A Tale of Two Minks'

I know it’s been WAY too long since we last blogged, so I’m going to do my best to sum up these past few months in one post. We’ve discovered that I (Hunter) hate messing with the pictures and Chelsea hates doing the writing. So this time I’ll write and Chelsea will choose the pics she wants. This could be our new thing...

Even though we haven’t been on any major trips since Korea, we’ve still been super busy this semester. We’re getting settled at our new apartment, exploring Hangzhou, and making short trips whenever our schedule allows it. For those of you who don’t know, we started the 2014-15 school year at a new school - Hangzhou Foreign Languages School. Like the school last year in Kunshan, HFLS has a main Chinese school as well as a foreign degree program for students who want to attend universities abroad. The difference is it’s a British program instead of an American one. The strange schedule takes some getting used to and I have to pretend to know what people are talking about when they use words like invigilate (turn out it’s the British term for proctor…as in proctor a test), but overall I really enjoy it. The students are all fantastic and our new colleagues are very nice and helpful. Plus the school as a whole is very reputable and well known throughout China. I think we lucked out to both get jobs here.

Our first holiday this semester was Mid-Autumn Festival back in September. We got four days off and used them to head to the island of Zhoushan, about two hours away by fast train. We actually had to take the train to the nearby town of Ningbo, then catch a cab to Zhoushan. We should have done a little more research though because it turned out to be another two hour cab ride and we had trouble finding a driver in Ningbo willing to take us that far. Even then, he refused to use the meter and insisted on an up-front payment of 600 RMB.Obviously we weren’t excited about this but it was getting late and we didn’t really have any other options. We conceded and eventually made it to the hotel around 11 PM. Zhoushan is actually made up of tons of little islands with some nice beaches and we spent most of our time there just relaxing. The main beach is famous for sand sculptures and has a bigfestival centered around them every year (like the ice sculptures of Harbin). Unfortunately we missed the main festival (also like Harbin) but still got to see some of smaller sculptures, as well as the artists working on them. On one of the other days we took a ferry to a more secluded island and did more relaxing on the beach. Other than the stress of actually getting to Zhoushan, it was a very relaxing trip.

The big holiday in the fall is National Holiday in October. It celebrates the founding of the PRC in 1949 and is the second biggest holiday of the year (behind Spring Festival/Chinese New Year). We had a whole week off and had planned to go to Vietnam but unfortunately had some issues with our resident permits. We were unable to leave the country until that was resolved, about a week after National Holiday. Luckily we hadn’t bought plane tickets yet and were only out $30 for the Vietnamese visas. Our backup was to go to Xiamen, which is on the coast of China and would have been a similar trip as Zhoushan, but as this was a major travel holiday for the Chinese (and Xiamen is a major tourist destination), all the trains that week sold out in a matter of hours. Our last resort was Shanghai, and even though we’ve been countless times, we always enjoy our time there. We went to all of our favourite places, as well as a few new places, and took a ‘Night Eats’ street food tour where we had some delicious food we would have never thought to try. I also learned a fun new Chinese vocabulary word…XiaoLongXia is ‘crawfish’ in Chinese – literally ‘little dragon shrimp’. I thought that was amusing. It was disappointing to miss out on Vietnam, but we can never complain about Shanghai…definitely our favourite Chinese city to visit.

Our last holiday of the semester came just this past weekend for New Years. We only had three days off but decided it would be worth it to head down to Hong Kong. We really enjoyed our trip there last year and thought it would be nice to check out a few of the places we missed the first time. We had to work on New Years Eve and therefore couldn’t get a flight almost 9:00 that evening. It was after 11 when we landed so we weren’t able to make it out for the countdown, although we did see (part of) a great fireworks show from our taxi. It was well after midnight when we checked into the hotel and we were way too tired to go out that evening. Since we only a few days there, we thought it would be best to get some rest in preparation for the next day. Our favorite thing from the first trip was the hiking, so we planned to do more of that. We found online that a trail called The Dragon’s Back was ranked the #1 Urban trail in Asia by Time Magazine (I assume by ‘urban’ they mean a trail still within the limits of a city). Although we can’t attest to the #1 ranking, we can definitely say it was the best we’ve been on so far. There were some amazing views from the peaks we made it to!

