Funny Stuff: The 10 Funkiest Foods I Met In China

*This is Funny Stuff:  If you're looking for the Chicken Foot Soup Recipe, we put it under this link:  Chicken foot Stew.

Now, to be clear, before talking about Chinese food, ordering off a Chinese food Menu in Hong Kong usually brought you something like this:

Seafood dumplings and wonton soup just outside the gate to Kowloon Park

Some were traditional Chinese foods and some was more neuvo but it all tasted pretty much like heaven.    I mean, you're in China so pretty much every restaurant was a Chinese food restaurant right?  I also ate a lot of food, strange food so I thought I would give you my list of  

The top 10 Funkiest Foods We Met in China and Hong Kong:

10.  Beef tendon.

I don't know whether beef tendon is a gross food or not, but seeing signs that said, "Fresh Beef Tendon" kind of freaked me out.  I know we eat the more interesting parts of beef ground up in hamburgers and hot dogs.  Spelling it out though.  That was kinda strange.  I'm all about Chinese food, but can we give it a handy American euphemism: Achilles Meal?  Maybe?  

9.  Chicken Foot Soup.

Here's what's weird about Chinese food.  A lot of it still looks like it did when it was up walking around.  Minxi and I stopped at a fast food place in Macau.  She managed to score me some chicken foot soup.    The soup was really pretty good and when I asked Minxi if she wanted the foot, she was excited.  Apparently, it's the bonus like the wonton in the wonton soup.  Felt like I dodged a bullet there.  She didn't offer to share.  Chicken feet?  Yech!

8.  Squid on a Stick.

Night Market in Mon Kok.

Several people had told me that the best Chinese food in China was not in the restaurants.  They told me to eat anything I could find street vendors selling on a stick.  Oh yes I did, with dipping sauce.  It was awesome!  Those are cuddle fish balls in the other hand.  I felt sort of bad for the cuddle fish but hey, life is rough.

7.  The back yard.

This isn't a Chinese food or Chinese food restaurant thing exactly but follow along.  This is a picture of Minxi's brother's back yard in Xindu.  The food is grown in the garden to the left.  It comes into the house on the right to be eaten.  The left overs go to the pigs.  The pig poop and anything...excreted in the house go into the pond on the left to be aged then scooped out and sent back to the garden.  Minxi's sister in law's steamed pork dumplings wrapped in banana leaves were the best food in the history of the world but I tried not to think about the whole "circle of life" thing going on in the back yard while I was eating.  

6.  The chicken feet.

This food strange, very strange

Did I mention the chicken feet?  Vacuum sealed in plastic with spices.  I'm so not hungry.  I had a nightmare like this once while napping in biology class.

5.  Jellied rice.

Southern Chinese Food Restaurant in Kowloon

These little guys were really very tasty.  It's steamed strips of jellied rice in a duck sauce like sauce with sesames.  The problem was that they were basically steaming, spineless white grubs.  Getting them to your mouth was a challenge then the good taste vs. slug like texture battle began.  I did eat them with chop sticks but it wasn't pretty.  Minxi has a nice laugh and she got to practice it...a lot.

4. Jelly Straws.

  

Speaking of things with a slug like consistency, how about jelly straws.  Just like the name implies.  These are tubes of a jelly like candy that you squeeze into your mouth.   I brought some home and a friend of mine at work literally spit it out.  The taste is fine but that "sucking the gut from a caterpillar" feeling is way too strong for me.  Even my daughter, who loves them, managed to dump half a slug into my carry on case.  Very nice.

3.  Dried shark.

Tia O Fish Market, Launtau Island

Hey, if you're going to be eating shark a lot, why bother with hustling down to the market every other day for a slice?  Why not just buy the whole shark, hang it in your pantry and cut off what you need?  That's a real whole dried shark that I really saw at Tia O market.  Really weird.

2.  Tea Eggs.

Surprisingly yummy are tea eggs.  Literally, they are eggs boiled in a strong tea.  They've got a nasty green brown colored flesh problem but have a nice mellow sort of taste.  Plus, if you've been on a bus for 14 hours and need protein right now, there's nothing better.  Get a drink though.  They gave me pasty mouth something fierce.  Although, I'm drooling now thinking about them.  Mmmm tea eggs.

1.  This thing.

Tia O Market

"What is it?'  I asked Minxi.

