Swimming

After a long hard day of shopping, we took some time off and spent the morning in the hotel pool. The pool is on the 10th floor deck, overlooking Victoria Harbour. Magnificent view! Noah, of course, is part fish and never wanted to come out, but when the sun goes down behind the building, the water starts to get chilly. However, there's also a very nice hot tub, and Jon took full advantage of that.

Open Air Markets

Yesterday we went shopping in earnest, first at the produce markets, then the Jade Market, then the Temple Street Market. It was quite overwhelming, but proved to be very successful (at least for the global economy, if not for our personal bank account).

The produce market consists of stalls filled with every kind of fruit and vegetable imaginable, from sugar-sweet miniature bananas (thinking of you, Anna!) to giant red dragonfruit, plus a slew of things we've never seen before (2-foot-long eggplants, maybe? Flowering asparagus? Bumpy grapefruit? 12 kinds of mushrooms?). There are also the "wet markets," where the kind vendors will butcher your side of beef, press your duck or fillet your fish to order. Wild.

The Jade Market is a huge, low, covered building with hundreds of stalls selling (of course) jade of every color, size, shape and quality, plus pearls, ivory and other jewelry. Some real, some fake. The vendors are very solicitous but very aggressive. I had one woman holding my arm until I had to physically shake her off. I did very well here.

The Temple Street Market consists of tiny outdoor stalls lining the streets for blocks leading away from the jade market, offering everything from t-shirts to i-Pods to mah jongg sets, all at great prices. We had a blast just looking at everything.

For more details and some photos, check out this link:

Open Air Markets

(if the above link doesn't work, try http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/touring/popular/ta_popu_open.jhtml)

Light and Laser Show

Every night at 8 pm, there is an amazing synchronized light and laser show across Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and we have an incredible view of it from our hotel. The show has been named the "World's Largest Permanent Light and Sound Show" by Guinness World Records, and includes 44 buildings on both sides of Victoria Harbour. It lasts about 12 minutes, and even includes fireworks on holidays like Christmas and Chinese New Year.

Apparently the best way to enjoy the show is on one of the ferry cruises, so you can get the music and narration as well. We'll try that soon.


Our cameras can't possibly do it justice, but we have found a video on YouTube that it very good. Click on the link below and enjoy!

Hong Kong Symphony of Lights

(If the link above doesn't work, try http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=AHWmFkpondw&feature=related)

Hong Kong

Nei hou from Hong Kong! (We have switched from Mandarin to Cantonese.) We came over from Zhuhai on Monday, crossing over the South China Sea by high-speed ferry in only 70 minutes. Hong Kong is a Special Autonomous Region made up of several islands. They have their own currency, they drive on the left side of the road (the British colonial influence), and we can finally drink the water. We are staying in a beautiful hotel in Kowloon, across the water from the main business districts on Hong Kong Island, pictured above. In fact, the two photos above were taken from our hotel suite. Pretty cool, huh? (BTW, the building at right with the illuminated girders is the famous Bank of China building designed by I.M. Pei, quite a scandal when it was built because its stark, angular lines go against all rules of feng shui.)

Jon has been working, teaching at the University of Hong Kong (the Harvard of China, he tells us), and meeting again with some of the people he met there. We hope to start sightseeing (and shopping) in earnest tomorrow (although Jon has managed to buy one new suit already, and we briefly found the Temple Street Market, which is similar to the old world market we had gone to in Shanghai. Believe me, we'll go back there again.)

The funniest thing we've seen so far is that everything here is decorated for Christmas, and I mean everything -- entire sides of huge buildings, every inch of our hotel, etc. It's a bit disconcerting, this being a supposedly non-religious country (or at least a Buddhist one), but it makes for good sales at the stores.


The buildings pictured above are 12 stories tall. That's a lot of Christmas lights!

Stay tuned for more Hong Kong photos coming soon!

