Sunday, June 22, 2014

Weekend in Xiamen part 5

Zhongshan Park is at the end of Zhongshan Road, so we already knew how to get there. Zhongshan Road is pretty easy to get to since it is the main tourist area of the island and is probably the most popular shopping street in the entire city.

Neither of us wanted to go back to Zhongshan Road, but I wanted to see the park. Ryan reluctantly agreed.

Zhongshan Park was not the most exciting place in the world, but it was a nice, clean place to take a walk. Pretty much the opposite of Zhongshan Road. The shopping street was dirty, loud and far too crowded. The park was clean, relatively quiet and almost empty, at least when we were there. It was not strictly empty. There were probably hundreds of people there, but anything in China with less than a million people is empty.

The highlight of the trip for both of us was the grocery store. That might seem strange, but I am still impressed by how many American items this store had. People visiting from the United States would not care. It is a tiny shop compared to American supermarkets. Since we live far away from the United States and real American food is hard to find, this store was a blessing to us.

I liked one of the two Italian restaurants, but Ryan's favorite food in Xiamen was pizza. Our hotel, aside from being in a good location, had a Papa John's in the courtyard. They even delivered to our room, which is a small price to pay for mediocre pizza.

It's easy to find better pizza in Hong Kong. Pizza Express is not bad and Paisano's is quite good. Ryan has neither in Fuzhou. His pizza choices are Pizza Hut and Chinese pizza. Frozen pizzas are better than Pizza Hut and no one from Italy or New York would recognize Chinese pizza as pizza. The first time I saw a Chinese pizza, I asked someone what it was. They said it was pizza and I laughed. I thought they were joking.

Papa John's is enormously flawed, but it is better than Pizza Hut and much closer to what most of the world calls pizza than Chinese pizza. The housekeeping staff at our hotel had to pick up a lot of pizza boxes.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Weekend in Xiamen part 4

The big sights in Xiamen are Gulangyu, Nanputuo Temple, Xiamen University, Zhongshan Park and Zhongshan Road.

We went to Gulangyu on our first trip to Xiamen and we absolutely hated it. There was nothing wrong with the island itself. It might even be pleasant on its own. The problem was that you can't really see it with millions of people milling about. Literally millions of people. It reminded me of Disneyland on opening day, only the people on Gulangyu were much angrier.

A quick ferry ride gets visitors from Xiamen Island to Gulangyu, but they cram the ferry as full as they possibly can. Even fuller than that, really. If you don't want to stand in a giant ashtray and smell what everyone else just ate, don't take the ferry. Gulangyu is an island with no connecting bridges, so there is no other way to get there. It is technically illegal to smoke on the ferry, but smoking laws are merely suggestions in China. Since pretty much everyone smokes, those suggestions are always ignored.

Once you are pushed off the ferry by the mob, it is still unbelievably crowded. Chinese people naturally push their way everywhere and this island is wall to wall people pushing to get to whatever they want to see. There is an observation deck on the highest hill, but getting there was an absolute nightmare. I have seen lions on the Discovery Channel that were more polite to the zebras they killed than the way most of the people on Gulangyu acted in their mad lust to be the first at everything.

We also went to Nanputuo Temple on our first trip. That was another place that is probably nice without millions of people all pushing each other. We did not even bother attempting the top of that hill.

Our first trip to Xiamen was in the middle of June and this one was at the end of May, so maybe we did not pick the best times to go. It might be less crowded in January. Maybe some of these places are better when there are only hundreds of thousands of people.

We never went to Xiamen University, on either trip. We never saw the point. There is supposed to be a nice lake at the university, but our hotel was next to a lake, so we never bothered.

Zhongshan Road is a major tourist shopping street. We went there on our first trip with mixed results. This was where we saw the world's filthiest Walmart and a woman urinating at the front door. There is nothing else on Zhongshan Road besides tourist shopping. Since we already knew that, we did not go back.

