This was the first year that I didn’t go somewhere outside of Shenzhen.  This was a nice break, actually.  So many folks leave Shenzhen and go traveling.  The train stations are clogged, the airport tickets are expensive, and it’s pretty much cold everywhere in China.  So, Shenzhen, being an immigrant city, empties quite a bit for Chinese New Year.  This was very noticeable; everything was much quieter, the busses were never full, and the restaurants and shops were easy to manage.

(above) Hiking shots from Nanshan

During the New Year, we were also blessed with spendid weather – sunny and in the 60′s and 70′s.  Various folks and I took advantage of the nice weather and made some hiking trips.  I hiked Nanshan twice, which is no big deal since it can be traversed in about an hour, but it’s still a pleasant hike.  I also hiked WuTong Shan once, which is a much bigger mountain on the outskirts of Shenzhen.  I went with my Buddhist class (those who remained in Shenzhen) and we made the round trip from the low parking lot in about six hours, I think.

(above) Shots from WuTong Shan

Even though Nanshan is much closer and more convenient to the city center, it was uncrowded.  WuTong Shan, on the other hand, was overrun with thousands of people.  The lower part of the trail followed a steep gully through a fairly dark temperate forest.  It was impossible not to see at least 20-50 people no matter where you were along the trail.  Our group started thinning out pretty quickly as the slower hikers lagged behind.  A couple of hours later we emerged at the upper parking lot.  I thought you could drive here, but there were few cars parked here.  It was loaded with people.  The last time I was here, we hiked along the leftside of the mountain.  This time, we took the prominent double staircase leading up the righthand ridge.  A slow and steady pace is all that’s needed.  The crowds didn’t let up.  A few folks topped out on different sections of the staircase along the way having taken more obscure trails on different sides of the mountain.  The summit was loaded with hundreds of people.

We took a direct route back down to the lower parking lot.  It pretty much followed a straight ridge all the way back down to the base of the mountain.  The dirt was fairly loose and required care to not slip.  This was quite a thigh workout.

I was sore the next day; it was a good sore.

Many bus and taxi drivers have little Mao memorabilia whose purpose is to protect the vehicle, bring good luck, or something like that.  This is the sort of post I would have created long ago, but I guess I finally got a decent shot of the front of the bus with Mao’s likeness dangling from the rearview mirror.

Over Christmas, I was asked an interesting question:  What’s the single biggest change that you’ve seen in China since you’ve been there? I like these sorts of questions because they ask for a pithy response outright.  My answer:  “It’s more civilized.”  I reckon I have to stick to that answer.  Shenzhen has changed a ton since I’ve been here.  It’s certainly more civilized:  The middle class is rising and they’re behaving more and more like typical middle class citizens in other countries:  from dress to activities to manners.  Even the wild shopping places have been tamed a bit:  there are barriers along crowded hallways to direct traffic and policemen now patrol around.  It’s still wild, but it doesn’t seem to be as much of a madhouse as it was two years ago.  Now, don’t be misled; China is still the craziest, most nutty place that I’ve been to in Asia, and for that matter, the rest of the world.  So, you can still come here and enjoy some wild adventure.

I reckon this increase in civilized behavior is a good thing overall.  However, with it comes things like inflation and big new fancy shopping malls.  There are so many shopping malls here now – high end ones at that.  There’s a new one underneath a brand new tower in Luohu, the heart of Shenzhen.  This tower appears to be taller than the Di Wang building, formerly the 8th tallest building in the world.  It’s known as “KK100″.  No idea what the KK stands for.  Underneath and beside it is another of these five-storied luxurious malls.  On top of that, around a huge glass dome are situated several new apartment towers, all part of the KK complex.  I wonder how much a studio runs in that place.  For sure, a foolish price.  I keep wondering, “Who is buying all this stuff at these malls?”  I guess it’s those who are living in the apartment buildings.

This is the biggest snow that I think I’ve ever seen in Georgia.  The storm was due to hit Sunday evening and it seemed that it was all anyone could do was to talk about the coming storm.  I even started to think that this was just the weathermen talking up the storm.  After all, how many times had they done this sort of thing before only to be wrong.  Well, Pat and I returned fairly late in the evening from a really fun basketball game.  A mere thirty minutes later, the snow started coming down hard and fast.  Big wet flakes piled up a couple of inches high in under an hour, and it just kept coming down.  By the following morning, I estimated the damage to be around five inches.  And it wasn’t going anywhere; nothing but freezing weather was forecasted through the week.  Being work days, I’d originally planned to crank through some work during my last two days in Marietta.  But, even I was happy to see that the snow had slammed the door on that idea.  We were all stuck at home and had nothing to do but go for walks, make scary looking snowmen, try our hand and sledding with makeshift sleds on the icy roads, staying warm with chai tea and hot chocolate, cooking and eating, watching the BCS championship game, playing guitar and singing the “Happy Song”, having tea parties, and on and on.  All in all, it was one of those great storms and experiences that one remembers for a long time.

