Guangzhou

On our latest trip to China, we visited my wife's Aunt and her family in Guangzhou.


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Guangzhou is a sleepy little town of around 12 million people and is located just 120 km north of Hong Kong. From Shanghai, its a 18 hour train ride (or at least that's how long its supposed to take). In reality, it took 21 hours - both ways. Normally, I wouldn't mind, as I really enjoy the relaxing, comfortable ride. But my wife's cousin and his girl-friend ended up waiting 3 hours for us at the McDonalds across from the train station - and that's gotta be one of those lower levels of hell.

One of the reason's the trip was so long, was it practically stopped every hour at a some town or city along the way to drop off or pick up passengers. A little slow getting there, and a little late leaving here all add up to 3 hours late at the end of the trip - and this was not one of those new high-speed rails you hear about on the news.

Still, if I'm not in a hurry (and on vacation, you shouldn't be), I almost always prefer a train to a plane for long trips. We were in the less-expensive sleeping cars. These consisted of six bunks per compartment without doors. Other cars were standing only (hopefully for not the whole trip), sitting, and the more expensive private 4-bunk sleeping compartments with doors. While the private 4-bunk cars are really nice, my wife and I have never felt insecure or uncomfortable in the six-bunk cars, so we save a bit of money and still enjoy ourselves.

So, it was July, which means it was hot, and it was far South, so it was pretty darn hot. And it was close to the ocean, so it was really humid. So you sweat - a lot (or at least I did because I was not used to it), and it just sits there on your skin like a wax coating that you just can't get off. So eventually, you just ignore it, live with it, and enjoy yourself anyway. And I really did enjoy myself.

Guangzhou from an Apartment rooftop

Guangzhou reminded me a lot of Seattle. Because of the frequent rains and high humidity, plants grew everywhere and anywhere they could. So the city was lush with greenery squeezed between the paved streets, sidewalks and highrises.

A mini park hidden behind a local restaurant

I also learned a new practice I'd not witnessed in any other city I'd visited thus far. In most restaurants in Guangzhou, they automatically serve a pitcher of hot tea along with a large empty bowl. You don't drink this tea, instead it is to be used to clean and sterilize your chopsticks, rice bowl, plate and drinking glass. The empty bowl is to discard the now unclean tea into. The pitcher of tea is then refilled with hot water to brew the tea which you can then drink.

My wife's Aunt was an Army nurse and then a professional doctor before she retired, so we both thought she was just being fastidiously clean. Then we started noticing other people in other restaurants doing the same thing. It's much like the first part of a traditional tea drinking ceremony where the first brew of a pot of tea is used to clean the cups and then discarded. The second brew, which is milder and less bitter, is then imbibed.

Xinghai Concert Hall

The second day were were in Guangzhou, we took a bus tour of the city. Being this close to Hong Kong it became suddenly clear to me, as the different buses pulled up to take on passengers, which ones were headed to Hong Kong and which were staying in the city. Being a former British colony, everyone in Hong Kong drives on the wrong (ahem, left) side of the road. So tour buses destined for there had the driver on the right. Don't know how they do that without constantly wrecking.

Traffic Police woman

The only reason I took this photo was because there I was standing, doing nothing a sweating bullets. While she was constantly moving, directing traffic, waving her arms and walking back and fourth while not a single stain appeared on that perfectly pressed uniform. I felt like an alien, or more appropriately, like Steve Ballmer...

Aside from The Jade Shop, and other destinations, our tour bus took us to White Cloud Mountain, a popular place both for tourists and locals alike.

Many of the locals used this steep paved roadway to get in their daily exercise walking up and down its twisty windy paths. We were just lazy fat tourists, so we took an electric car up instead.

Sign on knoll: "Welcome to White Cloud Mountain"

It was a bit foggy and humid that day (did I already mention it was really humid?) so long range pictures from the mountain lookout points where not all that good.

Interestingly, at the end of the tour, we were not returned to our starting point. Instead we were left at Yuexiu Park, home of the Five Rams Sculpture - a famous landmark of Guangzhou. Apparently, you've not been to Guangzhou, and you can't prove you've been to Guangzhou, unless you visit and have your picture taken beneath the Five Rams Sculpture of Yuexiu Park.

I can prove at least one of us was there!

The sculpture was built in 1959 as the symbol of Guangzhou. Legend says that long ago five spirits wearing robes of five colors came to Guangzhou riding through the air on rams. Each one carried a stem of rice which they gave to the people as a sign from heaven that this area would be free from famine forever. So Guangzhou is also known as the City of Five Rams, or just Ram City.

