Chinese New Year Holiday Activities!

I probably posted too many pictures, but nonetheless here we go. 

Sorted chronologically from about 10 days ago to a few days ago. 

First few are just of the tennis club I've been playing at most frequently.

The 'lounging area'.

淘金 Taojin enjoying his mid-tennis cigarette. 

View of the club house, that's a little restaurant on the second floor.. There are 4 courts you can see and then 2 behind me.

Blurry closed tennis shop. Closed because it's Chinese New Year 新年快乐 (Happy new year)!

Not pictured is the (very nice) gym and 12 indoor badminton courts because they were all locked up for the new year.

After tennis Tao Jin invited me to lunch with his mom who was down from Haerbin to celebrate the new year. Though I had work after, she insisted I have a beer as they were a local Haerbin brew (as you may be able to make out on the label). For food we have some pigs feet on the lower left hand corner of the table, some chicken something in my bowl in the middle, and some sort of dried pork dish on the right hand side. In the pot some beef and fish balls are boiling.

Cool horse jumping out of building.

Tallest building-to-be in Shenzhen. It is quite large.

What deals at Sarah's! 100元 = $15

A few days into the New Year 'K' arranged for me to play with the pro who's been giving him lessons. We drove to the city of Dongguan, which is just one city north of Shenzhen, and quite close to K's hotel. Confusingly, Dongguan is a city in the province of Guangdong which I mix up almost every time I say them.

Furthering my confusion is that Mandarin is not the primary dialect in Dongguan -- or any city in Guangdong province except Shenzhen for that matter -- and instead Cantonese is spoken. While both dialects use the same character system and can thus communicate via writing with no trouble, the spoken language is nearly 100% different.

Fortunately trilingual 'K' can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and English quite well so we have no problems. The pro's name is Asimwha (certainly spelled wrong, but not bad phonetically) and he was quite good. He plays lots of local tournaments so he's going to me help register and play.

View of the park next to the courts.

A few other guys that came to play.

After playing we went and had lunch at 'K's hotel. He didn't want to drive me back to my apartment and then back to work again so he had one of his employees drive me home. He has been very, very helpful so I'm trying to repay him with some tennis lessons.

A few days later Tao Jin invited me to his house for Chinese New Year. Here Tao's mother and I attempt to make dumplings. It's quite hard but she has of course been hand rolling dumplings since the age of 4 and is amazingly proficient at it. 

A few days later I ventured into Hong Kong via one of 3 (maybe 4) ways you can get from Shenzhen to Hong Kong - the bridge! It's a pretty cool bridge, you just hop through customs, hail a taxi and you're in Hong Kong in 20 minutes. The trouble is the bridge takes you to a new part of Hong Kong that is quite far away from the more urban part of the city so the taxi can get a bit pricey. 

That same night I had to come back to Hong Kong to attend a mysterious architectural art show. Because the architectural company that was sponsoring the show wanted some 'foreigners' (i.e. white people) at the show Tom and I were invited. This picture is unrelated. I just like the statue. 

Nonetheless the moment we arrived at the barbecue the women who invited us, whose name I can not remember, delegated us to BBQ a large amount of mysterious Chinese BBQ food. You'll recognize the corn and potatoes but probably won't recognize anything else. And in addition there was another table with about the same amount of food that we had the pleasure of cooking. 

After dinner was a traditional Chinese tea tasting. 

The tea tasting was accompanied by a fine performance by a guy you can hire to perform traditional chinese customs at your dinner. He later did some Tai-chi and was certainly very traditional.

Tai-chi man himself.

A quick photo with the Tai-Chi man. We may have had a little to drink. 

Off to Hong Kong again the next day. This time via the Futian checkpoint. Take the metro to the border station, go through customs, get on the metro on the other side, pretty easy. (No pictures allowed here so I had to be sneaky)

Streets of Hong Kong! Being chauffeured around by 'K', also with Asamwha (tennis guy), and his girlfriend (a Chinese police officer).

Very odd cultural phenomenon going on here. On all the pedestrian bridges we walked on the sides were packed with people.  I obviously asked 'K' what was going on. His reply: There are mostly Philippine, but also some other southeast Asian countries, housekeepers and nannies. He said during the New Year they get workdays off, meaning they are free from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. or so, and then return to their host family's house where they live. They have no where to go and don't make enough to return to their home country for the holiday so they just sit on the street all day and go 'home' at night. He also said it's much, much more common for families to have live-in help because it's cheap, and both parents often have to work serious jobs to support the cost of living in Hong Kong. 

Lots of 'hourly' hotels. 

