Hong Kong, Shanghai, and PTD

I'm sure you know the feeling: when you return home from a great vacation and your brain struggles to reacclimatize to everyday life, where you feel so low that you lack the energy to do anything except lay on your bed and stare at the ceiling. It's known as PTD (post-travel depression) and it is a real ailment; one which I suffered acutely from a few weeks ago when we returned from our two-week trip to Hong Kong and Shanghai.  I know what you're probably thinking, "Oh boo-hoo, you baby. You just took a vacation from what is basically extended vacationing in China. Whiner." And just let me say: You're not wrong.  I am living the good life here in Shaoxing. 

But, I am also afflicted by another condition which, when triggered, can lead to serious bouts of frustration, uncontrollable restlessness, and the inability to internalize rational perspective on static, routine living. It's called Wanderlust and, similar to addiction, it's manageable but generally insatiable. Coming back from a two-week bender of exploration in Hong Kong and Shanghai had me pretty tweaked; I missed the fast pace of living, going to bed each night looking forward to uncovering the new experiences that the next day would behold., and the challenge of navigating unknown territory. Thankfully, I'm not a big cryer, but I did feel quite emotionally tumultuous for a few days, and even cut short a date with our soon-to-depart foreign friends just or some quiet time on the floor of my yoga room, with the lights off. Fortunately, after putting up with a few days of quiet, mopey, "I eat my feelings" Julie, Cameron sat me down and gently but firmly pulled me back into reality by forcing me to talk about why I was feeling so blue and to acknowledge how ridiculously pitiful and pointless it would be to waste another day letting PTD get in the way of us making even more awesome memories this year. 

So, now that I'm back in my right mind, allow me to regale you with the tale of two weeks in two top-notch world cities.

We began in Hong Kong.
To summarize: it was wonderland. Couldn't have asked for more out of that trip (other than more time, of course. One week just wasn't enough).

We spent many a day enjoying the surf, sand and periodically blazing sun of Discovery bay - the upper class,

Relaxing in Discovery Bay

manicured, white foreigner-populated suburban "St.Albert-esque" community on Lantau Island where we stayed for the week - taking the ferry to central downtown of Hong Kong Island almost daily.

It's Tiramisu!

This is where we indulged in delicious, world famous Hong Kong baking: egg tarts, milk tarts, flower pot tiramisu, pineapple buns (surprisingly no pineapple in them though. It's all about appearances here in China..), sweet BBQ pork buns and the like. There seemed to be baking on every corner! We also tried real Hong Kong milk tea (refreshingly less sweet and more flavourful than the fake stuff) and mouth watering dim sum in loud, overpacked, windowless, hole-in-the-wall restaurants.

Hong Kong Island

Like Shanghai, Hong Kong offered us western culture-starved foreign teachers from "The Mainland" some much-appreciated diversity in cuisine, as well as in the company of different people walking about. I revelled in the experience of being able to order a pint of beer in a pub, sit down and, instead of listening to Cameron yak away, actually being able to eavesdrop on other people's conversations! Not that I'm sick of Cameron, it's just that after almost 6 months, it was such a novelty to be able to understand what strangers were saying around me and even strike up a conversation with them if I wanted to. Also, the amount of foreign cuisine that was available around us was nearly overwhelming. One of the biggest challenges we faced in Hong Kong was deciding what to eat. There's so much to choose from! And while savouring real Hong Kong delicacies was obviously of great importance to both of us, we were really tempted to take advantage of the availability of familiar western menus around us. Perhaps for the best though, we usually only stumbled upon our favourites (tacos, poutine, pizza) about ten minutes after we'd just filled up on dim sum, curry, sushi, or Chinese street food, thereby unintentionally keeping to our Asian diet pretty much ever time we ate out. One more thing to note about Hong Kong before I get to the sight-seeing hit list: I call Hong Kong wonderland because it really was like diving into a rabbit hole; it was a veritable escape from what we've come to know as the "real China". I felt much closer to home in Hong Kong - not just because we stayed with relatives (which I'll get to soon) - largely

Hong Kong Food: Milk tea, tomato soup, and egg tart

because, for one I wasn't being stared at like a zebra constantly, and secondly because with the common use of English it was super easy to navigate the city. As a recently liberated English colony, Hong Kong is a widely English speaking nation, where even most of it's elderly citizens speak completely fluently. We were so comfortable and care -free wandering about that we noted on numerous occasions how we felt like, if someone had dropped us here without telling us where we'd landed, we'd never guess it was China - in fact, I think I'd like be stupidly convinced it was Vancouver, just because of the plentiful Asian faces, cuisine and signage.

