Hua jiao

Although I find Cheng Du fascinating, the main reason I am happy to be back in Hong Kong is the cuisine. While Hong Kong has a multitude of restaurants hailing from all over the globe, it still maintains some local tastes and fragrances. But these are mild and appeal naturally to the Western taste buds. There is a very clear regional influence on cuisine, and Cheng Du was no exception.

The most powerful taste I experienced was "Hua jiao", 花椒 - literally "flower pepper", and known in English as Sichuanese pepper. It bears no resemblance to black pepper as we know it in the west, but instead has a reddish shell and an acidic, almost citrus, smell. It is used in hot pot, as well as in most local dishes, so we experienced it a number of times.

On such time was the first evening in Cheng Du. We went to an old park, which had touristy stalls, as well as museums, eateries and restaurants. There we had a hotpot dinner at an old, traditionally decorated restaurant, with entertainment in the form of dancing, music, and "Bian Lian" - 变脸,literally "face change", a part of the Sichuanese opera where performers switch masks with lightning speed.

Instead of the usual single big pot, we had 4 smaller "chambers" with varying degrees of seasoning with hua jiao and chilli. The smaller bowls in the foreground were to mix with soya sauce to create a dip for our boiled ingredients. The aroma from the pot was heavy, slightly nauseating, resembling the light-headedness one gets by inhaling vinegar fumes for too long. We helped ourselves to lettuce, lotus, potato, pork, beef, fish balls, and the oddity of the evening, pig brains (of which I only had a couple of mouthfuls). The hua jiao contains a chemical which numbs the lips and mouth, and the hot chilli made it an almost pleasant sensation after a couple of minutes. The downside was that we didn't eat that much (since hotpot is not that heavy, and the fumes of hua jiao took away our appetites). But that was apparently expected as we were stuffed full of oranges, tangerines, raisins, walnuts and, my favourite, mangosteens (a hard purple fruit that looks like an onion, but can be cracked to reveal a couple of sweet, white segments) when we returned to our loggings.

Media censorship

Another peculiarity of China - media censorship. Seen with Western eyes, censorship a violation of a fundamental human right. Especially the American GLOBErs have (surprisingly) strong views against censorship, and maintain that the freedom to gather information to make an informed decision in life is one of the most important functions in developing as a person, as well as a society. Danes seem a little more indifferent, but still maintain that an autocratic ruling party should not decide what people should and should not see and listen too. (But then again, we put up with bizarre micromanagement like the Danish fat-tax, something the Americans were profoundly annoyed by).

China has one television station, CCTV, having the all-powerful right to decide what to show on television (of course as dictated by the Communist Party of China), but it has several channels, some 40 of which were variable at our hotel room. They all show the same: Chinese talk shows, Chinese movies, and a LOT of Chinese adverts (There were probably also some nature programmes in there, but when everything is in Chinese, you kind of just flip mindlessly through the channels). At one point there was Li Na's tennis match at the Australian open, but generally the options were limited. I watched the last hour of a traditional film, in part to experience the film culture of China, and in part to see if I could pick out any Mandarin words. Not bad, but with immensely long periods of silence and dramatic violins in the background, it is nothing like Hollywood.

Regarding the Internet, China has banned numerous sites such as Facebook and Youtube. But Google is allowed, and I thus had time to check my gmail. But the connection speed is dire, and since most relevant servers were far away (i.e. Europe or Hong Kong), it was a test of patience rather than a pleasant experience. Also, photos take like 10 minutes to load, so even loading BBC or Bloomberg took time.

Talking to the father of our Chinese host, I asked him whether he thought this censorship was a bad thing. He didn't think so, but for very different reasons than I expected. I assumed that the fear of free internet was to do with uprisings against the regime, such as the one in Urumqi in 2009 (which, I admit, I still have some ideas about), but the father's main concern was with the erosion of Chinese culture. I later learned from a friend that pornographic images is another concern, strictly clashing with the upbringing of Chinese children (some schools state on graduation papers from high school whether the person has been in a relationship, since that would be considered as slacking off and not fully prioritising school). But China has many loop holes, and if you want to use Facebook in China, there are ways you can. But why would you, since a Chinese company has pretty much copied the concept with the web page "Renren" (literally "People people", meaning everyone), so all your friends use that instead.

