park here. None of the Canadians, nor the Australian, had ever heard of the game. It was a really fun night where we got to know some dirt about each other.

The next day it was way too hot to do much exploring, but we did manage to find a small little Portuguese place for breakfast and then head to the Penhas Church and the A-Ma Temple. Both are huge buildings dedicated to the two dominate religions still prevalent in the nation. People here, when they win big, they share it with their religion. I saw in the donation bin $1000 Yuan bill, which is about US$150. I have never seen one person put in that much into church donation back home.

After the temple we took a bus back to the ferry terminal. Along the way we got to see more of the real Macau, not just the casinos and monuments. It looked like a fairly poor area. The strangest thing I saw was in front of some random building (could have been a museum or city building, really no clue) there were statues of 4 white people and 2 cows. There was one statue that was of a chubby guy with his ice cream cone. Why someone chose to immortalize this, I’ll never know. Maybe it’s their image of the fat American? Your guess is as good as mine.

Ferry ride back was uneventful and once we got back everyone went their separate ways. Best 2 day visit to another country that I’ve ever had. Well, maybe not as good as Mexico with the Earthquake kids in summer of ’06. But then again, this trip was practically free thanks to roulette.

Pictures: koi pond at Fischerman's Wharf, statue thing discussed earlier, portuguese architecture in the main square, Penhas church. More are on facebook, of course.

Upcoming posts: Typhoon in Taiwan, Day trips to Victoria Peak, Lantau Big Buddha and outlets, and Hong Kong Disneyland.

Classes and living at CUHK A.K.A. Boring stuff.

First week of classes just wrapped up and I still don’t know my finalized class schedule. There’s been a whole lot of drama about classes here with all the exchange kids, and I’m no exception. So before coming here, USC Annenberg gave me a list of approved COMM courses for transfer. It was fairly long so it didn’t seem like there’d be any problem with taking 12 units here (which is what I need to take in order to be able to do my film minor and graduate on time). However, once we all get here, CUHK is literally only offering one of the courses on the list. So me and the other 2 USC Annenberg kids have been scrambling to submit alternatives that USC would accept. So far, I only have 6 approved units. If I can’t get one more COMM class, then I will have to drop my minor AND take 20 units in my last semester. Or stick around for a summer or fall course. This is definitely not ideal. If I can get just one more course, then I’ll be able to take 16 COMM units and just have to drop my film minor. I think that’s the best option because I don’t care too much about having the official minor or not. I took classes I enjoyed and that’s really all I need from that.

So yeah, cutting through this red tape has been shit.

Now on to the classes themselves: I’m taking International Communication, Psychology of Interpersonal Communication, and Mandarin 1. That’s 12 units here since each course is 3 units and Mandarin is two courses – one oral, one written. And man, the classes seem like a LOT of work. COMM and Psych each have 10-page research papers and 3 group presentations! In addition to the Midterms and Finals! Mandarin is all exchange kids so it seems a bit more chill, but it still has 6 quizzes and 8 dictations on top of the Oral and Written Midterms and Finals! This is going to be one crazy busy semester between all the work and all the traveling.

Also, it’s really weird how the classes seem so disrespectful. In COMM and Psych, there are only about 5 exchange kids in each and the rest is all locals. While the professor is lecturing and teaching, the kids just keep on talking at their normal voice level as if nothing is going on. Some exchange guys even told me how in one class, people were answering their phones in the middle of lecture and one guy was sitting on his desk with his back towards the professor so he could carry on a conversation with his friends better. I thought the conversation would die down after a while, once the professor got into the swing of things and they had caught up on each other’s summers, but they kept talking throughout the whole 2 hour lecture. And the professors don’t acknowledge it at all. They will just talk louder over the class roar without once asking them to quiet down. I don’t understand it.

That’s it for now. I’m off to Macau tomorrow – the Vegas of the East! – and just booked my flight ticket to Taiwan for next weekend, so this should be an exciting fortnight.

Last Weekend of Summer!

Friday night one of the student helpers organized a big group to go out to an open bar club in Wan Chai. We head out and Rachel and I are starving since we didn’t eat dinner with the rest of the group. We figure we’ll find out where the club is and then go get food and come back. However, when we get there the bouncer is being really strict about the forms of ID. All us Americans brought our state drivers license because the consulate said not to take your passport out if you don’t have to so we were all in jeopardy of not getting in. Luckily, the guy realized he’d be losing out on HK$150 each person and let us in. But I didn’t want to risk not getting in if I left for food and came back so Rachel and a group of others said they’d bring me back food if they could. Well, long story short, my dinner was smuggled in inside Joel’s pants and then once inside hidden like contraband. I’m sitting in the club, trying to hide my fries and I asked Logan if he wanted any. His response, “What is that? Drugs?!” Yeah, that’s how stealth we had to be with just some cheap fries. Well, got my dinner and then enjoyed the open bar. More CUHK kids ended up showing up later in the night so the club was about half CUHK half other people. By the end of the night we had overrun the dancing stage and it was like 20 of us just dancing our hearts out and trying to push off this creepy guy who kept dancing inappropriate with as many girls as he could. We ended up leaving the club around like 3am and since Jia speaks Cantonese we didn’t get lost this time and even got dropped off right near the dorm! Pretty nice.

The next day, CUHK organized a Hong Kong city tour. The group of us who were out at the club were kind of out of it at first, but we dragged on and eventually got a second wind. We visited Stanley Market, which had rocky beaches and lots of shopping (like most places in Hong Kong so far). Then we went to Victoria Peak, where there’s an AMAZING view of Victoria Harbor, and of course another shopping area. The last time was the Avenue of Stars. It was like a mini-Hollywood Walk of Fame. They had stars and cement hand imprints for some of Hong Kong’s (and China’s?) biggest stars. We found stars for Jet Li, Chow Yung Fat, and Jackie Chan. Bruce Lee didn’t have a star since it was built after his time, but they had a statue of him flexing every muscle in his body at the same time. The Avenue had a fantastic view of the skyline and had this huge hotel that was actually built on the water. The tour bus headed back, but a group of us wanted to stay behind to see the skyline laser light show. At 8pm music started playing on loud speakers all along the water front and a booming voice said stuff in Chinese that I didn’t understand but could only assume was talking about the show that was about to begin. The show lasted a lot longer than I was expecting. It was amazing to see an entire city’s downtown area have its lights choreographed. It reminded me of the Electric Light Orchestra Parade that Disneyland has, except on a much grander scale. The whole 5 minutes of the show, Rachel, Zarina, Leann and I just stood there and gaped in awe.

We then hopped on the Star Ferry and headed into Central to get sushi. I paid less than US$2 for my sushi dinner. CRAZY! It was the kind where the conveyer belt just has the sushi go by and you pick all the plates you want.

Classes have started so the posts will probably more spread out from now on. Hopefully I’ll have a great adventure to write about after next weekend. Tentative plans are to go to Taiwan or the Phillipines since we have Monday off. So we’ll see…

Photos: the view from my dorm window. Stephanie, Zarina, and I at the Wan Chai club (you can’t tell but we’re on the dance stage). The view from Victoria Peak. Logan, Rachel, Zarina, Leann, Etienne, and me at the Avenue of the Stars. Central HK skyline just before the light show. And of course, more photos are on facebook.