Crossing over from the Shenzhen special economic zone

Underwater bus

Qingyuan. A few weeks, we started off on a bus from Luohu, at the border with Hong Kong over in Shenzhen, on our 36-hour adventure to Qingyuan, a little town of 3-4 million people about 60 km north of Guangzhou. It was a 4.5-hour bus ride to start with.

We were planning to go to a rock music festival, in some national park 30 mins drive from Qingyuan. The Shanshui (because there was mountains and water at the said park) music festival in Niuyuzui was poorly documented, with almost no infos in English. But many, if not all, major names of the Beijing rock scene, like Carsick Cars and Hedgehog, along with many other ones from Guangzhou like Yufeimen and Zhaoze, came down to rock Niuyuzui, which is some kind of nature reserve run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

On the first day, we planned to catch some shows in the evening, once we got to Qingyuan, but Typhoon Conson (which directly hit the nearby province) totally disrupted our plans. Our bus ride became one of the most exciting ones I’ve ever taken in my life in the last 30 minutes or so, with rain literally putting our vehicle underwater. We arrived, met our friends who took the previous ride, and just decided to postpone music listening to the next evening.

One of the nice things about Qingyuan was that it is in mainland China, and yet is not Shenzhen, Dongguan or Guangzhou. It is actually a relatively small city, not a gigantic sprawl, and where it is possible to take pleasant walks.

After giving up on the concert for Saturday night (there was a power outage at Niuyuzui from 7PM and on), we wandered the streets to find a place to sit down. We were staying in a pedestrian alleyway called Guojin (國金), right by the commercial street of Bei Men Jie (北門街 or North Gate Street). Walked, but did not buy. Things are probably not marginally cheaper than in Hong Kong’s street market, I assume.

After getting some drinks and pastries at a corner bakery, we found Ali Baba’s cavern! It’s a liquor store, selling liquors in jars. The quantities were counted in kilos (for a few yuans per kilo), and the store owner would only put them for you in recycled 1 litre soft drink plastic containers (so bring your own cup). Our friend bought one black rice liquor (tasted like toasts, in my opinion), and a plum one. I was a bit absent-minded and forwent buying any.

I don’t have the address, but it was maybe 100-200m on the main road from the city’s main bridge, just off the city square/park. In Chinese, it’s called the Chongqing Three Gorges Liquor Store. In fact, the owner is a Chongqing-er, like one of the friends who came on the trip, and who was all happy to speak her own dialect in deep-down Guangdong province.

We found a fruit store, bought some fruits, and then found a bar by the river, which showed WWE, offered 12 cans / 100 RMB “specials”, and which had dice and barbecue from the nearby store.

We ended the night searching and finding late night snacks (barbecue, of course), before rolling back in taxi to our hotel beds.

Slipped under every door. Not my friend for the night.

This was my friend for the night

View from the balcony of Guojin hotel

Hotel room, with a computer

On Sunday, we met after 1PM, and set off to find a way to reach our festival, along… the famous Qingyuan chicken…

After going to the city’s new bus station (south of the river), we walked around for 15-20 minutes, before finding something that suited our tastes on one of the back streets. The place we went to was called the 水哥大牌档 (Brother Water Dai Pai Dong). We ordered chicken (from Qingyuan, so it tasted really really fresh), served with pepper and coriander. We also had fried beef with bitter melon, another light Chinese cucumber salad, and a mapo tofu…

(To be continued…)

We went to Shenzhen last weekend, to watch the game, eat some barbecue, and in my case, visit the electronics market, Hua Qiang Bei (华强北). Located in Central Shenzhen, right by the Metro station of the same name, Hua Qiang Bei is a commercial boulevard with almost a kilometre lined with two or three layers of multi-storied malls, mainly selling electronics, but also children goods and jewellery (like, each entire mall was themed). I was one day impressed with Sham Shui Po and Akihabara, but this is completely out of this world.

Laptops, cellphones, cell phone accessories, fake iPads (running Android, for about RMB600 or US$85), gadgets and all of the rest that has electric/electronic components in it could be found there. If you know that the Pearl River Delta region is currently the world’s factory, it is not at all surprising to find such a place in Shenzhen.

Because I was so overwhelmed, I didn’t buy anything, except a bunch of replacement batteries for my energy-leeching phone. You won’t find crazy deals, but you will find about anything to be found in electronics.

Will be back there with my renminbi later this year…

We celebrated the actual St-Jean-Baptiste as it should at the dim sum restaurant (Kam Fung on St-Urbain). Frankly, dim sum, “small bits” Chinese brunch, may not always be my favourite meal to have. But in Montreal, it doesn’t get better, as a way to assemble our group of friends around the same table.

In fact, one good thing about Chinese restaurants is the round tables, instead of rectangular ones that you’d find in Western restaurants. It’s really nice, because I wouldn’t have been able to speak to everyone sitting around the table otherwise.

