Chiwan Temple and a Hike Up Nanshan

On the last day of vacation before Mel and I had to go back to school, we did some touristy things with Jason close to home, in the Shekou area.

First, we took the subway a few stops to Chiwan, the end of the line, to check out Chiwan Temple. When you step out of the subway station there are no directions to the temple, and the area is very industrial and disorientating. We had to do some walking around and hardcore remembering of the google map we'd seen at our apartment to lead us there. That's the front gate in the above photo. It costs 15 yuan ($2.50) to get in.

I've been to a lot of temples, and I think this one is really nice. I've read that it's the largest in the province where we live, Guandong. It dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1127), but it's obviously had a fresh splash of paint since then.

That's us in front of the bell tower, which is locked so you can't go up.

Directly opposite, they made the mistake of leaving the drum tower open. *bonnnngggggg*

Check out the intricate dragon columns at the main gate.

There were some statues inside telling the story of the temple. The temple was built because an admiral was saved at sea by a goddess. When the admiral planted a tree in her honor, the goddess appeared and told him to also build this temple, plz.

*knock knock*

Temple boobies.

This is the aforementioned tree that the admiral planted. It would be cool to know what's written on all the red paper hanging there.

There's a turtle pond <3 nbsp="nbsp" p="p">

Mel and I in front of the main temple, where people were praying, lighting incense, and offering food to the gods.

You pass this strip of buildings on the way out. Some of them have small displays inside showing the history of the temple (in Chinese only).

Praying for a safe flight home.

Well, next up, we took a quick 10 minute bus ride back to the Sea World area, got some provisions and headed towards Nanshan Mountain. When we look out our kitchen window, we can see Nanshan looking down on us. I knew that you could hike it, but honestly it's been wayyyy too hot to even consider going for a hike. It was so hot today, as well, but we went anyway. Nothing says "I'm ready to hike!" like a bag of "tomato" chips.

Stairs. You don't get to hike anywhere in Asia without the punishment of a million stairs going straight up. There's never any casual, winding paths up the mountain. No, it's always goddamn stairs.

It took about an hour to get to the top, and it was probably 35 degrees in the afternoon sun/smog. We were so hot and tired by the time we got to the peak that our legs wouldn't have taken us much further. This pagoda in the picture above is the reward you find at the top. There were 8-10 people relaxing there, so we had to keep our cool walking past them and pretend like we weren't about to keel over.

The view from the top. It was a smoggy day...smoggy week, really... not even photoshop can clean up these photos! We could see our apartments from here... see the three big apartments sticking up on the coast? We're on the coast too, juuuuust to the right of those.

Of course, going down is faster than going up, but the stairs offer a different sort of punishment for your poor legs on the way down. Halfway along our descent, we noticed the steps were looking pretty wet, though it hadn't rained. A bit farther down and we found our culprit, and he had about 1000 meters of hose with him. Some guy was hosing down the mountain. Whyyyyy? And as we tried to get past his meters and meters of winding hose he just kept pulling and pulling on it. He didn't give a *shit* that is was like looping around our feet and tripping us. Not that we would have had far to fall, we were only on a mountain.

Staiiirrrrrrs.

Some cool carvings in the rocks that we noticed on the way down (we'd gone up path 2, but came down path 1).


Here's one of Shekou's many keystone kops listening to his favorite song as we leave the park at the base of the mountain. The cops in Shekou are so ridiculous, and there are so many of them so you really notice. They all look so young as if daddy's dressed them in their big boy cop uniform, and they're always either napping or staring at their cell phones. They really make you feel secure!

When we'd reached street level, we were HUNGRY! I'm thinking this guy ahead of us was too. He was only wearing underwear; no shoes, nothing. First time I'd seen that in ol' Shekou!

We went to Red Lantern, a Chinese restaurant that's popular with foreigners here. I'm not sure why, other than because it has an English menu? It's exactly the same as a few other places we've eaten in Shekou, that are just small little Chinese dives serving traditional Chinese food. The dishes were hit and miss, the star of the show being the fried rice. I have never seen someone eat so much rice in one sitting as Jason Keddy did that day.

Next, we took Jason to Ren Ren Le, a Chinese Wal-Mart-type department/grocery store near our apartment. It's where we go if we need some quick groceries (well, usually the maid shops for our groceries, but sometimes we go for things, too!) I thought it would be interesting for him, and at least there are prices on all the products so it's a more familiar shopping experience. I think he found the food the most interesting:

Eels or.... snakes?

Dried pig face! The entire face... what do you do with that??

Dog quarters.

Lastly, favorite find of the night: a banana stuffed toy with the words "Jim Carrey" embroidered on it! Which one of these items would you buy if this was your local grocery store?

Weirdest Zoo Ever

We must have had animals on the mind today, because not only did we decide to go to the zoo, but we also went over to the Old Shekou wet market where you can see just about every animal you can imagine (to eat). I know the area of Shenzhen that we live in is kind of a "bubble" that caters to expats so I figured the wet market was probably the best representation of the real China that Jason would get to see on his visit.