It is strange (from a Western perspective) that Chinese value heritage and culture more than individual freedom. But as the father said, China has over 1,3 billion people, hailing from very different backgrounds. Chinese are more locally minded than nationally minded, which makes sense for a European (we could never envision a United States of Europe). This difference within the population, as well as its size, makes it impossible to let people do what they want - that has been done in the past, with fragmented provinces and kingdoms fighting each other for millennia (not unlike Europe). The Chinese do have more in common than Europeans, with some +90% of the population belonging to the ethnic group of Han Chinese. The Communist Party acts as a massive lightning rod, dictating certain rules and regulations, but bringing peace, prosperity and optimism to millions. As such, the father said that Chinese democracy not only was impossible, it was not even worth aspiring to. Different background, different view points, but in some harsh way, at this stage in Chinese history, I think I agree with him.

Giant Pandas

I vowed to not write a "I did this, then I did this, and then..." blog for various reasons, the most important ones being it focusses on chronology rather than events and it makes for unimaginably dull reading. So mulling over what topics were relevant, this one popped up.

Granted, seeing Giant pandas was not the most important event on my trip, but they do make for good discussions. We spent a sunny afternoon in The Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base in Cheng Du, and I accidentally opened Pandora's box by saying that Giant Pandas, from an evolutionary point of view, would not survive without human help, a phrase some girls took to mean that I was a savage, heartless bear-slaughterer. Here is the argument:


Giant Pandas are known as "living fossils", meaning that there are an old species. Species on average only last 2-3 million years before they are replaced by new species (evolution / extinction), but the Giant Panda has been around for more than 8 million years. These species often have few close relatives (evolutionary speaking), since the common link with other animals is considerably earlier.

Giant Pandas are smaller than most big bears, around 5 feet long and weighing some 250 pounds. They seem shorter (granted, I have not seen many other bears) since their back is curved, as they seem to spend a considerable amount of time sitting down. Their diet is 99% bamboo, and they can eat up to 30 pounds of shoots a day (their favourite part).

So far, they have survived for such a long time, precisely because of their few numbers. Their diet restricts them to areas with bamboo, an area which could have spanned the size the Europe before humans entered the scene. They pose no threat to human livestock so never competed with humans (like, say, wolves have), and they are too big to have any natural enemies. But they are in no way adaptive.

Giant Pandas only eat bamboo, which contains almost no nutrition, and they utilize only 20% of what they eat. Instead of diversifying their diet, they spend around 16 hours a day eating bamboo and cut down on physical activity, which gives them the appearance of being lazy (it is so bad that sexual reproduction can be too physically strenuous that they just don't bother - evolutionary suicide). They are solitary animals, not tolerating trespassers on their turf, meaning that the Giant Panda requires a large space for large numbers. This is the main reason they are endangered - human expansion has cut down the size of their habitat (literally).

Reproduction is key to survival, and Giant Pandas are disastrous at it. Females have oestrous cycles once a year, lasting for 2-3 days (!), making it difficult for a lone male to find, court, and mate a female in another territory (especially since they are lazy creatures). They often give birth to two cubs although they can only care for one in the wild. Cubs are born premature every time, do not open their eyes for 6 weeks, cannot crawl for 11 weeks, and weigh a 1000th of the mother. Mothers' also lack a parenting ability, which means that first-time mothers have been seen to get so shocked at the cub's  shrieks that they hit it to death. Perfect.

So will Giant Pandas become extinct in the next, say, 100 years? No. The Chinese are completely mad about them, and the Panda ranks high (below the Dragon) in cultural identity. There has also been huge advances in artificial insemination, alleviating the need for the animals to actually mate. Centers such as the one in Cheng Du also feed the bears extra nutritional cakes and fruit, and has currently bred more than 100 Pandas. But the Giant Panda in the wild, currently estimated around 1600, will still be under threat.