The next day we took the ferry from Hong Kong to the ‘Las Vegas of Asia’, Macau. We also went there on our last trip but didn’t get a chance to stay long, so we thought we’d check it out again. Like Vegas there are tons of huge casinos with some great shows. We saw Macau’s most famous and longest running show, “The House of Dancing Water.” It was basically an acrobat show over water that also included some dancing and a vague story line. It featured some of the most athletic people I’ve ever seen performing some very impressive acrobatic tricks. It was definitely a great show. Afterwards, we had dinner and drinks at one of the many hotel restaurants and then lost $200 Hong Kong dollars almost immediately at the casino. We decided that was a good stopping point for the night and headed back to our own hotel. The next day we took the ferry back to Hong Kong, had a last meal of decent Western food (which can be hard to find in mainland China), and headed to the airport for our flight home. Due to the amazingly annoying Chinese practice of making up holidays, Sunday was a workday.

Unfortunately this school follows a little more traditional Chinese school calendar than the American Program did last year, which meant we didn’t really get real breaks forChristmas or Thanksgiving. We made the most of both holidays though by participating in an expat Thanksgiving cooking class in November and finding a great Christmas dinner at a local expat bar on Christmas Eve. The Thanksgiving meal was cool because we got to actually make all the food ourselves, as well as meet some other expats living in Hangzhou. Both meals included all the traditional holiday food such as turkey, ham, stuffing, potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. It’s a little hard to get in a true holiday mood here since no one really celebrates like back home, but we made the most of it and had a good time both evenings. The British program at school also had a Christmas get-together at one of the local hotels that included a good buffet.

Aside from the actual holidays, we also kept ourselves busy on the weekends also. We made several other trips into Shanghai for various reasons: we did a cool fun run called the ‘Shanghai Rat Race’, which was a scavenger hunt we finished dead last in; we met some friends from last year for a pottery workshop, which was way more challenging and frustrating that the movie Ghost makes it look; and we made another visit to the fake market where I got more knock-off New Balance shoes that fell apart within a month. We also made several visits to downtown Hangzhou were we rented bikes to ride around famous West Lake. If you can manage to avoid the crowds it really is a beautiful lake.

We also spent one Sunday judging a national debate competition at one of the other Foreign Language Schools in Hangzhou. Teams from all over China participated and we saw some really impressive debates. The topic was ‘’Countries should not possess nuclear weapons’’ and we heard some pretty convincing arguments, as well as some not so convincing ones that included the need for protection against aliens and asteroids. Our school had several teams participating, all of which did very well. It was a round robin competition in which 60+ teams competed for spots in a 32team bracket, which was then single elimination format. We had several teams make the tournament, two of which made it to the semi-finals (not against each other). The debates were all excellent, especially considering they were doing so in their second language. Overall it was an interesting experience to judge the debates. We made a little extra cash and although I wouldn’t want to do it every weekend, it was a surprisingly fun way to spend a Sunday.

I think that pretty much covers our semester. That got a little longer than I wanted, but I guess that’s what happens when you cram an entire semester into one post. For now, we’re counting down the days in January to our three week break for Chinese New Year. We decided to go to Thailand and are very excited to see the beach again! Hope everyone is doing well back home. Thanks for reading.

-Hunter

A few pictures of the HFLS campus:

Our trip to Zhoushan:

Shanghai trips:

This was taken in front of a propaganda poster museum. Really cool to see.

Shanghai Rat Race

Food tour in Shanghai. Those are mushrooms!

Pottery Class!

Hong Kong:

Happy New Year!!

We had a great time in Seoul and would have loved to have stayed longer. But with only one week set aside in Korea and another whole city to explore, we had to cut our visit to Seoul to only a few days. Luckily, the bullet train to Busan is only about two and a half hours, so we didn’t have to dedicate an entire day to the trip south. We did our hike up Namsan Mountain to Seoul Tower on Tuesday morning, then headed to the train station that afternoon. The train between Seoul and Busan runs every 10-15 minutes so we didn’t have to wait at all to get on board and be on our way. And although considerably more expensive than the fast trains in China, the lack of wait time, simpler ticket purchasing and check-in process, and free onboard Wi-Fi (albeit only 30MB worth) were the benefits of Korean rail travel.

Located on the southern coast of Korea, Busan is the heart of the Korean shipping industry and is also home to the largest fish market in the country (top 5 in Asia if memory serves me well, but don’t look that up). Busan Station is located in the center of this industry and needless to say isn’t the most scenic part of the city. It was, however, very interesting to witness the massive shipping yards with huge freighter ships, cranes, and trucks working in harmony with all the imports and exports to and from the country. We would pass by this area several times during our stay in the South and it was always cool to see.

