Traveling the World

Recently, an article passed through my Google Reader app which reminded me of an interesting lesson I learned while living in China. I was in Shenzhen with my gf at the time, and we were crossing into Hong Kong. It was in the morning, and we saw groups of children lining up at the border to go into Hong Kong. It was clear that there were mainland Chinese sending their children across every day to be educated in Hong Kong. I asked my gf what was going on. She said that these children had all been born in Hong Kong to Mainland Chinese parents.

Apparently, this made the citizens of Hong Kong angry. What has been happening for a long time is that the parents would get a visa for HK, and pay an agent around $25,000 to secure a hospital bed so that when the time came, the parents could cross into HK and give birth. Because they were born in Hong Kong, they had a HK passport, citizenship, and full rights to a great education. The reasons Mainland parents would go through this trouble are many:

Here’s where the Hong Kong citizens take issue with this practice. If you have 30,000 children being born within your borders each year to non-residents, it severely limits hospitals from being able to properly support its citizens. In addition, a black market for finding hospital beds has been created which pits private agents against their own brethren. The amount of money they can ask for is insanely high for many Chinese, and so these agents are getting rich off the blood, sweat, and tears of the Mainland Chinese.

The entire practice has enraged the locals, because it’s difficult for them to find hospital beds when it comes time for them to give birth. They protested, and finally the government responded by severely limiting the number of beds that mainland parents can have access to. Something that was included in the response which infuriated some locals was that this law included couples where the mother was from the Mainland and legally living in HK with her HK citizen husband. That meant many of them had to return to the Mainland to give birth, which also meant that they would have to live in the Mainland with their child (and have the child go to school in the Mainland), whilst the father worked and lived in Hong Kong.

The lesson to be learned here is that governments should pay more attention to the needs of their citizens, rather than creating blanket laws that generalize, and even harm the lives of future generations!

Please continue on to read this article for more information on the situation!

My novel is coming along quicker than I could have imagined. I had spent the last 6 weeks struggling with scratching out a horrible 1/3 of a page per 2 hours (roughly 1/3rd page per day). My friend with writing experience assisted me tirelessly, despite my incessant harassment to read my newest iteration. Finally, one rainy night last week, as I was laying on my couch with the laptop nestled against my crotch, she remanded me, exclaiming in a rage that I needed to trust myself. Instantly, I popped back to reality and the artificial light from the computer screen shone into my eyes. I knew what must be done, and went about diligently learning different writing techniques.

Although my writing never feels good enough, I am beginning to delve deeper into my creative mind and pull out more strongly crafted emotive descriptions. In doing so, I am gaining confidence in my own ability, which has sped up the writing process, and pushed me to play with the words and methods I employ.

Aside from writing, I have joined a website called Interpals, which has been great fun. People from around the world message me on a daily basis to talk about random things, but the hard part is figuring out when they’ll be online (thanks timezones..) to continue the conversation. These meetings have fueled me to pick the site of my next trip (it’s a toss up still between Russia, India, Turkey, or a rehash of Thailand/Malaysia/Indonesia because I’ve missed a lot in those places).

The search for jobs in China officially begins today, but I remember the process being long and arduous. Hopefully, my connections within the Wuhan community will make the process painless and quick. The employees at work verbally count down the days until my departure, and I applaud their enthusiasm, knowing that they’ll be stuck here even after I’m gone. Another thing to appreciate is that this time my body won’t require immunizations that cost a billion dollars, I know where to buy flights from, and I know where the best places to work are and which apartments are the cheapest and best quality for my money.

China.. I’m almost there..

So I just wanna say that I’m sorry I haven’t written lately, haha. I found that spending time in the US has made it so that traveling doesn’t happen, in which this site is useless. In fact, I did go back to China for a few weeks, and you would know had you been reading my blog site. I’ve decided that in order to keep them up to date, I’m going to merge the sites back into one like it was originally. Anyways, After a lot of thought, I’ve decided that I’m definitely moving back to China towards the end of February 2012. For now, enjoy my latest article, which highlights the intricacies of interracial dating (white men with Chinese women), since it’s something I get asked about all the time.

The standard line is that people think I love Chinese women because they’re submissive, but that’s not true at all. Before I can begin to explain it, I first want to talk about the types of women in China.

The first type is called “chuan tong” (chew-an-toe-ng), which is Chinese for a conservative thinking person. The second type is called “kai feng”(ky fuh-ng), which is Chinese for a liberal or open-minded person. Where it gets interesting is that you might get women who are extremes, and some in the middle that are mixes of both. For example, you will find Chuantong women who speak English and love Western culture and are very outgoing, yet will not date foreigners. I had a female friend like this in China. She was very beautiful, smart, and outgoing with a deep love of Western culture. Most of her friends were in their 30s or 40s and had many foreign friends, but she refused to date me because I was 4 months younger than her!

You will find Kaifeng girls who don’t speak English and don’t understand Western culture, but love foreigners and would do anything to date them. There are many girls that frequent bars in China that are looking solely for foreigners, and dress a certain way to attract those foreign men, but they are using their beauty and nothing else, which can lead to issues when the foreign man can’t speak Chinese, which is more often the case than not.

Because of this weird mix, its hard to know what you are getting yourself into when meeting Chinese girls, but you can tell quickly. For example,

- Do they wear sunny dresses or more Western clothing?
- Do they use umbrellas to shield their skin and eyes from the sun, or do they wear sunglasses?
- Do they wear makeup and dye their hair or wear colored contacts?

