Maydays.

Even with 2 days to go before May arrives, this fifth month of the year is looking like a pretty exciting one for me.

1 May: Labour Day public holiday, Ed & Fi are coming to Hong Kong

7 May: IS6643 Exam – end of second semester in CityU!

8 May: NUS-HK Alumni Happy Hour – please come if you are interested

12 May: The Buddha’s Birthday public holiday – long weekend!

14 May: NUS-HK Alumni Dinner Gathering

17 May: Flying to Taiwan for the Mayday Concert in Taichung… W00t!

19 May: Returning to Hong Kong

22 May: HKBU Student Societies Exco Day

31 May: Mayday Concert in Hong Kong at AsiaWorld-Arena

Can’t wait for the month to come!

Monday.

Time flies – we’re in the last week of April already.

The past couple of days have been OK – not too eventful, but still enjoyable nonetheless. Had my term test on Thursday and I thought that the test was not completely undoable, but I still think that having a closed-book test is dumb at the postgraduate level.

On Friday I decided that I want to go out of my mind for a while, so I took a walk from office back home – a whole 2 hours’ of walk! The great thing was that the walk wasn’t entirely painful or anything like that, in fact it was quite enjoyable as the weather wasn’t very hot. Though there was a bit of rain (which led me to almost wanting to give up when I reached Kowloon Bay), but the cooling effect that it brought made me continue walking. It was actually quite fun to be walking home, and I think I might do this crazy 2-hour walk every week. When I was walking back, I was having that reminiscence of my year in Shanghai, when I also walked quite a fair bit. And since it took me just one more hour to walk home than to actually take public transport, I thought it was quite worth it!

I went to the Shatin Racecourse with Sis yesterday to watch the races. Well, to be exact, we went there to collect souvenirs as they were giving out this nice little pin for the grand race yesterday. We had a bit of fun betting, and my sister came off with a winning bet that saw her pocket $41! After Racecourse, we went to New Town Plaza and had lunch at Fish and Co. It was heartwarming to see Fish and Co finally opening in Hong Kong, and I really miss the great seafood they serve. The sambal tasted a bit different from what I was used to in Singapore, but it was still nice.

Came back to school in the evening and attended a Christian talk at the AC Hall. I must say that the talk was actually very mind-stimulaing and it prompted me to really think a lot. I guess every once in a while I can do with such mind stimulations.

Feeling quite sleepy, but I still have one afternoon to go.

Life.

After spending the past couple of entries updating my trip to Shanghai, finally I am back updating about my life after returning to Hong Kong.

To be honest, there really wasn’t a great deal of things happening to me for the past 2 weeks or so. The more memorable things would be the following:

– Went Shenzhen on 12 April with a couple of colleagues and was mesmerized by the grandeur of the karaoke we went to, as well as the absurdly low prices we paid for the whole day’s enjoyment

– Went to Joey Yung’s concert on 14 April. The concert was OK, definitely not the best that I’ve ever gone to. The worst thing was that I have to endure some jokers sitting behind me, who apparently have never been to the Hong Kong Coliseum, or watch a concert, or both.

– Fell sick for almost the entire week. Must have been the cold shower I took the day after I returned from Shanghai.

– The typhoon that came and gone over the weekend. I was so hoping for the Typhoon Signal 8 which of course never came.

As far as school work is concerned, this week is the final week of lessons and I’ve got a presentation later, as well as a test tomorrow. Then I’ve got 2 term papers due by 2nd May, and an exam on the 7th – then it’s holidays! (Though it looks quite likely that I have a summer semester to come to terms with.)

Have fun for the remaining days of the week.

Shanghai in Retrospect (Part 4)

8 Apr 2008 (Day 5)

All good things must come to an end, and I’ve finally come to the last day of my stay in Shanghai. The thing was that it was really warm when I was in Hangzhou and Nanjing, but Shanghai was nothing like that. It was raining quite a fair bit when I got out of the Renzhi’s place (thanks RZ for putting me up for the few days) and I definitely didn’t like it to be cold, windy and rainy at the same time.

My flight was scheduled for 4 in the afternoon, but I left Renzhi’s place at about 9.30 because I didn’t want to waste my time hanging around doing nothing. I went to the Hongqiao airport first to leave my luggage there first, before heading back to downtown. As I was saying that every airport and train station has this huge signboard telling the world about the name of the place, Hongqiao airport was no exception:

After leaving my luggage, I took a bus and headed to the Hongqiao area, hoping to meet Gabriel for lunch. Given the busy man that he was, the lunch meeting was cancelled, so there went the change to try to con him into buying me lunch. But I still managed to meet Fionna, so that was still nice. Talking about nice, I finally had a change to be drinking something from Coffee Bean!

