And the 'Cleanest Subway Stations in the World' Award Goes to...Shanghai

Andy Hill

Gandhi once said that you can evaluate the morals of a society by the way it treats its animals, and in a similar vein, I believe that one of the most genuine ways you can gauge the charm of a city is in the care with which its public spaces are attended. It is one thing to have sparkling clean shopping districts, promenades, malls, and arcades; in the places where big money is made and business is done, you would expect there to be some modicum of concern for aesthetics and environment. 

All too often, city councils and governments pay all of their attention to these areas, where the money is and little concern is paid to the places which, although the public shares them all day every day, are not featured in travel magazines or guidebooks.

Nearly every city in the world has this dichotomy between public and private spaces, and although the public spaces are the ones that are the most visited by the most people, tourists included, they are often the most grungy and foul-smelling. 

Although people do not travel to New York City to see the subway stations (wouldn't that be interesting?), nearly all people who travel there will see this seamy underbelly of the Big Apple at some point during their sojourn there. And they would most likely be predictably affronted by the typical ensemble of sites, sounds and smells that metro stations the world over are known for: urine, perhaps vomit, graffiti, and the slumbering inebriate, not to mention people being attacked or at least shouted at and cat-called.

In short, subway stations are usually pretty gross.

However, if you ever travel to Shanghai—not exactly a small town, nor one known historically for its tidiness—I would bet that you would be very pleasantly, perhaps even alarmingly surprised by how remarkably clean the subway stations are.

Each tile is swept and mopped by an army of custodial experts; turnstiles are new; staff are chipper and helpful (okay, not always, but usually); everything is clearly marked; the bathrooms are bizarrely inhabitable. 

In fact, I thought to myself while I was staying there for several weeks, the subway stations in Shanghai just may be the cleanest in the world (that I have seen, at least). 

This is an impressive feat, not only because of the sheer amount of foot traffic these places receive on a daily basis, but for the obvious amount of care that the Chinese government puts into its public places. I was taken aback by the amount of tender loving care that these often repulsive and forgotten subterranean areas obviously received from the good stewards of China's public transit system. 

So hats off, Shanghai: you have been awarded the 'World's Cleanest Subway Stations' medal. 

Keep up the good work. 

Astrological Calligraphy

Andy Hill

When I was teaching in Gaoqing county, two other foreign teachers and I were taken to dinner by several people from the education bureau. It was in a brand new hotel and restaurant, very swanky. We ate sea cucumber, duck tongue, and turtle, among many other delicacies, all washed down with liberal amounts of baiju - China's own favoured white liquor - and cigarettes. Every dinner I've ever been to in China had a week's worth of baiju and smokes packed into it.

After we were stuffed, tipsy and languid, word came around that in a large suite down the hall there was a party of sorts happening, so we wandered over and peeked in. As it turned out, that evening a famous artist from Gaoqing was in town and was a guest of honor at this party. He was a tall, thin bohemian guy with long hair and beads around his neck and wrists. He waved us in and everyone seemed very happy to have three foreigners on hand to witness all of the festivities.

He was famous chiefly as a calligrapher, we gathered. The man had many large sheets of paper, brushes, and ink wells, and he was making them for everyone. He would write a little message and then sign it. I had never really watched someone write calligraphy before. I was transfixed by the graceful, lilting movements of his arm as he applied the black ink to the white paper. 

When it came to be my turn, a woman there who spoke English translated a little for him. A calligrapher asked me when I was born. He said, "Ah! A dog! In the zodiac you are a dog, and so am I." He seemed very pleased with that, as was I. My little poster/greeting said, "From a dog to a dog - don't worry so much!" 

It was out of the blue because I had been dealing with some serious, ulcerating anxiety during that period of my life, especially that week, and it was exactly what I needed to hear. I thanked him profusely and we took a couple of pictures together. He continued making the pieces for each person. We had some more baiju and smoked some more cigarettes, and soon it was time to go.

When I got back home, I hung the piece on my wall, and it has remained with me since then. Whenever I start to freak out about something, I stop and stare at that poster, remember his beaming smile and the movement of his arms when he made it, and I feel my heartbeat return to normal. 

The Mongolian Hot Pot Experience

Andy Hill

For several days, I had been braving the freezing hutongs, reading every historical plaque in Beijing and living on practically nothing with this French guy I’d met at my guesthouse. We were both, to say the least, on a budget and our diet of instant noodles was beginning to sour our attitude and weaken our ability to see and learn as much as we possibly could. 