So by now you're probably impatiently wondering  what did we did in Hong Kong besides giddily eat, drink and gawk like Chinese tourists at all the western things, no? Let me tell you. Briefly, we wandered a lot around Hong Kong Island, favouring the bustling Central and SoHo districts, took a nap in the Hong Kong Central library, walked and bartered our way through maze-like street markets in Kowloon, took in the HK art museum, the HK

Kowloon Night Market

Statue of Her Royal Highness in Victoria Park

history museum, as well as the "Avenue of Stars" (HK's version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame) along the waterfront. We also met up with Arlette, Cameron's cousin, and had drinks with a gorgeous view atop Victoria Peak, followed by a delicious, modern meal of Chinese fusion dishes at Ho Lee Fook, and had another drink on a rooftop patio surrounded by soaring skyscrapers in SoHo. We also went on a great hike/run up a mountain on Lantau where we took in a breath-taking view of  Hong Kong and it's packed harbour bringing in and sending out shipments of goods from all over the world. And because we're both self-proclaimed suckers for cuteness, we spent many hours playing whatever game an adorable little trilingual boy wanted us to play with him whenever we hung out at his house.

Chumming it up with Lucien

As I mentioned, we stayed with Cameron's 36 year old cousin Jean-Louis and his wife Sunny, 2 year old son Lucien (who speaks French, English, and some Korean), and their domestic helper, Jean. Meeting Cameron's family was a really important part of this trip for both of us. For me because, after 4 years of dating, it was my first introduction to that side of Cameron's family, and for him because it was the longest time he'd ever spent with Jean-Louis before, making the visit an important time to catch up and for once really get to know his cousin and family first-hand.

Jean-Louis, Lucien and Sunny in Discovery Bay

And of course we also had the good fortune of meeting up with Jean-Louis's younger sister Arlette, who also works and resides in Hong Kong.  Although it was only Cameron's fourth or 5th time meeting his cousins (they grew up in England), I feel like they share more personality traits with him than the cousins I've met from his mothers side who grew up alongside Cameron in Edmonton. Jean-Louis, and to a lesser (more flattering :P) extent Arlette, puts on the same wry joker/devilish facade in his social encounters, but when you really get him talking in a serious context, he eagerly engages and shares insight into almost any topic you throw at him.  Arlette, Jean-Louis and Sunny are also just plain interesting people to talk to because of what they do and how life brought them to Hong Kong. Jean-Louis is a stock broker working for a major French firm in the fierce world of HongKong's Finance culture, who majored in Mandarin in Uni and first came to Asia more than 10 years ago, having previously done the teaching thing like us, although in a much more rural & isolating context. Sunny is the same age as Jean-Louis and was born in Korea, living in Seoul for most of her life until moving to Shanghai to study mandarin, where she met Jean-Louis, moved back to London with him for a few years, and then to Hong Kong where she's now a well-connected and business savvy head hunter who scopes out talent for high power banking positions. Arlette has by now officially settled into her recent promotion to senior buyer for one of the leading department stores in Hong Kong called Lane Crawford. So, she pretty much has many people's dream job - shopping as a profession and setting store trends for millions of shoppers . Now that I'm writing this there's a million questions I wish I had asked her about her job but never did get around to it. Clearly, our time together was too short. Those relations of Cameron's are quality people.

It was tough saying goodbye to them all at the end of the week to head back north to Zhejiang province, but we soothed the ache of parting with some life-changing dim sum at a little place in the basement of a mall near the ferry pier. We'd seen people lining up well before lunch time and decided it must be worth trying. Sadly, because the business's name was not written in pin yin, we have no idea what it was called and thus couldn't look it up on the internet to check its reputation or specialties. We had the good fortune of sitting next to some friendly English-speaking middle aged ladies from Singapore though, who told us they'd been there several times and we simply had to try the BBQ pork buns because the place was famous for them.  We did, and were immediately transported to BBQ nirvana. We liked them so much we took a cue from one of the Singapore ladies and called for another order for the road (she had already put in her order of an extra three dozen to take home for her husband and daughters). I've never been more glad I'm not a vegetarian anymore.