I final remark goes to the Giant Panda as the logo for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). I am not sure whether the logo makes the pathos statement that "we should save cute animals", the ethos statement that "because animals cannot survive, we should help them to", or the logos statement that "without us, animals such as the Panda would be long gone". I subscribe to the second statement; that we should help save the Giant Panda for its cultural influences and its calm, natural beauty. But from an evolutionary point of view, because of human growth and their stubbornness to stay the same, they don't stand a chance.

Cheng Du

Back in Hong Kong after 8 days in China, it seems almost impossible to put into words the multitude of experiences, impressions and understandings which have been gained along the way. So over the next couple of days I will try to provide blog posts which illustrate some of the peculiarities over being a westerner in China.

The goal of this first one is to lay the foundation. Cheng Du is a massive metropolis, containing some 7 million souls (even more, if you count the outskirts of the town), and the city is the capital of the Sichuan province, which is the province just East of Tibet. It has a mountainous geography to the west, but the rolling hillsides around Cheng Du, coupled with the greyish sky and just-above-freezing temperatures, gives it a chilly, damp atmosphere, kind of like autumn in northern England. It's rural location (i.e. not East coast China) means it lacks the same level of investment, and is therefore better known for its long historical heritage, Sichuanese cousine and opera, crafts and arts, and Panda bears.

Historically, the city has been a major city since the 4th century B.C, where the name of the city was changed to Cheng Du, literally meaning "becoming capital". Throughout Chinese war-riddled history, Cheng Du was a major city of the ruling dynasty, and its position as the doorway to Tibet gave it significance, for example as the starting city in the Southern Silk Road (as early as 200 B.C) and for general trade in crafts and tea.

Although I spent most of my time in Cheng Du, I had one day in Shenzhen (located just outside Hong Kong, which is where we flew out from), and two days in Rong Xian, a rural town 4 hours drive south of Cheng Du. (We went there since the trip was organized by a fellow student and friend, whose grandparents live in Rong Xian. During the Chinese Spring Festival, people return home to their local towns to meet up with family - and we were invited along). And that gets me off the mark.

Settlers of Catan

After having my final class before the holidays, exchanging some Hong Kong Dollars to Renmenbi, and having a wicked cuttlefish and pork soup-noodle lunch, I parked myself outside the cafeteria in the sun to play a game of Settlers of Catan with 3 fellow GLOBErs.

Settlers of Catan (henceforth known as Settlers) is a 3-4 person board game with the objective to build settlements, gain resources and expand into a sufficiently large civilization before your opponents. It has a multiple-stage element similar to monopoly, but games rarely last more than 1½ hours, so people never get bored. It is the perfect combination of luck, skill, strategy and human interaction (i.e. bartering for resources with your opponents), and the game can quickly turn on its head with a few lucky roles of the dice.

Settlers is an old game and the concept has been copied into numerous computer games I used to play as a kid, such as Civilization, Age of Empires and Railroad Tycoon, and so it naturally had an appeal to me. The board game doesn't have any military element, so it doesn't end up with one all-powerful player like Risk, and alliances are not really necessary or alter a lot, which keeps the fun of "every man for himself". So apart from the "nerdy" remarks by the 4 GLOBE girls who walked past, we boys have found the perfect game that is here to stay!

It has been some time since I last played a board game, but I am sure I'll have more games of Settlers in the future. That will have to wait till after my trip to Cheng Du, where I will spend Chinese New Years. I depart for Shenzhen, which is just over the boarder from Hong Kong, tomorrow at 11:30 AM local time. We take the 2-hour flight to Cheng Du early Saturday morning. So until the 28th in the evening, I am off the radar and thus no blogging..:)

Rush hour

For my trip to Cheng Du this coming week, I needed a visa. The Chinese Embassy is located in Wan Chai, on Hong Kong Island, roughly a hour from the University. Since the place is notorious for long queues, bureaucracy, and a frigid air-conditioning, it is best to be there at 9 AM sharp, when the office opens. However, that means dealing with the Hong Kong rush hour twice, as you have to leave your passport for 4 days for processing, after which you can collect it with the visa.