We were walking around the area just south of Tiananmen Square and went past a cheerily neon-lit Mongolian hot pot restaurant. On the front, there were pixelated images of a cowboy riding carefree across (presumably) the steppe, and the inside looked particularly cheery when compared to the nearly empty, dark streets around us. 

We assured ourselves that we had earned it as we jerked the door open and stepped inside, were ushered to a table and seated with I Ching-sized menus. There was so much to choose from! 

We ordered freshwater shrimp and a couple of vegetable dishes (the other guy was a pescatarian) and, since we’d been so frugal, a couple of large Nanjings. 

A couple of tables over there was something of a party happening, and a long-haired, red-faced guy had a traditional stringed instrument he was trying to delicately pluck and follow with a falsetto melody. The others at the bottle-covered table knew not a word, but nodded and smiled the way drunken people do while listening to someone play a song they don’t know.

Soon, he noticed us and when our food arrived, rose to shepherd us through the complexities of the Mongolian hot pot experience. We ordered some more Nanjings, and he brought over some of the hooch that he and his friends were drinking, and we began throwing shrimp and green onions and chilies into the broth. 

Long Hair, it turned out, was the owner of the restaurant, and knew how to make his guests feel welcomed. He kept ordering stuff from the kitchen, and we kept throwing it into the broth (after explaining several times we were too broke for the additional plates, to which he smiled, laughed, and poured more liquor for us). 

After we had largely sated our appetites, and were just sort of picking sentimentally at what was left, nursing the Nanjings, we were serenaded by the owner on his little instrument. He came over to the table and actually put his foot up on one of the chairs and sang with his eyes closed and his head tilted back. It was nice, even though we were the only ones there at that point in time, except for the kitchen staff who obviously wanted to go home, and Long Hair’s daughter who watched embarrassedly from the counter. 

We paid up for what we ordered (he gave us much more free food than that), killed the rest of the Nanjings, and shook hands with the guy about one hundred times before stepping back onto the sidewalk as he assured us that the cowboy in the pixelated picture on the front of the restaurant was definitely and absolutely him.

Grokking the Yungang Grottoes

Andy Hill

I had spent a week in Beijing, and had soaked up the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, all the palaces and hutongs and markets and museums that I could really handle in that amount of time. Wanting to see more of the wider region, I began casting about for interesting religio-cultural relics to see in the surrounding areas. My searchlight fell upon the Yungang Grottoes, a series of caves containing tens of thousands of carvings of the Buddha and other reliefs depicting symbols and scenes from that wise tradition. 

The Yungang Grottoes are about a dozen kilometers from the city of Datong, in Shanxi Province, so I took a train the following evening from Beijing to that former capital of coal mining. I stumbled out of the station in the early morning smog into the most cripplingly cold air that I had ever experienced. Even central Vermont at Christmas seemed Caribbean by comparison. My bag was very light walking towards the taxis as I had already put on all of the clothes I'd taken with me. 

Trying to figure out the bus schedule made my skull ache, so I approached one of the taxi drivers gathered about the front of the train station, and soon we were off to the grottoes. 

Carved by a series of Buddhist monks during the 5th century, the Yungang Grottoes contain over 50,000 statues, reliefs, and depictions of the Buddha. Most are very small, even bottle cap-sized, but there are also some massive, several meters-tall statues smiling serenely down on the throngs of tourists who come to see this important relic of China's Buddhist past.

Shuffling from one cave to the next, I was struck by the devotion that these artist-monks had shown in abundance and quality of craftsmanship within. The cold air in my nostrils brought out shades of the austerity and asceticism that must have been the rule of their daily lives. 

The carvings sometimes look like near-natural occurrences, covering the face of the stone niches and enclaves as if caves themselves had been tectonically formed with the four noble truths in mind. 

If it had been warmer, I would have stayed longer than an hour perusing the caves, but I was starting to have trouble moving parts of my face, and began to become anxious about the fact that I had yet to buy a ticket out of Datong, and that I may be stuck there for the night. 

Regardless of these circumstances, I came away from the Yungang Grottoes with even more respect and admiration for Chinese history and culture than I'd already accumulated over the week. 

My taxi man was waiting faithfully for me, and grinned and barked in Mandarin as he saw me approaching. Once back at the train station, I was blessed with luck to have been able to return to Beijing that evening, and through the night I swayed and rocked gracefully, millions of tiny Buddhas smiling down upon me. 

