In the process of tracking down various family and family friends around my family’s native area of Xiamen (厦门), we were introduced to other family friends I never knew we had here. One of these people turned out to be Yang Lai-Yun, resident of Xiamen. She’s the mother of two daughters our age and also happens to be an English Language teacher at Xiamen’s No. 1 high school (No. 1 means that it is the best high school in Xiamen).

We were invited over to her home for dinner two nights ago by her eldest daughter–who were we to refuse a dinner invitation by the locals? Her house made the 12th or 13th home I’ve been invited into. John and I have really enjoyed each visit–each has revealed a different style of Chinese living, ranging from the old (300+ years) to modern. At most of the houses in China, we’ve been fed in the traditional Chinese style, also known by me as the, There Is No Such Thing As A Full Stomach. In other words, we’ve been stuffed solid through all the cities we’ve been in. Other than the feeling of being overloaded, it’s not a bad way to travel and sample the local homestyle cuisine.

During our dinner with Yang Lai-Yun and her family at her beautiful flat two days ago, she invited us to come to her school the next day and she would show us around. Sweet!! John and I have made a point about visiting schools in various cities and countries.

I can tell you that the high schools here are gigantic. Xiamen’s No. 1 High School is on a 93 acre plot and is currently expanding onto another 93 acres. They’re well equiped with laboratories and computers (running Windows 95) with what seems like an excellent teaching staff. English is a required subject. There’s about 3000 students which start school at 7:30a and leave at 5:30p. Senior 3 students (last year of high school) are there until 10p studying for their college examinations. It’s a very different education system with a very high bar!

The climax of our tour was achieved when Yang Lai-Yun led us into her classroom and put us in front of 56 students!! This was a bit of a surprise, but we were both really happy to meet the local students (y’all know how much I love getting in front of people and talking). At first we gingerly walked among the students, where some got the courage to ask us some questions. One of the students asked me about “society in America.” Tough question! I tried to give an answer that didn’t made China look poorly or make America look that great–which is truly what I believe. There are a lot of things in China that our society could take a lesson or two from and vice-versa. Hope it didn’t go over his head.

The electronic bell rang over the loudspeaker and we took up positions on the podium at the head of the class. Yang Lai-Yun encouraged us to speak a few words, but what could we possibly talk about? Instead I encouraged the students to ask us questions instead.

Amidst a lot of laughter and a very captive audience, here’s some of the questions we got:

• How’s the food in America?
• What’s life like in an American High School?
• What does it take to get into an American University?
• Are we considered poor by US standards?
• Is knowing only a little English make it difficult to work with other people?
• How do you suggest improving our English?
• Do you go often to NBA games?
• Can you sing a song?

I’m afraid that last one we had to decline (我不喜欢!), but John thew back the question and asked the student if he could sing a song instead! After a lot of laughter and some encouragement from Yang Lai-Lun, one of the girls volunteered to sing(!). She sang the song the goes, “I’m a big big girl in a big big world…”, which seems to be popular with the karoke crowd here. I was grinning from ear-to-ear–it was good!

Before leaving, we took pictures with the class (that’s going in the scrapbook!) and the class gave us a very enthusiastic “BYE-BYE!” when we left.

=)

So much FUN! What a way to see a Chinese high school!

This is one of those really belated topics that I should have blogged about a few days ago but I’m just getting to now.

Most of you have heard about Chinese New Year, which is a celebration of the New Year on the Lunar Calendar reckoning. This year is the Year of the Rooster. Happy New Year!

The New Year is cause for some serious celebration out here in China. Instead of being a one-day or weekend event, it’s a two-week deal here, filled with lots of parades, family traditions, eating, religious ceremonies, and fireworks. I had missed the biggest of the festivities while I was in the Philippines, but I was able to catch the closing festivities at the end of New Years.

I was in Chaozhou during this time, hanging out with John’s extended family. Walking around the villages, it’d be rare not to hear the “whump” of fireworks exploding all around, day and night. The sounds of fireworks are thought to scare off the evil spirts, so they’re set off with reckless abandon around here. Keep in mind that the Chinese were the people that invented fireworks in the first place. Also keep in mind that there’s no real government regulations on fireworks.