The MTR in Hong Kong is admired for providing access to almost all parts of Hong Kong at very reasonable prices. Naturally that involves changing trains, but it is a 30 meter walk across the platform most places, and the trains leave, literally, every minute. From University station (which is my stop, go figure) to Wan Chai, you change in Kowloon Tong, Mong Kok, and Admirality (the latter is located on Hong Kong Island). Stop and stop stations are encircled:



My friend Martin and I got on the MTR at university station at 8 AM. The trains were already crammed, trafficking people from the New Territories in the North toward the Kowloon peninsular and Hong Kong Island in the South. Once we crossed under the steep hills and entered Kowloon, we changed to head west for 3 stops towards Mong Kok. Mong Kok is the Nørreport of Hong Kong. It is the heart of the MTR, gathering the flow of people from the North, West and East, and reshuffling them onto the Tsuen Wan line which runs under Victoria Harbour and onto Hong Kong Island toward Central. 

Even though trains leave every minute, the immense flow of people means that there is a hustle and bustle to catch each train. Nice old ladies suddenly become ruthless as they try to weasel their way past other passengers and onto the train. Since I am 6' 3", I wasn't expecting to have to put my weight into holding my ground. Hong Kong does normally have a polite queuing-culture, but on the MTR it is every man for himself.

 

We got to the embassy just past nine, walked in past security, up to the 7th floor, and into a 7 person queue to collect our passports. For the price of 300 HKD I got a 6 month, double-entry visa, while Martin, being French, was only allowed a single-entry (the Chinese don't like the French, so they annoy them which stuff like this). We were out of the building and back on the MTR before 9:30.

Heading home is way more pleasant - the trains are literally completely empty, so I found a seat and read the Daily Standard. We were back at University at 10:30. The other Danes went and got their visas Monday at noon. It took them over 6 hours, trip NOT included, so rush hour was totally worth it. By the way, I paid a total of 14 HKD for the MTR tickets! I love my Octopus card! 

Chinese Marketing

Even though Chinese New Year, and thus a weeks holiday, is right round the corner, classes have got off to a rocketing start. I am obligated through my GLOBE programme to take Chinese Business, Chinese Marketing, Financial Management and Issues in Asian Business, the later of which will be conducted as a study trip to Singapore in May. I have also enrolled in Introductory Econometrics, which will be useful for my Bachelors Thesis, and of course Putonghua. Each course has three 45-minute classes every week, most of which are consecutive; which means I often only have each course once a week.

Today was Chinese Marketing. With a bright blue sky and 20 degrees outside, it was not an optimal motivation to be sitting inside between 10:30 and 13:15. The topic was "Understanding Chinese Consumers", and for the class we had read 25 pages of articles about Chinese consumer-patterns, including McKinseys annual report on China for 2010. It seemed an interesting, very relevant, and culturally enlightening subject, and being prepared, I was in a cheery mood.

It was brutal. We had no reference to the texts, and nobody but the professor talked for the 165 minutes, except in a 15 minute break. Instead, we were dragged through 66 PowerPoint slides about theories on why Americans and Chinese people were different, such as varying lengths of seratone receptors on our 12th chromosome, or the fact that we have references to different philosophies, Chinese and Greek respectively.

Most frustrating was the fact that our pre-class readings and the professors slides are contradicting. While all the articles stress the differences within China and warn about the myopia from marketing products to a single Chinese consumer, the professor kept referring to American and Chinese as fixed consumers. There were also differences in what this professor said and what our China Business professor had said previously.

It is clear that the educational methods of Hong Kong are very different from Denmark. Marketing in Denmark is about discussing, presenting ideas, and thinking for yourself. Here it is more a lecture, with the professor talking. Criticizing or disagreeing with professors is not something that one does, and there is a clear authoritarian division between lecturer and student. Our exam is about a self-chosen case, so that might provide more intellectual freedom, but that has yet to be seen. There is no doubt that my professor is extremely qualified and intelligent (he focusses a lot on human bias and behavioural psychology), but he uses the terms vaguely and extremely generally. So one finds oneself in a constant state of discomfort, on the one hand wanting to raise a hand to clarify or question critically, but on the other trying to remain on positive terms with the professor who grades one's exams.

Chinese

After taking all the business / economics classes I need in order to get full credits for my Bachelors degree back in Denmark, I had 3 hours per week remaining. It was not necessary to use them, but because my schedule is not that demanding, and mostly for fun, I chose to take a Chinese (Putonghua) course.

