We felt that Taiwan quake all the way out here. They made us evacuate the Nanshan Education Bureau building in the middle of class. Thanks God there wasn't a tsunami going towards the Philipines as was feared. This is the third big quake on December 26th in four years... kinda strange, ey?

Night Run [Macau, pt 1]

I'm a liar. I've been peddling untruths to myself, friends, and lovers for years and it's time to come clean. Unless you're taking a day trip to a national park, traveling is never ever cheap. Ever. I've created the most elaborate Excel spreadsheets to spread my lies in slick emails. I've told countless friends the only cost of Bonnaroo is gas money and the ticket, and since each car is packed with people the travel costs are negligable. And, hey, food doesn't count 'cause you'd be eating at home anyway, right? Right?

This time I was absolutely convinced I could do a weekend run to Macau for under $60. Not just me, mind you, I also offered the trip as "my treat" to an initially reluctant travel companion. I had a website promising me they would ferry me across the Pearl River delta for 80rmb up till 9:30 at night and I had a quasi-reservation for a double room at a guest house for 150rmb. Add buses and meals, and wa la... an über-cheap side trip to that Portuguese bastard child of a forfeited colony opposite Hong Kong on the delta.

The other myth that's become obvious to me over the past few weeks is that I can plan. I can research and improvise just about anything... but plan? No. Not a chance. My "plan" was to look up the characters for "ferry terminal" and scout them out at the bus stop an hour before the last departure. That was it.

First we were running late because I had to conduct my first ever phone interview [I invite you to speculate what that means] so after making Hera wait outside my apartment in the cold for half an hour, we had to get a cab to the ferry terminal. 40RMB. We get there and learn a) my ferry company doesn't really exist, and b) the company that does exist sent their last ferry to Macau an hour earlier, and c) by the time we decided to ferry over to HK and take another to Macau, the last HK-bound ferry was pulling out of dock.

At this point a rational set of characters would have called it a night and tried to set out again in the morning. No such luck that your humble narrator and his guest were rational thinkers. We wanted to go to Macau. That was that, obstacles be damned. We decide to go to Lou Hu to look for a night bus to Zhuhai [Mainland border city of Macau]. For Jacksonville readers, imagine being in at the Gate gas station on A1A in between Ponte Vedra Beach and St. Augustine and deciding you need to catch a Greyhound in downtown Jax to Orlando at that very moment - 9:45 at night.

So we hopped another cab [add 40 RMB] back to Bai Shi Zhou to get on the subway to Lou Hu. When we get there we discover that, alas, all the buses were gone already.... but wait! A dashing young gentleman offers to have someone drive us to Zhuhai for 500 RMB. I turn to walk away. 350 RMB it is. We're now at 430 RMB [$53 USD], for those keeping score at home, and we haven't even left Shenzhen yet.

So at 11am on a Saturday night I get into a strangers van with my Filipino friend for a two hour drive through China's industrial wastelands to a city I've never been to. Though expensive, I know it was a good deal because our driver was angry. Very angry. He drove fast and blared his Sino-Techno out of a small 8" sub in the back of his can [take the most mediocre house music you've heard, strip away all but the barest of melody, run it through a $20 Radioshack keyboard to get that 4-bit MIDI effect in full, increase it to a happy hardcore 250bmp tempo, and wa la! You're a Chinese DJ!].

Guangzhou, the third most populous city in China and shoe factory capital of the world, was the mid-way point at the north corner of the Delta. Our driver pulled off the highway here and into a dark parking lot of what, in America, would look like an abandoned strip mall near MLK Drive. Businesses closed but people hanging out in the shadows outside. Our driver stepped out and was swarmed by six or seven men who looked angry. He disappeared inside the mob.

"Should we be worried, Trey?" Hera asked.

It was a very reasonable question.

"Yes. I think so, maybe a little bit anyway," I giggled back. I was worried a little bit. The situation was weird and becoming a bit too fluid. We had bitten off a little more than we could chew when hired a driver who didn't speak any English to drive us two hours in the middle of the night to a town I was familiar with through Wikipedia. But that's precisely what made the situation so fun [and funny] to me.