My 27th Birthday at the Great Wall

Andy Hill

I had never really treated myself for my birthday. In fact, throughout my teens and twenties I was usually working on this annual time of reflection and celebration of myself, but towards the end of my 27th year in this incarnation, I decided to do something memorable for once.

I had been teaching English in South Korea for a year and had saved up some vacation time, so I bought a ticket to Beijing and planned to hike a section of the Great Wall for the big day.

On that special morning, I awoke freezing and gleeful in a dorm at the Sitting on the City Walls guesthouse. It was not yet light out, and I crept into the lobby to wait for my minivan out to the biggest manmade creation on the planet.

After about three hours, I and several other travellers arrived at Jinshanling and our guide told us he would wait at the end, at a section called Simatai. It was to be a roughly three-hour trek, depending on our durability. 

As soon as we were out of the van and on our way to begin walking along the wall, a panoply of 'guides' came rushing along to 'help' us along our way, carry our bags, explain various engineering and historical feats of the brave souls who built the Wall, and collect some money at the end. 

One middle-aged woman with the dexterity of an Ibex attached herself to me and proved to be cheerful company. 

The sections of the walkable parts of the Wall are perforated by guard stations that in their time were the brains of this ancient telemetric network, using smoke to signal over thousands of kilometres about news happening at one place or another. 

The Great Wall stretches out before you like an endless cobbled snake until you cannot see it anymore, climbing ever further over crags and peaks into the misty horizon, never in a straight line. 

Some areas are nearly impassable and quite scary, and if it weren't for the chipper encouragement of my near-elderly guide, I might have turned back for a Tsingtao in the parking lot. However aerobically exhausting the trek was, I felt an immensity of spirit, leaping from stone to stone and viewing the Wall from each new vestige, coupled with healthy humility and tininess, seeing with my own eyes how vast and long the human experience has been and how hard we have worked to shape the planet in our image. It was both daunting and encouraging. 

I had a beer with one of the army guys at one of the last stations before Simatai, toasting myself, and him, as well as all the countless people who toiled on that massive structure.

At Simatai we sat down to a massive and delectable feast, tired yet enamoured of what we had seen that morning. 

I was proud of myself for having finally done something on my birthday worth telling about. Now, nearly five years later, the Great Wall of China remains the most impressive manmade thing that I have ever seen in my life.

A Cathedral of Carnal Creativity: Symon’s Art Zoo, Bali

Andy Hill

I was literally driving around Bali, on the main road which makes a ring around the island. Near the northern tip, around Campuan, I practically wrecked my motorbike while instinctively pulling over when I saw Symon’s Art Zoo. 

Brightly colored paintings, statues, things dangling from here and there followed my every step as I ascended into the interior open area of this cacophonous carnival of creation. A man, who I would learn was the Symon who had erected this cathedral to his and others’ art, was sitting on a hammock under a veranda inside. I asked him about the place.

“Well, you’ve gotta have a palace. It’s good at the end of the night to be able to say ‘let’s go back to the palace.’ So I built a palace.” 

He gave some instructions to a couple Balinese guys who were moving a two-meter-tall statue of a violet- and crimson-colored penis. They scurried under its weight towards where it was to go.

“You see that up there?” He pointed to the second level whose floor, directly above us, was made from rustic wooden planks. “That’s the boardwalk. You know why I did that? Because now I get to hang out all day under the boardwalk. You know, like the song. Isn’t that nice?”

It is odd to say that there are pieces of art everywhere (although there are) because the whole place really is one big piece of art. A several-meter-long blue Buddha statue reclines on the front lawn next to a pool which, despite its quirks, could be taken from a house in the Hollywood hills. Paintings adorn most every square foot of wall space, or wherever they can be hung. There are statues at every turn, many with erect, but sometimes just tumescent, phalli of all different colors, shapes and sizes, but all with the same recognizable stamp of artistic authorship. 

“I bought this place years ago from the rajah. I wanted to create a haven of art here in Bali, something like the East Village in New York, where I’m from. Have a look around.”

There are many fascinating places to see on the Island of the Gods, countless temples and sacred springs and galleries. Symon’s Art Zoo stands alongside any of them as the most interesting to visit. 

Just having a stroll through the grounds is present enough for the trouble of getting there; but bring some cash and support this remarkable project by buying a painting or statue. Bali will be the better if the Art Zoo is there for years to come. 