After spending a minimal amount of time studying Putonghua in Denmark, I expected to be in the beginners class here at CUHK. But after a quick talk with my laoshi (teacher), she told me I would better fit in in the advanced beginners class. However, that class contains people who have had Putonghua for three semesters, and focusses on reading characters and basic writing - clearly showing the ambition of the Chinese. I am struggling to keep up with the others, especially speaking in class, but I am learning at a pace not seen before. The way of the Chinese - fall behind and you are on your own - is diametrically opposed to the Danish way, which emphasizes helping the weak. Thus the two systems have very different outcomes: the Chinese have a very strong elite, but a very large educational gap in society, while the Danes are more egalitarian, but are simply less bright and hard-working (on average) at the very top.

I thought it would be interesting to see how I take being the worst student in class, and consequently how much I learn from this learning method, so I decided to stick with it. It doesn't affect my grade transcript anyway. But it is definitely like nothing I have ever tried before.

Chinese characters evolved from pictograms, resembling the objects or ideas they refer to. The characters have to be learnt individually, as there is no immediate clue to pronunciation. For this reason they use "pinyin", which is the word as it sounds based on the English alphabet (see picture for the first page of my text book, characters to the left, pinyin translation to the right - note: no English!). It seems a daunting task, but quickly one appreciates the beauty and logic of the language, combining basic concepts to produce complex ideas.

Basic characters such as 山(shan - mountain) 人 (ren - person) and 果 (guo - fruit) bare some resemblance to what they mean; for example "fruit" simply looks like a fruit tree. When combined with other characters, for example 火山 (huo shan - fire mountain) or 美国人 (meiguo ren - America person), they create new meanings or words, "volcano" and "American" respectively. Other times, one of the characters is used as a phonetic reference, so 园 (yuan - park) is made up of the visual character 口 (kou - opening / mouth / enclosure) and the character for money 元 (yuan). The internal character has no other purpose than to remind the reader how it is pronounced.

Once one is able to recognize certain characters, deducing meaning becomes easy. So if you know that 好 means good and 吃 means eat, what does 好吃 mean? And if 小 means small, what can you infer from the words 小吃，小路，and  小学? (Answers given below)

Grammatically there are huge differences. Chinese do not really conjugate verbs, and the construction of sentences is quite peculiar. So while recognizing characters might be slightly logical, finding a correct sentence will be a challenge. An example: "你好, 我的名字是 Joachim Satchwell" means "Hello, my name is Joachim Satchwell". But literally, the characters mean "You well, I-belonging to name is Joachim Satchwell".

Learning a language is so helpful to understanding the culture. Chinese has 4 different characters relating to table-tennis smashes, showing their enthusiasm for the sport, and the characters reveal a patriarchal, agricultural society since the character for "male" is the composition of "plough" and "field". Unfortunately everyone in Hong Kong speaks Cantonese, but I will practice my Putonghua when I head for Cheng Du on Saturday.

Answers: 好吃 (hao chi - literally good eat, meaning "delicious"), 小吃 (xiao chi - literally small eat, meaning "snack"), 小路 (xiao lu - literally small road, meaning "path"), 小学 (xiao xue - literally small study, meaning "primary school")

Reunion dinner

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar and is thus quite different from the Western calendar. The most important festival, 春節, or Chinese New Year, often falls on the first week of February, but this year it falls earlier, with the first day of the holidays being this coming Saturday, the 21st of January.

The Chinese New Year is celebrated with family and relatives in your original home town. The festival thus marks the start of the largest human migration, as more than an estimated 300 million Chinese leave the cities and return to their family in the country-side. On the eve preceding the New Year (the Western analogue to December 31st), one eats a traditional and symbolic "reunion dinner" - 團年飯, or literally a festive dinner. Since most of the GLOBE'rs will be travelling to their families next weekend, we had a GLOBE reunion dinner yesterday.