My wife's Aunt and her family were wonderful hosts and overly generous with there time and their gifts while we were there. We really enjoyed ourselves and where thoroughly, and delightfully exhausted for the train ride back home to Shanghai. And while it too was late by three hours, we didn't have to worry about someone waiting to pick us up. We just hopped on the subway back to our apartment.

We look forward to visiting that beautiful city again - hopefully not at the height of the summertime heat...

The Archministry of Ultraviolet

Huh?
If you've never watched the movie Ultraviolet , you're missing out on one of the all-time greatest surreal, ass-kicking, blood-fest B-movies of all times (right up there with Kill Bill). And staring one of my favorite action heroines, Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, Resident Evil [all], The Messenger, etc).

At any rate, here is the Vice-Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus' Archministry from that movie (And We Were THERE):

Actually, this is the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

My wife and I went there for a day this last trip to China and as I was taking pictures, I felt a familiar, Déjà Vu-ish sensation. It wasn't until we returned to the states and I caught Ultraviolet on TV again that I recognized where we had been. In fact, much of that movie was shot in Shanghai around some of its ultra-modern structures to help give it that futuristic look and feel.

The sphere, upper-right, is their 4D movie theater

As expected, the museum is highly kid-oriented, and so by the time we left late that afternoon, it was packed with the little rug-rats (even though it was a Sunday), all decked out in their school uniforms.
 
Different floors had different themes: Nature, Technology, Science, Space, etc., with a lot of interactive kiosks and displays.

One of many full size Diorama displays

 

Play Go against a Robot

 

Watch a Choreographed Dance

They had a 4D movie theater (3D plus moving seats) but it was always full with long waiting lines. Food courts were in the lower level and gift/novelty shops scattered about. So you could spend your whole day there, if you wanted. I think we spent about 3-4 hours walking around the place. Most all of the displays and featurettes were in Chinese and English, so I didn't have to continuously bug my wife for translations. That was nice (no, I still can't read Chinese...)

Like I said, it was very kid oriented, but we still had a great time. It was one of those places I'd wanted to see on our previous trips, but never got a round to.

Wonderful 4-Dragon Globe Sculpture outside the Museum

On our way out, we spied a few shops on the opposite side of the courtyard and decided to take a peek. Boy were we supprised!

An entire Chinese style shopping mall underground! A maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Wander around long and far enough and it meets up with a subway line to take you back home - with all your procured consumables.

A Lesson in Jade (and deception)

We recently returned from our vacation to China. This is one of our stories.

While in GuangZhou, we took a tour of the city via chartered tour bus. Part of these tours, as I have come to understand, is a little kickback the company gets for dropping their passengers off a certain shops and restaurants. For the most part, this is ok - you just need to keep a healthy amount of scepticism about you during these side trips.

To Note: The food has always been good. It'd be bad for business if your customers got sick on your tour...

So near the end of our tour, we were dropped off at a nice looking Jade shop to get a lesson in Jade (and hopefully, spend some money).

We were ushered into a room where an attractive looking lady starting explaining how to spot fake jade. We learned that vibrant green, plastic looking Jade was fake (duh) and that all red Jade was fake (duh, again). But before she could go further, the owner of the shop burst in and had an announcement for us all...

Seems he was from Burma, and his third wife just gave birth to twin boys a few days ago. But there was a problem. One of the boys was very sick and may not survive. So the owner went to the temple and prayed long and hard to the Buddha. What what the Buddha told him was that he could not sell anything for three days - to ingratiate himself back with the spirits of heath and long life. So he closed up shop for three days. This, the fourth day, his ill newborn son had recovered. And so in celebration, he had gifts for us all!

Carpe Carp. It gets better...

One of his employees entered the room carrying a basket of little red bags. In each bag was a little Jade disk (toroid, for the geeks out there). And it was marked at 650 Yuan (about $100). Seemed a bit high to me, but if its top-quality Jadeite, it would be worth it. So we were each given one for free.  And he explains that he's already given away over 250,000 Yuan in Jade just today!

The fish is smelling a few days old now...

From there he ushered us into another room of his exclusive collection of Jade and Gemstones and proceeded to further explain the qualities of Jade and how to tell fakes from the real-deal - taking up where the lady had left off before (she was easier on the eyes, btw).

I'm not going to go into the full account of the qualities of Jade and spotting fakes. But if you are interested, here's a Wiki article on it: Jade

So, while the owner is explaining Jade, with us all from the tour bus crowded around him eagerly listening to his every word, he asks for one of the bags back so that he can demonstrate the qualities of authentic Jadeite. One guy in front, just happens to have his bag handy and gives it to the owner. Note: neither I nor my wife have seen this guy before on our tour, and its a small bus. So we are even more suspect and believe this guy is a plant.