Back up to middle school for a moment with me. Back when I lived in California we used to joke about getting M-80 firecrackers (illegal), lighting them, and throwing them in a toilet bowl. It’d blow and shoot up a big plume of water into the air. I never did it, but hey–it’s cool stuff when you’re 12.

If you were to throw the firecrackers the kids are lighting off here into a toilet, you’d not only shoot up a plume of water in the air, but also blow apart the toilet bowl and easily take out the stall walls…if not more. Imagine one big firecracker that’s slightly bigger than a two-liter bottle. Yeah. That’s one big chest thumping blast. Now imagine setting off more than one at a time. It’s something akin to what artillery shells probably sound like. These blasts are big enough that the air expansion from the explosion is enough to blow away dirt and debris in a 1.2 meter area.

John and I also witnessed some passed down family traditions. It seems that one local clan gets together every year, dresses in black, and walks around the neighborhood to the houses of people that moved during the past year. They then proceed to hang a two meter daisy-chained string of firecrackers from the roof–probably a hundred+ in all. Sometimes there’s more than one and they light them off simultaneously. Lots of chest-thumping sound and bright lights ensue. Cool way to get welcomed to the neighborhood!

Other than blowing stuff up, there’s also a ton of traditions that happen. The local shrines are running packed with people praying for luck in the coming year and lighting (a lot of) incense. There’s also city festivities and decorations. Every business and every park had some kind of rooster decoration. The TV have programs akin to New Year’s countdown celebrations with televised performances of various artists throughout China. In Chaozhou, these programs were broadcasted on huge screens at the park in the city center, where a large chunk of the city showed up to hang out. The festivities use up so much power than some of the residential neighborhoods were susceptible to power outages!

I’m sitting in an Internet Cafe in Xiamen (厦门), the area where my heritage lies. I was only here for a couple hours before nightfall, so I haven’t seen much of it yet. What I have seen I’ve really liked and I think I could easily spend a whole month here and not get tired of it. More on Xiamen when I’ve had a chance to look around.

On another note, it may or may not have crossed your news screens that China made a crackdown on Internet Cafes that allowed access to pornographic materials a few months ago. As a result, this particular cafe has software that blocks access to porn sites.

What’s interesting is that when I try to pull up my site, it says I’m a porn site and won’t let me look at it!

I’m currently in the area where John’s dad is from. The Chaozhou people are from my home province of Fujian in ancient times, so I’m able to occassionally comprehend the local dialect.

John and I spent yesterday afternoon looking for the Pang family compound in a village outside of Chaozhou. It was outside of the city and tucked away far from the main road, but we eventually prevailed. John had hopes of meeting his Grandfather, but when we got there we discovered he was in Hong Kong instead! No shortage of family here though, once we found the right place, the typical Chinese reception ensued, where all the family you never knew you had come out and try to determine your family relation. It was a lot of fun watching these people and trying to understand what they were saying and the village was a rare look into traditional Chinese life that we would never have found if we stuck to the guidebooks.

We eventually figured out the people John had the closest relation too and they had us come to their house for kung fu tea and dinner. Kung fu tea (gong fu cha) is a local style of drinking tea that I’ll have to describe at another time.

We were taken around the city here by John’s younger family members. They work out to be one generation younger than John, but they’re all older than us. They took us to see a couple of the local sites, which include a newly-renovated old city wall and a huge new park in the middle of the city. One thing is for sure, Lonely Planet and Let’s Go is way out of date here. China is changing incredibly fast–I wrote is my personal journal: 中国不是中国. For those of you that don’t have the Chinese language pack installed (or don’t know the language), it reads, China is not China. The place is rapidly getting westernized and built to an international standard, which means that a lot of what you would consider classical China is being lost in the process.

More on this another day, gotta go.

I’m at an Internet Cafe over in Kowloon (HK Peninsula) right now. The computers are a bit funky, so I’m going to keep this brief and hope that my computer doesn’t freeze up for turn itself off without warning. Yes, both have happened.

Hong Kong is an amazing city. No other city I’ve ever seen has been so well-blended into the great outdoors. The geography of Hong Kong consists largely of a deep-water coastline contrasted by tall green hills. It’s gorgeous land. The buildings here are engineering marvels of anchored high rises in the slopes of hills. But the slopes of most hills are still too daunting for engineers and have been left essentially pristine and untouched, providing a lush backdrop against glass, steel, and concrete.

