China Part I - Guangzhou

MONDAY (11/3) (cont'd)

Our plan was to take the MTR trains to the China border, cross the border on foot to Shenzen, and then get on a train to our final destination, which was Guangzhou in the Guangdong province, approximately a 90 min train ride from Shenzen. To make sure we got seats with all our luggage on the train, we took the Tsuen Wan MTR line to the Tsim Sha Tsui stop, transferred to the East Tsim Sha Tsui station to then take the East Rail Line all the way to the Lo Wu stop, which is the station for the border to Shenzen.

Hong Kong is officially the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (SAR). Originally a trading port, Hong Kong was a dependent territory of the UK until the the official transfer of its sovereignty back to China in 1997. Like Macau (which was a special territory previously under Portuguese rule), Hong Kong SAR is not considered part of mainland China with its separate government and highly capitalist economy. This is also why if you are traveling from the US or Canada, you do not need a visa to visit Hong Kong or Macau if you are staying less than 90 days, whereas you need a visitor visa to enter China regardless of how long your visit is.

And that's your history lesson for this blogspot. Phew!

We took the train from Shenzen to Guangzhou. The Chinese rail system was no match to the fancy, high-tech and user-friendly Hong Kong MTR. Instead, it was a traditional train station, with single trip tickets that need to be purchased, and absolutely no English translated anywhere.

We were heading to Guangzhou to visit my mom's oldest sister and her family. Traveling with us were:
- Mom & Dad
- Mom's older brother, Cherk, and his wife, Wai-Ling
- Mom's older sister, Joanne, and her husband, Peter

This group was the main group that we traveled with for most of the trip. We would be joined in the future by other family friends and extended family throughout the trip.

I had never been to China before, so I had never meant any of my eldest aunt's family, so I was pretty intrigued and excited. We arrived in Guangzhou around 3:30 PM, and were greeted by one of my 9 cousins and two drivers with two vehicles to transport us all back to my aunt's place.

Here's a pic of my eldest aunt, aunt Joanne, and my Mom:

Unfortunately, my eldest aunt had been battling health issues over the past few years, so she was still suffering from some illness, so we did not have a long initial visit. While we were at her place, we did tour the grounds.

My eldest aunt is an amazing woman, she has 9 kids, and is a self-made woman. Over 5 years ago, she built a secure "compound", with several houses built on the land to house her and most of her family under full time security. She also has multiple vehicles and drivers for the family. There's even a prayer temple/pagoda on site:



After the initial visit, the majority of the family went out for dinner at a local restaurant in Guangzhou. The dinner was an experience of a lifetime. For one, it turns out that I understood a lot more Cantonese than previously suspected, so I was able to fully understand my family and the cousins I had just met. Unfortunately, I am not so able to respond fluently, so I still had to utilize translational skills of my Mom more than not. Also, the cousins were so excited and happy to meet a North American cousin for the first time. Out of their excitement, we celebrated with a wonderful meal and a whole lot of Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac. And I mean, a lot. Once the cousins discovered that Will and I can handle our drink, they brought on the fiery storm of "yum buoy" (translating roughly to "have a drink" or "cheers"), and they did know how to say "one shot". Such a shame to chug such fine cognac.

Me and most of my second cousins:


If you're interested in the details, you can ask me or Will sometime. Let's just say that at the end of the night, we were a very happy family and Team North America (Will, me, and my Dad) did very well against Team China.

TUESDAY (11/4)

While in Guangzhou, my aunt's family put us up in a nearby hotel, the Hui Dong Holiday Hotel. There are two things that I quickly learned about China, it smells like cigarette smoke everywhere (it seems like everyone is a chain-smoker!), and the beds are really hard. Like, rock hard. I'm not kidding.

We started the morning off with some amazing dim sum (yum cha) at the hotel restaurant, Dongjiang Seafood Restaurant. There's nothing like eating dim sum in China, and it's also very cheap compared to eating dim sum in North America. Heaven!

Baomo Garden (Panyu District)

After dim sum, we loaded into the vehicles and some of our cousins took us sight-seeing. Our first stop was Baomo Garden in the Panyu District of Guangzhou. According to one tourist website (www.lifeofguangzhou.com):

• Baomo Garden is situated in Zini Village. It was originally built in the later Qing Dynasty, unfortunately destroyed in 1950s. It took 6 years to rebuild Baomo Garden (1995-2000), and now it is expanded to more than 6 million sq meters. Baomo Garden consists of a group of ancient buildings in Southern style, traditional Lingnan gardening arts, and elegant waterside scenery. The buildings, the gardens, the hills, the waters and the bridges are distributed naturally in balance, forming an attractive sight of a typical traditional Lingnan garden.

The large refined artistic brick sculpture "Wall of Blooming Flowers With Singing Birds" below was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest sculpture of its kind:























Here is a large porcelain sculpture "Riverside Scene of Singing Festival" which has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest porcelain sculpture:







Qinghui Yuan (Garden) and Ancestral Home (Schunde District)

The next stop on the tour was the Qinghui Garden in the Schunde District of the city of Foshan in the Guangdong province. Qinghui Garden is one of the four major gardens in the Qing Dynasty of Guangdong, and is considered a cultural relic of provincial importance. The garden was historically the ancestral home of families of two of the highest scholars in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties. There are gardens, pavilions, verandas, and natural landscapes that have been artisctically organized, providing a architectural and historical landmark within the bustle of central Shunde.