Consisting of 12 courses, most of them of symbolic meaning, the dinner is a fantastic insight into tradional Chinese values. 12 people are seated at a round table, and we had dishes such as squid, roast pork, chicken, dried oysters, mushrooms and lettuce, steamed fish, crab balls, and red bean soup. It was delicious! All the meat was served with the head (pork, chicken and fish), to underline that the food is in fact fresh, which is of serious concern to many Asians. 

Furthermore, Chinese have a funny belief that if you have something, then a similar-sounding event will happen. So since the word for eight (bā -八) sounds similar to the word for wealth (fā - 發), hotel rooms, telephone numbers and licence plates containing the number 8 all have a considerably higher prices than their equivalents without the number 8. The bad number to get is 4, since it sounds like death, and consequently many roads skip the numbers containing the digit 4 - for example 13 will be followed by 15.

So at the dinner, the best thing was the dessert, the twelfth and final dish, called "longevity buns"- 壽包. Literally translated as "life bundle", they are soft, spongelike cakes with a dark, warm custard in the middle. One bun for each was a perfect cap to our feast, and sent us on our way with good fortunes in the year of the dragon.

Of course, the actual reunion dinner will take place in 7 days time, on January 22nd, the last day of the lunar calendar. I will experience that in Cheng Du in China at the house of one of my classmates, and I can not wait!

CUHK

After being at CUHK for some 10 days, it is perhaps fitting to give the university some mention.

Founded in 1963, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) had the intention of bridging the gap between the West (in the form of British-ruled Hong Kong) and China. It is based on a collegiate system, somewhat similar to Oxbridge, with 7 currently active colleges and a further 2 more from next year.

CUHK is situated on a hill in the eastern part of the New Territories, overlooking the water. It reminds me of Alpe d'Huez with its steep roads and hairpin bends, and most buildings are at least three stories high due to the lack of building plots. There are buses going up and down the hill all day (which are free), as walking up the hill takes around 25 minutes and it is like climbing the stairs.

I live in the international house (I-house), which is a residents building on Campus. I-house is a 10-story high building located at the very top of campus. I-house is not a college, so each student gets affiliated with one, mine being New Asia. Each college has various perks, mainly PE facilities, which are limited to the members of the college (although nobody really checks), but libraries, cantines and classrooms are open to anybody.

CUHK is full of short-cuts to get around. Some buildings have elevators only operating between the ground and the top floor, which really helps. But as most of my classes are down at the bottom of the hill, the buses are super convenient and often used. Furthermore, since many departments, gyms, supermarkets and classrooms are located randomly around campus, one spends a great deal of time walking. It keeps you fit, but it is going to be brutal once it gets warmer. For now though, with the cool weather and rain, I don't plan to be outdoor much anyway.

Octopus cards

The most ingenious item available in Hong Kong is the Octopus card - and today I got mine!

The Octopus card is plastic card with an internal chip, and works like a contact-less debit card. You add value to the card, which maximally can contain HK$ 1,000, afterwhich you can use it as payment. Originally developed and launched in 1997 for the MTR (Mass Transit System - the metro), it can now be used almost anywhere, such as shops, restaurants, fast-food chains, vending machines as well as the MTR.

After filling out some paperwork, getting a stamp from my university, and paying HK$ 160 in an administration fee, I got a student Octopus card which gives a whopping 50% discount on all travel with the MTR (making a 5 minute journey to the Sha Tin shopping malls a meagre HK$ 2 per trip). So it was definitely worth the 5 day wait. No more fumbling around with coins!

The beauty of the Octopus card is its applicability. Over 95% of the Hong Kong population between 12 and 65 years of age have the card, and it is usable in almost any store. There is no pin code, reducing transaction time, which makes the HK$ 1000 buffer a convenient deterrent to crime (is theft really worth the potential HK$ 150 on the card?). Adding value can be done in any store accepting Octopus cards (again, almost anywhere), and it takes 5 seconds. Simply brilliant.

The real question is why this isn't present somewhere like Denmark? Granted, Copenhagen has less citizens than Hong Kong, but even there they have been experimenting with contact-less Metro passes. Apparently there must be several trial runs, but it seems retarded that a system which has worked for almost 15 years in Hong Kong cannot be implemented in a country like Denmark. So until the bureaucratic nightmare ends, Danes are stuck with inefficient clip-cards at prices that are well over 400% more expensive.