Our driver came back, opened the side door, and grabbed Hera's backpack. We correctly assumed we were switching drivers. We left our nightclub-on-wheels and drove off with our curious new driver.

"Ni hao, pengyou [hello friend]"

No response.

"Where are you from?" I asked in Chinese.

No response.

"Do you like Zhuhai?"

No response.

"Friend, do you speak Chinese or only Cantonese?"

No response. Nice.




- - - - too be continued [with pictures] - - - -

Yellow Smocks

Before I went to Amsterdam I'd never seen a prostitute before. Well, I have a memory of a prostitute coming and putting her leg on our families rental car when we were in Miami in '93, but that's just too weird to have really happened. In Amsterdam they were more like zoo exhibits than anything else. They were presented as tourist attractions. I'd never seen one in her natural habitat though.

Even on the famed Emerson and Phillips intersections in Jacksonville, which I once lived not too far from, I never saw one. Ever. Everyone said they there with the crack dealers but I never saw them either. I think my parameters of "normal human behavior" are just too wide to spot someone dressed eccentric enough to scream, "approach me for solicitation of sex and drugs."

Everyone claimed that the late nigh barber shops in Tianjin were all sin dens, but every time I looked while driving by they were doing legitimate business. But Shenzhen. Wow. Different story. Obvious isn't even the word. Apparently, we compete with Thailand on the sheer numbers of women coming to look for work and deciding the indentured servitude at a factory just wasn't what they had in mind when they left the farm.

Within a five minute walk I could count at least ten businesses of scandalous intent. Juries out on what they really are, precisely, but they're neon lit establishments with big glass windows with couches overflowing with bored young girls in short white dresses. There's always one booth for cutting hair and not a single customer. For that matter, I've never seen anyone coming into or out of one of these places. They're just kinda there. Existing.

Though prostitution is against the law, I've never seen a crackdown on the brothels like I've seen with street vendors [or reporters, or...], so it came as some surprise to read this in an article about prostitution in China in the International Herald Tribune today:

At the end of November, officials in Shenzhen, the southern boomtown, got the bright idea of reviving the Cultural Revolution for the purposes of temporarily cracking down on its prostitutes.

This came to pass as a face-preserving measure after a regional television station broke with decorum by mentioning the existence of this industry in a city famous throughout Asia for its sex trade.

To send the message that Shenzhen was actually a clean and proper place, the police dressed several dozen prostitutes in identical yellow smocks and marched them through the streets of Futian district, to be shamed by a jeering crowd and have their names and hometowns announced to all.

What's even stranger is no one I know had any idea this happened until we read about it on international websites. The news here is strictly "happiness abides," so things like this rarely get reported. Curious though, ey?


Tags: Treyopia current events news prostitution Shenzhen China Chinese Asia Cultural Revolution persecution

Multi-Post

I've been a bit sick, hence my slowness of posting. I was warned about eating the fried street food, but did I listen? Noooo. When I saw a dude frying banana's I just had to have one. And fried chicken on a stick. And now I'm paying.

It wouldn't be so bad if they Chinese didn't have an entire system of make-believe medicine. Err, "traditional medicine." When I was battling a cold earlier in the week I went to 7-11 to buy Children's Tylenol. They girls almost refused to sell it to me. The side of the box for their preferred medicine had written in plain English, "pear seed extract, grape stem, apple root,...". I got my Children's Tylenol with an orange Fanta Slurpee. I won.

As I type this I hear my roommate shout across the apartment "hot water!" every time I sniffle. Cold water, of course, is bad for your health. Dontcha know?

What's wound up saving me is Google's English-Chinese translator. Just find the scientific name for the medicine you need.

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Shenzhen is the land of homesickness. I just realized it after Hou Li told me one of her friends here from her home province is going back. It was too much being so far away. For my own part, I've had two bouts of acute homesicksness. It's not at all what I thought I'd be. It's short, spiky, and acute. It makes its attack and runs. It comes when you least expect it.

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And alas, the pictures I promised. Hera and I went hiking on Lamma Island last weekend. Great hike. Both of us being from beach towns, we wanted to find the nicest beach Hong Kong had to offer. Along the way we perused abandoned villages, which I'll write more about later.