Travel

posted by Alan
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One of the great perks about living in China is how easy it is to travel. Most Asian countries are only a two to four hour flight away for a few hundred dollars. It's typical to hear of someone making a weekend trip to places like Bali, Thailand, Vietnam or some other exotic location that looks like the Lost island (is that show over yet??). And China itself is so huge and there are so many places within the country to see. We have a long list of places to visit and things we'd love to do just here in China alone. If you're the adventurous type, you can travel anywhere by train for under $100 USD. Daisy made her first long distance train journey back in February. I think she's ready for more.

Moganshan, China; on the train to Zhang Jia Jie; Tioman Island, Malaysia


Our only international trips thus far have been to Malaysia and back home to the US. Within the country, we've been to Hong Kong, Zhang Jia Jie, Beijing, Henan, De Hang, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuyi, Moganshan and Zhejiang. Without Daisy, I've been to Xi'an, various cities in Henan and Singapore. If you're interested in any of those places, feel free to ask. We're hoping to hit Inner Mongolia in August and the Philippines in October.

ZheJiang (we miss you Zoie!); De Hang, Henan; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia


This week, we just booked two flights. In two weeks, we'll be flying to the famous cities of Guilin and Yangshuo. They are connected by the Li Jiang River, which features ridiculous looking limestone karsts jutting out of the ground. A picture of them is featured on the back of the Chinese 20 RMB bill. Take a guess as to who's face is on the front?



The other tickets we booked are to the ancient city of New York. Yup, in July we'll be visiting home again. We had planned on coming home for another Christmas visit this year, but we found out we won't be able to, so we decided to make a summer trip instead. Things worked out perfectly where we'd both be able to have the time to come. So from July 6 - 26th, we're looking forward to some BBQ, softball, Jacob's 4th birthday party, NY Pizza, Taco Bell and enjoying the NYC summer heat with you guys. We also chose this time because by then, the Mets should be in first place.


But right now, my brother Steven is probably somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on his way here for an 11 day trip to hang out with us and see how we live. I'll see if I can convince him to do a guest blog...

Picture Blog

posted by Alan
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I’m writing this as I’m watching Game 6 of the Cavs vs. Celtics playoff series, aka, Lebron Watch. As Daisy can attest to, I love sports. If ESPN.com ever got blocked in China, I think I’d have to leave. In my travels around this world, I’ve seen that there are a few things that transcend culture and boundaries. They are love, music, art and sports. You can go anywhere in the world, get on a basketall court (or any other mutual sport) and language and cultural barriers disappear and communication, respect and understanding begin (there were way too many "and's" in that run-on sentence). Anyway, I’m pullin for Lebron here. One more quarter to go. *edit* By the time I finished this blog, game over. 27, 19 and 10 and Lebron didn't have it tonight? Wow.
coming soon?

I try to always carry my camera around with me here in Shanghai. There is always something interesting going on in this city. I often take pictures with the intention of putting them on this blog, but often forget to even post them. So, I think I’ll periodically just do a picture blog of these random photos.

Badminton and cooking afternoon with our co-workers

Fei Yue local brand hi-tops

In a country where they love Kobe and Lebron, this is brand name is genius

First BBQ of 2010 out in MinHang; Chick-Fil-A in Shanghai

Dinner night with Su and Stephanie; Daisy's birthday orchids from my mom


Response to comments:
Steven - The US pavilion is really corporate. Mainly because America didn't have enough money (yes, really) to fund it, so it's all private sponsors.
Wendy - Thanks. We're still waiting for you.
Megan - The US pavilion is definitely less spectacular, but I heard it really focuses on family values and hospitality and they do it really well. You'll have to see for yourself when you get here.
Yuan - I thought it would be crazy in a bad way here this summer, but so far, it's just crazy in a fun way.

Expo Time

posted by Alan
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Last post exposed how many people DON'T actually read this blog, but they only see the update status on Facebook or Google buzz. Thanks for all the birthday wishes, although you're 6 months late. However, feel free to say happy belated to Daisy, who actually wrote the last blog entry.


So I got a new job. My contract ended with my previous company and shortly after, I was offered the position of Community Coordinator for the 2010 World Expo. It's an INCREDIBLE opportunity to be working on the biggest event in the world. I've already met with business owners, pavilion directors and just people from around the world, and the Expo has barely begun. This summer is going to be a memorable one, for sure.

I've posted about the Expo in a previous post, but until I started working on it, I had no idea of how big of an event this really is. Seventy MILLION visitors are projected to be coming over the six month span. Think about how many people that is. It's like the number of Yankees NOT on Performance Enhancing Drugs times seventy million. Over 200 countries built multi-million dollar Pavilions to showcase themselves to the rest of the world, daily performances, foods from all over the world. It's going to be a non-stop party atmosphere and was described to me as "the place everyone is going to want to be for the next six months." I know many people in America aren't quite as excited over World Expo's, but if you have this blog on your Google Reader (as you should by now), prepare to be given a glimpse of the excitement this thing brings.

Me & Dominic at the China Pavilion; Shanghai Expo Performance Center

Australia and Germany Pavilions

Suzanna and her Brazilian Pavilion; the insane looking England Pavilion


The Expo officially opened last night with a 35 minute fireworks and laser show over the Huang Pu River that was unlike anything I've ever seen. How they coordinated the fireworks, music, fountains, lasers, spotlights and everything else is incredible. If there's one thing China knows how to do, it's Opening Ceremonies. Check it out on Youtube:Shanghai Expo Opening Ceremony. Last week, there was an Expo test opening, with about 100,000 tickets passed out to the public. Through some connections, I got my golden ticket.

