I was in Hong Kong just over a week ago sorting out a visa issue.  Because Hong Kong is run almost completely separate from the mainland, most public systems are different, including the cash.  This is a picture of one of their bills, a fantastic shade of purple.  Hong Kong seemed amazing, but I was only there for four hours, and I think more time is deserved if I am to write any sort of post.  For now, I’ll just leaving you to wonder who had such a brilliant idea as to create purple cash.

I left the house shortly after the worst of the storm had passed, and once it seemed like I was not at risk of being soaked.  In typical Guangzhou fashion, it rained for three hours, but the sky remained the same impenetrable grey.  Someday I may stop noticing this lack of sun, though I can’t picture a life without.  Beijing Reminded me of Blade Runner, I haven’t found a comparison for this new city.

The bus didn’t arrive for a long time, and my mind progressed deeper into the depths of an aimless bad mood.  This was further agitated by the absurd number of people on the bus itself.  Even mid morning on a Saturday, there was almost no space available, and people were pushing each other through the door trying to get on.  My goal for today’s adventure was to spend time shooting the inner workings of the Guangzhou bus station, located almost an hour from my apartment.  Crammed within a bus of crying children and deafening phones, I began to loose track of why I had desired this trip in the first place.

Arriving in a more central location, the driver informed us that we all had to get off, despite being nowhere near the terminal.  I was furious, but the walk did a world of good, and the unwarranted fury quickly left.  Within 20 minutes, I was standing inside the dark of the bus terminal shooting away.  I like this spot because it reminds me of home.  There is something about the claustrophobic filth, the sensation that I might not be completely safe, which reminds me of Penn station, or possibly the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan.  It was easily 10 degrees hotter in the station than it was outside, and a number of people gave me dirty looks while I tried to pick up the feeling of this world.

Moving away from the depths of the bus terminal, I went above ground to the entrance of the East Railway Station.  I am drawn to this place, and often find myself here when things have been bothering me.  Something about the Cathedralesque metal work.  I’m not implying that I’m a religious man, and this is certainly not a place of worship, but it is a point of exodus.  I enjoy watching the thousands of people that transfer through this spot.  Migrants on their way between jobs, business people heading for Hong Kong, and the typical lot that frequent bus and train terminals.  I feel safe in these places of limbo.

I spent a fair amount of time underneath this lattice of iron, and a number of people watched as I tried to grasp the feeling I had in one spot or another.  In one particular picture, you can see a man looking above, trying to spot what I might be looking at.  I was actually looking at him, and the effect entertained me to no end.  Feeling sound of mind once more, I headed out to continue with the day.

My morning starting with a momentary flash of ultra violet, followed by an organ shoving explosion.  I sat up, looking out of the window in time to see lighting hit a building in the distance several more times, each with a sound I didn’t think possible.

I love thunderstorms, and dashed out to the balcony hoping to record the lighting as it danced across the flat stretch of land between my apartment and the mountains in the distance.  I have been in some unbelievable thunderstorms, but the stuff in Guangzhou is legendary.  These storms are fast, and incredibly loud.  Much as I wanted to continue standing outside, I figured that having my feet in a puddle 18 floors up was not healthy living, even if the building is well grounded.  The lighting hit the crane in the picture above several times, the site located little more than half a mile from my windows.

It rained for almost three hours, and by the time it was done the river below my apartment, normally little more than a trickle, had turned into a monster.  That said, it’s time for a coffee, and hopefully an adventure that will bring more stories to this page.

After many months of watching others posting hipster-inspired photography through the Instagram app, I have finally lost my inner battle and given the gadget a try.  Truth be told, it is extremely addictive, and manages to make even the most boring of scenes appear to be interesting.  Magic indeed.  Here is a shot taken in downtown Guangzhou.  Despite being done on what may be the single worst camera phone of all time, Instagram worked its tricks and turned this into a picture that I actually really like.

Creators and Programs at Instagram, I tip my crappy camera phone in your direction.  This is one excellent piece of programming.

A number of people have requested to see my new neighborhood in Guangzhou, and though I would have loved to oblige immediately, I have been doing active battle with the internet and all devices associated. I took almost 5 hours to figure out how to configure the new router. For one reason or another, it didn’t occur to me that the instructions and all portions of the software would be in Chinese. Lesson learned.

My new apartment is in a community unlike anywhere that I have ever lived. To begin with, Guangzhou is nothing short of tropical, and, as seen in the pictures, the landscape suits the word lush in all respects. Humid doesn’t quite cover the quality of the air. Saturated may be more appropriate.

