Five Years of Wedded (Mostly) Bliss

We celebrated our fifth -- ! -- anniversary last month, and did what all good married couples should do. We went to China.

We initially thought of that Paris of the Pearl River, Shenzhen, renowned for its Wal*Marts and masses of Hong Kong shoppers and factories and, well, little else. So we turned our eyes northward, and headed instead for somewhere that wasn't Shenzhen.

Guangzhou fit the bill, and while its reputation as a prime tourist destination is not exactly sparkling, we found it to be an interesting city to spend the weekend wandering.

We rolled into Guangzhou's eastern train station, where all rail traffic from Hong Kong arrives, late Saturday morning, and, upon seeing an incredibly long queue, immediately abandoned our plans to take a taxi to our hotel and opted instead for the subway, which got us into the city centre, where we then hailed a taxi completely without a queue. The thing about many Chinese cities is that the blocks are incredibly long and the cities incredibly spread out. Factor in that the best hotel deal was not immediately adjacent to a subway line, and we ended up in more than a few taxis. (In retrospect, there's probably a reason our hotel was cheaper than one that was right on the subway line, but I digress.)

We wandered into a Brazilian restaurant for lunch, which, of course, is exactly what you think of when you think of Guangzhou. But this was just the first of many pleasant surprises we found in the city. We spent an interesting hour at the Museum of the Peasant Movement Institute, where I saw what I am quite certain is my lifetime allotment of pictures of Mao. We then visited a museum full of artifacts from the Nanyue King's tomb. If you ever need to see a life-size shroud made out of jade and red thread, this is the place to be. When we rented MP3 players for the guided audio tour, we had to leave a deposit of RMB400 (US$53). The clerk wrote down the serial numbers of each of the four RMB100 notes Shelly left, and we got the same four notes back. It might have been interesting to pay with 20s.

We finally ended up at the Chen Clan's Ancestral Hall, which proved to be quite photogenic both inside ...


...and in the backyard sculpture garden.


Saturday evening, we decided to take a cruise on the Pearl River. While it had the risk of being cheesy and touristy, it also had the benefit of being cheap. We finally found a small "Muslim food" restaurant for dinner, where Shelly had the best (and freshest and longest) noodles I have ever tasted. (Sadly, in my quest for the perfect fried rice, I ordered fried rice. This cook playing with noodles in the front window should have been my first clue to order noodles, not rice. After all, he wasn't making rice.)


Total cost for an anniversary dinner for two: about US$2.50.

Our cruise turned out to be really nice, and very popular. After the traditional Cantonese stampede to get on the ship, we all found out that we had assigned seats. Not that you couldn't change -- the boat was only one-third full, probably because there is so much competition for evening cruises on the Pearl River. There was a continual parade of boats all lit up with neon both in front of us and behind us for the duration of the cruise. I understand why it is such a popular evening activity: Guangzhou was quite fetching from the river, and the water is cleaner than I expected it would be.


On Sunday morning, we headed to the market, which was closed, and then across the river to Shamian Island, which is notable for at least two things. First, Guangzhou seems to have preserved more of its colonial past on Shamian Island than Hong Kong has in all of Hong Kong. This is obviously not really true, but the buildings haven't been torn down to build highways, the old British post boxes are still standing, and the island feels nothing like part of a massive Chinese city.

The other thing Shamian is notable for is for hosting huge numbers of Americans who have come to Guangzhou to adopt a baby. The US consulate is next door to a large hotel, which is apparently where everyone stays while they're in the adoption process. We felt quite out of place when we wandered through the lobby, as we were the only American couple there that wasn't pushing a stroller.


Shamian is also a peaceful place, with few cars and lots of parks to wander through. As we were leaving, a man stopped us.

"Are you here to adopt Chinese baby?" he asked.

"No, we're just looking," I replied, which Shelly pointed out probably wasn't the best choice of words.

I ended up chatting with the guy for a few minutes, and learned that he brings his son to Shamian every Sunday to sit on a park bench and do his homework. "Other parks aren't free like Shamian is," he explained. "And here, I can practice my English."

On our way back to the market, we even found out why the river is so clean. There's a guy who paddles around in his little boat, picking up all the trash floating on the surface.

Mail Call

You know, not really as unobservant as this post makes me out to be. I've commented, at least to Shelly, for several months on the new 90-cent stamp issued by the USPS, the one that features my former home of Guam.