As you might expect, land here is at a premium, so at a distance, buildings are extremely clustered. This is especially true of residential compounds. I was totally shocked when I rode the bus from the airport into the city. It’s common to see things like clusters of six to twelve identical residential high rises, each towering 40 floors, that are practically touching each other. But after getting up close and walking through the city, I was strongly struck with the feeling that “somebody actually thought about what they were doing.” It’s well organized. Traffic is extremely reasonable and between the tram, subway, light-rail, and extensive bus system, you can get anywhere cheaply and timely. I’ll note that HK has controlled its vehicle population by imposing a 100% tax on the price of gas. Wanna drive? Gotta pay!! It also goes that the only people that can afford cars are extremely wealthy and ride in very nice European vehicles.

The best part about metro Hong Kong is it’s use of public spaces. In the very middle of central Hong Kong is a gigantic hillside park, complete with walk-through aviary, small amphitheatre, tai-chi garden, trails, playgrounds, botanical garden, and zoo…all free. Sitting just outside Garden Plaza, shadowed by the back side of I.M. Pei’s Bank of China building is my new favorite metropolitan spot. It gets better. Lantau Island, location of the new HK airport and the under-construction HK Disneyland is filled with undeveloped hills laced with hiking trails. We’re going there tomorrow.

One of John’s favorite sayings as he’s explaining this city to me has been, “when the government is powerful and has money…”

Indeed. (Behold.)

It’s quite a model city.

John has been posting a blog entry every time we find a place to steal internet from and I decided to pick up the practice.

Currently at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Information Engineering Reading Room.

I haven’t updated in while, but I’m currently in Hong Kong as planned. This is one sweet city. Anyone interesting in joining me for a future return trip? My computing resources and time are a bit more limiting here, so I’m giving a priority to replying to personal emails. So for the time being, if you want to hear from me, shoot me mail.

mike [at] mikelu dot org

With my dad back in his birthplace of the Philippines for the first time in 19 years, I’ve been meeting a fair number of my dad’s old friends that dropped by to see us.

One person in particular, Uncle Johnny (Uncle is used only for respect, no family relation), was one of my dad’s neighbors back when he lived in Manila’s Chinatown. Uncle Johnny lives on the Philippine island of Cebu and flew up north to Manila as soon as he heard my dad was in town.

It turns out that Uncle Johnny is in the spa business (e.g. massages, scrubs, and facials). He runs a spa inside of the big hotel in Cebu and is currently building another stand-alone spa business in Cebu. Of course, being in charge of a spa business, one of his chief responsibilities is to research the layouts, format, and methods of other spas. It’s a truly daunting task, believe me.

Uncle Johnny invited my dad and I to accompany him on one of his trips yesterday. Hehe–no way I’ll turn down an invitation like that! After we grabbed some grubbin’ Filipino food for lunch and sipped on various incarnations of coffee at Figaro, we headed to a place in Makati with a middle eastern motif called “The Spa” (is that a creative name or what??).

Now I’ve been to spas a few times in my life (actually, this trip is rapidly turning into the Massage Tour) but never knew the right way to go about one. The steam room, sauna, hot tub, and showers under the ambiance of smooth instrumental music is a bit daunting. Uncle Johnny led us through each step of the “experience” (going to a spa isn’t just about the massage you know) and taught us the proper way to about these things.

He selected for us the classic 1hr full body Swedish Massage with oil, which is your classic kneading and rolling massage. From here, we went through the process.

1. Ditch the clothes, take a cool shower.
2. Spend some time in the steam room to let your skin pores open up and sweat.
3. Take a cool shower to close up your pores.
4. Spend some time in the hot tub to let your pores open up again.
5. Take a cool shower to close ‘em up.
6. Spend some time in the hotter sauna (dry heat) for more pore openin’ action.
7. Take another cool shower to close ‘em yet again.

Okay, now we’re ready. Apparently this process of opening and closing pores relaxes the skin and better prepares it to receive a massage. Awrighty then. Let’s get onto the good stuff.

