那里只有蓝天

I went to the White Cloud Moutain in the morning with my mom. I liked this place a lot when I was little. The entrance is still the same, but now they made a new path with very nice steps for people to hike. Something funny happened at around noon time. My mom and I were having a rest next to a pond. The pond is inside an inn. It is a small Inn that has some historic value so there are some security guards in front of the entrance of the Inn. While resting, there are a number of young peole in their twenties showed up next to the pond and start playing with the fish and turtle inside the pond. The turtles are quite big, about the size of a letter size notebook. My mom herself has turtles in our house as pets, so when she saw those young guys took a turtle out of the pond, she yelled at them and asked them not to remove the turtles from their "habitat". So the guys obeyed. A moment later, my mom told me she saw some guy snached a turtle and put it inside a plastic bag. She believed they are stealing turtles. I told my mom to tell the security guard if she thought so. On our way out, my mom almost "whispered" to the security guard about she saw the kid steal turtles. Then she started walking very fast. She yelled at me and wanted me to walk fast to go home as well. Why? She said she was afraid when the guard caught those kids, they would guess it was her who told the security. Then they might come out and catch up with us to give us some trouble. But I did not want to walk so fast, so I told her why don't we take the gondola down hill so we won't get caught. My mom thinks gondola is too expensive. I laughed and told her that she wanted to save herself from danger but still cared about how fat our wallet is, such a typical conservative way of thinking. But at the same time, I felt troubled about the sad truth. If you consider we are doing the right things to help the turtles, then you must also accept the difficulty to actually do any "right" thing in China because often you are the only person who wants to do the "right" thing, and you need to think of a way to escape first before doing anything "right".

In the afternoon, we went to the Chinese Telecom Service Center. People there are nice and the service seemed to be quite good. I did not experience those bad things people online talked about. I also tried to use Chinese ATM machines. Interestingly, the maximum amount of withdrawal is 3000 RMB. The other weird thing is, after you insert your ATM card, it prompts you with a screen, saying " please make sure no one suspicious is around you ", you must push confirm to go to the next password screen. Otherwise, you will not be able to proceed. From a user's prospective, isn't this a dumb thing to do? Why give a screen with only one choice? Or is it because there are many people trying to rob ATM visitors?

At night I met with my middle school friends. There are only 2 guys and 6 girls. A lot of people came late because they had to do Over Time. It seemed like working OT is a typical thing among well-pay-office jobs. And another surprise was, after 10 years, people did not change much. They are still almost the same way I remembered 10 years ago. Maybe because it has not been too much time, people won't change too much in just 10 years yet? Oh, except one thing, girls do become prettier after 10 years. That is probably most rewarding for my trip :-)

Today I finally went to get my new Chinese Citizen ID. The place to get an ID is inside a special agency administered by the police. This place is stictly for obtaining ID or registering residency. (The ever infamous Chinese "Hu4 Kou3") The inside feels like a DMV. People grab a number from a ticket dispenser, then sit in chairs to wait for their turn. I originally imagined I would have to stand in long lines and worrying people will cut in front of me. That did not happen. Although when I grab my number, there are about 70 numbers before me, I only waited for 30 minutes. This is quite a big improvement from 10 years ago where if I go to a busy hospital, I would need to wait for an hour at least to be allowed to see a doctor. Another improvement is when I took the pictures for the ID before I even went to this agency, the photo studio actually collected my information and saved it to the government's database. When my turn came, the person just looked up my information, so I did not have to fill out even an application form. This I think makes the line go faster. Maybe the stupid DMV can do something like that so we don’t want to bomb DMV every time we go there.

After getting the ID card done, I went to the nearby famous "Up Down 9" shopping street. Because I heard a lot of things about how the city renovated this historic place, I was hoping to see some very nice and old style buildings. What I found was nothing new except a couple bronze sculptures. I was quite disappointed because it seemed like nothing much changed there. Another disappointing thing is the fact that the bookstore is now tiny. 10 years ago, this is one of the biggest bookstore in the area. Now in order to survive, the bookstore rented out its first floor to vendors to sell fashion. And I see this trend everywhere in Guangzhou, I guess no one is interested in reading books anymore. All they want to do is just get a shop going and sell fashion, shoes, and cellphones to make a living.

Lastly, in the afternoon I went to the far east side of the city. 10 years ago, this place is considered farm land, now it is the new residential area with tons of 30+ storied high buildings. Interestingly, they built a street overpass with an elevator. They told me it is the first ever overpass with an elevator. I feel it is a giant step for the government because they finally realize the importance of accomodating the disabled for crossing the street. Yet this elevator is locked up and unpowered. I bet you won't figure out why they do that. The elevator is nice and fully functional, but just locked up. The story they told me was the local management found too many kids play with the elevator when they made the elevator available. I felt funny and meanwhile felt sad. You see, it is a good thing that the government wants to do something for the people, but the government can't do jack when certain people are making a mess. Even though only a tiny fraction of people are making a mess, yet since there are so many people in this city, this tiny fraction amounts to enough damage to any good progress we want to make. It is going to be a long way for the city government to keep improving the quality of life here.