Later, after securing some South African wine to take with us, we were off to the Tsim Shia Tsui underground station to catch a train onward to part 2 of our holiday: Shanghai. Though I wasn't immediately into the idea of taking the train when trying to organize our departure from Hong Kong, I'm really glad we ended up going for it because, although it took a lot longer than flying there had (twenty hours vs. 3), it was also a lot more enjoyable.  Security was a breeze, and you're allowed to bring along all the food, drink and cargo you want, not to mention the comfort of being able to walk freely about the train and having your own bunk bed with a blanket and several pillows to sleep on at night. Plus, we got to check out the charming countryside. 10/10 yes, I would do it again.

And Shanghai was just as fun as Hong Kong. Though there was a tinge of sadness felt in leaving the good

Street level view of our hotel in Shanghai

company of the Lafaye-Edney cousins and going back to our solitary duo, we didn't let it stop us from having a ball in Shanghai. Of course, it's pretty hard to have an "okay" time in any city when you're staying in a Fairmont hotel suite, which we had booked for us and felt absolutely spoiled like royalty in thanks to Cameron's parents, Trish and Dennis :) We checked in on Wednesday morning, and after picking my jaw up off the floor, hopped right into the glorious, enormous footed bathtub for a soothing soak. Oh, the pleasure of stepping into a tub of hot, bubbly water. The sensation made my whole body shudder with pure joy; I'd forgotten what a nice, hot bath felt like in the 5 months since I'd had one last.

The atrium off of the Peace hotel lobby.

Refreshed, we then stepped out of the Peace hotel  right on to busy Nanjing street to do some shopping and commence our second metropolis tour. That evening, we went to a small, modern looking chinese restaurant for some spicy hotpot and tried a few crazy "local flavours" for our pot including some duck tongue and sheep's penis. I confess: it was my idea - JOKINGLY - but Cameron was the one who went ahead and marked it down on our order sheet. The duck's tongue was okay (surprisingly boney), but the penis was disgusting; I spit it out, yet Cameron was somehow able to swallow it down. Yuck. "Try everything once," they say... Unless it's eating penis, okay??!

The next day dealt us less than optimal weather for outdoorsy wandering so we settled for a day spent in our hotel's gym and spa. But, we made the supreme decision to venture out for a memorable lunch consisting of the silkiest, most succulent and delicate yet well held together hairy crab and pork-filled Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) at Din Tai Fung restaurant, famed as the best spot for dumplings all of Asia. We just kept looking at each other, murmuring "Wow" and "oh my gosh" in between bites of bliss.

Friday was spent checking out the iconic Oriental Pearl TV tower, and the famed Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, followed by the Shanghai Zoo on Saturday. We both really enjoyed the exhibits, but noticed in both the zoo and the aquarium how small the tanks/cages were for the number of beings which occupied them, as well as how regrettably ignorant and rude the Chinese tourists  surrounding us were towards the animals and fish. 

The Lion's Den at the Shanghai Zoo. Pretty small for such a large predator, no?

Every third person who I found myself standing next to in front of an exhibit would either be aggressively rapping on the glass of the fish tank, rattling the cages of the monkeys, yelling, spitting at or even throwing things like water bottles and other trash at the animals in open enclosures at the zoo, presumably in the hopes of getting some kind of a reaction from the poor thing inside.

A white kangaroo at the Shanghai Zoo. Only one water bottle had been tossed into this guy's cage. It was one of the cleaner pens we saw. 

For two days in a row we witnessed this antagonistic behaviour by the Chinese tourists and were jarred by the fact that what should have been a time to admire and learn about these beautiful creatures turned out to be an experience that instead had us marvelling at the crazed parents (supposed models of good behaviour for their children), behaving like wild and ignorant school children set loose on a field trip.