Basketball

Different countries favour different sports; Denmark is equally obsessed with football in the summer months and handball in the winter, whereas although England has football, it hasn't heard of handball, but instead has rugby, hockey and cricket. However, certain sports are part of cultural heritage. Any Dane will most likely have played football in their garden as a child, and consequently has a basic comprehension of the game. The CUHK students, although they have not openly participated in sports with the other GLOBEr's, say they favour racket sports such as badminton, tennis and table tennis. And the Americans; they have basketball. 

Perhaps due to some confirmation bias, I always thought height to have a significant impact on one's ability to play the game. I stand at 6ft 3in, and I have always found my best Danish opponents to be the tallest players. So although I am by no means the tallest guy on the court, I have always been able to hold my own.

Enter American GLOBEr's. Their average height is at least 3 inches below mine, and most of them are in a dire cardiovascular shape. But they are quick, have better technique, and are substantially more cocky with regard to their abilities. So naturally us Danes accepted their taunting challenges. We played once back in September in Copenhagen, a game the Americans narrowly won, but the deteriorating outdoor weather conditions meant that a rematch had to wait till Hong Kong.

So here we are: Basketball courts round the corner of our dorm, a new ball, and plenty of people who are keen to get the exercise in the 20 degree sunshine. Subsequently, my positive winning statistic is getting destroyed. The Americans just have a better understanding of the game, a better handling of the ball, and a better positioning on the court. Even though we have twice the height, strength and stamina, we are still found wanting. I feel myself improving dramatically, but it is discomforting to know that they, because of their culture and upbringing, have a enormous head start. Already looking forward to the first intra-GLOBE football match of the season!

Hot pot

As an introduction to Asian cuisine, the CUHK Globers invited us newcomers to a Hot pot dinner. Six stories up, just off the Wan Chai metro stop, we found ourselves in a bustling, steamy room at tables seating 10.

Although there is probably a more formal translation, a hot pot is a make-your-own dinner, which begins with a large pot of boiling water placed in the centre of the table. One then orders meat, vegetables and spices and dumps it all in the pot. When the ingredients have boiled, a shared pair of chopsticks are used to snatch what you want out of the pot and onto your plate, before you then use your own chopsticks to eat. At the end there is a delicious soup in the pot, a bowl of which finishes off the meal.

Our pot was a spicy pot - using chilli, soya sauce, spring onions and a hot peanut paste to create flavour, we added beef, tomato, lettuce, prawn, squid and chicken to begin with. Later we added pumpkin, and several more meats. Worthy of mention is cuttlefish, which was ground into little white meatballs and is delicious, and coagulated pigs blood, which had a slightly bitter taste, but a very unpleasant texture of gelatine.

Embracing traditions in any country makes for enlightening experiences. Meat is chopped irrespective of whether the meat contains bones or not, and fish have rarely been de-boned. Since there are no knives or forks - only chopsticks - you eat the meat in one mouthful and spit out the bones as you find them. Also, hot pot is great for improving your chopstick-technique, since the slightly boring lettuce is easy enough to fish out, whereas the juicy taiwanese meatballs are an entirely different matter!

For a 2½ hour dining session of all you can eat, including a pint of beer, I paid 150 HKD. So we treated ourselves to "cotton ice" in a nearby dessert shop before heading back to CUHK.

Tourism

Hong Kong had 42 million tourists in 2011, up from 38 million the previous year, and that is in a city with a population size of just over 7 million. Many come to enjoy the scenery and nature in the New Territories up North, but the thrill of Hong Kong is without a doubt the shopping and city life. Today was our turn.
 

The exchange committee for The Chinese University of Hong Kong had arranged a city tour all new students on campus. We visited Victoria Peak, which with its central location on Hong Kong Island and its 552 meter altitude provides a spectacular view of Victoria Harbour to the North. The day was overcast, but on a clear day one can see all the way to the hills separating Kowloon from the New Territories.