"I don't know."  She answered.

"Is it part of a fish?" 

"I don't know."
"Can we order it at a restaurant?"

We asked around some and it does definitely come from inside a fish.  I sort of think that we're looking at dried fish air bladders here but I could be wrong. (Update:  This is fish "mow" or air bladder.  It is a delicacy I understand, though not something  you're going to find at a run of the mill Chinese food restaurant in the US.)

Did I mention the chicken feet?

That's so gross.  I can't stop staring.

Funny Stuff: God Bless Colonial Harland Sanders

On September 9, 1890 a young man named Harland David Sanders was born in Henryville, Indiana.

Harland David Sanders

His was a hard life.  His biological father died when he was seven and his step-father, when his mother re-married, was violent.  He joined the army at 16 and served in Cuba.  Upon return to the states, he worked among other jobs, as a fireman for the railroad and a steamboat pilot.

Why do I tell you this?  Because, when Minxi and I arrived in Hu Jho at 3:00 am, 13 hours behind schedule, the only people at the bus stop were a handful of those very helpful people who badgered us and followed us around until it became clear that we couldn't just wait there for the 8:00 AM bus to Xin Du.  A nice lady we'd befriended on the bus offered to take us to her place but her dad said no.  We caught a cab and told him, "Take us anywhere safe."

You see, in 1950, as a reward for his innovative pressure cooking technique and creative use of herbs and spices, Kentucky Governor, Ruby Laffoon, renamed Harland David Sanders, Colonial Harland Sanders, and at 3:00 in the morning in a town where westerners were so rare that everyone stared at me like I was a movie star, our bus driver took us to a 24 hour KFC.  That's right.  The all nighter in Huzhou China, is a Kentucky Fried Chicken.  The world is truly bizarre beyond comprehension.

Minxi and I spent four hours in that KFC that morning, eating spicy chicken sandwiches, drinking milk tea, and chatting with the other clients who seemed to think meeting an American was pretty cool.  KFC's menu was pretty much the same, as was the smiling face of Colonial Sanders.  It kind of fit in a way.  I was feeling more than a little Kentucky Fried.

Outside, street sweepers, farmers carrying their food to market in trays strung on poles over their shoulders, and mystery moped riders passed to and fro in the dark streets.  I was in a strange, not kentucky fried, city, in the dark, continents from home, yet I was safe, chilling with my love in the KFC.

By 7:00 am we were full, and back in a cab, sleep deprived but safe.  I don't know where we would have gone if not to Kentucky Fried Chicken, but all I could think, as the sun rose and we made our way back to the bus terminal was, "God bless you, Colonial Sanders."

Colonial Harland Sanders

Holidays in China: Guilin

Having spent her youth as a tour guide in China, Minxi's been to many of the best holiday spots in China.  One of her favorites is the town she lives in now, Guilin Guangxi, airport code: KWL.

Turns out that Guilin is a major tourist town.  It does look pretty stunning.  Here's a pic Minxi sent:

Must be nice. Hanging out in Paradise, totally rocking wild hats.

This is the view out back from Minxi's apartment:

That's "Brocade Hill" in the middle of Brocade Park on the Lijong River.

This is the view across to the little sea food restaurant on the island in the river:

See the Restaurant?  There behind the...under the...Yup Paradise

Despite the fact that Guilin is a city of several million, it is a nature lovers paradise.  Hiking trails, caves, and river tours abound (there's a lot more river on the other side of the island.)  The sightseeing is fantastic.  Many adventure travelers make Guilin their home base while they tour the beautiful surrounding countryside. 

You're deep into China here so the hotels and food prices are generally much cheaper than in the US, which really stretches the holiday budget.  Minxi spends about $10.00 US on food a week.  That's cooking at home most days but dang!  

All this beauty comes at a price.  It rains in Guilin most of the time between March and June and can get windy and below freezing (though not much) in the winter.  If you can hit it in the summer or don't mind the rain, be sure to make Guilin part of your holiday plans!  A great tourist city.

Funny Stuff: Bizarre Jokes In Chinese Toilets

The funniest pictures I took in China came from a bathroom.  Let me explain.  I love a good joke as much as the next guy, but humor doesn't always translate well.  Which is its own joke really and made for some very funny pictures.

