Huizhou; Between Limbo and Hell

So now that I've escaped the PRC and their internet filters, I can say a few words about my life in Huizhou.

Huizhou is what in China would be considered a small city (roughly 3.75 million people) in Guangdong Province, about a 90 minute drive from Hong Kong.

It is, according to Wikipedia, 'In the provincial economic development strategy, Huizhou is regarded as a site for a world-class petrochemical industry, as well as the hub for solidifying information technology, and expanding exports and trades'.

That about sums it up. The whole place is as bland and uninteresting as a foreign metropolis of almost 4 million can possibly be, dominated by Wal-Mart and KFC. Also, there are no toilets.

The students were nice, but I didn't have many teaching hours and most of my time was given over to looking at grad schools and reading every book in my possession, including:

- The Red and the Black
- The Beach
- Kiss Kiss (by Roald Dahl)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- The King of Torts. That's right, I read a John Grisham novel

Sometimes, the gods punish you by granting what you ask for. I was feeling a bit cramped in Saigon and wanted to get out. Now that I'm back, it's never looked like such a cosmopolitan and exciting place.

Websites Banned in China

They include:

Blogger
Youtube
Facebook
Most human-rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch etc.
The Daily Show/Colbert Report websites
Wikipedia's entry on 'Chinese Internet Censorship'

Websites that have been blocked in the past include non-Chinese Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

Firefox, canny little devil, notes that when the website you're trying to access is blocked it does not say 'Error' or 'Web timeout' but 'connection interrupted'.

Of course, if Blogger is blocked, how am I writing this? I'm using what's called an online proxy, which hides your ISP and allows you to surf the internet (mostly) free of restrictions, though some websites such as Facebook are still a bit off.

A Chinese Story

Having fled Vietnam just in time I found myself in Hong Kong with a few days to kill. Since I didn't know anybody I headed over to the local Jewish organization. When they turned out to be arrogant and unhelpful I realized I was going to have to take care of things myself.

Out of necessity I ended up staying in Chungking Mansion, where a tiny little room with a fan could be had for the bargain price of only 80 Hong Kong dollars a night. Imagine if Phamn Ngu Lao, De Tham and Bui Vien streets were crammed into a single shabby high-rise and the Vietnamese replaced with Indians and Africans, and you have a pretty good idea of what Chungking Mansions is like. Decent curry though.

Hong Kong isn't much of a city to look at - just endless skyscrapers housing offices, apartments and shopping malls, with elevated walkways between them to avoid the drudgery of having to descend to the lowly earth. On street level, Hong Kong resembles nothing so much as simply a Chinese New York with British street names.

It is notoriously short on sights. There's the harbor and the Big Buddha and some decent parks and even a Disneyland but didn't appreciate them.

You see, I was in a lather because NOT ONLY did the French people decide to go to Paris without telling me or leaving a forwarding address, leaving me stranded, but my backup plan - teahcing summer camp in Zhuhai, China - was canceled due to swine flu. At my wit's end I stormed into the office of the Education Company (I'd rather storm into Jean-Marc Merlin's office, but he's out of reach) and demanded they give me money or, failing that, employment. Eventually the agreed to give me a do-nothing job in Huizhou, a city near Canton.

So now I'm in Huizhou, which I suspect was devised by some clever Ministry of Tourism initiative to make every other place in China - maybe every other place on earth - look fun and exciting. My teaching starts next week but it looks like my classes will have less than 5 students each.

China is strange. It pretends to be Western with it's high-rises and straight streets and Macdonald's, but just under the surface it is far more bewildering than anything I encountered in Vietnam. Also the censorship si really bad; i can't get on Youtube or Facebook, and I can only update my blog now because I got a 'proxy server' to get past the firewall.

Wish I were in gay Paris, but that'll have to wait. I'll still be back in Vietnam come September.

Tam Biet, Vietnam

So Now I'm in Hong Kong awaiting the next leg of my journey...and a good thing, since it turned out my Vietnam visa expires on Tuesday. I got the day/month thing mixed up.

So, since I'm not in the spirit for a lengthy introspection, I'd just like to say that I appreciate all the people I met in the last year and I'll miss you...at least until September.

More Like 'Singariche'

The best way I can describe Singapore is basically as a very luxurious retirement community. It's warm. It's clean. It's well-organized. There are plenty of laws to keep the young'uns from getting out of hand, cheap and cautiously spicy Asian food, and non-threatening English-speaking minorities.

Also there are shopping malls everywhere. If there's a global recession on, you wouldn't know it from Singapore. The shopping, dining, and construction is blazing ahead at a rate that makes HCMC look quiet and indecisive.

Setnoas: A kitschy little island to the south of Singapore proper, with theme rides and beaches and aquariums and other stuff for children and their grandparents.

The Esplanade: A durian-shaped performing arts center (and shopping mall, of course) right on the bay.

Singapore Art Museum: A charming modern-art museum with some rather bizarre exhibits, such as a video of a Vietnamese artist cutting up dozens of pieces of pork, putting them into glass boxes and placing said boxes on the subway escalators.

Sir Raffles believed that ethnic groups should each have their own little enclaves, and so:

Little India
Chinatown
The Colonial District
The Arab Quarter

All pretty much what you'd imagine them to be, with the appropriate restaurants, shops and temples.

Then I was late for my flight and had to spend all day in the airport. I suppose you could argue most of Singapore is basically an airport mall, but it still wasn't fun...

Oh, and the Merlion! Half fish, half lion, it's the national symbol of the city-state which in an odd way manages to represent the dual East-West nature of Singapore itself, or so I just made up.