Our hostel was located more to the north of the city and was in a very trendy area called Haeundae. Haeundae Beach is one of the more popular beaches in the city and was only about two blocks from our hostel. The beach stretched for nearly a mile and was dotted with hundreds of umbrellas and beach chairs that could be rented for only about $15 for the entire day. Since the majority of the week called for scattered showers and Wednesday was the only day with a sunny forecast, we decided our first full day in Busan would be dedicated to just relaxing at the beach. We were among the first people to get there in the morning and were able to secure primo seats right near the water. As the day went on, the beach slowly got more and more crowded with families, college students, tourists, and dozens of vendors walking up and down the rows of umbrellas selling box lunches of beer and chicken. We relaxed for several hours, had a box lunch from one of the vendors, and I even braved getting in the chilly water for a few minutes. Being the middle of summer, it was easy to forget how far north we actually were. And despite the hot outside temperature, the water was still quite cold.

By mid-afternoon we had had our fill of relaxing and decided to check out more of Haeundae. We went for a walk around the area, got some street snacks and drinks, and soon discovered we were in the middle of the Busan Sea Festival. An entire section of street had been blocked off for a stage with various bands and announcers, all in Korean, of course, so we weren’t exactly sure what was going on. One thing that was certain was the giant water fight happening between participants of the festival. Festival goers young and old alike wielded their best super-soakers and sprayed each other crazy, while automatic mounted hoses sprayed everyone from above. It was quite a site to see, but without our own water guns, we were unfortunately unable to join in. We watched the festivities from the patio of a street side bar and eventually went for dinner at a local restaurant, then headed back to the hostel for the evening.

The following day was a busy one, as we planned multiple activities all across the city. Our first stop was at the fish market I mentioned earlier. It was a huge market with hundreds of vendors ranging from private fisherman with their days catch on the side of the road, to larger organizations who had more official booths, to restaurants that would cook up fresh fish you picked from their tanks yourself. Octopus, squid, oysters, shark, and every kind of fish you can imagine were available in the market for one to buy. I was really hoping I could buy a fish from one of the vendors in the market and have the restaurant cook it up for me, but as far as we could understand from the lady at the restaurant, that wasn’t an option. We could only get fish from their tanks at the restaurant. After the fish market we took a taxi to Gamcheon Culture village, a vibrant community made up of colorful homes, narrow streets full of vendors and street food, and creative art decorating the entire village. We walked around for a few hours then headed to our last stop of the day, the 4D theatre.

Apparently 4D is a concept that is available in select countries all over the world (including the US), but has become most popular in Korea. Neither of us had heard of the concept before we started researching things to do on vacation, but we decided it was something we should try. In addition to the 3D glasses, we sat in seats that rocked, twisted and vibrated at appropriate times during the movie. There were also fans in the head rests of our seats and the back of the seats in front of us that blew wind and occasional bursts of mist in our faces. It was a very unique was to view a movie.

The next day we went on a city tour of Busan. Although the tour guide spoke entirely in Korean and we missed out on a lot of the history and details of the sites we traveled to, we still saw some cool sights in the city. The two main stops were at Oryukdo Island and the top of Hwangnyeong Mountain. Both offered some great sights to see and made for great photo opportunities. And while at the island, we discovered a hiking trail that ran all the way along the coast of the city, which we decided we would come back to the next day for hiking. The hike was our final day in Korea and ended up being my favorite. It was a beautiful 6 kilometer trail that started at Oryukdo and ended at the famous Diamond Bridge, which is a better sight to see lit up at night but also beautiful during the day. After the hike, we grabbed a late lunch and headed to Busan Station for the trip back to Seoul and our flight the next morning.

Overall we had a great trip in Korea. There was much more we would have liked to see but we felt we made the most of our week there. We are back in China now, getting settled into our new apartment in Hangzhou and trying to get back into school mode before classes start next week. Really, we’re already looking forward to our next trips later this year!

Haeundae Beach and the water fight:

This little guy had the best outfit by far. He was ready for battle!

Some cool pics from the fish market:

Some of the bigger octopus' would try to make a break for it if they could get over the edge of their containers. The vendors had to frequently throw them back into the water.