10:00 pm found us back at the bus station.  This bus was headed straight through from Shen Zhen to Hu Jho.  It was raining out but was quiet and warm on the bus and we were soon asleep.  When we woke up, we were at a rest stop in the Twilight Zone.  It was empty and massive, with no less than 60 stalls in the men's room.  We'll talk about the Chinese Toilets later.   Right now we need to talk about the "joke of the day" signs.  Over each urinal in the rest stop, the designers had placed a little joke for you to read while you did your business.  They even translated them into English.  This turned out to be very funny.  Probably much funnier than the original joke.

Joke of the Day:  "I have not cooked?   Ha ha ha....um?

This joke I like.  In English there's a touch of adult humor in it.  Plus, I just like calling people's mom's skirts.  "Dude, you mom is a skirt!"

Oh yeah.  The old dead turtle joke.  He he...What?

So, if you're every just looking for jokes and humor in China at 2:00 in the morning, try the bathroom.  There's a sentence I'll bet you never thought you'd hear.

Funny Stuff: Top 10 Bus Driving Tips

Minxi and my's travel involved airplanes, buses, subways, taxis, high speed ferries, escalators, motorcycles, and one purple PT Cruiser.  Only once in all this travel was I really scared, though it seems funny to look back on.  The local bus from Guang Zhou to Shen Zhen was driven I think by a man who'd given up serial killing in favor of the more sadistic sport of bus driving.  It took us three hours to go sixty miles and Minxi and I aged four years.

He seemed to view bus driving as a macho sort of extreme sport where you risked not only your own life but also those of the people in your care.  Southern China is growing so fast that the roadways are always a step behind.  This can make the driving more than a little hectic.  This guy though, was enjoying the challenge way too much.

I found myself wondering what sort of advice this diabolical character would give to young drivers just joining the bus force.  By studying his methods and tactics careful between waves of terror, I was able to put together his basic strategy.

The Cross Town Bus Driver's Top 10 Rules for Fun and Terror on the Roadways of Southern China.

1.  Your pedals are unruly scoundrels rightfully placed below your feet.  They should be stomped and ground into submission.  If they team up against you, smite them both at the same time.

2.  You don't actually strike another object until the distance between you reaches 0.  Demonstrate your understanding of this principle by approaching objects to as close to 0 as possible and then pitch your bus aside unscathed.  This makes you appear both manly and smart.

3.  Opening the door and shouting at pedestrians is both a good way to drum up business and to meet women.

4.  People who get motion sick are weak.  Making them vomit helps them build character.

5.  Moped are mice.  You are a cat.

6.  Only wimps come to a complete stop.  Macho men and women appreciate the challenge of leaping onto and off of a still moving bus.  

7.  Pedestrian and "Hood Ornament" are synonyms.

8.  Staying in one lane for too long breed complacency.   There are eight lanes out there for a reason.  Use them all.

9.  If your vehicle outweighs the cross traffic  you have right-of-Weigh.  They'll move.  Oh yes.  They'll move.

10.  Route maps are only guidelines.   Darting suddenly down narrow alleys not only heightens the drama it is also a great way to catch some laundry on the top of the bus.  Fluttering laundry is a sign of bus driving done well.

With these 10 rules, you young grasshopper, can be the bus driver of doom.

Seriously.  We had no problem with the in town bus service.  And no problem with the long haul buses, but that bus that ran on the eight lane highway but still wanted to stop at every corner.  Steer clear man.  Just steer clear.

Day 2 Part 2: Mr. Taxi's Wild Ride and The Four Dollar Hotel

Just across the border into Shenzhen, we took a little break.

Either Mnxi is testing her vision or I've told a really bad joke.

It's a little hard to explain the scale of what we are looking at here.  The building on the right is a bus terminal on this level and a taxi stand below.  The building on the left is a train station and the entire plaza that you see has a matching underground level.  China is built on the really really big scale.

We were on our way to Xin Du which was just off the main highway between Shen Zhen and Hu Jho.  We were expecting to take a bus from the building on the right and arrive at Xin Du mid-afternoon.  It was here at this plaza that Minxi's normally flawless navigation failed us.  When she passed though this plaza two days before, she hadn't actually checked on the Shen Zhen Hu Jho bus.  It wasn't here.  I don't know my way around Shen Zhen well enough to understand this but Hu Jho seems to be a bit out of the way and no bus runs from this station.  Poor Minxi.  She planned so hard for this trip and was taking such good care of us.  She really felt bad about what was a very innocent mistake.

