Xiamen to Hong Kong. Settling in China and more

Hello everyone,

Long time no see since the last update on this blog! I have been studying in Xiamen for some time now and have also found time to explore the country a little bit more, so I figured I'd post a small (perhaps actually quite large) update on the blog :)

Xiamen

Studying in Xiamen so far has been a really fun experience. The city itself is great; while there may not be very much to do for a tourist, it's a great place to live because it is relatively quiet, yet pretty much you could want to buy or do is available here, and importantly, it's right on the beach. The Xiamen University (XiaDa) campus itself is beautiful; it's like the UCU campus, but a whole lot larger. There are a lot of green areas, sports fields, and it even has its own shopping streets. When we moved to Xiamen we were given a room on this campus, which was pretty much like a hotel room, which would even be cleaned for us. However, we rather quickly were kicked out of this room when we had to make place for Masters and PhD students. Luckily, though, we found a very nice appartment for 5 people, in which I now live with Erwin & Jet, with whom I took the Transsiberian Express, and Mike & Loes, who travelled part of the way with me from Beijing to Xiamen. We have now spent two weeks in this appartment and not a moment has been boring; I've certainly never lived in a unit with such a nice atmosphere on UCU campus, where the living room is always filled with your friends and there is always someone who will watch an episode of Friends or Gilmore Girls with you.

The studying itself has been a fun, if not exhausting affair. The workload is much lower than it is on UCU or even in high school, so we pretty much get to spend our days exploring the city and hanging out together. The teachers are all nice and very different. We have two hours of Chinese language class every day, given by Jin Laoshi (teacher Jin), whose English is poor and whose methods would be deemed ineffective in Europe, but who is so sweet that it doesn't really matter. Our classes pretty much consist of reading texts aloud, some speaking exercises, and a great portion of time devoted to confusion over matters that are lost in translation. We also get to learn Chinese songs and we had a fruit tasting session, where she taught us the names of different Chinese fruits. Sufficed to say that we don't move through the book as quickly as we would in Holland, but at least we get taught the Chinese way.

We also get classes in Chinese culture, politics, and economics. Especially the politics and economics lessons are fun. Our politics teacher is the rebel of the university. He is always talking about his dislike for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and the fact that the university is ruled by party officials. He is not afraid to discuss issues like Tibet, censorship, or the one child policy, and he will usually take a Western standpoint in these matters. Our economics professor, however, teaches us about the great achievements China has reached in the past few decades, and although he confesses that mistakes were made (he himself was sent to work on the land during the cultural revolution instead of being allowed to teach), he focuses on China's great progress and generally follows the party line. The contrast between these two makes for an interesting overview of Western and Chinese standpoints regarding China's current position in the world. While these classes are devoted to teaching us facts about Chinese history, politics, and economics, the most interesting parts of the class always occur when the teachers give their personal opinions on difficult issues and current events.

Jinmen

As I said, studying does not take up a great portion of time here in Xiamen, so when opportunties arise, I grab the chance to go travelling in the weekends or other available days off. In my first free weekend in Xiamen, I travelled with Erwin and Jet to Jinmen, a small island off the coast of Xiamen, officially belonging to Taiwan. This meant a brand new stamp in my passport, a new currency in my pocket, and a slightly different culture to explore. Jinmen is only a small island, roughly the size of Texel, and frankly it is strangely similar. There are no big towns on the island, only one larger village and a bunch of small hamlets consisting of a few dozen houses or less and the ever-important temple. To get around the island, we decided to hire some scooters so we could drive around and explore. While we were momentarily quizzed about our driving licenses (Erwin was the only one who brought his; I don't even have one), we were given three scooters on which we strugglingly managed to drive away into the empty streets of Jinmen. Although it took a while to get used to these crazy machines, which accelerated at ridiculously fast speeds, we quickly learnt to use them well, and were able to speed across the island at speeds of around 60 km/h. Because the roads were long, straight, and deserted, we were able to really put our feet down sometimes and crank these little speed machines up to over 90 km/h. It's fair to say that we didn't get much else done this weekend. We drove around aimlessly for hours and hours, admiring the island's quiet, its beautiful natural habitat, and its deserted beaches. It was a great way of getting away from Chinese cities, which we had spent the past month and a half in, and enjoying a more quiet and relaxed atmosphere.

