Happy November! Today is a rather cold one with temperatures at 25 and steady snow fall. This is unusual for the week of Thanksgiving. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make to over to Shoreline for our annual dinner at Steve & Meg’s house. This post is rather late in coming as I accidentally broke my website awhile back, since we were preparing for our long trip to China fixing it wasn’t high on the list. However, instead of semi-daily posts about what we were doing you now get a super long post about the entire trip! Prepare for an adventure, but first I bring other news.

As only a few people know, we are expecting a baby. In case you feel you didn’t read that right, Richard and I will be parents. Scary thought isn’t it? Poor thing having us for parents. We have nicknamed “it” as parasite. We actually found it to be cuter than “sweet pea” or “little bean”, etc. Plus, it’s also a far more accurate name. Everything you read about how baby grows clearly states that the baby will take everything it needs from the mother and if there’s nothing left over for the mother, well that’s just how it is. This act leaves me to be often tired and with little energy. No, I haven’t spent time praying to the porcelain goddess as some expecting mothers do. I have had my fair share of nausea. Now that I’m nearly half way through my 2nd trimester, I’m finally having either cravings or aversions to some  foods. Something that my pregnancy book has been talking about since the beginning. In short, we’re due on May 8th. Currently, we don’t know if parasite is a boy or girl. Our first ultrasound is on Dec. 20th.

Now, let’s take a journey to China and Hong Kong!

We flew out from Seatac airport on a Sunday night. Our flight left rather late that night(as in after midnight) and we landed in Taipei at about 5am Tuesday morning. Crossing the international date line can be weird I know. Our flight was rather nice, Eva Airlines offers an “Elite” class which isn’t quite business but it’s also not coach. The seats recline just a bit more, you have a larger viewing screen and the seats aren’t as packed in. Actually all of our flights were fairly good. We’ll get back to Taipei and it’s airport at the end. We left from there for Hong Kong. The flight is about an hour long, so it’s more like a puddle jumper than an actual plane fight. They do serve a meal, which I was surprised about. If anything it’s a nice way to kill the time. How was my Chinese you wonder? Well, one would think that after 5 years of not really using any it would suck. While yes my vocabulary leaves something to be desired, apparently what I do say does not. Richard said that as we progressed on the trip my Chinese just got better. At one point I was talking to a guy who has served as a school guard for a number of years(I think even when I was there, so was he). While him and I were talking, Sean noted to Richard that it was just sick how I haven’t spoken for so long yet still sound so good. Richard readily agreed with him. I didn’t hear them talking about this, but Richard told me a few days later. I was told throughout the trip that my Chinese was good, but I always just thought they were being polite. 😛

Hong Kong

We landed in Hong Kong about 10am, then drove from the airport to our hotel. We were located on the Kowloon side of the harbor in the City View Hotel. It was formally a YMCA, and you can tell. Despite that the rooms were nice, the shower was even neat, the breakfast buffet was great and it was easy to find. As you all know, Hong Kong is an island, Kowloon is actually the nearest land mass to the tiny island. All I can really say about Hong Kong is that it is the most international city I have ever been too. Literally you can walk down the road and hear a number of different languages. There’s cars I have never seen in the most snobby parts of Seattle. We’re talking a place where Audi and BMW are “low end” and super common. Rolls-Royce, Maserati, Ferrari just around the corner. And not just one or two that we saw over our stay in Hong Kong, it was more like every time we went outside of a building you saw at least one or two. Everything is in Mandrian Chinese, Cantonese Chinese and English. It’s even very well done British English, rather than the “Chingish” we so often hear about. People in Hong Kong seem to get up late and stay out later. We figured this was due to the high temperatures in Hong Kong, but reality is we have no idea. The subway system there is very good, and considering the number of people, very orderly. There is pretty much any kind of shopping you could want to do, both high end and normal. Surprisingly not too many knock off’s but there are a few small shops which sell “imperfect” goods, so in other words the name brand tag has been slashed somehow reflecting the items rejected nature from the factory it was produced at.  There are small tailor shops all over to cater to the business world, need a suit? No problem! This is the place for custom made suits in a short period of time. The buildings are large and the lights are bright. Every night at 8pm there is an amazing light show done with music. As the viewer you stand on the Kowloon side, there are speakers set up for the music. It’s quite amazing that these buildings, all spread out over the island have come together to do this light show each night. Overall, it’s cheesy but cool at the same time. It’s worth seeing if you take a trip there. The food is quite good and you can find something open at just about any time. How do I rate Hong Kong? Fairly high actually. Yes there’s nothing super special about it, it is a large city with a crazy high population. However, given that it is unique. The masses aren’t rude or pushy, it’s easy to get around via the subway. You don’t need to know Chinese. I would go back.

