Sandro, my Italian restauranteur bud, cracks me up. His enthusiasm for his restaurant is tremendous and he can almost be found around the premises talking to the patrons, guiding the staff, and instructing those unfamiliar with pizza and pasta of the proper way to eat it. “No, no!   With your hands, with your hands!”, which is actually usually delivered in Chinese.   Or, the best is when he sits down next to you and takes you fork and knife and rolls the proscutti and formaggio up for you and dips it in the olive oil and vinager mixture, then hands you back the fork and knife.

I was a little surprised by his absence when I made my first visit after I was done with my tour of Shenzhen (provided by my company; I’d been to all the places I was taken). But, the waitresses recognized me immediately and called out my name. After chatting with them for a while in my crippled but re-emerging Mandarin and placing an order for my favorite pizza, I called Sandro. Of course, he didn’t know who I was since I dumped my old China Mobile SIM card (after being fed up with the confusing monthly fees). After teasing him a bit, I told him it was me and he excitedly replied, “OK, I’m on my way!” He showed up with his fiance, Lulu, and I had Penny, one of the waitresses, snap this shot of us:

Sandro ordered me a complimentary slice of tiramisu.   I had to ask (as I did many times in the past) him if he still made the tiramisu himself.   “Of couuuuurse!!!”, he proudly shot back.   That’s the answer I always like to hear.

I took two night shots of my two favorite buildings: Di Wang, the highest in Shenzhen and currently the 7th highest in the world, and the Hua Qiang Bei tower. The “Hua Qiang Bei Tower” is not really the name. I don’t know what the real name is, but I call it that because it marks the location of Hua Qiang Bei, the location of the amazing electronics shopping area in Shenzhen.

(above) Di Wang is the building with the really cool super laser beam on top.

(above) The high tower in Hua Qiang Bei recently added rotating spotlights on the top.

Seems like I’ve had a lot of these posts in the past – food related. That’s really not a surprise if you consider the importance of meals in Chinese culture. Well, I decided to invite my driver, Xiao Ji, out for dinner after work one day. He’s the one that introduced me to the really spicy food anyway. Oh, by the way, his English is getting much better. I reckon he’s surpassed my Chinese now. But, having just finished my first lesson with my teacher from a few months back, that will not be the case for long. We ended up going to one of the same restaurants we went to once last time. Excellent spicy food. Oh, and that reminds me: Tiffany told me to lay off the spicy food for a while. Ah well. Too late now. Anyway, Xiao Ji and I ordered some delicious spicy ribs, a spicy pork dish, some Kingway (local Shenzhen brewery) beer, rice, and broccoli to balance it out. Some friends of Xiao Ji’s showed up later on to join us.

Here’s the Chinese/English lesson for the night:

After the meal, we all went out for “Xi jiao”, of course…foot massage. My girl this time was pretty rough. I had to keep telling her to relax a bit; maybe my feet were just sensitive. Anyway, with 5 guys in there along with the massage crew, there was lots of the usual raucous laughs at my attempt at speaking Chinese. Around 9:30 we headed out. I was expecting another 15 minute drive to get back to my place. When we suddenly arrived about two minutes later, I realized I was in short walking distance of the restaurant and foot massage place. Great! The pieces are all falling into place.

I had a choice of two locations for my temporary housing (zanshi gongyu…basically) in Shenzhen: Shekou or Futian. The agent in charge of booking my housing was surprised when I requested Futian. Shekou is the westernmost part of urban Shenzhen, is the location of the popular ferry terminal (popular with foreigners anyway), and easily the most cosmopolitan. Futian District is more central, residential, and more “native”. Downtown Shenzhen, in the Luohu District, is further to the east. My criteria was simple: 1) Pick the place that was more native and 2) Pick the place closest to a subway stop. So, Futian wins on both counts. It’s not as nice as the joint in Shekou, but that’s fine with me.

This apartment is a good example of a typical, higher end, Chinese apartment. It’s not exactly to my liking: the hard bright tiles make for an echoey room, but I’m adaptable. The kitchen is small and, of course, has no oven, but since when did I cook in China, especially when there’s much better food to be found in the numerous restaurants. The furnishings and styles within are sterile by Western standards. Also very typical was the location of the dryer – in an exterior cubbyhole that faced on to a 27-story drop down to the road below. Those not fond of heights would soon have a pile of dirty clothes.

