China Musings

A week or two after the shot in CM#13, we were back on our neighboorhood pedestrian commercial area when we happened upon a festival of sorts. I hastily threw Alison onto my shoulder, much to the bemusement of the folks around, and got her to tape the show from her vantage point.

Turns out it was a part of the Guangdong Tourism Festival that seems to have been going on that week. They had a big stage set up in the square, and a crowd of people were trying to get a closer look. By the time we arrived, the crowd had gotten so big that even I could hardly see what was happening, which is why I got Alison up on my shoulders.

The dance itself was pretty wierd, nothing that I would have assumed was a traditional folk dance. The costumes were a little fancy for that, but who am I to speak of it.

This is one of the reasons why we like living so close to this street. Even though it is not the main shopping area in GZ - there is Beijing Road, which I will get to later, and the Tian He shopping complex, which you saw in CM#5 - Shang Xia Jui is a vibrant place and there is always something going on.

Link to Culture and Tourism Festival and schedule

CM#14 The Shang Xia Jiu Chicken Dance

This video was taken one saturday night about 2 weeks ago. My original aim was to just do a single shot walk through, but I had to splice some stuff together. I hope this gives some idea of the retail/shopping aspect of Guangzhou. We really live right down the street from here, and although it is not the best place to shop - especially for me since nothing fits - there is always something going on and plenty of restaurants and tasty treats.

CM#13 Shang Xia Jiu Shopping Street.

OK, I know you have all been waiting for this. Where do I actually live? Is it a thached hut, a mansion? Well, you are about to find out. This was shot yesderday afternoon, Sunday.

We have been living here for almost 3 years, and we like the house a lot. Alison is not so crazy about the location or the fact that we are on the 8th floor, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Just to give some perspective, we pay 1300RMB per month. That’s about 150USD. For most of China, this is really expensive, but in GZ, a place like this at this price is a steal. Many of our friends live in dirtier, smaller, and less well appointed places for much more. Of course, many of them have elevators too…

CM#10 Tour of 17 Duobao Jie Apt. 801

This movie was taken over two nights eating out at a local restaurant. Last year we were regulars at this place, coming at least once a week until suddenly they shut down. The place used to look horrible, with un-adorned walls, plain wooden bench seats, and dirty floors. But 2 weeks ago, they re-opened as the restaurant anchoring a brand new hotel that was renovated into the building above it. Now it looks great, the food is the same, and the prices have not gone up too much. We ate there both nights for about 36 kuai, not the cheapest food available but certianly a bargian. And for Alison it is heaven, she gets to eat spicy food anytime she wants.

The restaurant, called 渔之家 (Fisherman’s Home | The Fisher’s Hut | The Place for Fisherpeople to Return to After a Long Trip), is styled as a Chongqing 重庆 (formerly known as Chungking) hotpot place, and they have a lot of normal dishes as well. My favorite is something called Gan Bian Tudo Si 干便土豆丝, which are basically french fries, with chili peppers thrown in. Although I can’t breath fire like Alison can, I still enjoy spicy food.

I have gotten to figure out how to use the Quicktime sotware to paste movies together. I know, the editing needs work, but until someone can get me a real editing program for windows or linux for free, this is what you’ll get.

CM#8 Dinner at the Chongqing place

This is a video taken during our trip to HK for our 3 year anniversary. The Avenue of the Stars is HK’s answer to the famous Mann Theater in Los Angeles. It was recently completed and I guess they have been holding live shows there on a weekly basis. We happened to catch one of the acts while we strolled the lane. The Avenue itself is placed at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, right across from the famous HK skyline. The view was really nice and we had a great walk.

CM#7 Hong Kong Skyline

We have a date. Interview Dec 12, 2005. That is when Alison will have to convince the US that she really wants to be with me. We should get a visa within a few days after that.

This video was taken on a grocery run around the ‘hood. We live on a small alley that runs parallel to a larger road. Our community is made up of small, old, old, dwellings and newer block style apartment buildings. Although I appreciate the historic feel of the flagstone lane and the ageing architecture of days long past, I have come to realize that a lot of the people living in these old houses are also still mired in a standard of living that many of us thought we had left behind. Many of these small places have no or very little indoor plumbing. Cooking is done outside, as are clothes washing and sometimes hair washing.

We live in a very peculiar part of Guangzhou, and it is in no way indicitive of the rest of the city. There are several different situations which I hope to bring to you over time, so you can get a chance to see the dynamic nature of life in China.

Chinese Lesson:
路 Lu - Road [street, lane, way]
街 Jie - Street [road, lane, way]

The main street you see is Duobao Lu 多宝路, while we live on Duobao Jie 多宝街. In this case I would say the taxi takes us to Duobao Road, but we live on Duobao Way.

Geekspeak follows:
After spending hours over the weekend and last night trying to find some way to reduce the size of my movies, I finally broke down and upgraded to Quicktime Pro. So, now, instead of 10MB for 30sec we are down to 2MB for 30 sec, which is much more reasonable. The picture is not quite as large or as sharp, but you’ll deal.

Just a quick case in point for anyone who thinks Macs are too expensive: I spent countless hours downloading no less than 8 different video editors and converters in Windows and Linux and not one of them could both load my camera’s mpeg4 files and manage to not crash. When Tori brought over her iBook a few months ago when she was still here, I was able to spend 6 hours putting together a 5 minute movie from15 different clips, with music, titles, and trasitions, with iMovie. Comes right with the computer.

Anyway, Quicktime Pro doesn’t give me all the mutli-track goodness, but it does allow me to serve up my movies in slick H.264 iPod optimized format, and that’s good enough for me.

CM#6 Duo Bao lu

After striking out on cheap street, we took the Metro to Teem Plaza (天河城广场) This place was the biggest mall in Guangzhou until the Vanguard Mall opened up next door about 6 months ago. In any case, Teem Plaza is big enough. We took a look at some Sony Laptops and Alison browsed the leather bags. This is a quick look just to get a sense for the size of the place. We also shared some tasty mango gelato.

CM #5 Teem Plaza

This weekend I went shopping with Alison. We stopped by one of her favorite stores, the 5 kuai shop on Zhongshan 6 Rd 中山六路. Zhongshan Road, named for revolutionary leader Sun Yat-Sen (Sun Zhongshan in standard mandarin), is split into 8 parts and runs right through the heart of old Guangzhou. This particular section is a fairly good representation of WWII era architecture. The buildings here are not in especially good repair, and in other places, these style buildings are being torn down by the block. But in some areas they are being lovingly restored. I’ll have to take some video of one of those places.

CM #4 Zhong Shan 6 Lu

This is a video I took the last time I was in Baokang, Alison’s hometown. It shows her eldest sister making one of my favorites, fried poatoes.

While we were there, the whole family ate together pretty often, and da jie (literally big sister) did most of the cooking. You will see here how she expertly takes care of this dish, very straightforwardly.

CM #3 Cooking with Da Jie