The owner wraps the Jade in a single sheet of newspaper and tries to light it on fire. It won't burn. He explains that Jade is such a great conductor of heat that it pulls it away so fast that it can't get hot enough to burn. (Not sure about this one. Looked like a nice parlor trick to me).

He then takes the Jade disk and forcefully scrapes it right on the display cabinet's glass top. It easily scratches the glass. (This is true. High quality Jade will easily scratch glass).

All this is to prove that our gift from him is high-quality, authentic Jadeite (Although, the workmanship, IMHO, of our disk is not very good).

The fish is way past its expiration date now, but wait! There's more...

To further celebrate his newborn's recovery, he is slashing the prices of the Jade and Jemstone collections in the case behind him. From 6,000 to 10,000 Yuan, he is selling them to us for just 600 to 1,000 Yuan!

Well, another guy (that we've not seen before either) quite literately starts throwing his money out onto the counter demanding to by these hot items - shouting with excitement. Our Aunt, caught up in the moment (as anticipated) was about to do the same. We reigned her back in and explained the deception to her.  Later that evening at dinner, we tried scratching glass with our little toroids of Jade - and of course, we could not.

That's not to say that what we got was not Jade. I believe it is. But it is a softer, lower quality, common grade of Jade and not the high-quality Jadeite that the owner purported it to be.

Back on the bus, most were laughing and joking about the show we had just witnessed. Others, well, they'd spent more that they should have...

Billy Mays would have been proud.

Keeping Cool in the Hottest Summer on Record

So, I just read today that the U.S. broke almost 9,000 heat records in the month of July! Yeah, it was (is) frackin hot! If you live in a two story home, cooling the upstairs, where your bedroom is, can be a real challenge.

Close all the basement vents, restrict the first floor vents, close off unused rooms and you might have a comfortable sleep if you crank the A/C down to the lower seventies. And in doing all that, your wearing out your blower fan faster because of all the back-pressure it's having to deal with from all those closed/restricted vents.

So I got an idea, and it works really well. We're able to sleep nicely while its 90's at night outside, the thermostat set at 77 inside and the A/C not working overtime.

It's a custom Vent Fan I designed/built to fit over a floor vent in the room. You remove the floor vent cover, replace it with this, plug it in and let it run 24/7. When the A/C is going, it pulls more air into the room than normal. When the A/C is not going, it still pulls air from cooler rooms in the house, into your room.

Before we used this, with our thermostat in the living room on the first floor set at 77, it was 83-84 upstairs in our bedroom at night. Now our bedroom is at the same temperature as the living room because cooler air is being pulled into it from 'downstairs' all day long - even with the A/C is not running.

It uses about 12W of power, so at $0.12/kilowatt/hour, I figure it costs about $1 a month to run full time. That's a lot cheaper than setting you A/C down to 70 so upstairs get cool enough to sleep.

I won't go into details on how to build it because its pretty straightforward/simple. But if those who know me ask, I'll write a post with step-by-step instructions.

Here's the parts list:

• 2 12cm Whisper Quiet Computer Fans ~ $10/ea (I used Thermotake)
• 2 12cm fan grills ~ $1.50/ea (to keep fingers, toes, and dropped stuff out of the fan blades)
• AC to DC Transformer ~ $15 (make sure the DC voltage matches the fans and that it is double the milli-amps required by a fan)
• 8 bolts and nuts ~ $4
• 16 steel washers ~$1
• 32 3/4" rubber washers ~ $4
• 8 1/2" rubber washers - $1
• 2 Computer Fan connectors ~ $3 (optional)
• 4 sq ft of cheap fiberboard ~ $5 (probably don't even need that much)

The box measures 14"w x 7"d x 3"h and I just glued it all together with Elmer's Wood Glue.

I'm guess at these prices because most of this stuff I already had on hand from various computer projects, outdoor build projects and used electronic equipment. But I figure it may cost around $55 to build one if you have to go out an buy all the parts new.

I went as far as drilling 1/2" holes for the fan and grill mounts and inserting rubber washing in them to further isolate the vibrations of the fan from reverberating in the fiberboard box.

I used fan connectors instead of hard wiring them to the transformer so that if the fans burned out, I could easily replace them.

The whole thing is pretty quiet, moves a lot of air and really makes a difference in keeping our upstairs bedrooms cool. We have one in our bedroom and on in our son's.

Enjoy!