Beijing, the original Chinatown

After experiencing delays in takeoff, landing and layovers, I finally arrived in Beijing at 2am. The airport is some distance from the city centre, so I expected the city to be asleep as my taxi drove the 40 minutes to reach my hostel. What I found is true of every Chinatown I've ever visited. The city never sleeps. We passed by fields with kids playing soccer, brightly lit restaurants filled with families still eating and vendors hawking their wares on the streets. It was a stark contrast to Brisbane, where the city shuts down when the sun sets at 5pm, and banks close their doors in the late afternoon.

I opted to stay at Happy Dragon Hostel, not to be confused with the nearby New Dragon Hostel and International Dragon Hostel nearby. The Chinese hospitality industry is not the most creative when it comes to names. The next day I wandered around the Dongcheng district, the historic inner area of the city where my hostel was located. One of the first things I noticed was how the Old World integrated with modern conveniences and new structures. Wide city streets crowded with taxis, cars and buses share the road with a steady stream of bicycles. China was once known as the Kingdom of Bicycles, and today Beijing still has 4 million cyclists.

The fastest way to get around the city is underground. The subway system is clean and efficient, and rediculously cheap. At 2 RMB, the equivalent of 30 cents, anyone can afford to take transport in Beijing. The subways here are infinitely better than the TTC in every way. They're frequent. They're on time. They make sense, meaning there are signs that tell you what stop you're at and which stop you will be heading to next. Also, there are no drunk people yelling at fellow passengers, sleeping or defecating in the subway. All of which I have had the good fortune to witness in Toronto.

Beijing: proof that cleanliness and promptness can coexist in a subway system

The next-to-nothing subway fare also meant that I could visit any of the attractions spread through the city, and some I revisited several times. One of my favorite places is Wangfujing, a buzzing street in the heart of the city that representative of the clash between old and new that I see throughout Beijing. Noodle stalls and spice stores are crowded between giant department stores with huge flashing billboards. Established stores selling jade jewelry and fancy oriental rugs share entryways with tacky souvenir shops. Barely visible in a sea of massive gleaming new storefronts is the entrance to Wangfujing market, an old-fashioned pedestrian alley remnant from the Ming Dynasty era. Although it is crowded and noisy (what Chinatown isn't?) the offerings of countless vendors make this spot a delight for all the senses. Food stalls offer everything from fried crickets to sea horses to candied fruit on skewers. Regular fare like steamed pork buns, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves and crispy tofu attract the less adventurous tourists.

Wangfujing alley

Dumplings, buns and pineapple rice

Vendor pulling dragon floss candy

After having our fill of sweets and dumplings, some new travelling companions and I decided to try some tantalizing new dishes. First on the menu was deep fried scorpion. My friend selected a healthy looking specimen 4 inches long with huge pincers. It tasted like popcorn. Then we tried the silkworm. After debating the best way to approach the bulbous cocoon, I went and bit it in the centre. The innards squirted all over my glasses. That's when I decided to call it a day.

Tasty offerings at the night market

Deep fried scorpion

Fried silkworm
Didn't go over so well.

Identity Crisis

I recently paid a brief visit to the homeland to take part in a wedding. No, not Canada (which, unfortunately, looks like it won't happen in the near future due to my family being scattered across the world), but China. China had never been at the top of my list of travel destinations. It seemed too vast, too congested, too intimidating, with too many people. But when my friend Yuanyuan told me she needed me to be in her wedding party, I jumped at the opportunity. When else would I get to take part in a Chinese traditional wedding?

Despite the fact that both of my parents were the first in their families to emigrate from Hong Kong, and enrolled me in Chinese school for 8 years, I know embarassingly little about Chinese history and culture. This played a large factor in my hesitation in seriously considering visiting the country. I guess what I was really afraid of was the frustration and humiliation of not being able to navigate in my own home country. My Cantonese is conversational at best, and my spoken and comprehension of Mandarin is nonexistent. My Chinese writing is atrocious. For some reason, both of my sisters are much more fluent than I am. Although I find written Chinese characters are beautiful, the language is awkward and difficult to learn. The subtle inflections of each syllable means that one word can have five different meanings. I think my difficulties began when I was four years old, my grandma asked me to fetch her oranges for her and her friends. I misunderstood and instead brought her a dust pan, and the image of her and her friends bent over with laughter still haunts me.

Determined not to let it happen again, I tried to teach myself Mandarin and learn as much about Chinese culture as possible in the weeks leading up to my China trip. However, starting a new masters program this year with a 40 hour work week made it difficult. In the end, I thought I had learned enough phrases to get by, and boarded by flight from Sydney to Beijing filled with confidence. The air hostess examined my boarding pass and asked me a question containing three words in Mandarin. I gave her a blank stare, and it felt like admitting defeat when I told her I didn't speak Mandarin. This was the first of a thousand similar interactions throughout the duration of my trip. The following posts will be about my observations of what it feels like to be a foreigner of Chinese descent traveling through China.

