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January 22nd 2007
After a good night's sleep in Shenzhen we were up and running again this morning at around 10 to leave for Lufeng by car. Yue's dad insisted on driving there in Jessie's car, because she has a spankin' new Peugeot 206 1.6 automatic. The last one is really required, since Jessie's driving is like someone's who got there drivers' license for free with more than RMB1000 spent on tea. We set of through trafic in the city, always a nerve-wracking experience for me so I was glad I didn't have to drive myself. The highway was a piece of cake though and we drove for three hours through south-german landscapes; mountains, little lakes and forests. The roads are all new, two-lane asphalt toll highways. Not very cheap to drive on (300 km for about RMB70) but ... read more
January 20th 2007
The last couple of days on Hainan were again a bit more lazy; the weather also didn't help since it even started raining! Thank God we had enough books, so we stayed on our balcony (the temperatures were still in the high twenties) or on bed reading. Yue also bought a huge amount of tea and I bought a memory card for the video camera, charming the price down to RMB120 from RMB130, still half a taxi-drive to the city saved, haha! I got a little upset because of the way the Chinese do things, especially since we handed over the money for our hotel, about 100 euros to a lady from the travel agency without getting a receipt. Stupid me made of course a very sharp inquiry to the hotel personnel and we finally found ... read more
January 17th 2007
Feeling better after arriving here, clean air, nice weather, my cold is finally disappearing slowly. Just the occasional cough and running nose. But with 29 C, sun and a light breeze, beach at spitting distance and relatively good sand and water (25 C i assume), we have nothing really to complain about. Just hanging around eating, sleeping, swimming and reading is just what the doctor ordered. We travelled already for the second time into town, a 15 minute drive by taxi, to do some shopping. Yue saved us a lot of money getting the hotel room through an agent, reducing the fee from 1680 RMB to 250RMB a night! We've had dinners so far on the beach, eating fried fish and corn at the little stand 3 girls make illegally on the beach. The fish however ... read more
Shenzhen: one day before trip to Hainan
Published: January 17th 2007Asia » China » Guangdong » Shenzhen
January 13th 2007
Yesterday I was feeling a bit better so we went book-shopping and also bought a teenie-tiny little harddrive to back up the photos. Today was "family day". We visited Yue's uncle who lives with his son and daughter-in-law in Shenzhen, just a ten-minute drive away. They have a 11 year old daughter and twin of 3 years old. One boy and one girl, or one dragon and one phoenix as they say here. Their nicknames show already that there is a lot of sex-stereotyping still going on here: the boy is called Iron ball and his sister Duck egg! They were adorable though, very energetic, curious and funny. When we came back to the house, we had dinner and waited for Yue's maternal cousins to arrive. They also had some lunch and we drove with Jessie ... read more
January 11th 2007
Having had little inspiration but a lot of transpiration due to a feverish cold, I return to add the blog for the last few days. Let's go back to the last entry where we were about to depart to Foshan. We left early in the morning, actually a bit late, so that Tong had to race through trafic to the train station. We arrived on time to catch our train. Unfortunately it was a kind of stoptrein, so it took us about 4 hours to arrive to Foshan, which was supposed to be a little bit over an hour. Later we found out Yue's parents had bought the wrong tickets and on our way back from Guanzhou it took us 5/4 hours. We went to visit the remaining family of Yue's mother, i.e. her sister and ... read more
January 8th 2007
Finally we made some good decisions about where to go. The weather was lovely today so we went out somewhat late for brunch. Typical cantonese soup on an empty stomach is something I could get used to. After that we went to fit my tailor made suit for the final measures and some pants for Yue. We had coffee, the most expensive one up to now, in the most expensive hotel in town, the Shangri-La. Yue had blueberry pie which apperently they don't grow in China (the berries, that is, not the pie). When I told her that that surprised me, because the dutch word "bosbessen" would suggest they grow in the woods, of which I thought they had plenty of woods here, Yue had to disappoint me. Apperently there's almost no forests left anymore due ... read more
January 5th 2007
Having seen enough of the village of Xitang for two days, we bought some souvenirs. With the weather improving it was actually not such a bad village, very commercial though. We decided to cut the trip short and not try our luck in the other places in the area we initially wanted to visit, because rumor had it that it was snowing there! So we went back with Jessie and Tong by train to Shanghai. The last day or so we noticed that the village was more quiet, which meant the chinese holidays were over. On the train to Shanghai there was enough space so we arrived easily around 3 pm in the afternoon in a very pleasant hotel. Amazingly this was not a lot more expensive than the one we had before, more quiet, in ... read more
January 3rd 2007
Spend another evening in Shanghai and met an old ex girlfriend of Tong in the cafe next to the new year cafe. She is actually also from Shenzhen (though native Sichuan) and she invited us to come and have dinner when we would come back to Shenzhen. Yue met her last time 15 years ago, so it was a very surprising talk. After that we went to bed, a very long day for me since there were hardly any people who spoke english. I finally understand why Yue has such a hard time sometimes back home. The next morning we had a real European breakfast again, with good coffee and set out to find some drawing supplies for Yue. It was cold and rainy, so it was not such a nice walk through town. Coming back ... read more
January 1st 2007
Ok, since I just accidentally deleted the whole story I wrote, I'll keep it short: The new years celebration was a bit of a cold shower, we went home early, since the clubs close at 2 am and the chinese have a different way of celebrating. Today Tong arrived and we had lunch in a Hunan (Shangcha) restaurant with friends of Jessies. We did shopping and found some australian wine to bring to other friends where we will have dinner cooked by Jessie. I'm also writing this in their apartment. The weather turned gray, cold and rainy, so we hope to see some countryside tomorrow hopefully with some better weather. Shanghai was extremely crowed, we couldn't even find a taxi yesterday and today was also crazy since it's one of the few days the chinese have ... read more
December 31st 2006
So, the trip to Shanghai. We will stay here for a week and celebrate the new year also. I'm writing this in an internet cafe on the last day of 2006, I'll add some sentimental comments below ;-) This morning, we had breakfast in a more European way, since Yue's family was so kind as to provide us with some real bread. The French supermarket chain "Carrefour" has a relatively big store just around the corner, which means the Chinese can get a taste of the West. Except for the bread, we also had pindakaas (Unilever brand, tastes like the one from Albert Heijn, met stukjes!) and some sort of cheese, not too bad! The maid baked some eggs, which we got with soy sauce without asking, just like home! This is btw the most strange ... read more
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