Dear Readers,
Inspired by some of my favorite podcast, I have decided to repost some earlier work. This post, my first ever, was originally written as a letter home to family, I later tweaked it a bit for a more public audience. While some of the descriptions of Shekou are dated, and our culture shock became less pronounced over our 6 years in China, some of the observations are still relevant. It was also hilarious to look back at how green we were just off the boat, so to speak.
August 2, 2011 (original post date)
Shekou Seaworld
On the first day after our arrival we decided to wander through Sea World to an apartment complex called Coastal Rose Garden Phase 1, where we thought it was likely we would live. I think walking is the best way to see a city and this proved to be true in Shekou as well.
Although we had experienced the "excitement" of driving in a car in China the previous day, walking is its own special kind of adrenaline rush. It was a fast but difficult transition from the pedestrian/bike friendly city of Portland to a place where the buses seem to speed up when they see you walking across the street.
I guess there must be a kind of pecking order on the roads here: Trucks/buses, then car/vans, then electric bikes/scooters, then bikes, and if the coast is clear, or if you are incredibly brave, pedestrians. In other words, the bigger and more aggressive you are, the more right-of-way you have.
There are street signs everywhere that symbolize "no honking" however, it is hard to dissuade the Chinese from their seemingly favorite past time, as they will speed up to a situation just to honk.
So, as we walk out of hotel and down a quiet street we must then cross a fairly busy street to Shekou's main attraction of Sea World. Sea World is a "mediterranean" style plaza similar to those that have become popular in the newer outdoor malls in the states (i.e. Bridgeport in Beaverton... or any mall in Arizona).
We stopped by Starbucks (yes, they are everywhere here too) for my son's favorite pink donut, but alas not everything is the same, so we had to backtrack to Dunkin' Donuts where they have a plethora of pink donuts.
At this point in its construction Sea World has mostly food and bars, but very little retail. In addition to American fast food companies of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts we found KFC, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, TCBY, Subway, with a Chinese flare of course.
We cleared the main plaza and because of some major construction found ourselves in a sort of side street which turned out to be the main access road for the construction vehicles, which allowed us to see beyond the construction barrier to what used to be a plaza in front of the Minghua yacht (formerly a French ferry vessel) . The entire area (about 3 city blocks) around this yacht is under construction and will be incorporated into Sea World as retail space and hotels.
The project amounts to millions of dollars in investment by Shekou and private investors to keep pace with the on-going modernization in Shenzhen proper. Shekou in many respects had lost some of its luster as "the place to live" in Shenzhen because metropolitan Shenzhen caught up and passed Shekou in amenities and and modern apartment buildings.
As in the US, the wall around the construction site is decorated with artist renderings of what is being built. These show beautiful modern buildings, however they are accompanied with Norman Rockwell like images of westerners circa 1950... it's a hilarious combination.
As we exited the side street onto another 4 lane road the morning foot traffic began to pick up we soon noticed that locals, especially older, were literally stopping and watching us. There are are many westerners in Shekou so we knew it wasn't just curiosity of seeing non-Chinese people.
We made a loop and started to head back to hotel when my son decided he needed to test a money feed electric horse. I was about 20 feet away and observed a group of 3 men stop and watch my son and wife. At first I thought they, being men, were checking out my wife, but it was soon very clear that they were watching my son...it was a little weird.
I have since realized that my son is something of a novelty, older people love to watch him and talk to him, young girls smile and wave and many a teen has had a picture taken with him. This is mostly because of his blonde curly locks, but his mother is convinced it because he is "so cute", either way he enjoys the attention.
Walmart...Chinese Stlye
On day two we decided to walk through the Mont Orchid apartment complex then make our way to Walmart to see if we could find a cat box for our sixteen year old Cleo.
Mont Orchid has beautiful lush courtyard gardens and is very close to my son's school, our hotel, the subway, and Sea World, I was immediately sold on the place. Since our apartment tours weren't until the next day touring the gardens was all we could accomplish there that day.
We continued down road and when we were about half way (only about 1/4 mile) to Walmart and I started to rethink walking through the city thing, because at this time of year after about 11am this place is a sauna!!