Both the 8th and 9th batch of NCSH thought that the Coffee Bean in Shanghai wasn’t good compared to that in Singapore, but I guess for someone like me who’s been deprived of Coffee Bean since returning to Hong Kong, anything from Coffee Bean anywhere would be good!

The weather in Shanghai that day wasn’t very good, as it was rainy, windy and foggy. As I made my way back to the Hongqiao airport, I was quite worried that my flight would be delayed. True enough, it did:

This is the first time in my life that a flight that I’m on is delayed. As I returned to the airport at about 1.30 in the afternoon, I actually had to sit around for almost 6 hours before I could board my plane. And honestly when I saw the message above, my heart skipped a bit. The Chinese words “由於飛機晚到” and “起飛時間待定” are actually quite unnerving. I mean, even the airport had no idea when the plane is going to arrive, let alone when it would depart. But it turned out that my flight is not the only one:

A whole screen full of delayed flights.

Finally I boarded the plane at about 7, but was made to wait until about 8.30 before the flight actually took off. If everything had gone on well, I should have been sitting in my Hong Kong home at 8.30. The 4-hour-plus delay really caused quite a bit of inconvenience. I was suppposed to be having afternoon tea on the plane, but in the end it turned out to be a dinner (which was barely edible):

In the end I reached home at about 12.30, which wasn’t fun considering that I had to go back to work immediately the next day. But then again, it could have been worse – I could have been stuck in Shanghai that night completely!

Shanghai in Retrospect (Part 3).

7 April 2008 (Day 4): Nanjing

Finally I’m going to Nanjing! As I mentioned before, it was quite amazing that I went to Hangzhou 15 times (or 16 if you count the one I went the previous day) but never to Nanjing. So this time round I told myself I’ll make a trip to the former capital city of China no matter what. I took the CRH again from Shanghai and about 2 and a half hours later, I was in Nanjing! The first thing I did was to grab a Nanjing map and off I went onto the Nanjing metro, heading towards… erm… somewhere.

It looks like having a metro that goes past the train station is an in thing. We have that in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and now, Nanjing. It seems that even the Hangzhou metro is set to have a stop at the train station. I think having a metro system in China is increasingly becoming the trend.

And this metro line is kinda long too.

I headed first to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, hoping to get myself an impactful lesson in the history of what truly had to be the worst war crime in the modern world. But when I got there, I realised that the Memorial was closed on Monday. I heard from some locals saying that because entry is free, so they will have a rest day every week. The joke was that if they charge admission fees, it would be opened 365 days a year! Unable to get in, I could only resort to taking pictures on whatever I can see from the outside. That said, the view from outside was quite impactful as well:

300,000 victims (and some of the Japanese are still trying to deny that).

Some sculptures outside the Memorial.

Leaving the Memorial, I headed towards the Yuhuatai Martyrs’ Memorial. The place is quite massive, and it was free admission, so the exhibition hall was closed again. That said, some of the monuments inside the Memorial was quite grand too. The Memorial was built back in the 1980’s – I wonder where they found all the money to do all these at that time.

They even have the Chinese National Anthem engraved on one of the huge pieces of stone. All together now…

There was a small Chairman Mao museum inside the Memorial which, much to my surprise, was opened to public on a Monday! Photography was not allowed in the museum, but nobody stopped me from taking some from the outside.

A mega-size badge of Chairman Mao – according to my mum, who went through the Cultural Revolution, this badge was one of the must-haves during that period, and even though everyone was madly in love with Chairman Mao, not everyone had the right to wear the badge. It seemed like you could wear this badge only if you are “revolutionary”.

Portrait of Chairman Mao, similar to the one at Tiananmen Square, only smaller.

After the Martyrs’ Memorial, I headed towards the Confucius Temple. I initially wanted to go in there and offer a josstick or two to the Great Teacher, but the admission ticket of RMB 25 put me off. So I decided that I would sneak a picture from the outside inside. I’m sure the teacher won’t blame me and make me fail my two modules at my Masters course this semester.

As I was walking towards the bus stop, I saw this:

Now if I were to visit Nanjing again I know where I can put myself up for a night or two.

My next stop was the Presidential Palace – of course it has been turned into a museum now – and they were charging RMB 40 for the entry. Being a great fan of history of Modern China, I was more than happy to be paying for this entry.

Imagine the Communists did not come into power and the Kuomintang/DPP still ruled China. Chen Shuibian could have been working here instead of his Presidential Office in Taipei.

The whole Presidential Palace had this very strong sense of the Kuomintang, which was quite interesting. I’m sure because the relationship between the Communists and the Kuomintang has been getting better these couple of years, the tone in the whole museum had been changed. I would think that 20 or even 30 years ago they would have called the KMT a bunch of bandits under all circumstances, just like what KMT called the Communists. Oh well, maybe there’s really no eternal enemies in this world.

