Fujian - last day, 5th!

 

Date: 6 April 2010

Venue: Wuyi mountain

 

We got up at 5am super unwillingly.  Luckily it was drizzling outside and it was reasonable enough to tell the stout woman that we would not go with her for rafting because it was raining.  Went right back in bed after the call. Haha.

 

Of course then we went to Wuyi mountain, but, yeah, without the woman’s guide.  It sort of stopped raining when we were there, but the roads were all wet and was a bit cold.

 

The view was rather nice.  We took our time and strolled along the 九曲 river.

The boatmen were all gone owing to the rain.  They started to pack their boats back home!!!!  Well, lucky us then the weather got better again and we had our chance to see the famous river! :D

This was where the boats were laid out.

 

Da da!  We were in the boat :D without raincoats!  The 4 of us!  Our pants were all wet…

   

The view on the boat!

 

After all that, we were all soaked and were really cold.  We had no choice but to go back to the hotel to get changed!  Finally we had wonderful dinner in a local restaurant - super good fried eggs with Wuyi beers!!

 

Eh.  The end! :p

Great wall and 798

The Pride

 

Yesterday I was talking to the security guard who works in our building.  She had taken a few days off so I started to ask her if she went to somewhere during her holiday.  Well, of course she did, she went to Fujian, which I actually went too back in April early this year.  As the conversation flew, she asked if I had ever been to Beijing and, proudly, I said YES!

 

I was in Beijing for the national day even :)  The trip was, well, not long enough, I didn’t really see much (I am very greedy)… I might go there again in the future, who knows?

 

 

 

I was in Beijing to see a friend.  On the first day, we went to see the great wall.  Now I can say I am a real woman,cockily :)  The great wall was really great, it took my breath away.  We didn’t go to the very touristic spot, therefore “my great wall” was more “original” than artificial.  Actually we climbed some mountains, got us all bruised and bleeding before our arrival to the great wall…  Well, it was a stupid story, I will just skip it here.  The only thing that disappointed me about great wall was, I actually couldn’t see it from the plane, needless to say from the moon.

 

 

 

I went to the famous 798 art centre the next day, alone.  It was so huge!  It reminded me of our annual industrial estate workshops, which I went with Jan, my now-not-so-new German friend.  This art centre in Beijing was far bigger and had more exhibitions.  It opened my eyes and the artistic side of me was truly satisfied :)  I hardly spent enough time in this huge art centre and I wasted some time at the beginning going to empty galleries inside those empty buildings.  Worth going to another time, to at least spend a day!

 

     

 

What I didn’t expect was the couple who were taking wedding pictures in the art centre.  Are they really THAT artistic?  I am never ever going to take my wedding pictures in any art centres.

 

 

 

There were so many interesting exhibitions in the art centre…

 

 

I was even in time for a Cuba exhibition!

 

Though I went to Beijing alone, yet I wasn’t lonely, I managed at least to meet my friend in the evenings during my stay.  I made quite a few friends and talked to many interesting people, as always, despite the fact that my Mandarin wasn’t as good as my English… I feel kind of stupid to admit this fact, but sometimes I find it so much easier to use English words to replace Chinese words - it’s a bad habit that most of us Hongkies have.  I felt quite ‘handicapped’ because I couldn’t utter the right Chinese words, very strange feeling.  May be one day I would go to Beijing to learn Chinese - like so many Japanese do these days - because it seemed to me that so many Beijingers loved me…

6.4

 

Date: 4 June 2010

Venue: Victoria Park

 

Charles asked me whether I would join the memorial in Victoria Park, of course I could join.

 

 

I nearly cried.  Cannot forget what happened on 4 June 1989 in China.

China has too much to do in order to be a democratic society.

 

 

 

This day.

Fujian - Day 4 Wuyi Mountains

 

Date: 5 April 2010

Venue: Wuyi Shan, Fujian

 

The train from Xiamen to Wuyi Mountains took 13 hours.  It was a night train, and I could hardly get any sleep.  There wasn’t much to see at night, some tourists groups were getting on and off the train in the middle of the night…  I don’t think I enjoyed it all that much anyway.

 

Upon arrival, the train assistant came over to talk to us about the hotel.  Molly insisted we should get off the train to compare prices, the rest of us didn’t have any opinion - hey, we were exhausting, I could hardly open my already-too-small eyes.  After talking to 2 assistants, Molly gave in and said we would stay with them (it was rather funny though, when those 2 assistants tried to talk us into staying with them, the 3 of us didn’t understand what they were saying, I sort of waved at them saying “we don’t understand you, talk to the other girl”, haha, aiya, our poor Mandarin!).

 

Hotel was once again very cheap, Yan and I were staying in one room while Molly and Kimmy were staying in the other.  Very quickly did we take a shower and out we went again.