Hong Kong

We got the past week and a half off school because of the Chinese National Day (the People's Republic celebrated its 60th birthday, as you undoubtedly saw on TV) and the mid-autumn festival. Again I grabbed the opportunity to see more of the country and travelled with Anne to Hong Kong. Two fellow (ex-)UCU go-ers, Kim and Laurens, study there at the moment, so we met up with them and they graciously let us stay at their places, and showed us the sights. I won't go through a day-by-day account of everything we did, because I don't want to be in this internet cafe all night, but I'll just discuss the highlights.

Hong Kong is a strange but interesting city/country. While I used to think of it as just a small, crowded island stuffed to the brink with skyscrapers, it turned out to be so much more than that. Did you know, for example, that Hong Kong is made up of over 200 islands, most of which are unpopulated, and very difficult to access. That there are great opportunities there for hiking, because of a rich availability of nature on these islands and on the New Territories, a part of mainland China that belongs to Hong Kong. That there are beachside villages 30 minutes away from the city where you would sooner believe you were in Spain than in Asia? But that you can also spend two nights of the mid-autumn festival going to see a traditional dragon dance and sitting in a large park with thousands of Hong Kong locals lighting lanterns and eating moon cakes, feeling like the British never even arrived in Hong Kong.

What mostly struck me about Hong Kong is that it is a city of limitless opportunity, as long as you have the money to spend. In Holland, I can imagine you might have more money than you could know what to do with, but in Hong Kong, there is always a place to spend it. There were houses for sale for about 16 million euros, on a secluded cliff with a panoramic view of the ocean, yet only a 30 minute drive away from the city center. There are bars where you might have to pay 10 euros for a beer, but where you can enjoy amazing live music in every imaginable style possible, or a stunning view of the city from the rooftop of one of its skyscrapers. Every type of food that you might want to have is available in one restaurant or another, either from Asian, European, or American cuisines. If it's clothes you're after, you won't have trouble finding them in any of the city's gazillion malls serving exclusively to people who have more money than they could ever spend, or 'banker wankers' as our couchsurfing host Mike would refer to them.

To explore all this madness, we first stayed a night at Laurens' place, and then moved to Kim's dormitory, which is located on Hong Kong Island, and which is near to her university. We stayed the first night there in the common room of her building, but were thrown out at 6.30am by the building's guard, whose shift was over and who wanted to get rid of us before he left. The next night we spent in Kim's room together with her two roommates, but five people in a three-person room was a little too crowded and we decided to move to a hostel the next day. Laurens had recommended that we stay in the Chunking Mansions, in Kowloon district, where many Indian residents of Hong Kong live and run their businesses. These Chunking Mansions, are, in fact, filled with illegal aliens from India and all over the world, making for a very interesting mix of ethnicities and personalities. The lower two floors of this illegally occupied building are filled with shady shops selling mobile phones or restaurants serving food from Indian of Middle-Eastern cuisines. We found a cheap room on the 16th floor of this building and moved in for the night, only to find that our dorm room was also occupied by a man who seemingly lived in this hostel, and who had covered two beds with an incredible load of stuff packed in shopping bags which were stacked to the ceiling. This was clearly not the safest place in Hong Kong, with a sign on every wall proclaiming 'stealing is a serious crime' but it was a great experience to stay here in this small multicultural island in the middle of Hong Kong, in a dilapidated building standing right opposite the Peninsula, Hong Kong's most expensive luxury hotel and shopping mall. We spent the next two nights with a couchsurfer called Mike and his tiny dog Frank, who then told us that people regularly disappear in the Chunking mansions and that most shops and hostels are fronts for drug traders and prostitution rackets. Wonderful...