Finally got a chance to join my dad and his friend on an outing of their interesting hobby of huntin’ down graves.  See, there’s this site called findagrave.com which brings together parties who need to hunt down a long lost ancestor’s grave and those who are willing to do the hunting.  It’s 100% a volunteer effort.  As a grave hunter, you basically sign up for the site, register for a particular region, then “claim” requests to hunt down graves whenever one comes in.  You then have two weeks to find the grave, photograph it, and provide the uncovered information to the interested party.

To me, this sounds like a really fun excuse to get out, do some amateur exploring, enlist the help of locals, help folks hunt down their relatives, and so on.  When I heard the story of hunting for an old graveyard and finally discovering by stumbling across a tombstone long-covered by brush and leaves, I was hooked.  And, on top of that, one of the tombstones uncovered and cleaned off had but a single word carved on it:  “Indian”.  Awesome.  Many of the graves go back into the 1800′s.  Real Indiana Jones material, right?

Well, I joined for an outing that promised to be simple – and was.  But, the day’s setting was perfect – a bit misty and foggy with a light rain falling.  We were hunting for the Bethel Methodist Church, somewhere out near Buena Vista, Georgia (pronounced by the locals as “Byoona Vista”). Finding it wasn’t anything special, we had to ask around a bit, but I didn’t realize how many dirt roads that Georgia still had.  We finally found the church, a classic small white church, far down a sandy dirt road, basically out in the middle of nowhere.  The only recent evidence of anyone passing by in the neighborhood were prominent deer tracks crossing across the small and sandy parking area of the church.  The graveyard in the back was sparsely populated and hunting down the graves was a piece of cake.  We got our pictures and called it a day and headed for the reward for the morning’s work: lunch at Aunt Mary’s Country Kitchen in downtown Buena Vista, Georgia.

Satellite view of Bethel Methodist Church:

Saw more than my fair share of movies over the holiday.  Might be the last time I can see movies for free.  Dang!  Anyway, here they are, ranked from FIRST to WORST:

Black Swan (2010)

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Genre: thriller, mystery, drama

Trailer Black Swan

by CinemaRx

1) Black Swan – I give this one top honors because it kept me on my toes all throughout the movie.  If you’re thinking this is just a delightful little movie about ballet, you’re way off.  I think I was most shocked by the various horror-inspired thrills placed throughout the movie.  Natalie Portman obviously prepared well for the role.

True Grit (2010)

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Genre: western, drama, adventure

Trailer True Grit

by CinemaRx

2) True Grit – I’m not a fan of westerns, but this was a really well done movie, and I suppose it’s now my favorite western.  I liked the smallness of the story; it wasn’t a grand adventure where our heroes set out to save the world.  Plus, the cast was nice and small which lent itself to good character development.  My favorite scene was the long night scene at the cabin.

The Tourist (2010)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Genre: thriller, romance, mystery

Trailer The Tourist

by CinemaRx

3) The Tourist – I don’t know why this movie got so hammered by the critics.  Maybe because it wasn’t edgy or didn’t challenge anything.  It was just a basic, light intrigue, movie with big stars set in Venice.  The setting certainly gave it a bonus.  This one’s good if you’re in the mood for a low intensity and enjoyable movie.

The Fighter (2010)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams

Director: David O. Russell

Genre: drama, biography, sport

Trailer The Fighter

by CinemaRx

4) The Fighter – Big drop-off in quality now.  Sorry to all of you who enjoyed “The Fighter”.  I thought it was pretty lousy.  It just felt like a two-hour Jerry Springer show.  Even the heroes and heroines (save maybe Mark Walburg’s character) couldn’t help lowering themselves to idiotic bickering and trash-talking.  The fight scenes were surprisingly sparse and goofy – the guy gets beat up for a few rounds then happens to suddenly throw a couple of choice punches (that his crackhead brother told him about) which ended up winning him the fight by KO.  Uh huh.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

Cast: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Ben Barnes

Director: Michael Apted

Genre: fantasy, family, adventure

Trailer The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

by CinemaRx

5) Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader – Now we’re in to the real dregs.  I enjoyed the last Narnia movie, but i just couldn’t wait for this one to end.  The new cousin character was beyond obnoxious (big relief when he was turned into a dragon).  I found myself not caring one bit about the various emotional scenes.  Especially the awful teary-eyed goodbye.  I didn’t even think the effects were anything special.

Unstoppable (2010)

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson

Director: Tony Scott

Genre: thriller, drama, action

Trailer Unstoppable

by CinemaRx

6) Unstoppable – Not much to say here other than ‘awful’.  There were lots and lots and lots of shots from the perspective of the tracks.  Next in frequency of appearance were the zoomed shots showing the train approaching.  That’s about it.  Both characters had personal life issues that had no bearing on the story. I fell asleep a few times.

We’ve finally put together the video for our performance at barZ!ing.  The show was a lot of fun, especially Saturday night, when we ended with the new song that just rocked the house.  Most all of the footage is from Saturday too because the camera battery died almost immediately after first use on Friday.  That’s the second time I thought I charged the camera but I hadn’t (or the adapter came loose or something).  Not matter; as with “Outside My Window”, the second performance was much better than the first.  Enjoy!