View of the skyline on the way to the island of 长洲 Changzhou。

Asimwha buying our dinner. The fishing boats come into port in the afternoon and you pick out what you want to eat. They give it to you alive in some plastic baggies and you take it to a local restaurant where they cook it up for you. Assuming the Chinese waters they catch the fish in are relatively unpolluted (bad assumption) this is about as fresh as seafood gets. 

Some Chinese dessert that 'K' hadn't seen since he was a child. It was basically gooey batter wrapped in peanuts, quite good. 

Panorama of the back side of the island. 

We went to a temple on the island that is apparently quite famous. I liked it. 

I guess K did to?

A view from the temple towards Hong Kong (though that's not Honk Kong you can see in the distance, it's some other island). 

A view of the city on the way back from Chang zhou. 

Candid photo taken by the kind-of-scary Chinese police office girlfriend of Asimwha!

Picture Dump

View when leaving work my first day. Quite pretty that day, isn't always this clear. Building on far left you can only see half of is the hub of one of China's biggest financial institutions. 

Super Bowl Sunday 7 AMish

Special at 'Frankie's', which is the Western bar we watched the Super Bowl at. Western bars are nice to get a little more familiar cuisine and experience, but really over priced and I always kinda feel like I'm sitting at Applebees in Boise when I go to one so I don't go often. 

Just after the game a candid of 3 co-workers. Two girls are from Florida and the guy is Canadian. He was very drunk and thought it was appropriate to buy the girls flowers, it was strange but highly entertaining. Despite this maneuver he's actually a nice, normal guy. 

First time playing tennis in Shenzhen.

This is "K" he is my translator and tennis fanatic. He owns a hotel in Shenzhen but lives in Hong Kong. He's helped me a lot so I've given him a few mini-private lessons. 

Me with the two club pros. The lefty swinging is the better one and pretty fun. We went out to the bars last night and had fun. He doesn't speak any English so good Chinese practice for me. Him and I are playing again tomorrow. And then his mom has flown down from north of Beijing for Spring Festival and is going to cook us some lunch after we play because I guess they own a bunch of restaurants in northern China. I suspect something was lost in translation though because the story was confusing. 

Fun story about 淘金 (this guy's name which literally translates as 'Searching for Gold'). He is from basically as far north as you can be from in China which means he has a ridiculously strong accent. Imagine trying to learn English from a Scotsman or an Irishman. Highly difficult. 

Balling in Shenzhen!

Lunch with "K" and the two female club pros after the first time I played. We ate at a Sichuan（  四川  ）restaurant because that's the region where these girls are from. Sichuan food is famous for being really spicy but this was the best food I've eaten so far. 

This is a bar I've been to a few times. It's a great bar, though very dive-y. The owner is this 28 year old Chinese guy who taught himself English by watching sitcoms so he has very strange vocabulary. But free pool and $2 drinks, you can't go wrong. Guy in the picture is Tom from Virginia. He works with me and is the guy I hang out with the most from my company, really nice guy. 

Bathroom at the aforementioned bar one night. Toilet was broken. At least they have a Western toilet though. Lots of squat toilets at bars and local restaurants here.

Paige and Claire at our Spring Festival party. Such a strange party. 

This is Korey, head foreign teacher at the other Shenzhen center. But more importantly notice the chicken head on the plate. For some reason they include the heads on all the platters in case somehow you forgot what you were eating. 

Late night shot of the dinner party. This is probably only 1/3 of the people who had been there. Tall-ish Asian guy on the left with the grey jacket owns both Shenzhen centers and Asian guy in black directly across is the principle of my school, and also apparently gay which is super taboo here. 

Me and one Chinese teacher were the only people at work for the last two hours the other day and nothing was happening so I built a big block tower. Pretty impressive.

Today I went hiking with Dakota, 50ish year old teacher from Louisiana who has led quite the life. I think she was living a normal American life until she had a stillborn baby, her husband dropped dead of a heart attack, and then her mom died soon after. Ever since she's been traveling the world teaching English ever. Two of the Chinese girls who work in our office also came along. 

First just some scenery. The hike/park was much nicer than expected. But also very, very Chinese.

Towards the top of the hill, other side of this little plaza is a big ol' statue of Shenzhen's creator and China's former president Deng Xiaopeng.

The statue! He kind of looks like the Monopoly man to me. 

The view from the top of the hill. Today was probably the smoggiest day since I've been in Shenzhen.

Really tall building you can make out in the middle of the picture is still under construction.

When finished it will be the tallest building in SZ and one of the tallest in the world. 

And because they're Chinese the girls took like 500 hundred selfies and sent a few to me. 

And on the way down from the hike...stereotypical Chinese temple!

One last picture of us racing across traffic to get on the subway and head to work for the day.