Here I also learned for the first time what would be a much repeated lesson.  Those helpful people who come up to you when you're wandering around lost in China don't really have your best interest at heart.  The bus terminal was huge, with different lines running out of different bays.  While wandering from line to line, we picked up a woman who was about 60.  She followed us around giving Minxi helpful advice in Cantonese.  I couldn't understand her but Minxi's face told me that she didn't care for this woman.  Minxi has travelled a lot in China and I trusted her worry.  When I asked her what this lady was about, Minxi explained that she was trying to get us to go to a transportation provider but that Minxi didn't think she was "real."  We did eventually follow her to a little out of the way kiosk selling travel to anywhere.  Minxi was dead set against it.  I don't know what sort of transport we would have gotten if we'd have paid these people but another of their "helpers" approached while we were talking to a police man.

These helpful folks showed up everywhere we went in China, attracted I think to the legend that all white people are rich.  While none were hostile, they could be very persistent and distracting while trying to read a map.  Minxi says that these people can't be trusted.  I imagine that most of them do offer some version of the service they advertise but probably not safely or in a cost efficient manner.  It would certainly be easy to vanish into the mass of China so I strongly recommend staying with known, licensed tour guides and established bus and train lines.

We ended up taking a pleasant though expensive side trip across Shen Zhen in a taxi searching for a bus to Hu Jho.  I'd read that Shen Zhen was a dirty grimy town and was pleasantly pleased to find a bustling metropolis.  I rode in the back and enjoyed the view while Minxi chatted with the very pleasant driver.  It's a planned city, designed to support shipping and commerce with Hong Kong and there are plenty of factories and sky cranes around.  We drove on some very pleasant, tree lined boulevards though and saw lots of shopping and day to day life.  The Shen Zhen Bay Sports Center is as amazingly beautiful as it is large.  This is a computer generated promotional photo and only shows about a third of the total structure.

Shenz Shen Stadium

We were on our third bus terminal, an old stone affair with big, viney trees out front, when we finally found our bus.  The bad news, it was about 1:00 in the afternoon and the bus didn't leave til 10:00 pm. With no plans in Shen Zhen and a tired born of days of travel, we decided to find a hotel.  Luckily, the building across the street proved to have a small hotel on the third floor.  There were no signs, or billboards, just big concrete steps up to a filthy patio where three women were chatting and tending to a small flock of half naked children.  The room was a concrete box with a small shower/toilet combo. The box springs sat on the floor and, since the shower was raised, was soaked with water from the shower.  It was dark with no windows and had a cool muggy smell.  The price was hard to beat.  We paid 25 yuan, a little more than four dollar.

Minxi headed out to buy food and I let the cool and dark ride me off into a far away sleep.

Just How Big is China?

Probably the hardest thing for me to get used to in China, except the toilets which we'll talk about later, was the sheer number of people.  No matter where you went, somewhere between 200 and 2,000,000 of your very best friends were there with you.  It takes some getting used to both the mad press of people and the sheer scale that China is built on.  The border crossing between Lo Wu and Shen Zhen for example sees about 1,000,000 visitors per day.  When you go to the taxi stand there you find not one but two lanes of stalls for taxis to pull up to to pick up passengers.  These lanes are in a big U shape under the bus terminal.  All in all about 60 or 70 cabs can and do load at the same time, 24 hours a day.  And that's just the taxi stand.  There's also a bus terminal the size of a football stadium and a train station there.  It's staggering really.

You remember that Original Star Trek episode "The Mark of Gideon" where there was this planet with no disease and there were so many people no one could move?

Yeah, it's like that.

There are somewhere around 1.4 Billion people living in China.  Numbers like this are a little hard to wrap your head around so here are some handy comparisons.

There are:

1,400,000,000 people in China.

the US population is a whole digit shorter.

311,000,000.

This means that there are about 4.2 people in China for every person in the US.

The entire population of my home state of Kansas would fit into Beijing, that just Beijing 7.4 times.

If you worked at $10 and hour 40 hours a week, it would take your 67,304 years to make one dollar for each person living in China.

The total weight of the population of China is about the same as 259 Empire State Buildings.

If everyone in China were to eat a quarter pounder today, it would be the same as one 350,000,000 pounder.