After a short cool-down period sipping on Ginger tea in the waiting room, we were led to one of two rooms with a long row of massage tables. We were more or less the only ones inside this room. The experience of this segment of the “research mission” is obvious. Another obvious remark is that it was relaxing and felt rather nice–right until the point we were interrupted by what sounded like a British businessman, trying to figure out if he could make a 6p appointment, applying the misconception that the key to foreign comprehension of your language is to speak extremely loudly, hereby disturbing the R&R for everyone else in the room.

Research Mission Finding: Big common rooms with lots of massage tables are bad for customer satisfaction.

Anyway, other than this minor aberration, everything turned out nicely. We finished our massages, sipped some more ginger tea, and left, feeling vastly more relaxed. Another Mission Impossible accomplished (I’m telling you, this is really difficult work!!). Uncle Johnny, who gets something like three massages a week on average took this as a normal routine. My dad, who has never gotten a massage in my lifetime, was definitely the most refreshed. As for me, I found myself awake, with blood coursing through my veins, ready to tackle a night of drinking with my Manila cousins. A story for another time.

I have a little bit of extra time in Manila, so I’m doing some catch up blogging. Here’s something I started writing on 2005.01.21 back in Bangkok.

To my café dreamer friends (Lisa, Andrea, et al.), open your idea books, for Banrie Coffee of Bangkok is sure to inspire any future café owner.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mt. Fuji as seen from Hakone, Japan (2/1)

Tagaytay Highlands, Philippines (2/6)

Okay, so it’s not exactly a day. But as far as my travels go, I had found myself in the brisk weather of Hakone on 2/1 and found myself in the balmy tropical weather of the Philippines on 2/2. I’m sure Fuji-san is well known to most of you. Tagaytay (pronounced Tah-gai-tai) is a hilly, semi-jungle region to the south Manila. Thankfully, getting here does not require a trek through Northern Luzon as described in Cryptotnomicon (although admittedly, this would be interesting). Tagaytay is a beautiful resort area built in a still-active volcanic region.

I realize that I haven’t given a current State of the Vagabond lately, so here’s a travel update. I’m in Manila, Philippines. It’s an unlikely destination for the world traveler eh? But alas, I have ulterior motives. The majority of my mom’s side of the family lives here, many of whom I haven’t seen in 18 years, most in over a decade, and others never at all. When I was planning my trip, it turned out that my mom’s family wanted to have a family reunion (first in nearly two decades) and my dad had some family business to attend to out here. So we scheduled our trips simultaneously. Not only is it fun to see my parents out here and take me around to the places they grew up, but they also brought my laptop.

Thus far, my cousins out here are a kick and I’ve discovered I have a lot in common with them. Of the ones I’ve met and heard of thus far, about half of them are in a technology field and the rest are doing something related to business. Sound like someone you know? To be honest, I was surprised too. Meeting them has also been a taste of reality. Several of them have goals of moving to America. It’s a humbling experience to realize how fortunate I was to be born in the country that others only dream of. I’ve also discovered what kind of a privilege it is to travel the way I am right now. A United States Passport allows me to walk freely into the majority of countries around the world. My family here has to go through arduous visa applications and waiting periods to go anywhere. Truly an eye-opener.

As far as language barriers go, I’ve been having a blast here. As many of you know, I speak a little-known dialect of Chinese spoken in the Fujian province. What I’ve probably not mentioned is that my parents are from Philippines and my particular accent is the Fillipino accent of Fukenese–that’s right, the roots for the Chinese here are in Fujian! Going around Chinatown yesterday, I experienced something new–my Chinese tongue was native. Prior to my visit here, my Chinese was only spoken with family members and a small handful of family friends. Today, it’ll get me around Chinatown.

While Tagalog is the true national language around here, the majority of classes are taught in English. As a result, most of the conversations with my cousins take place in a mixture of English and Tagalog. Turns out this is no problem for me–many basic Tagalog words, conjunctions, and modifiers have been unknowingly mixed into my Chinese. I’m able to understand the majority of conversations and catch the gist of the rest. I wholly expect Tagalog to start filtering into my normal conversation in a couple days.

That’s it from my end of the world! Happy Chinese New Year!