Macau

Yesterday we went to Macau, a small island reachable from Zhuhai over a pedestrian bridge. Macau was under Portuguese control for 450 years before being ceded back to China in 1999, and is now considered a Special Autonomous Region, similar to Hong Kong (but much older). We needed our passports to get in and had to go through Chinese customs to return to the mainland. They have their own currency, the pataca, but every store and restaurant seems to accept (and prefer) the Hong Kong dollar, which is of equal value (about 12 U.S. cents each).

Macau is a city of juxtapositions, with Catholic churches and European plazas nestled just down the road from gigantic casinos awash in blazing neon. All signs are in Chinese, Portuguese and English, though very few people seem to speak or understand the latter two languages. Macanese food has strong Portuguese influences, and many dishes feature bacalhau, or dried salt cod, which is quite delicious.

Macau has always been very poor, and the gambling has been quite a boon. In fact, gambling revenues there have recently surpassed Las Vegas (although the Chinese government has had to crack down on local mainland officials going over to gamble with municipal funds). We watched a water and light show at the Wynn casino to the music of "Money Makes the World Go Around" from Cabaret. That pretty much said it all.

We are off to Hong Kong tomorrow -- more news to come!

The Zhuhai Fisher Girl

Local legend has it that an angel descended to earth one day and fell in love with the beauty of the land around the South China Sea. Reluctant to return home, she turned herself into a fisher girl, weaving nets and searching for precious pearls to earn a living. In addition, she unselfishly used her knowledge and powers to heal villagers who were ill, and so she was well loved by one and all.

Soon she met a young fisherman named Hai Peng and they fell in love. Not long after, however, Hai Peng listened to malicious accusations and demanded the fisher girl to give him her magical bracelets as a token of her affection. The fisher girl tearfully explained the origin of the bracelets. While she was still the daughter of the South Sea Dragon King, the eight bracelets were given to her by the eight palace mistresses, to guard her against the thought of abandoning immortality. She would die if she even removed one.

Tragically, Hai Peng did not believe her story and turned to leave. The fisher girl, to prove her love for Hai Peng, removed her bracelets and died in his arms instantly.

Hai Peng was filled with remorse and grief. His great sorrow moved the Jiu Zhou Huan Elder, who taught him the way to bring the fisher girl back to life. For this he had to go to the Jiu Zhou Island to find the Resurrection Grass, which had to be fed with man's blood. After much difficulty, Hai Peng found the grass and grew it with his own blood. Days turned to years, and the grass was finally ready and used to revive the fisher girl. Henceforth, the fisher girl became a true mortal.

On the day of their wedding, all the girls in the village together found a gigantic, magical pearl at the seashore. In gratitude, the fisher girl presented this to the reverent Elder.

Isn't that a lovely story for such a lovely statue? She's 9 meters high and weighs 10 tons. She's very impressive -- sort of the Statue of Liberty of Zhuhai.

Pudong

While we were in Shanghai, we took a ferry across the river Huangpu to the island of Pudong (the name means "east of the Pu;" mainland Shanghai is called Puxi, which means "west of the Pu"). We went over on the luxury air-conditioned ferry, which cost 2 yuan per person (28 cents).

Pudong has some of the tallest buildings in China. The Shanghai World Financial Center is over 100 stories tall and looks like a giant bottle opener. We went to the observation deck on the 97th floor and enjoyed some amazing views. (The observation deck is just below the opening at the top of the building -- very cool effect to be up there.) The next tallest building is the Jin Mao tower, which looks sort of like the top of the Chrysler Building made into a full skyscraper. And then there's the Oriental Pearl Tower, the largest TV transmitter in the world, and an incredible sight to see.

We came home on the commuter ferry, which mainly cater to bicycles and motorcycles. It was quite an experience, but only half a yuan (7 cents), so we couldn't really complain.



The photo above shows the boys posing with the mascot for the 2010 Expo, who is pictured all over Shanghai the way the Olympic mascots were plastered all over Beijing. He looks sort of like a blue Gumby, but cuter. We never actually found out his Chinese name. We'll just have to come back in 2010. ;-)