A Motorbike Trip Across Java

Andy Hill

I have always loved driving. When I lived in America, I got around to driving across that massive country a half dozen times in total. I am infinitely more interested in the land route than flying and would choose a bus, train, or car over a plane any day. 

So recently I found myself with some time as well as a mission in mind, the logical conclusion of which was Java. From Kuta Lombok I drove to the ferry at Lembar, embarked upon the ferry with my motorbike, and spent several days in Bali before making my way to the western tip of that island to get on the ferry which takes one to Java. 

In the early evening I arrived in the town of Banyuwangi, at Java’s eastern tip, with a powerful thirst for kilometers. 

Although I had enough energy to drive for many hours, it was soon very dark and I was tired of shifting my weight from one bony ass cheek to the other with each passing minute. I made a stop on the side of the road just after Jember for some fried snacks- tempeh, tofu, bananas- as well as a cup of white coffee. After some polite conversation with an older woman, I shared that I was looking for a place to sleep for the night. 

More simply than finding cards at a casino, the kindly old woman called her younger sister over, who conducted me to a house less than a kilometer away, showed me a simple room in the back with a light and bed on the floor, and asked for nothing in spite of my attempts to recompense her for her generosity.

The next morning I woke with the call to prayer at roughly 4:30, had a coffee with the patriarch of the household, and was on my way again. 

Aesthetically, the drive is gorgeous; rice paddies stretch out indefinitely on either side; wild and lush vegetation abut even the most derelict of town roads; and perpetual mountains can be seen on the horizon and through the clouds. That having been said, without some kind of environmental regulation on the emissions of large trucks, the air may be completely un-breathable in not so long a time. 

After that second day of driving, which took me from Jember to Ponorogo in about 12 hours, my face, tee shirt, hands and pants were blackened by exhaust. You have to have an exfoliator for that kind of muck. 

Driving in this country is fluid and courteous- there is no spastic starting-and-stopping; you simply go when and where you can and stop when you have to. The major highway which runs through Java is only a two-laner most of the time, and it runs through every little town along the way, so there is always a place to stop and get a coffee or a bowl of soto ayam.

In Ponorogo I stayed at a place that was 60,000 rupiah per night, or roughly $5 US, and got a fitful if respiratorily-frustrated sleep. I was up at the crack of dawn again the next morning, with Yogyakarta in my sights. I made it to Yogya in mid-afternoon and was able to cruise right into the Java Tea House to meet a friend with whom I would be staying. 

In the next couple of days I will be getting back on the bike to head west towards Cianjur to check out Gunnug Padang, perhaps the oldest megalithic site in the world. I will be armed with plenty of respiratory masks and a camera. 

Candi Sukuh: Java’s Mysteriously Mayan-esque Temple

Andy Hill

The drive itself is pretty straightforward. From Jogjakarta you head to Solo, the other capital of Javanese culture, and drive through the city and keep going northeasterly. Traffic tapers off, it begins to get hilly, and then a proper ascent begins towards the mountainous villages surrounding Candi Sukuh. 

Candi Sukuh is one of the more anomalous things I have ever seen in my life. It is a temple in central Java, dated to the 15th century, yet it doesn’t look Hindu, or traditionally Javanese, or Buddhist, or any of the other religions or cultural systems which would have inhabited this island at the time. 

Instead, compellingly, it resembles a Mesoamerican temple or pyramid complex. If you looked at a photo of Candi Sukuh and you didn’t know where it was, you would assume it was in Mexico or Guatemala. Its central structure is a step pyramid with stairs leading up the centre to the top, where some kind of ritual activity was to take place. 

There are reliefs depicting scenes carved in stone around the main pyramid which uncannily resemble Mayan and Aztec motifs. The symbolism is not glaringly Hindu, as the faded and curled-at-the-edges informational plaque in front of the complex attempts to paper over. 

Not to mention that the whole vibe of the place is bizarre, not in a bad or eerie way, but just that it seems like this thing you’re staring at is not homegrown, that it came from somewhere else, that it knows it, and that it is smiling at you looking at it trying to figure it out. 

Candi Sukuh is actually quite small – the entire complex sits on a piece of land probably less than a hectare in size. There were only a couple other people there, Javanese tourists, when I visited. I strolled around for about a half hour, had the parking lot attendant take a couple goofy pictures of me, and then motored back down the mountain to Jogjakarta. 

When I got back to town that night I went over to the house of an older Javanese friend of mine and told him about where I’d been. He regaled me with a highly detailed account of how people from what is now Mexico came here centuries ago, built Candi Sukuh as a gesture of cultural exchange and in a vain attempt to transmit their solar, phallic religion to these islands, traded with the Javanese, and took off. 