Second day begins with a light headache. After morning tea with my parents, we went to get some clothes and my dad and I together fixed the water tap for our washer. My parents are still obeying the rules of the good old days: they actually have two washers, one new one old. Instead of using the better and new one (which is front loading), they want to use the old one (top loading) first until it dies. I feel funny about it because it took me a long time to realize in the USA that if one can afford it, one should always enjoy the new one and discard the old. If you think about it, top loading washers tend to damage textiles more than front loading, and letting the new one sit at the balcony means it is gonna get worn out by sun and rain as well. Such "farmer" mentality is so hard to erase in our minds of the 80s.

After lunch, my uncle called me and asked me to go out to take a look at the new Guangzhou Convention Center. I am taking the GZ subway the first time and it amazed me how new and clean it is. The trains and the station are free of litter. The gate is controlled by RFID systems. They don't need physical tickets. I just need to use my RFID tag over the sensor to open and close the gate. In my opinion, this subway is by far the best I have seen comparing to the BART, or the LA metrolink. But I just can't figure out how they keep people from littering, my only guess is that people see how clean the subway is and do not wish to deface this image.

The convention center is huge and has a modern design. Right now it is still not fully finished. If it completes all 3 stages of its structures, it is going to be as big or even bigger than the LA Convention Center. The inside of the Convention Center feels like an airport terminal. The outside is a modern steel structure designed by Japanese designers. The process of choosing the design is this: many teams will join the competition, each team will receive $30,000 as entry fee. If selected, they will get to discuss the actual designing fees and enter the construction phase. I am sure a lot of civil design or industrial design studios find the Chinese market thriving and ludicrous.

The next thing I went to is the University City. I saw some funny thing along the way. On two different occasions, I saw two different version of the street sign of the university city. One is called Higher Ed. Mega City, the other is called University Village. They have the same Chinese but different English translation. I bet the signs are made by different construction teams and therefore they picked their own English Translation. The university city (note: this is my version of its name) is very nice. The buildings and the layout are better than many US universities. However, I see something very disturbing. Even though many buildings are completed, a lot of schools have not moved many people over here yet. So the percent of facilities used is quite low. The other thing is this mega city took only a couple years to finish construction. My uncle told me, although they called the mega city completed and usable, there are many construction teams now finishing up or fixing defects of the construction projects. This somehow made me feel like working in a USA software company: Pushing a product out of our door on time but fix the defects later.

I can only say there are a lot of changes since I have left this city. The new airport is modern, spacious, and well constructed. Took me 20 minutes from walking out of the plane to walking up to the exit of the custom with no stop. There is this huge underground parking structure that is all connected. In LAX, always so painful to find a way from the parking lot to ticket counter.

The highway connecting the airport to GZ city is impressive. It is new and better than say 101, or the 10 in LA. As soon as we enter the city, I can see high rise buildings everywhere. Surprisingly, most of the 20-30 storied tall buildings are actually residential apartments, not offices. Another interesting thing I notice is almost every single household has an air-conditioning machine hanging on their exterior wall. AC machines certainly become an every-day appliance in GZ, much like fridges.

90% of the time our car stays on some kind of high way. Inside the city, it is always on a 3-4 storied high highway. So I wasn't ready to look at any scene with people yet. However, as soon as we got off the highway, I saw people, I mean lots of them. It is a site you won't see in the crowdest streets in LA. Maybe in Chinatown San Francisco during busy time, that is the only place I can compare to what I see here. I probably got used to what I see in LA. Walking on the street means running into someone every 5 minutes. Now it is every 5 second you see 2 to 3 faces. What can I say, what a populous city.

And certainly even though a lot has changed from the outside, the people here and the lifestyle here have not changed too much. People ride their bikes along side with cars on the famous People's Bridge over the Pearl River. You know what, when I was 14, 15, when I rode bikes on that bridge, I obeyed the rules and used the bike lane because I did not want to get stuck outside of the bike lane and riding with the cars. Today, people still violate the rules and don't use the bike lane, somehow I am amazed by this resistance to obey. And people cross the streets with even more guts than before. I remembered when in 1997, it is not an issue to cross any street because cars are sparse. Now, with 10 times more cars, and with more people needing to cross the street, people just becomes Ninjas. They literally move between the traffic. Like my mom will approach the car lane with such skill that the car mirror is only 5cm from her. Then she would move very fast to the next lane. And if cars are coming, they don't stop, they actually slow down and try to dodge the pedestrians as well. I don't know what to do if I drive. I am sure my basic instinct tells me to stop whenever I see a person or a bike.

And then another thing I learned is things do become old and dilapidated. I returned home, home, in my memory, was in a nice quiet neighborhood with lots of grass, trees, even flowers. Now I discover I am standing in front of a 20 year-old building in a neighborhood next to a food market. You know when there is a big market, there would be a lot of street vendors. So there are all these piquot seller, incense seller, and even frog seller just 10 meters away from my room's window. I can see the seller kills the frogs and clean them for his customers. And when they argue, I can hear all the curse words loud and clear. Oh, was I talking about old and dilapidated, I am talking about my home. In 1997, the building looks new and so is the interior. Now things just look very old. My parents have a mix of old and new furnitures. They did not replace the floor or repaint the walls when they remodled part of the house. So you can see the old stains and cracks on the walls or on the floor tiles (mostly in my room though …). My desk's paint is all faded and peeled out, The nicest thing in my room is … just the new door. I mean the room is not bad, but just the newest thing happens to be the door.