We walked through the bird section first, the conditions of which make it real easy to picture how something like bird flu could have gotten started. I mean, it's pretty gross. Everything, from the ground to the cages to everything around is beyond dirty. The birds themselves are covered in crap with large patches of missing feathers and sores on their bodies. It's ducks stuffed in small cages with pigeons and chickens, with the as-yet unsold heads, legs or other body parts laying not too far away.

I had to do a double take in the seafood section (which makes up the majority of the market)... that's alligator on the left there! The floor is really wet and things are always splashing around sending more water flying at you... it's pretty nasty, especially if you're wearing open toe sandals!! Oh, and on this day we even saw a crab make a run for it out of his basin. He got out and started crab walking up the aisle in front of us. It was pretty damn funny looking to see him go.

Blurry, but those are the hind legs of dogs. I hear that's the best cut of meat :D

God only knows what this is drying on the ground in front of the market.

Well, after that little tour, we got on the subway and headed towards the Safari Park zoo to witness another interesting display of animals. 

The subway doesn't go all the way there, so we had to take a taxi the rest of the way. That's me at the entrance. In my guide book it said it was 100 yuan ($17) to get in, which is kind of expensive for a zoo, but when we got there the price had been jacked up to 200 yuan! Can you imagine... a $34 zoo? Isn't China supposed to be cheap? We paid, but I doubt we would have gone there if we'd known the price in advance. Luckily, we didn't know it yet, but this zoo was worth every penny.

The sign advised that there is "no tooting" in the zoo.

Our visit was off to a great start when the very first animal we saw was a goat actually giving birth! The baby had literally just dropped out of her and the afterbirth was still hanging from her body. There were zoo employees around, but they all looked completely oblivious.

The next exhibit was the exotic... household dog?

Cage number three was... a single light bulb.

Cage number 4 was a turtle pond with garbage floating in it, but I must have forgotten to upload that picture. Damn. Anyway, the next stop for me was the ice cream man, where I bought a strawberry cone and then proceeded to drop it right on the ground. At home, people are generally pretty cool about that and offer to scoop you another cone, but this guy went out of his way to avoid all eye contact or acknowledge my tragic loss. There would be no second cone :(

Kangaroos! I don't know if I'd ever actually seen kangaroos in real life before? They have really big balls.

List of sights to the right: herbivores, giraffe, camel, buffet. Hmmm... wonder what's at the buffet?

"Note: Carefully fall down stairs". Don't even think about walking!

A man and his emus. It was around this time that we noticed the insufficient fencing at this zoo. Like the emu fences were raised by about a foot at the bottom and you can see in the photo how low they are on the top. I could've reached in and given one of those birds a noogie if I wanted to. And they could have eaten me if they wanted to.

Surprisingly healthy-looking camels. I'm used to the hump-flopped-over/mangy fur variety. Also, two of them were getting really frisky with each other, but Mel wouldn't let us stay to watch. How hilarious would camel sex be?!! Some people have no sense of humor.

Pissed off ostriches and another case of too-low fencing. I had to jump away at one point when one came too close to me.

You could pay a few bucks to feed a lot of the animals, including these elephants.

They just slid their trunks up, rested them on the fence, and kids stuck carrots in their nostrils.

The first of many incidences of overpopulation at the zoo. I mean, look at how many koi are in that water!

It was insane! There were thousands of them fighting for the food people were throwing down. Occasionally, they'd climb up over each other and out of the water.

Next to the koi pond was this elephant friend. For 20 yuan, you could either sit on him (nothing to hold on to at all once you did) or he'd PICK YOU UP WITH HIS TRUNK!!! Really! For some reason, Jason went with the "sitting on him" option.

Next to the elephants, there was this group of girls with snakes around their necks. You could pay to have your picture taken with the snake on you. For good measure, they'd also stick a parrot on your arm. The girls approached us and we said "no thanks", but they must have sensed weakness in Jason because two of them actually CHASED him, with the snake.

One girl caught Jason, took him by the arm and dragged him back towards the snake. He's kind of freaked out by snakes so this wasn't cool. That's the red mark she left on his arm.

It took a while for Jason's heart rate to go down after the snake scare, but when it did he was hungry. We were all hungry... even though I'd already replaced that one dropped ice cream with two other cones along the way. For some reason, we didn't hit up this Elephant restaurant, though I'm sure their roast trunk is amazing.

We wound up at this fast food burger-type place, and it was so horrible. I got ice cold chicken nuggets. And see that pop machine in the picture? Yeah, our colas were served from the juice pitcher next to it.

Baby monkeys <3>

The next section we came to was pretty weird. It was like this really long walkway, raised off the ground, where you could look down on different animal exhibits. First, we came to the bears.

You could pay to throw meat down at the bears. They just stood there the whole time waiting for food.