Clearly, more research and investigation needs to be done into this fascinating structure, for no one can deny that there are oddities about it which cannot be explained away easily. A troupe of historians and archaeologists needs to be dispatched to the site so that we can begin to unravel its origins and story.

In the meantime, I’m gonna go ahead and believe the story my older Javanese friend told me about the Maya coming here millennia ago. 

An Idul-Fitri Block Party in Tetebatu

Andy Hill

Towards the end of the month of Ramadan, a friend of mine in Kuta Lombok named Reggae, a local budding rock star and surf teacher (seriously), asked me to come up to his village in the foothills of Mount Rinjani (Indonesia’s second-biggest volcano) and play with him and his friends at an “awesome rock party.” 

When the day came, we rode our motorbikes a couple hours’ north to Tetebatu, arriving in the afternoon at a public practice space in some elderly woman’s housing complex. This was fortunate because I hadn’t played a drum set in over 10 years.  A few of his friends and band mates were waiting for us, and we were ushered into a sweltering room with walls and ceilings lined with old carpet. We gave our set a cursory run-through. Some of the tracks were “What’s Goin On?” by Four Non Blonds; Guns & Roses’ version of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” (practically the Indonesian national anthem); and “Englishman in New York” styled as “Reggaeman in Lombok.” 

After an hour or so of practicing, we again got on our motorbikes and went to Reggae’s house so he could get into his “awesome rock party” clothes and so we could break fast, on the last night of Ramadan (Idul-Fitri, as it is known in Indonesia), with his mother. As has always been my experience in this country, this home-cooked meal was remarkable. I struggled to eat with my hands while they made fun of me and I thanked them profusely for having me over to eat with them. I told his mother it was delicious in the Sasak language, thinking it would impress her, although she corrected me; the dialect there in east Lombok is actually totally different from that of central Lombok, of which I knew a bit.  

After that, like clockwork we scurried out of the labyrinth of pedestrian lanes his house was buried within, saying hello to everyone in the street, all of them out in their break-of-fast best. Eventually, we arrived at a small intersection adjacent to which a stage had been built, replete with a professional sound system and range of guitars and drums being set up by black-clad, pierced and tattooed Sasak youths. Politely, they only stared when I turned the other way. 

There was an excited and friendly buzz in the air; children played with firecrackers, head-scarved women clucked and laughed with one another, and men stood around by their motorbikes smoking endless clove cigarettes, watching on as the restless youths prepared to do their thing. 

A few different groups of young guys took turns on the stage, going through an interesting amalgam of Indonesian pop, American-style punk, and traditional numbers until finally I was beckoned from my perch behind the stage to get up onto the drum set. I was pleased that I was able to keep up, given how self-conscious I was to be the only foreigner within a 100-mile radius.

It was a thoroughly family-friendly affair, and a beaming older woman even brought me a little cup of coffee from her shop, which was unfortunately located across the street from the cacophony. 

We spent the rest of the night jamming back at his house with many of his friends until we passed out on the couches in his front room. I drove back home in the morning, singing to myself “Wah-oh - I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien, I'm a Reggaeman in Lombok....” 

Java’s Sukunan Village Recycling Program

Andy Hill

For the better part of this year I have had the delight of living on the island of Lombok, which sits to the east of Bali in the vast archipelago of Indonesia. During most of this time I lived in a small village in the island’s south whose psychedelically gorgeous beaches are still yet to be developed, where running water doesn’t exist, and which has had electricity only for three years. I saw many beautiful and charming things there.

I was also able to see the growing cost that plastic is taking on this carbon spaceship of ours, even in such a sparsely-populated area as I had taken my sojourn. Because of this growing awareness of the scourge of plastic waste (in a place where ‘the garbage man’ will not come to exist for years), I recently traveled to Java in order to research what, if anything, people there were doing about their waste.

While in Yogyakarta, I learned of a village on the perimeter of the city called Sukunan which has a citizen-based recycling program, and soon I was on my motorbike to go and see what they were doing. 

Back in 2003, acting on inspiration from two Australian friends, a young man from Sukunan named Iswanto began separating his rubbish into plastic, paper, and glass/metal, as well as collecting organic and food waste into a compost bin. 