So you get the point.  When you cross the border into China be prepared.  60 stall toilets, 300 table restaurants, people everywhere!

Day 2 Part 1: Into China

The whole reason I flew into Hong Kong rather than Beijing or some other Northern City was to meet "Ba Ba" Minxi's father.  He had been a professor of Russian and English at the University in Guilin and had an apartment granted him by the University there.  Each winter however he went South to his hometown to pass the cold months with his three sons.

Minxi and Ba Ba's home village, Liange He, is across the river from a slightly larger village called Xin Du.  It's so remote that most people in Xin Du haven't taken up Mandarin and are still speaking Cantonese.  In her home town, they still speak the local dialect.

I was more than a little intimidated by the idea of meeting Ba Ba.  At 83 he had survived the Japanese Occupation, lost family members in the revolution of 1947, been relocated to a collective farm, raised three boys, moved by himself to the University, and when his wife died, took Minxi who was seven at the time, off to Guilin and raised her while teaching.  Oh, there was also the social revolution of the 70's.  He'd survived that too.  Now, two cancers later, he was alive and well, living the dignified life as the elder of his family and working hard to find a good husband for his youngest child, my Minxi.   Everything I've accomplished in my life reads something like, "got served cinnamon rolls during Saturday morning cartoons" next to this man.

Still, Minxi and I are not sweethearts or some kind of crush, we're building a life together and the right thing to do was to go meet Ba Ba and ask for Minxi's hand in person so, after a good night sleep punctuated by a midnight food attack, we made for the border.

There are tons of ways across the border from Hong Kong to China.  I was sort of in favor of taking the ferry from the China Hong Kong Ferry Terminal on the West side of Kowloon just about 10 minutes from the hotel.  It drops you off at the terminal Ghuang Zhao.  We were on a budget though so we used the MTR.  The MTR Blue Line runs from Hung Hom, which is connected to East Tsim Sha Tsui by an underground walkway, all the way to Lo Wu, where Minxi had crossed the border two days before.

Although it's called a subway, a good part of the blue line in above ground as it crosses the New Territories between the mountains and Taio Harbor.  The harbor and Mountains were beautiful but here I saw, for the first time, the poorer side of Hong Kong.  We left the glittering Kowloon, passes through some middle class neighborhoods an into poorer housing built over the drainages and culverts that run down the mountain.  There wasn't a lot of graffiti or signs of violence but it was otherwise a lot like some of the poorer parts of Los Angeles that I've seen.

Be careful when you get to Sheung Shui.  The blue line splits here.  Half the cars go on to Lo Wu, the other half go on to Lok Ma Chau.  Minxi and I had to leave our car and wait for the next one to take us to Lo Wu.

It's easy to find the border crossing itself.  The platform at Lo Wu is a kind of giant funnel.  I never had any trouble at any of the border crossings on the trip.  It's a two stage process, you fill out your visitor card, show your paper to the guard, they scan you and then pass you through to the inspectors who were never interested in me.  From there you go on to a second guard who clears  you into the country.

Minxi had to go into the "Chinese Nationals" line and I had to go into the "Foreigners" line.  It takes real class to stand in the "Foreigners" line and not hum "Feels Like the First Time."  There's an enclosed bridge from the Hong Kong side to the mainland China side but I didn't get a good look.  I'd lost sight of Minxi.  A few minutes later we were reunited and emerged in the warm morning sun in Shen Zhen. That was more or less when all hell broke loose.

Funny Stuff: I could pay 3000 Yuan but I Don't Like You!

When looking for budget places to stay in Hong Kong, I found two different types of hotel, a regular hotel and a "Youth Hostel."  I knew there was a horror movie called "Hostel" but that was about it.

Here's what I learned:  A "Hostel" is a budget style hotel usually with dorm style rooms.  The world is full of these as a visit to http://www.hostelworld.com/ will show you.  These seem to cater to the young and "backpaker" crowds.  

When you look up budget hotels in Hong Kong, you'll find lots of things called "hostels."  In the language of Hong Kong these are licensed as guest houses and there seems to be a lot of variety in terms of quality and features.  In Kowloon they are found in "mansions."  These are not mansions in the high gables Hollywood Hills sort  of way.  Rather these are 15 to twenty story buildings roughly the shape of a city block.  The lower levels they are filled with shops and vendors.  The upper levels have businesses, private residences ,and guest houses.

