Hong Kong

Last time I wrote, I had just arrived in Hong Kong. I spent 2 weeks there. Unlike what you might expect, those were my most confined and homely yet.
Not at first though. As said in my last blogpost, at my arrival I went to the notorious Chungking Mansions. For a few days I stayed there, in a very central locaton, enjoying the bustle and energy. I met a nice girl through couchsurfing, we went out a couple of times, doing such exciting things as going to the space museum together. On a lone walk through the city, I pretty randomly met a canadian guy. We had a great time together and decided to go to another place.
He had heard about this one hostel up in the mountains of Hong Kong Island, at a rather inconvenient but beautiful location. At the edge of the city, walking a long way up a small path through dense forest, it lay on the very top. There an open ocean lay in front of us, dotted with islands and disclosing a sideway view of the skyline. My canadian friend was a gifted cook, so the rest of my stay felt more mediterranean than anything else. We bought food in a market closeby, cooked them up in the big kitchen, enjoyed the sun, read up and watched the big boats go by. This delightful routine was only interrupted by long walks through the city and the surrounding nature.
At the hostel I made my first chinese friend who didn't speak a word of English. She was an interior architect. Surprisingly we could talk for hours about a bunch of subjects. I couldn't help being impressed by the progress I had made in Chinese. However, after traveling on and some disappointments later, being unable to have more profound conversations with other chinese speakers, I rather felt impressed by how much communication is dependent on wanting to understand each other and how with the right person surprisingly much can be said with very little means. Language is a very personal thing.

HK turned out to be my favorite city in China, so a bit more about it. HK has everything to love about a world city, but is very unique in its form. It consists of several mountaineous islands. As on the most popular one, HK island, building is usually limited to the coast, as inland is too steep. There nature gets free reign, in a tropical abundancy I'm sure many people are unaware of. This results in the sum of both a scarcity of available plots, causing the sureal amount of skyscrapers, and behind this a background of even more imposing nature.
Living in such a vertical city was unusual to me. A HK resident might wake up at home at the 26th floor. A lunchdate might be had in another building at the 15th floor. Off then to the sauna, hairdresser or fitness in yet another building at the 21th floor. Doing some afternoon shopping in a mall might as well be somewhere 50m above as below ground. I'm sure I'm just a boy from the small capital of a little country, when I say all of this filled me with wonder.
Sadly I was still a bit sick at that time, but I did go out once, to what might have been one of the coolest bars I ever went. At the top of one skyscraper, slightly elevated at the foot of the hill, it had all glass walls and an incredible view over the city. Unbelievably, the bar had a rooftop terrace, with speakers outside.

Shenzhen

Next up, I decided to go to Shenzhen. This city lays right next to Hong Kong, back on the mainland. It was truly non-existent 30 years ago and is now one of the biggest and richest industrial cities in China. I wasn't planning on spending a lot of time there, since it doesn't have a good reputation. The city is made up of uninspiring (this is a euphemism) apartment buildings, bland offices andfactories.
After expensive Hong Kong, I was keen on finding a couchsurfing host in Shenzhen. I wrote a ridiculous amount of people and got lots of responses. Eventually I ended up staying at Zhang Yi's place. She was very social and welcoming, and had quite a few traits unusual for a chinese person. Foremost her excellent english, her feeling for sarcasm and her foul mouth. Our first meeting consisted of going to a pizza hut (which had been months ago for me) in a mall, where we got really drunk somewhere in the afternoon. During the week she had to work every day, but I had a great time at her apartment.

The other people who replied me on couchsurfing, at whose place I wasn't staying, I met during the day for various activities. This way I got to know a lot of locals.
Also I had met a nice girl 2 months earlier in Yangshou, the region with the beautiful karst-mountains. At that time, I found her immediately awesome when she told me she was an optical engineer, working on lasers. She actually lived and worked in Shenzhen, so we met for a couple of very entertaing dinners and discussions about modern china.
So with her or others I went to parks, a faraway beach and a great day at a wild waterpark. I also went to some bars, at that time dominated by the World Cup. You couldn't miss it. Almost every bar projected the game, as well as malls, city squares, even the tv's in busses mostly showed football. Surprisingly, it was a great pleasure watching this in the company of chinese people. Their enthusiasm was enormous, and any excitement on television instantly possessed the crowd. Funnily though, they clearly weren't that experienced in watching it. Every time the ball rather obviously missed the goal by 5 meters, 90% of the public only figured this out after some 20 seconds wildly clapping and excitement for the goal. Don't even mention off-sides etc.

Meeting up locals, I made one of my better friends yet, with whom I made a short trip to Guangzhou.
Same as in Shenzhen, old authentic parts are hard to come by andthe city is build mostly of these standard, immensely ugly apartment buildings. But then there's the ambitious city center. It makes you wish you could fast-forward some 5 years to see the result. Central is a vast muddy expanse, to become a park. What's already finished are both a museum and an opera of beautiful modern architecture (especially thelatter, designedby Zaha Hadid), surrounded bylots of impressive skyscrapers, soaring up to 400meters. And then the tv-tower. More than 600meters high, brilliantly designed and perfectly located. A modern Eiffel-tower.

Shanghai

I decided to head for Shanghai a second time, since I had only visited the city itself, not the neighboringregion.First Iwent 2 days to Nanjing, for a stop-over.I quickly made a friend there, a design student. We went to a forest,got lost andended our day partying.The day after, I went to Shanghai, couchsurfing and planning the rest of my trip. I asked the girl from Nanjing if she didn't want to join me for a while.Together we went to some of the most beautiful cities in China. Firstly the watertowns of Xitang and Zhouzhuang. As you'll see on the pictures, these small watertowns are incredibly gorgeous.They are popular tourist locations, although a lot of the local people still live there, once leaving the central roads . Advice: spend the night. Late in the evening and early morning walking is a delight!
Afterwards we made a short trip to Suzhou. Some nice parts, some less. Wealso visitedthe famous museum by IM PEI, which I found rather disappointing.

We had a great time together. When back in Shanghai, time had come to go to Beijing. My friend's small hometown lay somewhere in between those two, so she invited me for a short stay at her house. I was happy to go somewhere a bit more off the beaten track and be invited in a chinese home. Her parents were the most generous.
Dinner was quite a funny experience. Besides the delicious food, a decent amount of beers was placed on the table. As usually, these were served in small cups. Drinking is only done mutually, where everyone together empties their cup. Quite different as in Europe is the pace at which people drink. Clearly the purpose is to be as drunk as possible in the shortest while, preferably long before the end of dinner. Every few bites I could get, the father proposed another round of 'Gan bei!' (literally meaning dry cup).


Next up, Beijing and a trip to the land of the milk & baby-voiced, subwaywagon-breasted catgirls.