Saturday night, we wrapped up our holiday in style with an amazing European dinner at the Cathay Room, the fine dining restaurant in our hotel with a gorgeous view of the Pudong River, the Bund, and the Oriental Pearl tower which was lit up right across the river from us. The dinner was exquisite and we toasted to all the wonderful experiences we've been fortunate enough to share together so far, with overwhelming gratitude to

Dennis and Patricia for reaching out across the globe to touch us with their unending love and generosity once more - We love you guys <3. To cap the night off, we stepped out onto the rooftop terrace to snap some photos, then went down to the Hotel's Jazz bar and snagged front row seats to watch the famous Peace Hotel Jazz Band perform. The music and ambiance were so authentic, it was like being transported back to the 1930s, when Shanghai was just starting to form it's reputation as a chic, vibrant World City, and the Peace Hotel was the Place to Be on the up-and-coming Bund.

Since returning from Shanghai, we've gotten back into the swing of teaching, although on a new six-week schedule in which we only get Sundays off, but are not required to do any office hours. Now that the students are on summer break from their regular school, we teach more classes during the day as well as evening, but still only work for 1.5 hour blocks at a time (two consecutive classes) and then get a 2.5- 4 hour break in between, so it's not like we're going to burn out anytime soon. I'm actually finding it nicer to be in the classroom with the kids more frequently since it provides more fluidity between the lessons and a better chance to get to know the kids.

The Brazilian doing her thing. I followed suit. 

Beyond teaching, I've been trying to stay focused on keeping fit by doing yoga in my apartment, going for exploratory bike rides/walks, and of course my regular morning runs (I say "of course" like it's so easy but this is increasingly NOT the case - it's already close to thirty degrees by 6:30am these days!). I've gotten some extra motivation lately to also eat healthier since booking my first ever modelling gig. Shortly before leaving for Hong Kong, a Chinese acquaintance of mine arranged for Cameron and I to meet with some advertising reps who were

looking to hire a young female foreigner to do some modelling for a bathroom ceramics company catalogue. Since foreign models are in high demand in China, they'd been having a hard time finding professionals, so they were willing to hire a first-timer like myself and even agreed to pay me really well (think twice my hourly teaching wage), to be doubled if they decide to book me again for a second session. So, two weeks after coming back from Hong Kong I was picked up and brought to the

Glamour Shot

company's showroom/office where first, I watched a professional model from Brazil do the shoot, was treated to lunch, and then got my hair and makeup done up before hopping in front of the camera in a flowing white dress to do some elegant modelling in a fake bathroom. At the end of the day I walked away with about $200cnd cash in my pocket; not bad for a Sunday's work.

Meanwhile, we've had to say goodbye all too soon to our lovely Mexican and Italian friends. To be honest I was pretty bummed to see them go because it felt like we were just starting to really get to know each other, and then all of a sudden their year in Shaoxing ended while ours just passed the halfway mark. Also, since they were our main outlet for socializing, for a while it felt like we'd be facing a real dearth in casual social engagement (which we've discovered I seem to miss more than Cameron, though both of us really enjoy being social) for some time. However, now that a couple weeks have gone by, I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of new connections I've recently made - including the Brazilian model from the shoot who has invited us to visit her and her boyfriend in nearby Hangzhou, a Chinese guy who owns a French furniture store (and wants to pay us to come and sit in it so that people will see a foreign face there when they come to shop, thereby boosting his company image) and a Chinese girl working in a tea shoppe (who happens to be studying to become a CSL (Chinese as a secondary language) teacher while also teaching English part time at another tutoring centre in Shaoxing) next to a gem of a yoga studio I discovered near our place.

Lowing Cha Zhuang (Lowing Tea Shop), where I sat for two hours chatting with a new Chinese friend

So, to sum it up: life is pretty easy going right now. I feel really lucky to have such an easy and fun job, good health, and the freedom to explore and learn as much as I want to while saving money for even greater adventures down the road. And of course, knowing that there's you, the quality folk back home still thinking about Cameron and I from time to time who bless us with the warmth of knowing there's a welcoming community there to look forward to upon our return. It reassures us that while we'll be gone for a while, our hearts will always be at home in Edmonton.

Thanks for reading <3

Julie