But today, when I opened a letter from Grandma -- and lets face it, in this era of e-mail and next-to-free phone calls across the Pacific, Grandma accounts for the bulk of the mail I get -- I was reminded of this incredibly beautiful stamp yet again. That letter, by the way, took 24 days -- October 5 to October 29 -- to make it from Eastern Iowa to Hong Kong. Is it any wonder nobody sends snail mail anymore?

Back in March, the USPS had this to say about the stamp:

Hagåtña Bay (international price) 90 cents – on sale June 1. The Postal Service will issue this stamp in the Scenic American Landscapes series to honor the Territory of Guam. Located approximately 1,600 miles east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean, Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands. Approximately 212 square miles in size — roughly three times the area of Washington, D.C. — Guam is home to a population of approximately 158,000 people, including native Guamanians, known as Chamorro, as well as others of European and Asian descent. Today the island is a popular destination for tourists, with some 1.5 million people visiting the island annually to enjoy its natural beauty. The stamp features a photograph by Michael S. Yamashita of a sunset of Hagåtña Bay in Hagatna, the capital of Guam.

I lived on Guam for three years in the late 1990s. It was a fantastic three-year period: I had an interesting job that gave me incredible access around the region, I learned how to dive and I went snorkeling practically every day. It also was an incredibly expensive place to live, and I'm sure I lost money on the deal.

So thank you, Grandma, for the great Guam stamps. Keep those letters coming!

The Round Robin Visits

Posted by Shelly

40+ years after graduation, my aunt is still in close touch with her college friends, all teachers or retired teachers. They get together twice a year, usually in southern California. However, twice they have traveled overseas together. A few years ago they met in England, and this September the “Round Robin Gang” came to Hong Kong.


One friend and her husband are now working at the Hong Kong Canadian School and we live on the same street. The group sandwiched a trip to Beijing and Xian, China with two long weekends in Hong Kong. We enjoyed having Karen stay with us, meeting everyone and acting as tour guides.


It was fun to hear everyone’s impressions of Hong Kong. One night we went for Chinese food. In Hong Kong fresh seafood is live seafood (people want to choose their own fish from the restaurant’s tank located in front of the shop). A common dish is steamed fish prepared with spring onions, ginger, a bit of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil. Since the brain, cheeks and eyeballs are considered some of the best parts of the fish, steamed fish is always served whole. This was surprising to the group and Greg further entertained them by eating both eyeballs and the cheeks. [The cheeks were delicious. I ate the eyeballs on a dare. I'd do it again, but probably not without a dare. -- G]

Chickens are also served whole. We ordered a fried chicken. After frying the whole bird, it is cut up into large-bite size pieces in the kitchen and then arranged on the plate to look like a whole bird (head and feet are usually put on the serving plate). Strangely no one wanted to eat the chicken head, but everyone did photograph it.


Hong Kong has very little flat land. There are a lot of hills, stairs and overpasses. Even though the group was in good shape and used to walking, they did find all the stairs a bit tiring. This made me very happy as I am always happy to have an excuse to have a foot massage. Chinese foot massage start with soaking feet in a large wooden bucket filled with hot soapy water or medicinal tea. After about ten minutes of soaking, the massage starts. In addition to treating all the pressure points on the foot, the masseuse usually continues up the leg as far as the knee or mid thigh and sometimes even offers a quick shoulder massage at the end.


Foot massages are painful in the best possible way. Hour long massages cost less than US$10 in China and are US$15-25 here in Hong Kong. Several of the Round Robin had more than one massage and one even branched out to try the “ear candling” service.

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Dogs and their Poop

Posted by Shelly

Many people in Hong Kong have dogs – both large and small. Dog walkers are supposed to clean up after their dogs when walking them. Most walkers are quite good at this. As soon as a dog starts to squat, the walker will quickly slip a piece of newspaper between the dog's legs to catch, well, whatever drops out.


This is then wrapped up and dropped in the nearest dog poop collection box. I'm not sure what this box says about who walks the dogs in Hong Kong, but it must say something. There is no Chinese on this box, only English and Tagalog, the language spoken by most of the Filipina housekeepers in Hong Kong. Does this mean that the authorities believe that only English-speaking foreigners and Filipinas pick up after their dogs? Or that Chinese never take their dogs for walks? Or, maybe, that dogs owned by Chinese don't poop?