We finally made it to Walmart and found complete chaos! The place was two levels of wall to wall people and every inch of the store was merchandised. It is set up similar to Ikea or a casino, in that, if you aren't paying attention you will lose your way and have a hard time finding the exit, and in this case all the signs are in Chinese.
We looked through the pet supplies but didn't have any luck with a cat box, then as you might expect we got lost. This was the fun kind of lost that only lasts a few minutes and you still feel like you're in control of your surroundings...the frustrating helpless feeling of being lost would come later that day.
So as we wandered around Walmart we finally found our way to the down escalator to the main floor. Just to give you an idea of how packed this store is, even the space between the up and down escalators was piled with snacks and candy, or "impulse" items.
The main floor of Walmart is a grocery store and the first thing that hits your olfactories as you step off the escalator is a mix of warm raw meat and live seafood! It is so overwhelming we had to beeline to dried goods before we lost our breakfast.
We spent a few minutes in the beer aisle deciding between 3 kinds of german lager or 3 kinds of asian lagar. I think I heard some whispered complaints about missing New Season's (Portland) craftbrew selection. In the end we settled on a few cans of Carlsberg.
We finally made back to the hotel to hydrate and eat lunch. Both of which were needed to make up for the 3 or 4 LBS we had sweat away during our walk.
Coastal City
During lunch we decided it would be fun to take advantage of the hotel shuttle to the giant shopping complex known a Coastal City to buy my son a toy and see what all the buzz was about.
So at the designated time we ventured down to the lobby to catch the shuttle only to be told that it had just left. It turns out that the clock in our hotel room is about 5 minutes slow, and even though we are in the subtropics we are clearly not on island time.
We were feeling adventurous and decided this was not going to stop us so we did the frogger routine across the street to Sea World to catch the Metro. The Shekou line of the subway was just finished last year and is the cleanest train and station I have ever seen.
We also got a taste of the government's attempt to educate the local public to be more courteous. I had read online that during peak commuting hours that you must push your way on/off to a train or bus or you will be left behind.
Although there was hardly any traffic in the station there are videos and guards instructing the passengers to line up and let people off before you get on. I am curious to see if this works as well as the no honking signs.
As we attempted to navigate the map and locate our stop we started to feel a little in over our head. I asked a local who pointed to the Coastal City stop, and then I asked a couple of Aussie gentlemen a few minutes later, just to certain nothing got lost in translation.
They happened to be heading to the same spot, and one even gave me an extra metro token, which turned out to be fortuitous since I ended up having that old vending machine problem of not having a crisp enough bill.
We followed the Aussies on to the metro and they gave us a heads up when the Coastal City stop was coming. We then made a short two block walk to the retail area and started shopping!
We walked through the giant modern mall (5 stories with additional basement levels for some of the bigger stores) and made our way to 5th level and Toy-R-Us. After perusing that and a few other toy stores we found my son his first Chinese toy, a race car tow truck combo that comes with a tool box to take it all apart.
We then went to Jusco Grocery which was a breath of fresh air (literally) from the Walmart grocery store.
Unfortunately jet lag started to catch up our little boy and his jet lagged dad's patience was also wearing thin, so we headed outside to go back to the hotel. Our intention was to catch the hotel shuttle back, however as we got close to the pick up time it began to be clear that we had no idea where we would find it.
We walked around for a while tried to communicate with Jusco employees (it's their shuttle) just generally hoping to get a lucky break. Soon the buzzer on my phone alerted us to the fact that we had 10 minutes to find the shuttle, but we had already walked in circles so we gave up.
No problem, we would just head back to the metro, except with all of our wandering we had gotten completely turned around. We started asking random people and store employees where the metro station was located, but most of them just giggled because they had no idea what we were saying.
We walked and walked with my son on my shoulders for at least 2 miles in blazing heat around this complex feeling increasingly desperate... We were truly lost on "Planet China".
Finally a young woman at the Pizza Hut was able to speak enough English to instruct us to the metro stop. I estimate that we came within a half of a block of this stop twice during our travels. We purchased our tokens like old veterans and relaxed on the air conditioned train.
After a deep breath, my son happily amusing himself with teenagers seated next us taking selfies with him, my wife and I broke out some cool drinks. Just as we thought we had finally made it through a tough first day...my wife's coke exploded!
You can find the rest of this series, First Impressions of China, at http://freebirdtales.strikingly.com/