Quick impressions:
- It's HUGE World Event. I've heard of World's Fair's(now called Expo) before, but like many Americans, I never had any real idea of how big they really are. Ironically, a majority of past World's Fair's have taken place IN America. It's a massive cultural exchange fair that is bigger in scale than the Olympics. Among landmarks that are left-over from past World's Fair's are the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle in Seattle and the globe and that weird Star Wars looking thing in Flushing Meadows Park.
- The Expo itself is huge in size. It's like a small, surreal (the pavilions are crazy looking) city. Almost like a movie set. We were there for 8 hours and only saw about 65% of it. And this is without going into most of the pavilions.
- I can already anticipate the fooood. Not everything was open because it was a pre-launch, but just seeing the food pavilions and restaurants from all the different countries got me excited.
- There really ARE 1 billion people in China. I think they were all at the Expo when I was there.
- When I saw the USA pavilion, i felt a surge of patriotism that I wasn't really aware was there before.

USA! USA!; The massive Africa Pavilion (the different countries have pavilions inside)

Canada & Spain Pavilions

Thailand Pavilion; giant optical ball in the German Pavilion that moves towards the loudest sounds

Thai food pavilion and Belgian Fries. Just a sampling of the foods that are going to be here. MMmmmMmmm.


You can check out an extensive, interactive 3D virtual model of the entire Expo and all of the Pavilions at www.expo.cn.
Check out the official Expo trailer here.

Looking forward to Steven, Gen, Laureen, Jimmy, Megan and whoever else also plans on coming this summer. Summertime in Shanghai is always fun, but this summer is going to be even better.

Let's Go Mets.

Happy Birthday to Me

posted by Daisy
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Yay another post and it's still before 2011. :þ <---- that's for Alan for making fun of me. I thought I'd be better at posting if I told people I'd post. Wrong again! No shame. haha

Happy belated to me. Birthdays keep happening faster and sometimes I forget how old I am - yes I'm serious. But I don't think my friends here know just how old I am either. For my last birthday I remembering sauna-hopping at Spa Castle in NY. I enjoyed a memorable nap on the heated flooring.

For the 7th anniversary of my 23rd birthday, Alan surprised me with with a 2-day (1-night) trip to the hot springs! We took a 4.5-hour bus ride south to a small town called Wuyi. It's not as far as that sounds -- especially if you're really good at sleeping in moving vehicles like I am! We arrived earlier than our room was ready so we got the chance to explore Wuyi. It's super small compared to Shanghai. I guess you can gage whether a town is large, medium or small by seeing if they have a (1) KFC & McD's, (2) KFC, or (3) none of the above. Wuyi falls between mid- and small-sized: there's a KFC a 10-minute cab ride away. [We only know that because for my birthday dinner we contemplated eating McD's haha No, we didn't have KFC either!]

Tang Feng Hot Springs Resort in WuYi, Zhejiang Province


After grabbing some noodles for lunch, we headed back to our Japanese-style room. The bed was on the floor and so were the chairs - I mean way low on the floor. I'm not used to being so close to the floor in China but it was clean and comfy : ) We settled in and broke our food-coma-like trance to get ready for the hot springs!
Outside, the Japanese-inspired layout continued. Under shingled roofs, pool after pool was filled with steaming hot bath water. We hopped from coffee to milk to who knows what. We even climbed into a pool with mini fish [okay this is gross but cool] -- the fish eat the dead skin from your body. Imagine this: a large circular pool with shallow water and people immersed from the shoulders down as if they're trying to lay down on their backs with their heads resting on the edge of the pool. The locals looked calm and really STILL so as to not to scare the fish away.
We get in and try to mimic the locals. Then Alan starts CRACKING UP. If I didn't know Alan, I would have tried harder not to laugh at him but I couldn't help it - his laugh is contagious. I saw the lady next to him wanted to laugh too because it was just THAT funny watching Alan crack up by himself. hahaha I laugh just thinking about it... ahh so funny.

Sorry, no pictures allowed IN the hot springs. Our Japanese-style room, Tang Feng driveway at night


The closer to dinnertime (5pm) it got, the less people there were. In the evening we got massages on the outdoor heated floor! Note to self, if I ever have heated flooring, I’ll seriously consider getting rid of our bed. So after the massage we fell asleep on the floor for an hour… dipped in another pool…and headed out to dinner. We enjoyed the hot springs for 5+ hours! What a super nice birthday : )

The next morning we woke up and joined the rest of our bus for a side-trip to a local village. It was nice to sit on a bridge and watch the locals do their thing. There has to be 40+ dogs just in this one village – everywhere we looked there was a dog. Same breed, same face, same color... it was the village of the dogs. Wonder if they serve dog to keep the population down???



Speaking of food, we stayed at this village for lunch. While we examined the menu at a local Chinese restaurant, the chef/owner came out to tell us his recommendations. So I asked him what kind of meat he recommended. He started listing them off and then all of a sudden he got really excited as he remembered the RABBIT. It was the "catch-of-the-day" from the way he was describing it. He practically ran into the kitchen so he could show us. It was dim in there but we saw him lift up something that resembled the shape of a large squirrel minus the fur. I looked at Alan and gave him a "what do you think" shrug… He's game for almost anything so we got the rabbit. Of course we took a picture for you, don’t worry – Alan was on it. The chef was more than happy to let Alan into the kitchen to take a picture of the ugly thing. Haha Despite the way it looked before we ate it, it was pretty good : )
After lunch we made it back on the bus for the 4.5 hour ride home. It was like we were gone for an entire week… What a nice birthday…

Rabbit, the before and after


Some other highlights:
- I got a HUGE Ding Dong lolly pop
- Ricky and I turned 23
- I look... act? ...seem? AM young but I got a few stunned looks when 2 girl-friends asked me "how old are you now?" :þ Their eyes got real big, and as if there was sudden breeze coming by, their heads went back slightly in surprise : ) hee hee hee