Soon there were donated several sets of old oil drums which were set around the village for residents to separate their household waste into. In a central area, collecting ‘houses’ were constructed for these drums to be emptied into, the contents of which would then be picked up and taken to recycling facilities in nearby Surakarta. 

Now, people come from all over the world to learn about this pioneering, efficacious, and simple means of eliminating ‘waste’ which would otherwise end up in drainage ditches, topsoil, and rivers.

When I arrived, a group of 30 or so people from Sumatra was there for a presentation set up in front of the collection houses. A representative of the program was explaining to them how organic waste can be turned into compost which can then be sold for a profit. 

Plastic waste containing aluminum foil, which cannot be recycled, is cleaned and turned into bags, wallets, and other accessories by Sukunan’s villagers and are then sold at a profit by many local entrepreneurs. 

I was led around and shown the various aspects of the program by a kind, older woman from the village who acted as an ambassador. I was impressed to see many sets of three collecting drums at every small crossroads in the village. The drums had been brightly and impressively painted and decorated by local youths.     

It was inspiring and uplifting to see people taking a village-based approach to this massive problem, for that is the level from which the solution must come. 

I purchased a little hand-sewn wallet made from old plastic and aluminum coffee wrappers, thanked the woman for showing me around, and was eventually on my way back to the city, energized and informed about how this daunting task may be transmuted and perhaps overcome. 

Unsuccessful cheap: a visa run to Singapore

Andy Hill

It was the last nearby capital city that I had yet to visit, and since I had to leave Indonesia to get a new social/cultural visa, I decided to snatch up a relatively cheap air ticket (about $80 round trip) and visit Singapore for this vital errand. 

This tiny Southeast Asian city-state, founded by British colonizer extraordinaire Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and ushered into a developed and bustling modernity by strongman-cum-intellectual Lee Kuan Yew, is home to a towering skyline, sleek and efficient infrastructure, little visible poverty and in some quarters highly overt opulence. Singapore was once called “Disneyland with the death penalty” for its kid-friendly, crime-free streets and unforgivingly draconian penal system (mandatory death sentences for drug possession). 

Other than that stuff, it isn’t really famous for much else, I gathered as I combed through the literature online on the eve of my departure from the island of Lombok. 

Add to the list: expensive. As I was travelling with my girlfriend, we chose (idiotically) not to find a place to stay on Couchsurfing.org and assumed that we’d find some mildewed and stained guesthouse in an alley somewhere at a non-bankrupting cost. 

We were penuriously wrong. A backpacker’s hostel near Chinatown was the cheapest accommodation we could find in the Lion City – roughly $30 US apiece for beds in a gloomy dormitory packed to the vents with other snoring, farting sojourners. But what could we do? The penalty for sleeping in a park in Singapore is most likely some kind of amputation, so that was not an option. We accepted our lot and soldiered on.

Singapore does have a nice street food culture, it must be said, even if it is still a few more bucks-per-meal than any other Southeast Asian city. It is lucky to have a large population of not only Chinese but Malayans and Indians, making for a deliciously cornucopian cuisine. However, whereas in Hanoi, Bangkok or Beijing one can find god-in-a-bowl for one to two dollars, prices hovered between four and six dollars in Singapore.

However, in spite of the reeling feeling that our visa run had by then taken on the cost of a honeymoon, we were able to take in some of the more interesting things in the city. 

The Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman Hindu Temple is resplendent, with impressive statuary and ritualistic minutiae of the Indian religion. The Haw Par Villa ‘Buddhist hell theme park’ is more than enough to terrify anyone into following the eightfold path. The Arab Street district had some impressive mosques and alleyway shops with interesting imports and antiques. The nearly 200-year-old Armenian Church is a wonderful place of much-needed quietude in the teeming metropolis.  

I hate to be negative in my review of this hyper-developed, modern, rich city, but it is obvious that its opulence has come at a cost: it has no soul. Of course that is only my opinion, but I prefer places where people sit around on the sidewalks at night playing half-destroyed guitars and ask you to come into their houses for coffee after five minutes of hanging out. 

I don’t think Singapore will ever be like that, but they do have a big new casino/resort that’s important or notable for some reason that I forget. 

When Santa Claus Came to Gaoqing County

Andy Hill

Christmas came around and my friend and I, both English teachers in the small hamlet of Gaoqing in Shandong Province, were more or less forced into donning Santa suits and singing carols for our students at a local school.

After stuffing pillows under our red felt shirts and sipping more than a few warm glasses of local brandy concealed within half-full plastic bottles of Coca Cola, we  proceeded to a stage and sang “White Christmas,” “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” in front of a crowd of hundreds of parents and teachers.