The people who created the Republic of China. Respect.

忠孝仁愛信義和平 – not just the names of the roads in Taipei, but also the advisory motto of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

My whole day in Nanjing concluded with the trip to the Presidential Palace, and unlike the previous day in Hangzhou, I had ample time to take a bus from the Presidential Palace back to the Nanjing train station. One thing I noticed about Nanjing was that it wasn’t really a very modern city like Shanghai or even Hangzhou. The whole place seemed to appear quite old and under-developed. Perhaps I wasn’t in the place long enough, but it looked like Nanjing is still carrying some kind of historial burden on itself, and I thought it was a bit odd. that said, I’m sure they are going to develop this place somehow – perhaps the “historical burden” was meant to be the characteristic of Nanjing?

Sidenote 1: I spotted this when I was boarding the train to Nanjing at the Shanghai Railway Station and I simply couldn’t understand what it was trying to say:

What does it mean by “Moves the Vehicle Crew”? You mean there is actually a crew of people who would manually move the train? I suspected something fishy here, so I went to check what they did, and bingo!

It’s about time they hire someone who could do better translation than to depend on Babelfish. “Moves the vehicle crew”? You’re having a laugh.

Sidenote 2: Poor translation doesn’t stop at just English – even Japanese translations are quite amusing too:

I really didn’t know that “male” is translated to be “マレ” in Japanese. I did a search on “マレ” on Google, and the first result I got was Malé, the capital of Republic of Maldives. I didn’t know by entering a washroom I could transport myself all the way to the Maldives. Fascinating!

Shanghai in Retrospect (Part 2).

6 April 2008 (Day 3): Hangzhou

The last 15 times that I went to Hangzhou were all in 2005. I’ve visited Hangzhou in winter, summer and autumn, but never in spring. So I decided that I could do with a short getaway there. After all, the scenery in Hangzhou is so beautiful that you probably would never feel bored by it. Did I ever mention that if I have the money, I’ll buy a house right next to the West Lake?

I took a train from the Shanghai South train station – the station opened in 2006 and it was actually quite a beautiful station. I think it was designed like those European train stations, and apparently it’s the biggest train station in Asia right now. What impressed me wasn’t really the size or the cleaniness (well that actually took me by a bit of surprise – it’s one of the cleanest train stations in China that I’ve ever been to), but this:

The roof of the train station actually looks quite impressive if you ask me. Anyway, the train I took was the new high speed rail (CRH) and it was really comfortably. It kind of resembled the High Speed Rail in Taiwan, but because of the fact that it was quite new so it did not hit the maximum speed that it boasted of. But I guess to get to Hangzhou from Shanghai in 70 minutes is actually quite cool!

When I got to Hangzhou, the first thing I did was to buy the return ticket back to Shanghai – and I managed to get the last ticket for the high speed train that was scheduled to leave at 6.30pm. Lucky! Because of that, I had only about 5 hours to really walk around Hangzhou, which was fine since I pretty much knew the way and did not have to rely on a map. After all, it was the West Lake that I really want to visit, so that was alright for me.

And as always, the West Lake is ever so beaufitul.

The last couple of times that I visited the West Lake I was always walking inside the lake itself (as in the pavements built across the lake) but this time round I decided that I want to walk round the lake instead. I started at the Yue Fei Temple, and did a reverse route heading towards 斷橋殘雪. The walk took me about 2 hours, but it was highly enjoyable because of the scenery. The weather was a bit warm, which was a slight turnoff, but all in all it was still wonderful.

Then I thought that I had more time, so I continued walking around after buying the gifts for everyone back in office in downtown Hangzhou, and managed to catch this picture, which I thought was the nicest one out of the 100+ pictures I took around West Lake:

But as the setting sun suggested, I was getting a bit late and had to rush back to the train station. But neither a bus nor a cab was to be seen, and as I was panciking and contemplating about going back to Shanghai late, a disabled man who was riding a special scooter came to my rescue! He offered to ride me to the train station for RMB30, which was a bit expensive because I know even if I were to take a cab it would only cost me between RMB15 to RMB20. But seeing that I had to rush to the station, I took up the offer and boy, what a ride it was! It was actually very fun to be sitting inside that scooter and watching all the cars and bicycles next to me. And 10 minutes later I was already at the train station, with half an hour to spare before the train departs back to Shanghai.

Dinner was at some seemingly posh restaurant with a service attitude that did not warrant a mention. I slagged them off big time in dianping.com after that.

Shanghai in Retrospect.

4 & 5 April 2008 (Day 1 & 2): Shanghai

I went to Shenzhen pretty early in the day and took the bus from the Kowloon MTR station that go directly to the Shenzhen airport. The bus went from the Shenzhen Bay checkpoint, and on the way there I saw these fishing farms that reminded me of the kelongs back in Singapore.