***

On a célébré la St-Jean-Baptiste comme il se doit, c’est-à-dire au restaurant dim sum (Kam Fung sur St-Urbain). Mais pour être franc, le dim sum est loin d’être mon choix personnel de resto, mais y’a rien qui bât ça quand vient de trouver quelque chose pour rassembler tous mes amis autour d’une table.

Le resto chinois, peut-être comparé au resto occidental, a la qualité de placer les convives autour d’une table ronde, ce qui favorisera les interactions. Si on s’était mis autour de tables rectangulaires, je n’aurais certainement pas pu parler à tout le monde rassemblé ce midi-là. Alors, bravo au concept des tables rondes !

I know that I should stop amazing for these things, but I just can’t help it. These are photos of a new shop on rue Ste-Catherine Ouest in Montreal (near du Fort). It has been replacing the old Movieland (physical world video rental, what a backward business model) for at least the past month, I asked one of the clerks. It is basically borrowing from the concept of small shops within a big one that you see a lot over here in my corner of Asia.

Viewshop is like the little brother of the department store model. Most of the shop(s) belongs to its owners, but small open spaces within it are rented out to tenants, such as the Korean cosmetics booth (Korean brands like LaNeige are hugely popular all across China).

Some of the products sold in the shop are remarkably Chinese. They could be sold in some upscale-ish store in Shanghai or Hong Kong, I feel. On one side, it’s all clothing, all for women I think, and on the other, you would find various electronics gadgets (alarm clocks, USB cup heaters) and fancy stationery (an apple-shaped notepad?). Then, a small (bubble tea) café, and the cosmetics.

Yes, the owners are Chinese, after I asked, but wasn’t that already obvious? Yup, that is Montreal’s other Chinatown, far from Asian fonts clichés.

I was walking down on Ste-Catherine last Saturday, and saw this kid just sitting there, apparently waiting for his parents to catch up or something.

The Chinese squat is a comfortable sitting position perfected notably by certain people, such as the Chinese… You see that a lot more in mainland China, at lunchtime near construction sites, or at bus and train stations at any time of the day. In Hong Kong, not so much.

Maybe I became colour-blind with Montreal’s Chinatown, but San Francisco’s struck me in awe as spectacularly multicoloured — especially in shades of fluorescent orange, green and yellow. Well contrasted with generous usage of the Asian font and you find a Chinese America from a past era, or at least, forever stuck in a generation’s imagination of what a Chinatown should look like.

Somehow, it’s an interesting walk, in the same way a walk at Windows of the World is interesting.

Grant Street 都板街

Washington Street 華盛頓街

A reader of CLC is promoting such a movie night this Saturday night! It’s a movie called Snake Deadly Act (1979) by Wilson Tong. Check their Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=109853092368690

My favourite (perhaps because it’s one of the only ones that I know) independent label in Hong Kong, Harbour Records, released a compilation for public consumption. It’s available as a free download here:

http://harbourrecords.com/downloads.html

Alternatively (especially people in North America), I made a copy of the archive on my webspace with title encodings and mp3 id3 tags corrected to UTF-8. It’s also a RAR, which preserves file names in Chinese, if you absolutely want to read the title names in characters:
http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~csam/files/Harbour-Records_Listen-to-the-People.rar

Of the artists featured on it, I recognize False Alarm, SuperDay, Jing Wong, Hard Candy, and 林阿P, which we assume is the 阿P of My Little Airport (MLA is not among them).

Track list under the cut.

1. False Alarm – 喜二
2. The Lee’s – Smoking on the Shoulders of Giants
3. 黃衍仁 – 轉念 始於足下寸土
4. 神奇膠 – 我明明生勾勾 點解嚟活化我
5. Superday – 八月十五
6. Squawk – 後知後覺
7. No One Remains Virgin – 心繫鳩國
8. Jing Wong – Muted Singer
9. the secret lovers project – 我們的遷徙
10. 林阿P – 我等在街上籌旗
11. 蹙 – 基本訴求
12. Hard Candy – A Word Starting With “F”
13. Pusshi Ta-chi – 領匯歌
14. The Running Deer – 80後:我們沒有得選
15. Bjorn – my home; my loan
16. 生番present: 花*靚clan – 屋邨女
17. The Chaostones – Sedimental Clamour
18. Forget the G – Prologue
19. 在草地上 – 別站著
20. 郭達年 – 我知道

My colleagues are prepping up for the International Media Conference, which officially starts today, but which will pretty much get going tomorrow (Monday). “Reporting New Realities in Asia and the Pacific”, is the theme of the conference, with distinguished speakers such as Hu Shuli (Caixin Media), Kurt M. Campbell (U.S. Secretariat of State) and Surin Pitsuwan (ASEAN).

The official Twitter hashtag is #imchk

Edit (2010-05-01): A video summary of the event has now been published.

Hong Kong’s Lamma Island Coal Power Plant, seen from Yung Shue Wan 榕樹灣