After all of the cameras flashed and we did our best Santa poses with all of the students for those assembled, we realized that we hadn’t brought civilian clothes with us to the auditorium to change back into.

We went into a local supermarket to the sounds of yelping and shrieking as children ran both towards and away from us while adults stood frozen and clutching for the cameras on their phones.

Luckily, everyone seemed to understand “Ho, ho, ho!” as we bounded to the aisle with the cheap Chinese champagne.

We made our merry purchases and stepped out onto the sidewalk to pop open our bottles of holiday hooch. The idea of going back to the apartment to change into normal clothes was now out of the question.

Santa Claus was coming to Gaoqing County.

He, or an inexplicable two of him, made appearances all across the town; at a pool hall for a few rounds of billiards, inside a food cart grilling various meats-on-sticks for a crowd of customers, even popping in at the local KTV to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Doing the can-can dance down the road and howling “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” while double-fisting cans of Nanjing was our heartfelt act of cultural diplomacy, our way of bringing some of the magic of Christmas to the little town of Gaoqing. Our cheer was roundly responded to by the young and old who ran to greet us and investigate the veracity of our long, cottony white beards.

I can only hope that someone is there this year to continue the tradition.

An Afternoon in Kowloon

Andy Hill

I read somewhere that Mongkok, an area of Kowloon in Hong Kong, was one of if not the most densely populated places on the planet.

I took the sterile and coldly efficient MTR (Hong Kong’s subway system) from my place in Causeway Bay to Mongkok Station and ascended to ground level expecting to see a frenetic, frenzied froth of people.

It wasn’t really that bad. In fact, it felt no less spacious than Central. I decided that I would loosely follow Nathan Rd, the thoroughfare going north/south through Kowloon, all the way down to its southern extremity in Tsim Sha Tsui, where I would pick up samosas and chai at the famous Chungking Mansions before boarding the MTR and traveling back across the harbor.

Nathan’s surrounding estuaries in Mongkok are loaded with neon signs, and sometimes they go all the way over the street, forming a canopy of metal and glass boxes and bars. With few square meters of sidewalk to spare, vendors sell various foods-on-sticks next to stalls with newspapers and fashion magazines.

I got down to Tung Choi, which runs parallel to Nathan, to the “ladies market,” a long, tight pedestrian alleyway filled with booths selling knock-off clothes, bags and various accessories. If you want to buy cheap stuff in Hong Kong, Tung Choi seems to be the ticket. There are also many small restaurants lining the ladies market with a good selection of Thai, Vietnamese, Sushi and European fare for cheaper than the Hong Kong average.

Back onto Nathan, I realized that it was probably one of the best streets in Hong Kong for surveying the city in general. I liked it better than the island-side of downtown. It has a slightly different vibe than the island, which often feels like one big bank with a few restaurants and shops sprinkled in between. Which is great if you really like banks.

I eventually got down to Tsim Tsa Shui to the ethnic cornucopia of Chungking Mansions, my favorite place in the city at which to eat. I got two big veggie samosas and a chai tea for $15 HK and squeezed into a little plastic chair at a food stall to write this blog.   

Traditional Chinese Medicinal Tea in Central Hong Kong

Andy Hill

In many places throughout Hong Kong, there are small medicinal tea shops with massive bronze containers of tea and lines of cups for consumption by those wishing to somehow gird themselves against the rampant pollution and harshness of the city.

Being one who cherishes tea in general and feeling very much in need of some kind of healthy boost, I was strolling through Central the other day and decided to try one of the elixirs.

Two were on offer; one called “American Ginseng” and another called “24 herbs tea.” I went for the latter, which not only sounded more interesting but looked less like urine than the former.

The smell and taste immediately brought me back to a Thai monastery at which I stayed earlier this year, where several times a day we drank a powerful detoxifying tea of esoteric origin. Although not as bitter and strong as its Thai sibling, this earth-colored brew was very similar, tasting of wood and dirt with some bitterness mixed in.

I don’t mean any of those in a negative way- I would prefer them to any artificial flavoring on offer across the road at 7-11 any day. Some of the best liquors in the world have the same profile.

The tea had a clean, dry aftertaste that lingered not longer than its welcome. The small, florally-decorated Styrofoam cup it came in was the perfect size. You wouldn’t want to drink too much of this tea for fear of burning out on it, but it was definitely something I have begun drinking every day that I have been here.

