In Chinese, the word Fu2 means “Fortune”. That’s pronounced “Foo” with an ascending tone (tone 2). When you say Fu2 dao4 le, you’re saying that “fortune has arrived”. All around China, especially on the doors to peoples home, you can see a Fu character displayed upsided down. Huh? Why upside down? The reason is because the word for “upside down” is dao4, pronounced with a strong downward tone (tone 4). It just so happens that the Chinese word for “upside down” shares the same pronunciation as the Chinese word for “arrived”. So, literally turning the character Fu upside-down is a play on words that implies that fortune has arrived. Neat, eh?

This is Fu rightside up:

福

If you’re on a laptop, please turn it over right now. Maybe comments on my blog will start working. OK, now I feel strangely superstitious. Here’s a photo of my front door (yes, an upside down Fu):

My colleage Daryl arrived in Shenzhen on Wednesday. That same day, I woke up with a Chinese flu! What began about 18 hours before as a scratchy cough, that I attributed to bad air quality, had rapidly transformed into dizziness, a splitting headache (that required me to hold my head tightly together when I coughed), and muscle soreness. There was no way I was coming into work. By Friday, surprisingly, I’d made a quick recovery. It wasn’t complete; I only worked a short day due to fatigue, but at least it was fast. On Saturday I felt good enough to brave Shenzhen, so we headed out around town together for food, talk, exploration, mobile phone purchases, and massages. At the Mao Jia restaurant, we mistook shreds of bull stomach for calamari. Trying to be noble, I did pick a few small bites, but the chewiness just wasn’t enjoyable enough.

Later in Hua Qiang Bei, I helped Daryl buy a mobile phone. Despite colleagues suggesting we go there, others raised an eyebrow when I mentioned where we got it. “Yeah, but it’s new. See the box and instructions that it came with?”, I said, naively defending the purchase. Sure enough, the charger didn’t work when Daryl got back to the hotel. The following day, he went back solo for the exchange. I have to admire Daryl for his ability to get things done in China knowing only the words for “hello” and “thank you”. He was successful in getting his money back, but got the shopkeeper mad at him, a funny story itself. Anyway, since he’ll be coming back to China every couple of months for a cupla weeks, we just picked out an el cheapo – $32. After that, we went in search of a convenience store or a newspaper stand to supply the SIM card which bestows the number and minutes (you pay extra for lucky numbers). There are no idiotic two-year plans here. It’s a great system.

(above) We didn’t purchase one of the phones that these bored-looking girls and Chinese rabbits were peddling. After getting his money back from the original salesman the next day, Daryl went to a different counter and bought a more slightly pricier one. Still working, Daryl?

By the way, it’s been freezing in Shenzhen for five or six days now. Around Thursday, a drizzle moved in and added to the discomfort. Most people here don’t have heat. And that goes for a lot of China, even places quite far north which are certainly colder than here. When I realized that was indeed the truth (after asking several folks), I stopped complaining so much about my lack of heat and just put on some more layers.

Back to the main story, the weekend before was absolutely stunning, but this one was just the opposite. We both wanted to buy a little more insulation (I was already wearing my cold weather climbing liners) so we headed over to Dong Men for clothing and exploration. Daryl couldn’t find a fleece, but I found a handmade knitted cap that was perfect. We also discovered a small area that brought some of the Da Fen Cun artwork to Shenzhen proper to sell. I was a little disappointed in the variety though, but the prices were great. Down in the basement was an awesome furniture featuring beautiful and expensive handmade furniture.

After a lot of wandering, we decided to try our hand at a bike ride over to Di Wang. This wasn’t us renting bikes, but rather hitching a ride with some of the folks for hire who’ve installed small seats on the backs of their bikes. Before we could start any serious negotiations, all of them (about 5-7) suddenly sprung away into the traffic like scared rabbits. Daryl and I turned around to see a group of policemen moving on to the scene. Oh right…the whole “You don’t have a license” thing. Reminded me of the times I’ve seen the street food salesmen have their portable charcoal grills kicked over by the cops, only to quietly recover their strewn-about equipment and rebuild the mini restaurant after The Man had left. Well, there will be no bike ride this time.

After that excitement, we headed over to Xiang Mi Hu for a great foot massage place and some food. After the great foot massage, the girls asked if we’d like a regular massage. We declined because we were pretty hungry at this point. I was surprised when one of them suggested that we just order out some spicy noodles and eat here. “OK, great idea!”

(l-r) Peace through massage (actually, she means “Victory!”), “Gimme two niu rou la mian!” (beef spicy noodle!)