When I reach the Shenzhen airport, I was about 2 and a half hours early and I’ve already checked in while I was still in Hong Kong. So I decided to take a walk around the airport when I saw this:

The thing about China is that every airport or train station must have this huge board that tells the whole world that where this place is, and in this case, I guess the only people who wouldn’t know that this is the Shenzhen airport would probably be the blind. And with the two words of Shenzhen being so big, I think even the blind can see it.

Apart from the fact that the flight took off on time, there really wasn’t too many things to be pleased about the flight actually. Well I had a meal to go with as the flight was around lunchtime, but I thought I would not post the picture of the lunch up because it really wasn’t anything spectacular. I know meals on flights are normally not great, but the one by China Southern Airlines definitely take some beating!

When I finally reached Shanghai, some 8 hours after I left my Hong Kong house, I went to lunch with Renzhi, Gary and Geraldine. The dinner was at some Cantonese restaurant on Yan’an Road West and let’s just say that it was a great meal – me coming from Hong Kong and having Cantonese cuisine again! But of course, there is always a difference between good and bad Cantonese cuisine, and that was a great one that would probably put some Hong Kong chefs to shame. And the washing basin in the washroom was quite special too!

And then after the dinner it was off to a karaoke session, which Renzhi managed to call two of his other friends to join us, and the result is this group photo on Nanjing Road:

The great thing about Nanjing Road is that it just doesn’t seem to change – the neon lights are still as bright as ever, and it’s as if electricity is free:

I spent the second day in Shanghai and kicked off the day with a great breakfast:

The weather wasn’t actually very good as it was actually pretty foggy. I went to the Bund to try to see the scenery across Huangpu River, and the Pudong I saw was quite disappointing.

I was jokingly telling Renzhi that 2 of the balls of the Oriental Pearl Tower were missing and I was left with just one to see. I continued my walkabout around the area, and I somehow spotted the 四不像 that I frequently come across at the Tat Chee Avenue entrance of City University outside one of the shops on the street:

What are you doing here?

And I saw this on Nanjing Road (yes I was there again – well to see the Bund you probably have to walk through Nanjing Road anyway!) and I thought this ad was actually quite interesting. I mean, China is a place for advertisements and product placements, but this was a nice refreshing change from those really hard-sell ads.

Of course it has to be Yao Ming – I’m in China after all, and Shanghai is Yao’s hometown in case you didn’t realise.

I ended the day at Qipu Road, with the old tentage-style market being removed and made way for buildings.

The one thing that didn’t change was that Qipu Road is still full of shops selling clothing and textiles. Ever since the closure of Xiangyang Market, it seemed like quite a number of those stalls have moved over here. Judging from the number of shops that were selling fake shoes, clothing and accessories, I think that’s about right.

Shanghai.

Because of the great firewall in China, I couldn’t update my little journal as much as I’d love to do it. So for the couple of days that’s missing, I’d probably would be retrospectively entering them later.

So five days of holidays have come and gone. I went to Shanghai, coupled with day trips to Nanjing (for the first time ever) and Hangzhou (for the 16th time!). The trip was actually pretty good as I got to see for myself how Shanghai has changed for the past two years. Well there aren’t exactly big changes such that you’ll go in and think “wow this place look completely different”, I still very much can get my way around without any problem, just that they’ve got 8 metro lines compared to just 5 two years ago. They’ve also changed some names to the metro stations, so those things needed a bit getting used to.

Most importantly, the trip to Shanghai was for me to see people like Renzhi, Gary and Damon, and I think I enjoyed seeing them very much. Though sometimes it can get a bit demoralizing to be introduced as a “3rd batch NCSH senior” because it makes me feel old, but I guess I could take comfort in that the NOC program in Shanghai is still going so strong after all these while.

Will be updating more about the trip probably later, if I could find the time – I probably want to go sleep earlier today because I reached home at 12.30 midnight instead of 8.30 in the evening because of the terrible flight delay in Shanghai. My flight got delayed for 4 hours!

Work.

Thank God I did not tell myself that life after the speech contest would be easy, because it certainly wasn’t! There were a few reports to write, a few proposals to draft, a few phone calls to make, a lot of people to talk to – basically it was about the same level of work, just that I didn’t feel as uptight as I did for the past couple of weeks.

Would finally be able to have my extended break tomorrow – I’ll be flying over to Shanghai via Shenzhen around noon, and I should be in Shanghai by about 3.30 in the afternoon. I’m certainly looking very much forward to the trip, as it would be the first time in close to 2 years that I’ll be there. Hope that the trip is going to be fun for me!

Before that happens though, I still have about half a day plus an evening class to deal with. I shall endure.