Dongguang and Shenzhen

Although the train drops you off in Shenzhen, our actual destination was Dongguang where the office for Richard’s business partners are located. Our hotel here was just ok, in terms of service, breakfast buffet and overall comfort. Our first room there was so smoky smelling that we had to change rooms as we didn’t sleep that first night, we couldn’t even open the window to help and the air conditioner didn’t work well. Our second room was better, it was marked as a “non smoking” room. We managed to be able to sleep in that room and the air conditioner worked. Richard was quite happy with that as he didn’t like the high temps(although it was cooler there than Hong Kong). Overall, I don’t have much to say about this part of the trip. There’s two reasons for this; first of all this area is young and loud, secondly we did a lot of a business stuff. Referring to the young, it’s a lot of probably 16 to 28 year old who are originally from the rural areas sent there to work. The money that they don’t send home is spent on cars, clothes, cell phones, etc. Every show plays music very loudly, it’s kind of dirty and there’s no sense of anything really. Due to the high amount of business that was done I don’t feel comfortable talking about it here. You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned any company names either. On that note when it came time we took the ferry from Shenzhen directly to Hong Kong airport. It was rather cool actually. We just missed the typhoon that was passing through as well.

Nanjing

As many will know, this is where I spent a year while I was in university. I had a great time and learned a lot. It had been 5 years since visiting Nanjing last. In some ways the city has changed a lot, while in others it’s the same city I remember from before. Compared to where we just were, it was a sight of beauty. Large, old trees line the streets, people are more polite, there’s a sense of history and appreciation. Don’t get me wrong, Nanjing does have it’s shady parts like any other large city. But in comparison, it’s almost like you have arrived in another country altogether. Wang laoshi and her husband met us at the airport, it was great to see them. We visited Wang laoshi and her daughter while they were in New York for a year, however it had been 5 years since we last saw her husband. This is the family that I often refer to as my adopted family, as that’s what they did to me when I lived there. I was just another daughter/sister. For a bit I thought it was common of them to do that, but now I realize that although their kindness is common them almost completely taking in a student is not.  Our first real day there we were treated to a wonderful dinner, it was fancy but normal foods at the same time. I wish I could have eaten more. Xinxin, who I used to always call my small cat, has grown into this beautiful young teenager. She was so busy with school we only saw her the one night. Wang laoshi, we also only saw for about 2 days. Right before we arrived she learned that she would be taking the current exchange students to Beijing. I could tell she wasn’t pleased with this, but was doing her best to not show it. The weekend before we left, her husband took us around the city. We had a great time and a nice hot pot lunch.

Also, while we were there we met up with Jon and Sean. They are both former classmates of mine from the spring semester. It was a real treat to see both of them. With Sean we went to a great Indian restaurant and talked for a rather long time. In fact they had to tell us they were well past closed before we realized it. We met Jon a night or two later for drinks(although I had hot water). About halfway through Sean joined us.  Again, really cool to just hang out with them and hear what they have been up too all these years. I can’t tell enough how much I enjoy that we have stayed in contact all these years. We met up with Jon for a quick lunch. Another treat was meeting up with Sophia. At the time she was one of the teachers I had my spring semester. However, she is now married to one of my former classmates and very happy. Blake, her husband, is here in the states(just in Portland actually) finishing his studies. I believe he is working on his PhD, but it a masters, I forget. They are currently working to get her and her daughter to move over here. They were married last year sometime. She said that they hope to officially move here this winter. Overall I hope to be able to visit Nanjing sooner than another 5 years, but with the arrival of parasite we’ll see.

Taipei

The airport has each gate themed. So if you like Hello Kitty, fly through and you can see the full Hello Kitty themed gate. It’s unique and actually makes the airport more fun. One of our gates was about the postal service and another one was about local foods. You get the idea, it just builds from there. I’d like to say lots of great things about Taipei, however we only stayed one night and most of it was spent in the office. Yes, more business. Meals we had were hot pot, belt sushi(much like Blue C) and noodles. Pretty low key actually. We did visit the memorial park for Chiang Kai Shek and the Taipei 101 tower. There was no time for any other sights.

Yes, I would like to visit Taipei again and actually see some of it. There’s also a fishing town Richard visited last year that he said would be fun for us to go together. Perhaps in a few years when parasite is a bit older we can take a family trip.