Our noodles ended up coming very late so we decided to start the massage. My massage girl said that she had a technique that could help my flu recovery. It was these heated cups that are placed on your back… I’d tried these before with Tiffany before accupuncture to help with some tightness in my shoulderblade after a climb. She’d only used three which were localized along the base of my left shoulderblade. Tiffany’s weren’t the heated glass cups either, but small glass suction cups. These were bonafide heated glass cups. She used a small torch (really – a stick with some sort of cotton fiber material to fuel the flame) placed inside the cup to burn off the air and create suction and then slapped them on my back. Daryl was thinking of having them too. But, when the first one went on and he exclaimed something like, “Oh my GOD, no, I don’t want that! No!”   I thought he was just teasing – trying to make me nervous. He then whipped out his camera and started taking pictures from his nearby massage table. When he said, “Oh man, you should see how your skin is bubbling up!”, I started to get worried too. It was indeed uncomfortable, I can’t say it was legitimately painful, and when I protested a bit like a little sissy, the massage girl just replied, “Oh it’s not!” (in Chinese). Basically, she wouldnt’ take them off no matter how much I protested. Eighteen cups and a few minutes later, they finally came off. I now have eighteen purple circles on my back that should last a week or so. My flu is way better, but is this just a case of this rock also “keeping away tigers”? I don’t know. It also wasn’t painful at all when she rubbed down the welts, so no big deal…but those pictures are a little creepy. Have a look:

(above) Freak! Bubbles!

As always, the massage ended too soon. But, the hot noodles then came and we were content to slurp away. They were awesome; the perfect food for a cold and dank day.

There was one DVD that I’d been looking forward to: Dragon Wars, one of the funniest bad movies of the year. Indeed, it was a classic awful movie, definitely worth a watch. But what’s arguable more entertaining is the packaging work on the back of the DVD here in China. Now, keep in mind that when you create packaging for anything, you create it so that the item will be appealing to consumers, right? Am I missing anything here? Check it out:

Hilarious! Did you notice that Ian McKellan’s quote about the movie wasn’t even about Dragon Wars at all? Now, how did this text actually arrive on the back of the DVD artwork? The best guess I’ve heard is that the underground packaging supplier just pulled a review off of an English movie review site somewhere and stuck it on the back of the DVD packaging without bothering to see if it’s even correct. At least it’s intelligible English. Some of them have obviously been run through Chinese to English translation software a la Prison Break.

“Dragon Wars” makes a great gift for family and friends!

My new apartment is so-so. The good is: it’s not badly priced, it’s got a great view, and the landlords are great. I guess these are pretty important, especially the last one. Having lousy landlords could make it miserable.   Mine are indeed very nice and responsive and like to drink tea with me. I guess I’ve just had a lot of maintenance issues with it.

When I first moved in, I plugged in my desktop computer. About an hour later, there was a loud POP and the power went dead in the bedroom soon followed by the smell of smoke behind the walls. Uh, was that my computer’s fault? Thinking that it was, I set out more than once to look for transformers. I wasn’t well educated on electrical systems before, but having dealt with this, I at least have better working knowledge. I eventually was told by my neighbor Peter that it wasn’t my computer’s fault and that I didn’t need to buy a special power supply for my computer. OK, that’s good news.

A few days later, not one, not two, but three leaks suddenly sprung.   One of the toilets leaked.   The shower had quite a big leak, but at least it drained.   And there was a mystery leak inside the walls.   I discovered that by the pools of water in the hallway.   I followed the wetness to the walls and could see the waterstain seeping through the walls along a pipe.

Fixin’ the leak.

The landlord was great though and fixed those problems right away.   Other difficulties include silly stuff like not having sheet rock, which makes hanging up pictures hard.   Hmmm…now I have to go back and figure out the right tools for hanging up pictures on these mortar (I guess) walls.   There are numerous annoyances like this.   For example, the washer/dryer is totally mysterious.   Sometimes it takes forever, sometimes it’s really fast.   At least I’m now starting to figure out it’s peculiar personality traits.   Hanging up clothes can be tricky.   If the pollution moves in, you better pull them down fast or they’ll stink.   Gosh, so many other wierd little things like that that I know I’m forgetting to mention (seems like every day I have an “oh I have to write about that in the blog!” thought).

Oh yeah, then there’s the sink with a fetid odor emerging from it. Half the time I go into the bathroom it stinks and I need to turn on the fan and open the windows.   Sometimes it’s fine.   But, I found the culprit:   a simple lack of a large curve in the drainage from the sink.   The large curve (I at least knew this) “traps” water inside which prevents the stink from seeping out of the sink.   How hard would it have been to install this to begin with?   Anyway, they’re coming to fix that, thankfully.   Now, I just have to figure out why the rent didn’t hit my landlord’s account.   Time to bring along a colleague to the bank for translation, call up the Xiao Liu for the car, wait in line, figure out what’s up, etc. etc.   Time, time, time…

Aside from the maintenance, I like the location of my old place better. I miss being able to leave the building and have restaurants right there. I’m at least closer to work here.   Also, here, in Hua Qiao Cheng (or “Overseas Chinese Town”, the location where I’m currently living), I need to walk about 10 minutes to decent restaurants. And while they are still cheap by US standards, they’re still pushing twice the price of Futian.   And the quality isn’t as nearly as good…especially for the Hunan food!