We stayed in two:  The Cosmic Guest House in Mirador Mansion and The Angel Guest House in Chunk King Mansion.  In some ways they were the same.  The rooms were tiny, they were cheap (About $35 per night,) they both offered rooms with and without bathrooms, and they both offered double locking doors.  That is to say, an outer locking door to your hallway and then an inner locking door to your room.  

Our room at the Cosmic Guesthouse.

What differed was the staff.  Minxi had made the arrangements for the Cosmic before I arrived.  The lady who ran the place changed the prices abruptly when she saw that I was a Westerner and not Chinese as she had assumed. She also decided, when she saw that Minxi had Chinese money on her, that she couldn't take Hong Kong Dollars only Yuan.  The exchange rate was better and she was going to make about $1.00 more dollar on our stay.  She also failed to fix the broken toilet in the hall.  We talked to her briefly when we got back from China.  She showed us a room with an included toilet but wanted twice as much.  Fed up, I refused.  She she sensed that the deal was slipping away and, asked in English, "Well, how much can you pay?"  Wrong question.  We left and walked down to Chung King Mansion where we found the Angel.  Minxi spent the next two days laughing to herself and repeating, "We could pay 3000 Yuan but I don't like you."  Harrumph.  I got a little grouchy with the Cosmic lady.

The Angel staff was exactly the opposite.  They weren't effusively friendly or anything but they took our visit seriously and let us keep the room for the remainder of the stay for the same price they offered the first night even though that meant letting us have the weekend for the week day rate.  Adil was our host.  He was an Indian with fair English.  He spent most of the time hanging out in the hall talking to this guy from Tonga who had rented a room for the month.  Adil had the bad habit of leaving the outer door open a crack but made up for it by sleeping in the hallway on a small mattress at night.  It was awkward creeping over him in the morning but we definitely felt safe.  

The hallways of the mansions can be pretty gross but the Angel itself was pretty clean and they kept hot water and a small fridge on hand.  I give them a 4 out of 5.  It was a good place to stay

Lonely Planet has a listing for them here 

http://hotels.lonelyplanet.com/china/hong-kong-r1973696/angel-guest-house-q1262907/

If you do happen to spend the night there be sure to tell them that the Hong Kong Honky sent you.  It won't mean anything now but maybe I'll pick up a discount next time I'm in town.

We're Flying over What?

It would be unsurprising to hear someone say that a 23.5 hour day spent flying on airplanes was the longest day of their life.  What's surprising is how true that was of my flight from Kansas City to Hong Kong.

The day actually started in the dark at 4:00 am when my very good friend Michelle showed up at my door to take me from my home in Topeka to Kansas City for the first leg of my flight.  If you're ever wondering who your real friends are, the ones who show up at your house at 4:00 am are the real ones.  She showed back up at the airport 10 days later at midnight to pick me up.  Truly an amazing friend.  Thanks 1,000,000 Michelle!

The flight left Kansas City at about 6:20 and sunrise happened for me about an hour later as we were approaching Denver.  The sun didn't set for me until about a half an hour before I landed in Hong Kong a full 22 hours later.  Here's why.

When I left Kansas city I headed East and landed in Denver about an hour later.  Since I went from Central Time to Mountain Time, it also got to be an hour earlier on the way.  So, when I left Kansas City, the clocks read 6:20 and after an hour and a half of flying, the clocks in Denver read 6:45.  I was flying away from the sun.  I wasn't moving as fast as the world spins so the sun was still gaining on me but only slowly.  I had dawn at 7:30 Topeka time, Noon at about 4:00 pm and sunset around 6:00 the next morning.  

This made napping on the plane, never an easy task, even harder because my eyes insisted that it was still only mid-day outside when my body thought it was bedtime.

My time travelling, pole hopping, four story tall airplane about to board in San Francisco. 

The other thing about the flight that just freaked me out was that we went over the Bearing Sea Land Bridge between Alaska and Siberia about four hours into the tran-pacific portion of the flight.  That's right.  Leaving from San Francisco, way South of Alaska, and heading to Hong Kong even farther South, we went over Alaska and Eastern Siberia.  I was able to follow our progress on the handy video display in the cabin of the plane, what took me a little longer to figure out was why.

