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Published: June 11th 2006
House Duck, kind of.
So when we got to the lady's sister's house, we thought they had a pet duck. We ate that duck for lunch the next day. I know, morbid yet kind of funny. Least to me. I had the most bizarre experience going into mainland China. Last time we went to mainland, we went to see the sites, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, all the good stuff. This time, we were just taking a one-night trip to visit friends. So we take a short train ride across the border between Hong Kong and the mainland to Shenzhen.
Shenzhen is actually pretty cool, lots of tall buildings. There's a hugeass mall Where the train station is. Rows and rows of stores, it would take more than a couple days to walk through. It was really annoying though because it was a touristy area and all of the shop-people kept coming up to us to tell us to come into their store or show us a catalog with their wares, etc. We didn't shop for very long because it was so frequent.
The friends that picked us up we know from America. The lady doesn't speak english at all so my mom has helped her a lot through the years. We've known her and her kids for a long time. Her side of the family lives in Timjin (sp?), least that's where I believe we were.
Not too bad
View from a building, I guess it doesn't look too bad here but you can see all the little bits of litter. Random little town an hour away from Shenzhen. Anyways, so she, her daughter, and two nieces came to get us. My mom had told us that one of the lady's nieces was really rich; she had married a businessman so we were expecting to see some neat stuff.
Once we got to the town though, my brother and I were in culture shock. Really crappy. o_O We went to the sister's house of the lady and while the outisde looked crappy, the inside was alright. It basically seemed like that was the house they lived in for years and it was really freaking old and ugly but since the niece had married rich, she had given them a lot of nice gifts such as a fancy dish dryer, huge stereo system, and really neat, modern furniture. But I don't think the lady's sister (mother of rich niece) knew how to design or decorate really well. Course, I don't believe that's important to them.
One thing that really freaked me out was the driving. There are streets but no traffic lights and no lines so people just basically drive wherever the poop they want. There are tons of scooters
Old and Dirty
I wish I could have seen how this looked when it was nice and new. and motorcycles too so they just weave in and out wherever they want as well. I guess in one way it's sort of safe because no one drives too quickly. It's still weird though since you have to assume the other people are going to stop. o_O I think I saw one traffic light at a major intersection in the middle of a developed area of the town.
Then the niece took the family to dinner and things were different. Apparently in Timjin, while most of it is crappy, there are random streets and parts of the town that are nice, have new buildings, and it seems like a lot of of the areas are being set aside for construction of new apartments and commercial areas. So they're trying to improve their town. Anyways, we went to this really nice, huge restaurant. We had our own private room with a little sitting area with a tv and karaoke (we did not karaoke, thank Bob), private bathroom, and a huge table to sit at. Of course, the niece ordered a buttload of food.
We thought maybe we were going to stay at the lady's sister house but the niece
wouldn't have that. She got us two rooms at this really, really nice hotel. Best shower ever. I want one for my future house.
I never did get to see the niece's hugeass house, but oh well. She did a lot for us and I appreciated it.
So yeah, this trip was very reminiscent to the Bratislava/Eurotrip experience. o_O Gotta love that exchange rate!
Marty's here now so I'm sure I'll be seeing more sites and updating more! :D
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THANNATOZnLILEOYTIS
Joe North and Lila Rose
House duck, kind of
So - I loved the house duck story. Definitely a Chinese experience. (And, for that matter - a "rest-of-the-world" experience.) We Americans sometimes forget that our food was once living, lol. And, in this case, the food lived with them - prior to lunch. :o)