Mike was a really nice guy who worked as a professional voice actor, doing voices mostly for Japanese cartoon shows, which aired even as we were sitting in his living room. He gave us some great tips about what to do in Hong Kong, and showed us some of his favourite bars. We stayed in his small appartment, which was actually quite large compared to the average Hong Kong appartment, and had a great time together. I had never been couchsurfing before, but this was an experience that certainly encourages me to try it in the future. It was great to stay with a local who was able to tell us about his favorite sights and who could show us around.

Macau, Shenzhen & Guangzhou

After seeing Hong Kong, we moved on to Macau, another Special Administrative Region of China (meaning it has its own government), which is known as the Las Vegas of the east. It used to be a Portuguese colony, so its ancient city centre is filled with European architecture, and you can find as many churches there as in any similarly sized city in Western Europe. Portuguese is also still one of the official languages (the other being Cantonese), so we could actually read more street signs than we would be able to in the rest of China, because of our language of other European languages. I almost felt guilty for visiting this place, and indulging in European culture while I could also be seeing the 'real' China. Me and my friends have started calling visits to McDonalds or other Western chain restaurants 'sinning' and this felt the same to me; I was cheating on China, instead opting for the easy way out, the one European point of escape in this part of Asia.

However, I put that out of my mind for one day and we walked around through this strange yet beautiful city, and we also visited several of the large casinos. While they were all enormous and luxurious, the one that clearly stands out as the most extreme of all is the Venetian. It pretty much lives up to its name; next to its massive casino it has recreated Venetian canals indoors, flanked by shopping streets where its rich customers can indulge in buying all of the luxury brands you can possibly think of. While all of this takes place indoors, the ceiling has a blue, cloudy sky painted on it, and the lighting is meant to represent daylight, so you will never have to leave the casino, and it will still feel early in the day even when it's late at night. This resets your biological clock to the point where you think you have a few more hours to spend gambling or eating in one of the casino's luxury restaurants. Unfortunately the table limits were a little high for our standards (the minimum bet was 5 euros at the lowest), we did spend a whole 2 euros on the slot machines, unfortunately returning with nothing but another experience to write on our blogs about.

Since we didn't turn into millionaires overnight, we headed back to good old, cheap China, and went to Shenzhen, China's third largest city and first Special Economic Zone, for some cheap shopping. Few people have ever heard of Shenzhen, and there's a good reason for it: there is absolutely nothing to do there except scoop up clothes or other items at bargain bin prices. It was the first city in China where capitalism was allowed and encouraged, so flocks of Chinese people herded to it to make their fortune there. It was strange being in a city that 30 years ago was absolutely nothing, and that has now grown to such a massive scale. There's really nothing else to say about the place, other than I bought a nice new pair of shoes.

From Shenzhen we took the train to Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong province. This is the capital of the Cantonese society and the point of origin of its famous cuisine. It was probably the dirtiest and smelliest city I had been to in China, yet from time to time I really enjoyed its atmosphere. Guangzhou's main purpose is also making money and shopping, and the streets are often filled with markets selling cheap clothes. Clothing stores also abound, and since my wardrobe was rather small (I hadn't bought many clothes since my journey from Holland, so all I had were the clothes I travelled in), I set out to buy a great number of new shirts and trousers for about 2 euros each. If you're ever looking for a cheap place to shop, and you happen to be in Southern China or Hong Kong, I highly recommend it. There are also some beautiful sights to see, including an orchid garden and a large and interesting temple. Yet I was also happy to return last night to Xiamen, where I would once again be able to live comfortably in our appartment, and where my wallet can now recover from the beating it took in Hong Kong and Macau. The things I've mentioned in this piece are nowhere near an exhaustive account of the past few month in China, yet I hope it will give you an idea of how things are going here. If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to update this blog again.

Jeroen