Next to the bears were the wolves. For the wolves, you could pay to put meat on the end of a rope tied to a stick, and lower it down for them to eat. It was so strange!

Then, for 50 yuan, you could pay to ride in this armored car and they'd drive you through the tiger habitat where the tigers jump up at the caged vehicle and try to eat you.

It was almost closing time, and we hadn't yet seen any of the animal shows that the zoo puts on, so we headed over to the dolphin show. It had already started and I'd lost my ticket, but the guy let me in anyway. We got there just in time to watch a seal play dead for like 5 minutes straight, and then after the seal was done, three white guys dressed as clowns (we were the only foreigners in the park that day, so it was kind of surprising) and a dude dressed as Spider-man came running out.

They did a diving routine, and then for some reason, Spider-man got out of the pool and picked up a broom.

He climbed up a tall ladder, broom in hand, and dove into the water with it. Then a white girl dressed as a mermaid swam around for a bit, some dolphins hopped around, and that was it.

The zoo was closing- we could tell by the announcements- but, hey, they were all in Chinese so we pretended not to notice. There was still one small part of the park we hadn't seen yet. It was an all-bird section, starting with (over-population again) wayyyyy too many peacocks in one place.

When we saw the giant chicken we were really glad we'd stuck around to see this last part of the zoo.

This thing was huge. I'm pretty sure it was a dinosaur.

Gimme five!

And with that, it was (way past time) to leave the weirdest zoo ever. Jason had never been to an Ikea before, so we got a cab there, because he totally needed to pack some home furnishings in his suitcase to take back to Canada.

It's hard to go to Ikea and not get the meatballs. It costs like $2! Such an awesome deal.

The funny thing about Ikea in China is that it's kind of like a museum of sorts to the Chinese. The top floor of Ikea is all these little showrooms; bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens showing off the products. Well, the locals here might be shopping but just as often it looks like they're either playing house (their rooms probably don't look like these westernized rooms) or studying these strange foreign room designs. This couple in the above photo was having a photo shoot! Not the first time I've seen this. I wonder if anyone bought some cookware at Ikea to cook up some crocodile with :D

Mall Skating Like a Hot Pie

On Friday morning, we lazily sat around being totally useless while our maid made us breakfast and mopped our floors. It was a nice treat, because we're never usually home when she's at our place... she always comes while we're at work. We were having trouble deciding what to do with the day, but finally decided on seeing Windows of the World, which is a theme park full of miniature versions of famous sights from around the world. Little Eiffel Tower, tiny Mt. Rushmore, you get the idea.

When we got to Windows of the World station, though, we decided to forget about it. Admission was a little pricey, but mostly we were just tired of crowded places! Spending a Chinese holiday in China can do that to you. The station where we were at has a nice, big mall in it, so we got some lunch at RBT (where Jason once again picked all of the QQ out of his drink), shopped at H&M, and then we went skating. In a mall. Why not, right?

The skates weren't exactly modern. Jason had a nice blister within about 15 minutes on the ice, so we didn't wind up skating for too long. It was still pretty fun, though. We got lots of "hello"'s from the kids on the ice, and it was definitely the warmest rink I've ever skated in!

We went to the Ole Supermarket for cheap fancy cakes and imported cherry 7-ups.

When we got back home, I brought Jason to my classroom so I could take care of a few quick things. The unfortunate thing about our school is that the street that connects Mel's school (main campus) and my school (lower elementary) is basically a hooker street. Every single room is just a "bar" with ladies out front calling out to any guy that walks past. And there's usually some western guy with them. How embarrassing.

They called us "handsome". Win!

While I worked, Jason played with blocks.

Next, we went to the market by our apartment for some dinner. For about a month now, we'd been secretly plotting to order Jason a fish head soup for his dinner some time during his visit. Imagine the hilarity! The pictures on the menu always look so funny, with the fish head prominently displayed, floating mouth-up in the middle of the soup bowl. When we finally ordered it for him, the above picture is how it looked. What a disappointment. Where's my mouth??!

We went to our local Korean restaurant for a fruity soju drink and then went to sing karaoke inside this giant, flashing box. When we got to the front desk, we had no idea how to tell them we wanted to sing and for how long and in what type of room. There was no English, just a list of prices and characters, and no one there spoke English either. We agreed to just pay whatever price they pointed to, and we were taken to our room.

Imagine our surprise when, a few minutes after being shown to our room, we were served a giant fruit tray! Awesome! And, after a bit of tinkering, we figured out how to work the machine and there was a lot of English songs. The place was so overstaffed, you wouldn't believe how many people we could see standing outside of our door just trying to listen to us sing. The service was awesome though. When we stuck our head out the door to ask for a beer, they were falling all over themselves to get it for us.

One of the best parts of Asian karaoke is finding spelling mistakes in the on-screen lyrics. I don't think I've ever seen one better than this, from Rhianna's "Only Girl In The World": "I want you to love me... like I'm a hot pie". LOL!!! The official lyrics should permanently be changed. So awesome.