 

Breakfast was easy to get, and yeah well, cheap.  We got on a bus then got off in front of the gate of Wuyi Shan.  Immediately, a few rough farm women came up to us, asking whether we were to buy tickets.  Molly did all the talking then before we knew it, we were following one of the women.  Molly said they were the aborigines of Wuyi Shan, they knew their way to avoid checking tickets.  Haha, to be honest, I was glad we followed her in, that saved us so much money!  In was the famous Yunv Hills (少女峰) at the back in the left picture.

 

The woman led us the way was rather stout and very strong as well.  She knew her way, she was talking very fast without taking a break.  Ay, it was very sad, city girls like us have no chance outrunning her!  A shame really!

 

On our way to the “Tiger Howling Rock” (虎嘯岩).  Very very very steep.  Our lead said “OK, you follow this path and I will meet you at the end, here is my number, if you don’t see me later then call me!” then off to the other way.  Hah.  Smart move.

We took way too long to walk the trail.  We enjoyed taking silly pictures and having fun :)  Do you think the rock in the picture looks like a fish?  Yan was posing a fish - in case you can’t tell.  Haha!

It really was a very nice trail - except it was way too steep.  Very quiet and very green.

There were so much to see on the way.  One of them - the very steep natural rock at my back.   It wasn’t a very good picture but well, you see how steep it was at least!

At the bottom of the steep rock, there were some sticks ‘supporting’ the mountain, there was a story behind these sticks: old people believe if they put the sticks there to ‘support’ the mountain then their backs wouldn’t ache anymore.  However, nowadays, they said if you put a stick there, you’d have a 靠山 (it means someone who’d be there to look after you)!  How superstitious!

 

If it wasn’t so challenging to climb all those crazily steep rocks, here was another: The Thread of the Skies.  You have to squeeze yourself between two narrow (way too narrow!) big rocks and thereby see “the thread of the skies”.  Haha.  Very silly, isn’t it?  But we were tourists, that’s what tourists do, being silly and do whatever that is stupid!  It wouldn’t be bad if the weather was nice and if there was a blue sky… but the point was, it was very wet and started raining.  Hahaha, the rocks were all wet and so we were half soak after this.  I won’t ever go inside again, “I will see you on the other side, bye bye!”

On our way back to the hotel, we saw the rafts - it was one of the must try in our list.  Looking very romantic, yeah?

There wasn’t much to do in the end, we went to this temple.  There was this middle-aged Hong Kong man walking next to me eating some candy, I asked him what it was, he gave me some to try.  Haha, obviously he thought I was a local girl and said my Cantonese didn’t sound very native.  HAHA!  How was that even possible?!  He later on caught up with us and helped us take this picture :)

 

We talked about how horrible the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing was.  Haha, what a day!

 

P.S. The stout lady said we should get up at 5am the next day to climb more mountains and take the raft.  We had to obey.  That night Yan and I slept at 8pm, HAHA, crazily unbelievable, right?!

 

Stay tune for our last day in Fujian :)

Fujian - Day 3 Gu Lang Yu

 

Date: 4 April 2010

Venue: Gulangyu Island, Fujian

 

After a night’s rest, we got up early, had breakfast at McDonald’s and got each of us a nice hot heearl milk tea (Yan was dying for some pearl milk tea, haha) then boarded on the ferry and found ourselves at Gulangyu Island.  Molly really wanted to go there.

 

Needless to say it was again packed with people.  So many people, too many people - and all of them Chinese, very very exciting!  The weather wasn’t all that good, it rained when we went out, was very cloudy when we were walking around.

We had lots of fun taking pictures actually… too many tourists, it kinda reminded us: we were part of them too.  We had to do all kind of crazy things when we were travelling, isn’t that true?!  Actually it was one of the pictures that I liked very much.  I liked how the picture was overexposed and how I was laughing so heartily.

 

The island was very westernized - that’s why it was so touristic, there were really some very nice looking buildings like this one.  I didn’t have any special feeling regarding all those building, but I did scowl at those people who stood in front of me taking pictures of the same thing I was shooting when I got there first.

Very far away was Mr Zheng Chenggong.  If you want to know more about him… Wikipedia welcomes you!

You see?  We really were enjoying ourselves :D

The European style hotels and the famous Piano Museum!  I was happy enough to be able to pronounce those made in Germany pianos :p

We walked and walked and walked, finally we arrived at the highest spot in the whole island.  I have to quote a Beijing guy who sat downhill at the temple “What the hell is there to see at the 100m tall pavilion?” (in Chinese: 一百米高可以看啥呀?)  Yan and I joked all our way up there at the pavilion at what he said.

There were too many people up there, we had to wait very patiently.  Ah, all the pushing and cursing made me so angry!

Feel free to spot out the mistakes :)

After queuing for a millions of hours, finally we got up the cable car!

Yan and I were the first one to get off the cable car.  Before anyone could walk in front of us, we rushed in front to take pictures :p  Silly us :D

Saw some very interesting looking animals and then left!

 

All we could eat in Xiamen!  There were some very nice looking buildings :)  Afterall, Xiamen was once a colonial city!

I have enjoyed everything :D