So I went to this place up north called Harbin recently with some classmates. We were only there for 2 days but unless you want to go skiing that is about enough. The main reason for going is the snow&ice festival which they hold once a year, check it…
Inside the festival, where the pics above where taken, it was -30 deg.C, I guess it has to be to hold a snow and ice festival right? Anyway it was interesting but it was the first day so of course there were people-a-plenty. Oh, but the fireworks were great, not just the usual expanding dotted style that I’ve mostly seen on new years eve in aus. They had all sorts of different kinds, ones that looked liked dragons flying through the air (well, more like snakes), and other ones which amazed me at the time, but which elude my memory right now.
And here is me in the barren wastelands of the artic(actually its me standing on a frozen river which goes all the way to Mother Russia.
Because Harbin is close to Russia, there are lots of Russian tourists and thus I was constantly mistaken for a Russian. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but it I got the feeling the locals didn’t like me too much. There was the sniggering, “argh, ä¿„ç½—æ–¯”. Something like, “argh russia/n” which isn’t too bad but the guy who muttered it didn’t look to thrilled. Oh and then there was the horse and carriage guy who said that my three friends could ride in hist carriage but not me (he later changed his mind but then swindled us haha).
真的完全troubleï¼
Two days ago there was an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan…this earthquake just happened to destroy several fibre optic cables that link China with the outside internet world. As a result, the internet over here is really slow at the moment and some sites don’t load at all.
Check it out.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/249659/1/.html
Wordpress lives on!
Well, I should have done this a long time ago – like 6 months – but anyway, finally I’ve got around to putting the wordpress blogging application on my own server since I can’t access wordpress.com from inside China, consequently, I have been unable to update my old site at http://occidentallyoriental.wordpress.com. So, I reluctantly migrated to myspace.com and continued posting the odd bit of news or tale from my travels.
Now, I have returned home to wordpress and will from today continue to update my travels from here, not myspace.com.
Thanks to Simantic for your guidence and encouragement in this process of setting up wordpress.
T.
Check this out from Shenzhen. Eek…
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/world/asia/13prostitutes.html?ex=1323666000&en=662c908963829ec8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
For any Futurama fans out there, you will surely be familiar with the episode entitled “30% Iron Chef”. You’ll recall that Bender was given the essence of flavour, and using it his cruddy dishes suddenly tasted great!
And of course we’ve all heard of MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate).
Anyway, in Chinese, MSG is called Weijing (味精 <- i think these are the characters but most of you probably cant see them anyway). The literal meaning of each character is as follows:
Wei: Taste, flavour.
Jing: Purified, selected, best.
Although i’m sure everyone got this from the episode, it was funny to see the meaning in the chinese characters.
You have to learn to think in Yuan here or you will spend just as much if not more money than back home. So, you have to stop converting things and thinking its cheap for back home, and start just thinking in terms of cheap for here.
For example, for a normal meal you would want to spend between Y10 and Y25. That is for like lunch or dinner and should include a drink other than complimentary tea. For something like breakfast, with a drink you should spend less than Y10, like Y6 or something. If you just grab some Jiaozi or Baozi though, it should be like less than Y5.
However, I couldn’t help but convert some books I bought back to AUD yesterday. I got three language books (all part of the same series):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/7800525767/sr=8-1/qid=1155805745/ref=sr_1_1/102-4187302-1612917?ie=UTF8
That one is one of three in the series /|…
I also got two of the accompanying audio tapes (each having 3 cassettes) and a small mandarin phrase book. Grand total, Y158! So about $30 AUD. Considering that amazon sells these books for $19.95 each, that is seriously cheap.
But, as I said, it should be considered like spending Y150 on books in AUD, cause for that amount you could buy the same amount of meals as you could in Australia, or the same amount of bus/train tickets etc.
Quanzhou has a veritable army of motorbike taxies and I highly recommend catching one if you’re ever in town. Other cities have them also, but I would recommend catching one in a city that doesn’t have too much traffic as it’s pretty crazy on the roads here and being stuck in a traffic jam breathing in fumes probably isn’t recommended.
I’ve never actually caught one before, but I decided to take one to get to the southern shaolin temple, which I visited today. Oh, I also got one last night to take me back to my hotel from the internet cafe.
Maybe it’s really dangerous, but man its fun. Especially the one I took back to the hotel last night. We didn’t even go on the roads, just through all these back streets through food markets and down alley ways. It was an awesome experience and its fairly cheap.
So, today, my confidence bolstered by my successful journey the night before, I decided to take a bike again to get to the temple. The trip there cost Y8 and took about 15 minutes, mostly along main roads which weren’t too busy. It was such a cool experience and I almost want to just go places on these bikes just for fun.