Here are some pictures of the interior:

I like the big window looking out over this part of the city. There are some nice cushions for comfortably sitting against the window while typing up blog entries. Here are the views (straight across and at an angle):

On the top floor is an observation deck and a small workout facility, which I’m too lazy and busy to use. I went up at night to take this nice panorama of the surroundings (I’m figuring out how to do night shots with this versatile little camera):

Dang, I love Hong Kong! I left Seattle bound for Hong Kong through Tokyo on Thursday afternoon in the midst of the high wind storm that was approaching over the Olympic Range. Already there were some high gusts in Seattle. I really didn’t want to be delayed by these winds; I was more than ready to return to the East. We took off with warnings of turbulence from the pilot. It was really nothing though and soon we were cruising high above the cloudy Pacific. I landed in Hong Kong at nearly 11pm local time and arrived at the Shangri-La some time after midnight. What a relief to step into this hotel after my stay at the unnamable extended stay hotel in Redmond. OK, it’s not that bad, but the Shangri-La is one hundred times better and twice the price. This time, I took only half an Ambien and went to bed; it was around 1:30am.

I awoke at 7:30 fully rested and completely adjusted. I couldn’t believe how good I felt. I had zero jet lag effects and I still do as I write this some three days later. What did I do differently? I slept a little more on the plane – about an hour from Seattle to Tokyo and for most of the flight, about four hours, from Tokyo to Hong Kong. I also drank a lot of water.

After a superb western breakfast in the restaurant, I returned to my room to catch up on some emails. I then checked out, leaving my luggage with the concierge, and started walking along the edge of Victoria Harbor and the Avenue of Stars towards the Star Ferry Terminal, Octopus card (the Hong Kong mass transit card) in pocket. It was 11:30.

Huan Huan is one of the characters of the 2008 Olympics

Dragon in Kowloon

It was a great day to be out and about so I headed to the main island intent on taking the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria Peak for some birdseye views of the city. I’d never done that before. As I walked along the water, I watched for the Indians looking to tell my fortune. Sure enough, more than one approached me along the way. They have a keen eye for spotting Westerners and sauntering casually up to them and starting their magic routine. I saw an Indian leaning against the railing, casually eyeing me. He lazily lifted himself up and casually wound his way through the crowd to approach me. “Sir, you are very lucky.” A wave of the hand and I kept walking. I hopped on the ferry bound for the central district of Hong Kong. Once there, I lazily wended towards the Peak Tram. I was so glad to be back in Hong Kong, I must have had a smile on my face the whole time.

Inside the tram and the rice bowl

There was a big line waiting to hop on the cable tram. I chatted a bit with some other foreigners while in line. I had checked the weather a couple of days before leaving for Hong Kong and decided that the forecast was good enough to make a trip to Victoria Peak for some pictures. It was a little hazy, of course, but the views would still be good. The cable car climbs steeply up the mountain and only takes a few minutes to arrive at the top. The station is a small shopping center with an observation deck. It’s shaped like a rice bowl! It’s about $2.60 to go to the observation deck, but it’s not any better than the view from the windows on the lower floors. Here are some pics.

Views from up high. The picture on the right is a summit I want to hike to, to the west of Victoria Peak.

I wandered some more to a larger shopping center behind the rice bowl. I’m not a shopper at all, but I came across a quality item at the Hard Rock store. Check it out (below). I asked if the guitar was for sale. It wasn’t (like I would really buy it). I found another shop with some interesting little souvenirs. I’m a lousy shopper, but I found some good stuff and bought it. I won’t give the surprise away here though.

One of Yngwie’s axes

Another thing I didn’t realize was that Halloween is popular in China. I guess that’s not as surprising as some of the other holidays that the Chinese have marketed for commercial purposes. The funniest has to be Easter; hardly anyone knows what it really is.

I wanted to walk down Victoria Peak, but I’d bought a return ticket and it was only good for the day. I thought maybe I could come back in the coming weekend for some night shots with the unused ticket. But, no, I took the train back down and then wandered some more among the narrow streets and alleys. I was also looking for a neat church I’d remembered seeing. I couldn’t find it this time. Next time. I found the Central Station and dropped down to catch the subway back to the Shangri-La where I was to meet a driver to go into mainland China. I met the driver right at 4pm and collected my luggage.