The better they speak English, the easier it is to tell who they are. It might be harder for them to express who they are and what they want using English, but body language can always get the message across. The main differences between American women and Chinese women are that Chinese women have no fortress walls keeping you out of their life, i.e. they are very happy to talk to you if you’re a stranger; they are quick to develop feelings and will be honest with you about those feelings if you encourage them to do so; most of them will never invite you over to their home (assuming they live with their parents) because you only meet the parents if you’re serious and looking to get married; When they sleep over, they usually don’t cook, but they’ll clean bloody everything; when you go on vacations, they want to take pictures of bloody EVERYTHING, but mainly THEMSELVES!

Overall, Chinese women are just as smart and outgoing as Western women, but sometimes you have to encourage them because these things are not encouraged within their society, so please, stop staring when you see white men with Asian women, because love knows no bounds, and you never know who you’ll find yourself with until it happens! I hope ya’ll enjoyed this, and feel free to discuss this. I’m open to answering any questions about my personal experience!

A days worth of travel couldn’t stop me from being wide awake upon arrival at PEK airport in Beijing. You’d think from the massive grin plastered all over my face that I’d never been to China before, but you all know better.

The happiness in my heart felt like I was walking on clouds and nothing could ruin my day! We took the airport express train into the city and began a long, long search for a place to sleep for the night. From my trip to Vietnam, I discovered a new way to travel: one in which I have nothing planned upon arrival to my destination. This way, I can be open to anything!

We walked around for 8 hours until we met a backpacker who took us to her hostel (Sanlitun) in Dongsishitiao in Chaoyang district. Chris was even more wide-eyed as he’d never been to China and had been dying to come his whole life. He was amazed at how the food tasted, the people spoke (quite different to the way his Chinese teacher taught him), and everything else in between. The fun we had wandering around was better than anything else we could have wished for!

Until the next day, when the conference attendees began arriving in droves. They were so friendly and jetlagged, it was kinda cute. I passed by this Chinese girl who said a few words to me and walked off, but that’s not the end of the story..

On the 26th, Louise and I headed back to Hong Kong to pick up my phone. After almost an hour on the phone with the manager, she agreed to a price of 500HKD, or about $65. The original price to replace my phone’s motherboard was $130.

They explained to me that upon first inspection at the care center, my phone’s camera and headphones jack were broken, which was a simple fix and free. When they sent it to the engineer, they discovered that somewhere between them and me, the real motherboard had been removed and replaced with a fake one that had physical damage to it. Although not my fault whatsoever, the warranty was obviously voided. This is just one way in which Chinese people are shitheads.

We spent the whole day in HK, so sadly I had no time to gamble in Macao. Who wants to come back to China with me and gamble????

The next morning we arrived at the airport with 2 hours to go and ate overpriced garbage. I tried to hurry the girls along because I was the only one of the three of us who has done international travel.

After a brief farewell with Louise and an hour and a half to go, Lily and I dashed to check in. I had no problems, but since Lily has never left China before, she did. We both applied for visas on arrival, but apparently Chinese law requires a physical visa in your passport before they will allow you to board an international flight. After begging forever, they told her to buy a Cambodian visa at three times the real price just so she could leave.

It was real scary for both of us, as she finally got clearance with 25 minutes to takeoff and arrived at the gate with 18 minutes to go. A huge sigh and deep breath, and we were off.

Four hours later we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was the first time I saw bad weather here, but I was just glad to be free of the bullshit that is China after being stuck in Wuhan for six months. Oh yeah, and it was 30C (~88F)!!!! After waiting in line to go through the “border,” we were told Lily needed to get a free transit pass. Thirty minutes later and we were once again free!

The first thing we did was exchange money and bought food. After being in China, I wanted to eat something special, so I had chickpea samosas. Lily got a grilled sandwich, and realized her mistake when she tried my food. She promptly ordered what I had after she finished hers. Being a gluttony for punishment, we got 6 dunkin donuts to bring on the plane.

In Vietnam we had to go to the visa office located adjacent to the border crossing lines, waited 30 minutes and cost $25 each. On a side note, it’s strange to be using USD in Asia!!!

When our visas were ready, we happened upon 2 Aussies traveling with Aussie dollars. They were the last from our flight to receive their visas, and the visa office did not have enough change for them. They asked if I could lend them the money to pay for the visa and then pay me back as soon as we crossed into the country. We ended up sharing a taxi because of the cost.

In a similar situation as us, one of the two has traveled a lot, while the other has never traveled before.

It was hard communicating with the taxi driver, and I resorted to a mix of English and Chinese. He dropped our new mates off first. It was a vibrant area with thousands of locals and foreigners hanging out on the streets chatting, eating, and playing. I felt strangely at home.

He then took us to our place, which was dark and boring with no lights or people. After a few minutes of trying to explain why we weren’t getting out at the destination we asked to be sent to, the words “hui lai” did the trick. That’s Chinese for “return” or “go back.”

We went to where they got out, but couldn’t find them. We checked into a place and explored the area. Within 10 minutes a man on a moto offered to sell me marijuana and I laughed because everyone in Asia is the same no matter where you go.

I got a beef and pork empanada with a banana milk shake and they were both yummy. I thought about Louise and how I wished she could see this. We went back to the hostel to find they locked up for the night…. at 11pm.

We woke up the grandma to open up and put some things down so we could go back out for drinks and people watching. The grandma was pissed we went back out cuz it meant being woken up again later. Talk about great customer service. We booked another hotel for the next night because locking up early and being angry about your PAYING customer wanting to have fun is unacceptable.