Air China's mystery lunch. Top 3 worst airplane meals ever.

Westward Ho!

Even though I promised myself no more traveling due to rapidly dwindling funds, I couldn't resist a spontaneous roadtrip to the outback during our mid-semester break. With only a vague itinerary in mind, five of us packed into a Wicked campervan that was in questionable condition. Carnarvon gorge would be our eventual destination, but getting there and back was an adventure in itself. Located 800km northwest of Brisbane, the gorge is an oasis in middle of central Queensland's notoriously dry highlands, with springfed crystal clear waters feeding the surrounding tropical rainforest, enclosed by towering sandstone cliffs. As we drove further west, the towns grew smaller and the townspeople grew wider. My doubts of Australia having the world's highest obesity rates have since been put to rest.

We pulled into Carnarvon National Park late in the afternoon, found that the main campgrounds were full but we could take the trail to Big Bend, where campsites located 10 km away were still unoccupied. So, with only a few hours of solid daylight left, we packed up what we need for the night and hiked. Quickly. The trail was relatively flat, but very tricky terrain because we were basically following the riverbed. Even when it hasn't rained for months, Carnarvon Creek still flows steadily, as rain throughout the year percolates slowly through the sandstone and seeps out into the gorge. We passed Cathedral Cave, which houses some of the Australia's most well-preserved rock art, showcasing work by aboriginals over 3500 years old. We reached our campsite at dusk, a fabulous site with our own personal pool and cliffs that provided great acoustics for our iPod speaker setup. We were the only ones around for miles, and we celebrated our good fortune with cold beers. From the case that I carried for 3 hours.

Lush greenery in the Carnarvon oasis

Aboriginal stencil art with and handprints

Sandstone cliffs surrounding our campsite

The next couple of days were spent sweating, hiking, swimming or a combination of all three, and it was blissful. So of course we blew a tire on the way driving out of the park. Did I mention we had already blown the spare tire on the way drving into the park? Right. Did I mention we were in the outback with no cellphone or radio reception? Interesting. So we sat by the side of the road... and waited. After a couple of hours somebody drove by saying he could fix our tires, so he left with two of our friends while we waited at the van. 5 hours later... we were still waiting. It was growing darker with the setting sun and the rain was starting to pour down outside. Inevitably images of Wolf Creek began to creep into my thoughts. I was about to switch from mildly worried to deeply concerned, when we saw headlights in the distance. Our friends were back! With new friends! And beer! The tires still weren't fixed, but our night was salvaged. After an impromptu roadside party and a few angry phone calls, we were on our way home the following morning, only 30 hours behind schedule.

Still happy campers

One Hike to Rule Them All

After quick review of the New Zealand trip, I've roughly calculated that our journey consisted on 25% driving and 75% hiking. Despite some hairy experiences with tackling driving on the wrong side of the road, everything seemed to fall into place, with even the weather started cooperating after we arrived in Queenstown.

Okay so here I have summarized the best of the best of NZ hiking:

The Diamond Trek, just outside of Lake Wanaka. Often referred to as the prettiest short hike in NZ, we did this hike on a spectacular sunny day (the only one we had entirely without rain). We had the trail almost completely to ourselves, save for some curious four-footed onlookers.




Franz Josef Glacier hike. Definitely some of the most fun I had in the South Island. Every day the guides hack out a new trail in the stunning blue ice, a solid mass of more than a billion cubic metres moving rapidly each day. We spent a full day on the glacier, digging through ice caves, squeezing through tight crevasses and sliding down ice tunnels.





Tongariro Crossing. Renowned as the best dayhike in the country, this gruelling trail takes you through some beautiful and bizarre scenery. After walking through flat tundra-like landscape, you're faced with the Devil's Staircase - a steep climb up 1400m that passses lava flows and detritus from the still active volcano. We reached the 1900m summit in 3 hours, only to be surrounded by fog so thick you could barely see your hand in front of your face.





Fast forward to the Blue Mountains, a region featuring spectacular rock formations, waterfalls and bushwalks (the Aussie term for hiking trails). A blue haze hovers over the entire mountain range, produced from the oil of eucalyptus trees in the surrounding forest. It's here that we endured the toughest and longest hike yet. Some locals took us through a relatively unknown trail passing through rainforest, steep rock faces and abandoned mine shafts. After 5 hours of hiking, we thought it would be a great idea to tackle the Giant Staircase, an absolute nightmare consisting of a steel staircase winding up vertical 300m and leading to the peaks of the Three Sisters. Its like doing a full day of tough hiking, followed by climbing the CN Tower. Somehow we managed. Two weeks of trekking produces some pretty solid muscle.