I asked what the tea was good for, making a bizarre pointing motion at the organs of my torso, a gesture which could have been interpreted any number of ways. The guy fished out my change and pointed to another guy measuring out various powders into sacks behind the counter. He smiled and said, “Good doctor.”  

As I put the tea in my bag and thanked him, I considered that there would probably be no more important figure in China’s future than he, if the environmentally rapine course of the country’s development is continued for even another day. 

Shuffling Through Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum

Andy Hill

With the exception perhaps of the recently departed Nelson Mandela, there are no other political leaders in modern history I can think of who command as much auspice and importance to a country as Ho Chi Minh does to Vietnam.

Ho dedicated his entire life to the independence of his country, from the early days of its first battle with French colonizers, to the Japanese, to the French again and finally to the Americans.

Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 at the age of 79, only a handful of years before the last US soldiers would leave and Vietnam would be united again under one flag.

He is interred at Hanoi’s Bao Dinh Square, the site where in September 1945 he proclaimed Vietnam’s independence after the Japanese were defeated in World War II. It is a fitting place for his mausoleum, although it is odd that he was embalmed and put on display.

If I remember correctly, his desire was to be cremated, his ashes spread among several different mountains sacred to the Vietnamese. He said that way he could fertilize the soil of his beloved home. Instead, he joined the ranks of Lenin and later Mao as embalmed Communist leaders.

The monument is gorgeous, a giant stone cube sitting atop the steps of the massive public square. Guards with bayonets keep vigil over the doors while the Vietnamese, most dressed in their Sunday best, solemnly file through in line and into the front doors.

Once inside, it is, well . . . as quiet as a mausoleum. I was asked by a guard to take my hands from my pockets. In an unfortunate and wholly accidental lack of cultural diplomacy, I was so wrapped up waiting to see Uncle Ho’s face that I distractedly kept putting my hands into my pockets and the poor guard had to keep reminding me to take them back out again.  

It was an otherworldly experience. I remember being able to hear the air-conditioning very well, and the sound of the penny loafers of the old man in front me scooting along the carpet. That great hero of national self-determination finally came into site and looked . . . really old . . . and really dead.

The strangeness of the experience was somewhat spoiled by my students telling me later that evening that they didn’t really think it was his actual body in the case at Bao Dinh Square but a wax replica.  

Either way, Ho Chi Minh towers above the drooling, dithering, disappointing leaders of today, and it is with a great affinity and abiding reverence that I remember visiting his mausoleum (even if it was a wax replica inside that case). 

Shanghai's Propaganda Poster Art Centre

Andy Hill

I was hunting for something interesting to do in Shanghai and came across the Propaganda Poster Art Centre on the always-wonderful traveler’s almanac Atlas Obscura. The PPAC is a private collection-cum-museum of over 5,000 pieces of propaganda from the late 1940s through the 1970s conveying messages from the Chinese Communist Party.

I grabbed a coffee and meandered to the French Concession to find it inside of apartment building B at 868 Huashan Rd., betrayed by a small sign.

I was expecting dusty, rickety racks of posters for antiquities fetishists, but the PPAC is really more like a proper museum. The chronologically-arrayed posters (they are called “big character” signs- simple, un-ambivalent ideas printed on large surfaces) provide a powerful perspective on Chinese history through the lenses of popular art and iconography as well as political ideology. Educationally, it’s one of the most instructive exhibits I’ve seen.

Visually and artistically, it’s one of the most beautiful. You don’t need to be sympathetic to the sentiments on the posters to see the remarkable creativity and liveliness of the artistic culture from which they emerged. They are bold, vibrant and stunning, imbued with fervor and conviction, and far and away more interesting than most art you would see hanging in a gallery or museum.

It’s an insightful perspective not only into Chinese history but into the attempted internationalism of communism. There are posters protesting racial discrimination in the US; Russian and Chinese farmers arm in arm; Fidel Castro screaming into a microphone; and a particularly heart-warming piece showing people from all over the world coming together under some slogan most likely praising the international communist movement.

There are many other examples of pop-art from the time not directly related to communist propaganda, as well as many different pieces showing the iconic “Shanghai girl” baring a single breast and lethargically shilling for a brand of toothpaste, chewing gum or cigarette.

The Propaganda Poster Art Centre is one of the most interesting places in Shanghai and provides a remarkable history of 1940s – 1970s China. International museum-goers of the world will find their China itineraries lacking without an hour or two spent at the PPAC.