There are a ton of great pictures to be taken, but I’m not quite ready to completely irritate the neighbors . Given my status as one of possible 10 foreigners living in this area, I stand out plenty as it is. It is unusual for me to see anyone not of Chinese decent. The community is gated, and I estimate the population to be somewhere between three and five thousand, a strange mix of young and old, with more children then I have ever seen in my life. Everywhere I look, there are children bouncing around, riding scooters and bikes, and causing chaos on roller blades. I can picture no place more fantastic to grow up as this little world. It is an ongoing block party in a land where the temperature never seems to drop. I also have no reservations in saying that this is, hands down, the cleanest place that I have ever been in China. The only draw back that I have found is that it is nearly an hour from the central city, but this is not too terrible as I am located directly across the street from any number of buses and a subway.

If I have time this evening, I hope to go out and take some night shots. The lighting here is fantastic, and there is something that I find very attractive about the Guangzhou nights. It is so humid that the night air tends to be foggy, condensation following a hot day.

It took three weeks, but after much cursing and hair pulling, I finally have internet in the new apartment. The amount of time that I spent trying to figure out how to live without the web has confirmed my understanding of how addicted I really am. But who cares, the world is at my hands once more!

When I moved into my first apartment in Beijing, we were lucky enough to have an internet package already installed, but soon enough it came time to renew our contract. This would have been easy enough, but because internet is typically purchased in 6 month to year long contacts, it was of no surprise that no one could remember who we had purchased our service from. Imagine for a moment that you have no idea who your provider is, but you need to pay a bill. Throw three foreigners with poor Chinese into the equation and you have quite an adventure ahead. We went so far as to go door to door in our complex asking neighbors who they got their service from. Most of them didn’t understand what we were trying to ask, and those that did were so entertained by the idea of foreigners trying to get things done that they weren’t much more help. After hours of digging and questioning, we found the phone number that we were looking for, and that was that.

This time around, I have not been so lucky. Three weeks ago, I had one of the girls that I work with call in to find out who was responsible for the internet in my community. In a format similar to the U.S., certain companies have the rights to place service in certain areas. Unlike the U.S., however, there are only a few main companies, and all of them are heavily controlled by the government. The result is that there isn’t much need for them to get anything done in a timely manner. At first, the answer was that they weren’t sure if they put internet in my community, and they would have to check. Checking took four days, at which point they called back with an answer. This was great, except that they had gotten my address wrong, and as such, the answer was null and void (despite being an apartment complex directly adjacent to my own).   Add another 4 days.

Eventually, it was determined that they could provide service, but they weren’t sure when they would be able to install it. Another staff member in the office explained that they would call when they had time, but that I shouldn’t expect any news any time soon. Three days passed, and no call. Once again, we were forced to pick up the phone, this time being more direct in demanding a time that they would arrive. Someone on the other end said they would arrive in the next three days, and would call before they arrived. Given that I work almost an hour away from my apartment, this wasn’t exactly convenient. Three days later, they called, ready to come install everything on the one day when I wasn’t able to come home.

The story goes on like this for some time, and ultimately becomes stagnant and entrenched in bureaucratic depths that seem to line a post socialist economy. Long and short, I got my internet, it just took days longer than I would have liked. In honor of this moment, I have included two pictures taken from my balcony in the closing hours of the day. It was an unusually clear day in Guangzhou, and I was graced with the sight of the mountains in the distance.

The smell of smoke appeared quite suddenly while the crew was serving lunch, which is probably why no one on the plane thought to immediately question the acrid air. I wasn’t even aware that something was amiss until I tried to ask the attendant for a refill on my drink

“Hold on just a moment”

The man had stopped his routine of serving, and was looking around the cabin for something that only he could see. That’s when I noticed the undeniable tinge to the air, an absolute smell of trouble. The attendants stopped serving, pulled their cart back to the galley behind us, and I could see one of them making a phone call. In this small time, the smell suddenly got much worse, and more people were looking around with the beginnings of what may have been a panic.

In a moment, the attendants were back, opening each compartment on the plane one by one and pulling out the contents. With each one, I had a great fear the there would be some fantastic explosion, the yet undiscovered pile of smoldering something-or-other finding itself suddenly fed a big dose of oxygen. I was surprised that they did not bother to see if the outsides of the compartments were hot, but then again, they were, at this point, visibly anxious. Burning electrical circuits have a very distinct smell, somewhere between ozone and a mix of plastics and metals. This was, to the letter, the smell that now characterized our economy cabin. Sitting directly over the wing, it was clear that the smell was coming from the vents on the floor and the ceiling.