We then drove South to Stanley, especially to experience the Stanley market (pictured). The town's waterfront, and the nearby Repulse bay (named after the H.M.S Repulse which was docked here during WWII, and not after the murky water) provide picturesque scenery for the expensive villas built around the hillside, and the abundance of wealth was also illustrated by the enormous yachts docking in the harbour and the modern shopping malls with huge commercials for Cartier watches and Burberry clothing.

Our final stop was the Avenue of Stars. Although it is meant to be a tribute to the Hong Kong film industry with artists such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan represented, it is all about the view across the harbour to Hong Kong Island.

What was interesting about this trip is the Hong Kong idea of what western tourists want. The Peak is literally a huge shopping centre, with McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, 7-11, etc. Stanley market, which used to be famous for small shops and good bargains, has now been so overrun by tourists that it rarely offers prices below that of the city. And of course all the areas have to be something that can be photographed.

Taxi-drivers

Having hailed most of my cabs in Denmark or Western Europe, this is the image I had in mind when my fellow HK Globers told us we were going to CUHK by taxi: A large, clean Mercedes, seating 4 people, driven by a friendly, clean-shaven and overly polite man wearing a shirt and black shoes. Instead, as we exited the terminal, we were greeted by 3 vehicles looking like lada's built in the 80's covered in commercials, traditional characters and dirt, seating a maximum of 5 (the fifth person sitting where there normally is a gear stick). We split up, 3 or 4 to each cab, and headed towards the drivers.

Hong Kong has some 18.000 cabs and is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. That means bumper-to-bumper traffic most days and cut-throat drivers that are underpaid and overworked. Our taxi driver was a short, stout lady with a boyish hair style and some missing teeth, wearing a dusty fleece sweater and an earpiece from her cell-phone. She quickly grabbed our bags, jammed the trunk with 3 suitcases, and started shouting into her earpiece. The trunk could not even fit 2 bags, but the lady whipped out an elastic cord to lower the lid of the trunk as much as possible (it closed just more than halfway). Then she ushered us into the cab, piled in the remaining luggage on the spare seat, and slammed the vehicle into gear.

If the packing of the taxi had been bizarre, it was nothing compared to the trip. The female driver had 4 cell phones rigged to her wind shield and dash board, and was constantly flipping between them and screaming aggressively in Cantonese. For 40 minutes she only diverted her attention from the phones when she had to pay the bridge fare or curse at other drivers. The poor state of the car, as well as the fact that we were driving on the left hand side of the road and that she was rarely going below 100 kph, wasn't too comforting.

Apparently, cab drivers don't speak much Mandarin, let alone English. So the thought of trying to find your dorm on a new campus with an aggressive driver is not exactly comforting, but we got lucky pretty fast. The taxi meter showed 218, but because of various tolls and charges for bridges and luggage it was a total of 250. We pay, and let a large nod and several loud words of recognition, before she touches her earpiece, starts shouting again as she hops back into the cab, and speeds off down the road.

Calculating the actual fee in Danish kroner, I ended up paying something like 65 kr. for a 40 minute drive. That wouldn't even have gotten me a mile in Denmark. Welcome to Hong Kong!

The plot

The first chapter of GLOBE 2012 embarked as I, along with 9 Danish classmates, departed Copenhagen Airport on January 3rd. The GLOBE programme, offered to students of International Business at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), merges 15 students from CBS, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the University of North Carolina (UNC) into one class of 45. The class spends a semester at each university, having classes and excursions together, as well as sharing cultural and social experiences. Hong Kong is the second leg of this 1½-year programme, with UNC concluding the it in the autumn 2012 semester.

When one embarks on such adventurous journeys, it is customary to write a blog. I am (obviously) no exception, and although I dislike the idea on ranting on about events in my life like some appalling reality show, it is a convenient way to gradually update friends and family at home, while at the same time keeping a personal account of what I actually did on this trip.

I will strive to base each post on a topic I find interesting or peculiar, rather than on a chronological account of my stay. That will make it seem less like a diary and a more interesting read (a plus for anyone who is not my mother), and will also alleviate the pressure of daily posts, although I will try my best. I also regret to inform Danish readers that I will be writing in English, although most Danes I know are proficient English readers (there is always Google translator).

Anyway, the first real post is well overdue, so I'll better get to it. The GLOBE 6 adventures of 2012 have begun!