I had a great time “chatting” with Michael’s son, Eric.   He had assembled this little homemade comic book and was telling me all about it.   Of course, I had no idea what he was saying, but it was delightful just listening.   Then he grabbed his English songbook with all the old classics a la “Ten Little Indians”, “If You’re Happy and Ya Know It…”, etc.   I alternated between saying, “I know that one!” and “I don’t know that one!” (in Chinese) and he got a kick out of each time I said it.   Check out the video:   Eric, the kid

Lucky pig!

I went looking for some decent shirts for work.   I should have bought them when I had the chance at Luoho the week before, but I was more interested in observing the whole bargaining process rather than participating in it.   Michael was kind enough to accompany me to Huaqiang Bei, but it turned out to be more for electronics than clothing.   Well, there’s plenty of clothing, but nothing that I was looking for.   Anyway, the point of this story is that this was the place that met my expectations of crowded China.   Oh man, the market was jammed shoulder to shoulder with people.   Check out the video here:   Huaqiang Bei.   Even more impressive was the electronics market, which is what the place is famous for.   It’s a wild bazzar where any electronic item you can dream of, or build, can be bought.   People can actually assemble electronics on the spot.   Want a custom mouse?   They’ll build it right there.   This was a feast for my eyes and ears.   I gave up after an hour looking for shirts to buy.

More neat buildings are under construction here.   This one, as all the others, are encased in bamboo scaffolding.   There’s a more durable frame of iron around the bamboo, but it’s still bamboo.   Check out this picture.   The dark scaffolding is the metal.   Oh yeah, look at the huge crane waaay up at the top:

Here’s a shot of the busy street.   Note the woman in the foreground.   She’s selling copies of Windows Vista.

This morning, Judy, Michael, Tina, Heidi, and I hiked up the Mount Si of Shenzhen, Tang Lang Shang.   This was a far cry for the wilderness experience of Mount Si.   Putting the words   “wilderness experience” and “Mount Si” together is normally wrong, but compared to Tang Lang Shang, it certainly is true.   But, regardless of the presence of progress everywhere, I enjoyed it and was a even little sore the following day, so it’s a good workout too.   This is a popular walk among the locals and features a paved road all the way to the top, like a miniature Pikes Peak.   I would say that the elevation gain is maybe 1500 feet, maybe a little more, so it’s certainly less demanding than Mount Si.   Also, this was a winter ascent (in comfortable sunny weather in the 60′s).   There is the option to take rough dusty trails that often are steeply cut dirt steps, but we stuck to the road for most of the time.   Part of the mountain is being chewed apart by heavy machinery and some of them were sitting dangerously close to the edge of an artificial cliff cut out of the mountain.   These particular machines were drilling straight down into the earth and I was half-expecting part of the mountain to cleave off.

Here’s one of the shortcuts.   This one starts out as a very steep dirt stairway then turns into this comfortable concrete staircase.   You also can get cell phone reception:

I got my first look at some of the real foothills (I guess) of China from near the top of the mountain.   Despite the haze, the pictures turned out clear.   We continued on to the top only to have the road end and the final stairway with a board across it warding off the hikers, I mean walkers, from continuing on.   Normally, I would have gone off the trail here, but figured it best to follow the rules.

A view of the foothills from the slopes of Tang Lang Shang:

Here’s a shot of my two colleagues and me:   Michael and Judy.   I look like a giant barbarian invader.   Peace, man.

Oh, this is a funny story. The other night I figured I should take advantage of the gym nearby and start toning up. So, I donned my iPod and headed straight for the free weights where I did a few reps of light bench presses, some curls, flies, and other exercises whose name I’ve now forgotten. Anyway, there was only me in the gym at 9:30pm until a young girl with two young little boys came in. The kids started playing all around the free weights, lifting up dumbbells, rolling them around, and so on. When I started doing flies, the youngest kid, probably around six, came up to me and started grabbing my arms and pressing in; I guess he was feeling my muscles. Well, I just smiled and kept doing the exercises (remember I had on the iPod). Eventually, he turns his attention to my ear buds and starts jumping up to grab them out of my ear. Well, I just leaned out of the way until I thought I would be fun to give him something to listen to. Instantly, I had made my selection. See, I could have had him listen to Respighi, Mozart, Bruch, or maybe even some Frozen Taco, but nope. What did I pick? Ludacris! I queued up “Number One Spot” and handed the youngster the ear buds and pressed play. The next thing I heard was his raucous imitation of the opening: “Yeah, baby! Yeaaah!!!” – Ludacris’s a capella reference to the movie  Austin Powers. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “What have I done?!” as he and his older brother and sister (I guess) left the gym with him still singing, “Yeah baby! Yeaahh!!” over and over. Who do I blame? I blame Aidan for  playing rap on the way to climbs the previous two climbing seasons! OK, just kidding, Aidan; it’s not your fault.

A few people have reported that the comments aren’t working.   I confirmed it was broken a couple of days ago.   No idea what’s going on.   I’ll see what I can do.