Check out this cool car. You see this sort of extravagant display of wealth frequently in Shenzhen. Xiao Liu and I took the time to pose next to it for pics. Maybe we should petition the company to buy one of these for motoring around in.   Whaddya think?   A special Olympics license plate too:

Oh, I guess I didn’t get a pic of the emblem.   It’s a Ferrari.

I finally went on a “real” hike this weekend, taking the number 65 bus to the end of the line at “Xian Hu”, or “Fairy Lake”, a small resort much like Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia. It features a large lake with paddle boats, a small beach, lots of trails through gardens, a Buddhist monestary, and a cupla cool little pagodas. It’s also surrounded by some decent hiking opportunities…the best I’ve done yet. Our group ended up hiking along the ridge to Xiao Wu Tong Shan, or the smaller version of Wu Tong Mountain (I don’t know what “Wu Tong” means or which tones each word is). There’s a large TV tower or something on the very top which makes it a prominent landmark in Shenzhen on clear days. The hike was actually quite long with some decent elevation. With the various false summits, it was probably 2000 feet of elevation at least. It felt more like 3000, but I’m out of shape. As usual, the trail was a sidewalk and all of the uphill, save the very end, was stairs. Many of the steep sections were demanding and some of my fellow hikers set a nice “stairmaster set on…OK, moderate psycho” pace, more than I could comfortably keep up with.

(l-r) The top of Xiao Wu Tong Shan, The Endless Stairway…slow down!, Great view of Fairy Lake from high up (See the cool pagoda? Of course you do!)

The higher we went, the more people we passed because there was an intersection about 400 feet below the summit that led down to the monestary. Some of these poor folks ascended from that steep side, but it would be the perfect way to get back down to the lake for us. Some of the people commented that a “foreigner” was on the way, and when they realized I understood them, they just giggled.

There are water salesmen that haul bottles of water up for poor-planning hikers. They jack up the price five times to about 80 cents a bottle. A peasant who was collecting discarded bottles (in the trash bins for the most part!) for extra money, exclaimed “gui lao!” as I approached some of the water stations announcing that a foreigner was on the way. Apparently, that used to be a derogatory term for foreigner (“old ghost”,basically) and I can’t quite get a straight answer if it’s still considered a little rude. Some say yes, some say no. Maybe he wanted them to jack the price up 10 times.

(l-r) Getting close, Me on da top, The Han Hoarde

We didn’t stay on top that long. It was already in the afternoon and we wanted to visit the monestary, the pagoda, and the lake before dark.

(above) Wu Tong Shan in the distance. See over on the righthand ridge of the large mountain in the distance what looks like a dirt road going straight up the mountain…two tire tracks and all. That’s actually a set of double staircases. One for going up, one for going down. Have a look from space here.

It was the steep descent to the Buddhist monestary that really punished my calves and made them sore for the next few days.

(left) Naw man, China’s not that crowded. (right) Me sitting on a very steep part of the stairs with the monestary in the distance.

The monestary was pretty cool. It was teeming with people. I saw the only other foreigners down at the entrance negotiating for a ride back to the park entrance. The fragrant odor of incense covered up the usual reek of kiddie pee. At the top of the stairs at the entrance was a large cauldron filled with incense sticks standing erect in ash. The monestary is large and features several small shrines where folks were letting their troubles vanish away in incense smoke. I enjoyed a high perch looking down into the courtyards and watching the worshippers.

(above) Just inside the entrance

(l-r) Don’t mess with homes, Looking down into the courtyard

We followed a stone walkway through a smelly creek drainage that led to the lake. Beyond that, we went to the pagoda and climbed the stairs, my legs were starting to ache at this point. The views weren’t that good anyway, but it was nice to at least said you’ve done it. Wheee! Back down, we wandered some, consulting the confusing map and eventually figuring the way back to the bus. Quality day. I want to go back to Wu Tong Shan and hike up that. Gotta stop being so lazy!

The big DVD store in Dong Men is now selling HD and Blue Ray DVDs. There’s a whole row of Blue Ray DVDs. In fact, they’re starting to jam the shelves tighter than ever before. I guess business is good and the periodic crackdowns are just a mere nuisance. The HD and Blue Ray DVDs are the same price as the regular DVDs – 10RMB, about $1.38. Of course, that’s double the street rate because you’re ostensibly paying for better quality and better packaging. However, they’re quality has been pretty bad lately; maybe one in four DVDs end up hanging somewhere in the movie. They’ll at least let you bring them back and pick out a new copy of the same movie. Or, if the current movie isn’t in stock (they move the stock often, especially in music and old movies), you can pick a different movie. But, getting your money back…don’t even try.