What we never saw on our first trip was Zhongshan Park, so we went there this time.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Weekend in Xiamen part 3

Xiamen Island is small, so getting to everywhere we wanted to go was pretty easy. There is more to the city than the island, but we were not there long enough to explore the outer reaches, and we really didn't care anyway. We mostly went for the grocery store. That was on the other end of Yundang Lake. We could have walked to it from the hotel, but then going back with all those groceries would have been too much.

We actually went to the grocery store twice. The first time, they were out of too many of the things we wanted. They said another shipment would come in on our last day in Xiamen, so we went back just before we left the city. It would have been ironic if the main reason we went to Xiamen was a bust, but that's the chance you take when you go somewhere for a single reason.

Across the street from the American grocery store are two Chinese Italian restaurants, Duole and Mamma Mia. We did not try either of them the first time we went to Xiamen because we were on a cruise ship full of free food, or at least food that was already paid. This time, we had to find our own meals, so we went to one of the Chinese Italian restaurants on our first night and the other one right next door on our second night.

From the outside, both restaurants looked basically the same. You could tell they were two different restaurants, but there was nothing that distinguished one from the other. From the inside, one definitely looked more like a traditional Italian restaurant than the other. We assumed that one would have the better food. We were completely wrong.

The restaurant with the more generic café interior, Duole, had much better food. I don't know who runs either restaurant, but I would be surprised if the chef in Duole was not Italian, or at least trained in Italy. The pasta was as fresh as could be and the sauces were excellent. Almost every single Italian restaurant in China serves dried pasta. The better places put more effort into the sauce. The worst places just slap ketchup on top. Duole served us fresh pasta that was probably made that day. The best part, to me at least, was the garlic bread. I love garlic bread. It is one of the hardest things to find in Hong Kong. Lots of places have Chinese bread. Some places have what they call garlic bread. No one has genuine, fresh bread with genuine garlic and genuine olive oil. Who knows why. Bread is not a Chinese staple, but we have fresh garlic all over the place.

Even if you find a place that says it has garlic bread, it is usually Chinese bread, which is nothing like Italian, French, German, Dutch, American, Canadian, Irish or Scandinavian bread. Sometimes they will put Chinese butter on it or Chinese vegetable oil. Chinese butter tastes nothing like what I think of as butter. I don't know how they make it, but something is just off, like vegan cheese. Chinese oil is usually corn or peanut oil, which is not always a bad thing, but is not ideal for garlic bread. Olive oil is more expensive and not a traditional Chinese ingredient, so few places will use it.

Cheaper places use something called gutter oil. The less said about that, the better. Foreigners can usually tell which places use gutter oil since you will have a dramatic reaction to the food right away. My rule is if any food comes out of me right after I put it in, I never go back to that place.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Vacation to Somewhere part 6

Finland is out. The house where we were going to stay in Helsinki is no longer available. That is what sold me on going to Helsinki in the first place. Without that house, I'm not as interested. It was a very nice house.

Kevin was the only one who wanted to go to Finland anyway. No one else was excited about it, so it's probably best that we are not going there.

Now we are pretty much back on page one. We don't know where we will end up going. August is coming up, so we better make up our minds fast.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Tiananmen Square

Victoria Park
Photo from the New York Times


It was more crowded than usual in Victoria Park yesterday. It's often crowded in Victoria Park. It is a popular place to hang out on the weekends and is an even more popular place for large gatherings and protests. There are few open spaces in the city, so the park works pretty well, and it is easy to get to.

Yesterday, about 100,000 people crammed into Victoria Park to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest. People gather every June 4th, but this was the 25th anniversary, so turnout was exceptionally high.

The amazing thing is that Hong Kong is part of China. There is never any mention of the protest in Mainland China, but in Hong Kong, everyone can say whatever they want about it. Internet service is far less restricted in Hong Kong. Every anniversary is all over Hong Kong news while it is completely ignored on Mainland news.