Following the tour at Qinghui Garden, we were treated to 70 min foot massages somewhere in Guangzhou, which was heaven. It cost the equivalent of about $7 US. Ridiculous.

For dinner, we headed to to a Szchezuan restaurant in Guangzhou, where we experienced another fantastic meal and the cousins tried to get us drunk this time on Chinese rice wine/liquer called Baijiu, a 50% alcohol that tastes like a horrid marriage of bad tequila and fernet. Ewww...
Still, we managed to hold our own and Team North America survived another Team China challenge.

WEDNESDAY (11/5)

Baiyun Ropeway (White Cloud Mountain)

On Wednesday morning, we met up with a couple cousins and loaded into vehicles for some more sight-seeing. This time, we were going on the Baiyun Cableway up Baiyun Mountain (a.k.a. White Cloud Mountain).








True to it's name, the base of the mountain was surrounded by some "white cloud" or fog, which scours the view of the Guangzhou skyline:


Within the "White Cloud Mountain Resort", there is Bird Valley Park (Mingchun Valley), which has the largest natural birdcage in China.



The birds at the special bird show were trained to fly out for "tips", but they definitely had discerning taste. They did not go for anything less than 5 RRB (which is still only ~73 cents).




After the Baiyun tour, we headed back to my aunt's house to visit and have lunch before we all headed back to Hong Kong.
Of course, the rest of the Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac came out and we finished it all. In two meals, 6-8 people cleared out 4.5L of Cognac. A little disturbing, but a fantastic bonding experience.


So, before I sign-off this blogspot, I do have to note that Will and I were highly entertained by the English translations on the few signs that were actually translated when we were touring around Guangzhou (yes, we're a*#holes):









So, after lunch, we headed back to the train station and headed back to Hong Kong for more adventures.
Cheers to my aunt's family (especially my cousins who showed us around) in Guangzhou, it was a wonderful time!

Hong Kong Part I

SUNDAY (11/2)

Will and I left SFO on Saturday (11/1) around noon-ish and embarked on our two-week vacation to the original land of my people. No, not Canada, we were going to China.

With the craziness of life of late (e.g. insane work stuff, new house, moving into new house, renovating the bathroom, living in a house without a bathroom, etc.), we were excited for the break. Even more exciting was the fact that we were going on holiday that was planned completely by my family, the fate of our vacation lay in their hands. You'd think that this would be scary, but we were so exhausted from life, it was fine by us to follow blindly and be taken care of. And boy, we were definitely taken care of.

Will and I arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday evening (11/2) and met up with my folks, who took us to Langham Place Hotel in a district of Hong Kong called Mongkok, which is on the Kowloon peninsula. This hotel would be our HK base, as we would be heading in and out of mainland China throughout the next couple weeks. The location of this was perfect, right smack dab in the middle of a lot of action, and our hotel was located directly over one of the subway (MTR) stations, the Mongkok Station, in addition to being located right next an adjoining shopping mall.

As soon as we got to the hotel, we checked in, dropped of our stuff, and then headed to dinner with some family via the MTR. The first thing that impressed me about Hong Kong is the MTR system. It is the most user-friendly metro system that I have ever seen, there is amazing signage with English, interactive subway maps, and all prompts are translated in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. The trains schedules are also incredibly well-organized, so there are many interchange stations that are timed such that when you arrive at one station, the connecting train arrives within the minute if it isn't already waiting for you. Supposedly, there have been major extensions to the system to merge two rail systems (the original MTR and the KCR East Rail Line), providing extensive coverage within the same system. And because it is so cheap, it is the most common form of transporation in Hong Kong.



Also, there is a card called the "Octopus Card", that is purchased and utilized like a debit card to access all the transit systems. You can ride any bus, subway, and ferry in the Hong Kong area using this card, and many stores also take the card as form of payment. And, you can keep adding money to it to re-use the card, and the balance is good for 3 years from the last date of money replenishment. Seriously, so easy.

For dinner, we headed to New Kowloon, only a couple MTR stops away from Mongkok. We met up with my dad's older sister, her son Raymond, and Raymond's family (Shirley, Anne and Karen) at a restaurant called Festive China in the Festival Walk shopping mall, walking distance from the Kowloon Tong MTR station. Yes, you'll note something as quickly as we did, there are a lot of shopping malls in Hong Kong, and usually within proximal distance to the MTR stations.

I remembered meeting Raymond when I was last in Hong Kong at age 6 (yes, that means it's been almost 26 years since I was last in Hong Kong!), so it was great to meet his family and catch up.


FYI, I had no intention of blogging any food on this trip, as we had a pretty packed itinerary, no computer access, and there was no way that I was going to be able to record everything we ate. And thank goodness, we ate a lot of really, really good food, and I was too busy enjoying it to write down/remember every name/translation of each dish.

MONDAY (11/3)

On Monday morning, we got up relatively early and packed up some of our stuff, because were headed to mainland China! We managed to check the rest of our luggage at our hotel as we were returning in a few days. Sweet!

Before we left the hotel, I snapped a couple pics from our hotel room on the 22nd floor:






Off to China!

Getting to Know My People

November 16, 2008

Will and I just got back from a two-week vacation with some of my family to the Far East. We were in and out of Hong Kong, into mainland China to Guangzhou, Zhangmotou, Zhuhai, and to Macao. It was a trip of a lifetime.

There are plenty of blogspots currently under construction, so if you're impatient to see some pics, see below for a slideshow (via Picasa) of 163 of the 915 pictures I took on the trip. More detailed blogspots to follow shortly. Enjoy!