The attendant who appeared to be the most in control hustled back to the phone and made another call. In a moment, two of the pilots were in the aisle next to me, looking extremely concerned. They consulted for a moment, relocated a few passengers sitting across the aisle from my seat, and then began the process of trying to remove pieces from the floor, perhaps hoping to find anything that might resolve the matter. At this point, it seemed clear to me that there was an obvious choice in front of us; if you are in command of a plane that is obviously suffering a mechanical issue, find the nearest airport and request to land. We were still an hour from Guangzhou, and the last thing I wanted was to be left with no apparent answer to what could be nothing less than a major red flag. I envisioned a burning suitcase in the cargo hold below, a set of wires that had shorted out, a rodent that might have fouled the inner workings of the wings. And yet, there was nothing to show. The pilots turned off the lights and the overhead displays, as well as the air circulation system, and the smell was gone.

We landed in Guangzhou without fanfare, but the moment we stopped, the air was turned back on an the cabin was once again filled with the odor of charred mystery object. We disembarked and went to collect our bags. Despite being in a relatively small terminal, the bags took almost an hour to be delivered, leading me to speculate that a team was probably climbing not only through the jet, but also through all of our stuff to see if they might rule out a cause. Should they have found nothing in the bags, I can’t imagine what process would need to be undertaken to find the issue in the plane itself. I can only hope that on my next trip north, I am no so unfortunate as to ride the same plane again.

It’s been a busy month among busy months, and as I look now, I see that I have failed to make even one post in the last 31 days, a sore failure on my part.

After much discussion, preparation and rescheduling, I finally made the move the Guangzhou, way down south next to Hong Kong, but as I write this post I am currently sitting back in Beijing, after a week of business (and getting a Chinese Drivers License, but that’s a story of it’s own).  I will fly back south tomorrow morning to continue our project, and then it’s off to Hong Kong on Wednesday or Thursday for a visa issue.

In the meantime, I have a few pictures of the new place.  I have always had a hard time photographing indoor spaces, and this was no exception.  To compound the fact, I was also in the process of departure for Beijing, as can be seen in the clothing scattered around the rooms.  I had washed all of my things the night before, but Guangzhou is humid to the point where nothing dries.  Laying it all out inside the space seemed like a good idea, but was of no avail.

Oh yes, and my balcony overlooks an industrial complex and highway.  Most excellent

I haven’t had much chance to explore this new city, other than the compulsory trip to Ikea, but I’m hoping that within this next week I will have a bit more time to get some pictures of the community I live in.  It is gated, there are palm trees, and if I didn’t no better I would have never picked it as a part of China.  Until then….

I’m spending the week in Guangzhou on a business trip of sorts, and went out to dinner this evening with some of the people in our company to the finest cuisine Guangzhou has to offer-  An assortment of Snake.  As we entered the restaurant, we passed a large crate with a number of three to four foot long creatures inside, and I was quickly aware of the direction things were headed.  When I was told that we would be eating snake, I figured that there would be a dish or two, but in a fashion similar to Beijing Duck, the entire meal consisted of dishes made out of the various parts of just one animal.

Long and short was that most pieces were delicious, and tasted nothing like I would have thought.  The only parts that did not sit quite so well were a strange slurry made of entirely of minced snake tendon, as well as the snake liver, which had an okay texture but a challenging flavor.  The meal was finished off with a glass of snake-egg egg whites, spiced with some local herbs. A year or so ago I watched someone on TV eat a similar such meal, and declared that there was no way I would do the same.  I must be slipping.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of time to write in the last few weeks.  Work has been full tilt, and I am preparing to move to Guangzhou (part of why I’m here), which means that my mind is completely held up with other topics.  One the other hand,  it means there will be plenty of new stuff to write about!

I spend a fair amount of time hiking around parts of Beijing, and recently spent a day hiking the Jinshanling section of Great Wall to the north of central Beijing.  In the past, I visited the wall at Badaling, but the two trips cannot even be put into the same category.  While Badaling is nothing short of a Great Wall Disneyland, Jinshanling is borderline empty, and many sections are in their original condition (built in the 14th century), making the experience feel quite a bit more authentic, if you will.

Along with authenticity comes a significant change in safety.  On many section, there was little to no wall, and a remarkable drop.  The builders of the wall did their best to place the structure along ridge lines, making it all the more difficult to attack.  It was one of the best hikes I have been on in a long time, and though my knees paid for it dearly, it was a day well spent.  You cannot tell from most of these pictures, but there are sections of stairs that are approaching 60 and 70 degrees in angle.  Don’t slip, friends.