I tried to speak Chinese to him during the ride and it was at this point that the reality of my language skills hit me like a splash of water to the face. I’d forgotten a lot of vocabulary! So, I’ll be calling my Chinese teacher soon to rectify the problem. One of my goals while in China is to become fluent in Chinese. I know I can do it if I can just keep disciplined in my study and practice. My hypothesis is that Chinese has a steep learning curve, but once you’re about to crest the hill, the learning should really accelerate. If I can ever master the tones, I’ll be good. We passed many huge apartment buildings and again I was in awe of the quantity of people living here. Undoubtedly this is the most populated spot on earth, but the traffic was better than Seattle on most days. This part of Asia has 100 times the population and 1/100th the cars. Don’t think that there are never traffic problems though; just not as common.

Just a few apartments ’round town

We crossed the new beautiful white bridge, which was under construction when I left, over Shenzhen Bay and into mainland China…

Tiffany, a friend that I know through Toastmasters and a practitioner of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, had long suggested that I come and give acupuncture a try. I was always curious, but had never quite made the leap of faith for some reasons, probably the needles. However, with my imminent return to China, I decided to give it a try for the sake of a new experience and to perhaps help out with occasional knee pain I had. Before leaving for China, I had three sessions. I’ll talk about the first here; it was the most revealing.

Needles in the back (they’re painless)

The first thing she did was feel my pulses in both wrists for several minutes. I had no idea, but a lot can be determined just by listening to a patient’s pulse. As a result, Tiffany also suggested we treat my digestion, which felt weaker than it should probably due to my experience in Peru eating some bad food, to say it mildly (I ended up in a hospital in Lima for three days).

I then laid supine on the table. Tiffany introduced me to a needle within it’s tracking case. The cases are thin glass tubes used to keep the thin needles straight when they’re inserted. Before I had the chance to say, “Oh, those are the little cases. So how do the needles go in?”, she made a quick tap on the end of the case and the test needle was inserted. OK, painless! It’s true that there were occasional tiny stings, but it’s pretty insignificant. Within a few minutes I had eight or so needles in strategic places – some in my side, feet, and the two most significant ones in the fleshy part of my hand between thumb and index finger. Apparently, the points in the hand are called “Hegu” in Chinese,   “the Great Eliminator”.   As I lay there wondering what to expect, Tiffany told me about the mysterious “Qi” (pronounced “chee” in tone 4, the quick downward tone in Mandarin Chinese), the life energy running through living things.

(This is the character for “Qi” in simplified Chinese)

I won’t go through a description of “Qi” here, that’s beyond my skill, but there are plenty of websites available. The purpose of the needles in specific locations, however, is to influence the movement of Qi, remove “blockage”, and so on. Tiffany asked me to be aware of a strange energetic sensation, that being the movement of Qi. I found myself honestly thinking to myself, “How strange could it be? Could I have felt it before? Maybe I’ll think I felt something and convince myself that’s Qi.” After a few minutes of no sensations, Tiffany tried to induce a movement of Qi using the point in my right hand. I believe this corresponds to the liver, but I don’t recall exactly. She manipulated the needle by one gentle movement.

I then felt a powerful and unmistakable wave of energy starting in my right hand and running through my body! It started in my hand and seemed to move down to my feet in just an instant. It wasn’t a shock; it felt like a wave and it was undeniably energy. It was intense enough that my eyes instantly teared up. Tiffany remarked, “Wow, that was intense. OK, no more of that for you today.” I also had sensations of a sky blue color. This wasn’t a hallucination or anything like that, I just kept imagining that color. Tiffany later wrote me and told me, “The sky blue color often relates to the kidneys which are related to fear, will power, resources. But it could also relate to lungs…inspiration, aspiration, grief and letting go. These are just keys words mind you.. not the whole enchilada.”

As for the results of the acupunture, it’s hard to say but they were subtle. However, the various Qi sensations that I had afterwards (though none were as intense as the first one), basically proved to me that there’s something palpable to this form of medicine that’s been becoming popular in the West. Ever heard of Acupuncture for pets? It’s real.