Extra polite dog walkers even carry a squeeze bottle filled with water to dilute any spot where the dog pees. As Hong Kong is mostly cement, this is a nice touch and helps the streets not smell completely like dog urine. Apparently, though, a dog walker recently did not clean up after their dog in front of our building as the following sign was posted last week. You can click on the picture below if you want to read it more easily.

Kill the Germs

Posted by Shelly


Ever since SARS, the Hong Kong population has been extra-cautious regarding personal health issues. The buttons in elevators are often covered with a sheet of plastic with a sign posted indicating that the area is sanitized every 30 minutes. Alcohol or alcohol gel dispensers are regularly located in office building lobbies and restaurants.

And Pizza Express, a local Italian restaurant, reminds you to keep, well, one hand clean:

October Catch-up

Gosh, what a surprise. Six weeks have sped by without a single blog post. Shelly has been doing her part and has written three posts, and I haven't even gotten them posted. I'm going to post a bunch of stuff today without backdating it, but most likely, the last thing you read was September 9.

And just to follow up, the new iPods did finally make it to Hong Kong, and my old iPod held out just long enough to keep me entertained on my daily commute to work and walk home. Thanks to Uncle Larry for sending me a story about iPod costs around the world. Hong Kong is the cheapest place in the world to buy one, so I upgraded at the right time!

Work has been crazy. Somehow, I've taken on way more than I should have. We're in the process of doing some reorganization at the office, and I'm not exactly sure of what my role will be next week, much less next month. In the process of the reorganization (brought about my editor's resignation), my boss's boss's boss came over from London to see what we've been up to (part of the reorganization has changed my boss's boss's boss from someone in Hong Kong to someone in London), and he seemed shocked by how much I've been doing, which gives me hope that I may be able to do less in the future, as he asked me how I could possibly think about the big picture and what's best for the magazine with all the copy I'm churning out. He also called me "the most prolific legal journalist in Asia." I got the feeling that this was a role he did not think I should have to have, which gives me hope for the future.

I also got a nice raise when our new financial year started in October. I will never again get a 17% raise. Hopefully, I will never again be as underpaid as I was prior to the raise.

The reorganization has given me some opportunity to redefine my role at the company. I hope to move a step higher on the organizational chart and become responsible for the magazine I've been writing for. My boss was responsible for much more, and I didn't want to take on her role, which was more of a manager role. I am enjoying my writing assignments way too much right now to give them up completely.

What else is new in Hong Kong? We had company in late September and early October when Shelly's aunt came to visit. She was actually here as part of a group of college friends that still get together periodically. One of the members lives in Hong Kong, and everyone packed up and flew halfway around the world. (Karen's friend introduced us to Happy Valley a year ago, which is how we came to live here. When we recently met friends of Shelly's cousin who were moving here, we invited them to Happy Valley for dinner. They live here now, too, so the circle goes on!) I believe Shelly has a post on Karen's visit that I'll post shortly.

Somehow, I managed to get enough work done that Shelly and I took a week's holiday in Indonesia in mid-October. It was an incredibly relaxing trip. I can only remember one other time when I needed a holiday as badly as I needed this one. I have some photos that I'll post.

So, with turmoil at work and my parents arriving for a week's visit on Friday, my life doesn't appear to be slowing down much. Time is really flying by. I also need to buy a new computer, as the one I'm using has been beset with problems since the beginning. I had a bad memory chip almost immediately, then I broke the screen in Manila, my hard drive died a year ago, and my CD/DVD drive died in April. I've fixed everything except the CD/DVD drive. It's now having trouble turning back on after being shut off, which means I'm leaving it on all the time. I've reached the point that it is more cost-effective to just buy a new machine, and now that the latest update to Apple's operating system is on the shelves, I'll be buying soon.

I'll be buying the extended warranty this time, too. (Though in fairness, at least part of the problems would not have been covered. Shelly and I have each dropped it, so I'm frankly surprised it works at all.) (Shelly would point out that she didn't actually drop it. In truth, Shelly placed it on my desk incautiously and Fat Choy did the actual dropping. Shelly would also probably point out that my desk was too cluttered for her to find a good place to put it, but that's another story.)