People talk about “one country, two systems”, but Hong Kong is very much Chinese. There is definitely more personal liberty in Hong Kong, but the government, people and culture are decidedly Chinese. Most of the people in Hong Kong or their parents are originally from Mainland China and the older generations see China in a positive light. Some people say that Hong Kong police are becoming more and more Chinese every day, while civil rights and labor rights already lean more toward Chinese.

What I find really amazing is that people from the Mainland can come to Hong Kong relatively easily. The city is mostly seen as a giant shopping mall, but the people in charge of China's government have to know that Hong Kong newspapers and TV have enough freedom of the press to criticize China and its leaders. When people visit from China to go shopping, they can easily hear news stories that they would never hear in China.

Chinese visitors in Hong Kong this week might be surprised to learn about what happened in Tiananmen Square. Some of them might go home and tell others about it. That is definitely not so good for all that control and repression the Chinese government has worked so hard on. On the other hand, there is money to be made in tourism.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Weekend in Xiamen part 2

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the island, which was a very good choice. Even though we had been to Xiamen before, we knew nothing about the hotels since the cruise ship was our hotel.

In Fuzhou, you have few options. There are a few western hotels, but they are easily the most expensive. Most of the hotels are Chinese, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but Chinese customers seem to have different ideas about what is clean and comfortable. Chinese hotels also look like they were decorated 50 years ago. I don't care about the latest furniture and whatever this week's trends are, but I think you have to redecorate your hotel every once in a while. If nothing else, newer carpets and beds tend to be cleaner.

Xiamen has more choices. They have plenty of Chinese hotels, of course, but they also have a greater variety of western hotels. It's not just the most expensive western chains. They have cheap western hotels, too.

The Crowne Plaza is neither the most expensive nor cheapest hotel in Xiamen. It is supposedly a 5 star hotel, but Chinese 5 star is usually not the same as actual 5 star. I have seen some Chinese 5 star hotels that Motel 6 would not want to touch. The Crowne Plaza would probably be 3 stars in Paris. It was clean and comfortable, which are the most important things to us, and it was in a great location.

The hotel had all the basics you expect of an international hotel that are sometimes hard to find in China. Everything in the room worked properly and did what it was supposed to do. The hotel even had a swimming pool, which is not as common in China as it should be, but the pool was being renovated while we were there, so we never used it.

The hotel was a few blocks away from Yundang Lake. We could not see the lake from our room because we were facing the opposite direction, but it was an easy walk. We went to the lake during the cruise, but we spent more time there this time. Yundang Lake is not the most exciting piece of real estate in the world, but it is a pleasant place to walk around and a lot cleaner, and a million times safer, than walking on the street.

Since we stayed at a major hotel, it was easy to get a taxi. We were on one of the major streets that cross the island, so taxis and buses were always an option. Buses in China can be difficult to impossible if you don't understand the Chinese system. Most foreigners just use taxis, which can also be difficult if you don't speak any Chinese. In my limited experience, I would say that Xiaman taxi drivers are almost guaranteed to try to rip you off, until you say something to them in Chinese. Once they hear Chinese, they immediately shape up, and perk up. More than a few taxi drivers stopped for us begrudgingly, but were suddenly animated when I spoke even the smallest amount of Chinese. I can't assume anyone's political persuasion, but my impression was that some of these drivers were sick and tired of waiguoren expecting them to speak anything other than Chinese. Since Xiamen is not among the most popular of international destinations, there has never really been any effort to bring in English or Japanese. Hong Kong taxis are the opposite. Most drivers are comfortable, or at least tolerant, of English while some are personally offended by whichever Chinese dialects they have political disagreements.

If you can't speak any Chinese, any decent hotel should be able to write down where you want to go. The Crowne Plaza, like most better hotels, has business cards with a Chinese map on the back. Whenever you go back to the hotel, you can simply hand the driver the card. Whether he approves of funny sounding foreigners or not, he can probably read the Chinese card.