Our problem was the jet stream, the band of high altitude winds that circles the globe.  In the Northern Hemisphere it circles the globe West to East at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.  Rather than fly against a 200 mile an hour headwind all day, it is actually faster for a plane leaving San Francisco to push up North of the Jet Stream and then drop straight down onto a target in Asia.  Our flight path took us past Anchorage, all the way up just South of the Bearing Land Bridge, and back down into China West of Beijing.  For a while we were actually well West of Hong Kong but the clever guys in air traffic control had it figured out so that we blew back East, right where they wanted us in time to land in Hong Kong.  After all that, we landed within 3 minutes of our expected time.  How you fly 7,000 miles across 200 mile an hour winds and land within 3 minutes of the target is beyond me.  If I ever get a job at the airport, it's going to be in the baggage handling or food service fields.

Going home we took advantage of the jet stream, shooting straight across the Pacific over the Southern tip of Japan.  With a 200 mile an hour tailwind, we were moving so fast that our ground speed was over 800 miles an hour most of the time.  I left Hong Kong at noon on the 12th and landed in San Francisco at 8:30 the same morning, having briefly flown back into the 11th when we went over the International date line.  By the time I landed in Kansas City a little after midnight on the 13th, I'd lived in three different days in 24 hours. Woof.  No wonder I was so tired.

The "Money for Nothing" News

This is a totally useless side note but I kept getting caught up in Hong Kong's television news.  It's not that I was into the local politics or anything.  Most of the time that we were near a television, we were eating at a crowded restaurant or waiting to board something or other and there was too much noise to even tell what language the reporters were speaking in.  No, what got me about the Hong Kong news was the great, low quality animations.

If the reporters were reporting on a traffic accident, handy graphics of blocky looking cars would show up, complete with direction arrows would pop up and recreate the accident for you.  If the policeman who responded was a part of the story, a chunky digital cop would enter and play out his role.

I suppose there are issues here about whether an inaccurate animation might be used to unduly influence the viewer but to me, it was pure gold.

So help me God, it looked like the video from "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits.  I'm not even kididng:

"Ooo ah om ba!" If only there had been a football riot!  Televisions are everywhere in Hong Kong.  Sometimes, the whole side of building turns out to be a TV.  For a cheap thrill, check out the animated news.  Making up your own headlines can be a great way to pass the time while waiting in line.  "In other news, small man driving yellow box attacked by four stick figures wearing blue rectangles.  The yellow sign was furious.  And now a funny dancing octopus."


Here are a couple of samples I found online:

"Please remember to throw your hands up and yell 'Wheee!' while exiting the plane."

"Excuse me sir, you seem to be stuck in your spaceship."

Have fun.

Day 1: The Avenue of Stars, tsim, sha, tsui

After a nap that lasted way longer than planned and a dinner of "Immediate Noodles"  basically the same as raman noodles only with this yummy flavor pack, Minxi leapt to the helm.  She wanted to go see some "movie thing" down on the water front.

I'd didn't really understand what we were after but, about 20 minutes later we popped up from an underground walkway (also called a "subway") and found ourselves back on the harbor just a few hundred yards West of where I'd had my walk that morning.

Here, behind a large hotel and running quite a ways down the waterfront is Hong Kong's version of the Walk of Fame outside Grumman's Chinese Theater; The Avenue of Stars:

It was a little too touristy for me with lots of small memorabilia stands and chintzy statues of giant director's chairs and the like.  I also had the disadvantage of never having heard of a lot of the actors and singers.   We did find Jackie Chan's hand print though and I got my picture taken over Jet Li's star.  He's pretty cool.  Also the famous bronze statue  of Bruce Lee is here.  He's from Hong Kong and is about the biggest star ever here.

Avenue of Stars Bruce Lee

Minxi was really excited to be there and had me take her picture over the star's of lots of people.  There was a small band playing about half way down and the restaurant at the eastern end looked pretty tasty though we didn't go in.  There's a nightly light show over the harbor and The Avenue of Stars would probably be a good place to see it from.  The walk is literally right on the water and the view of the harbor is completely unobstructed.

I wouldn't make this a stop on my next trip to Hong Kong because it really is just a bunch of squares of concrete, but, if you're already headed to the end of Kowloon for the Art Museum or Space museum (See Day 4) then you might stop by.  It's at the very southern tip of Tsim Sha Tsui.  You can't miss it.  If you find yourself paddling around in the harbor, turn around, you've gone to far.