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ByGD

Kindness of Strangers

Super cheap package tours to China are awesome. I’m an expert at making cheap travel plans. But I’ve taken a package trip to China because even I couldn’t plan an equivalent trip for less. But the downside to those package deals (and most package tours) is that they don’t allow for individual contact.

When I was on my package tour of China, we were beset by hawkers every time we got off the bus. But I never had an actual conversation with a Chinese person who wasn’t paid to be nice to me or trying to sell something. Once, at the zoo in Beijing, a pair of college students approached me wanting to practice their English. Before we had finished with pleasantries, the tour guide rushed over and shooed them away.

Talking to Strangers

In contrast, solo travel can be hard. In China, it’s guaranteed to be. But the upside is the connections with regular people, which do more to demolish preconceptions and stereotypes than anything else that could happen. When I traveled with my daughter in China, we met dozens of people. We chatted with college students about marine biology; explained international adoption to old ladies with the help of a cell phone translation app.

Help When You Least Expect It

And we got lots of neighborly help from strangers. When we got lost and couldn’t understand the directions in Chinese, people gave us a ride where we were going. The concierge at our hotel volunteered to accompany us for an orphanage visit on her day off.

On the day pictured here, we visited the May 4 Square, a public space honoring protesters who fought for Chinese freedom from foreign occupation, now a popular place for couples and families to spend their free time.

Flying a Kite

We bought a kite, then struggled to put it together. This man, who was at the park flying kites with his young son, noticed our struggle. He came over and fixed our kite, then showed us how to fly it. We didn’t try to talk much or struggle with translation apps. We just hung out, flying kites, cheering on our kids. That dad kept an eye on us as well as his own kid. He helped us straighten out the string when the kite fell or tangled with someone else’s. Thanks to him, we spent a relaxing afternoon the way the locals do. That day we were part of the community, just another family among many enjoying the waterfront on a day off.

Package tours can be a good deal. But the neighborly kindness of strangers far from home is priceless in so many ways.

ByGD

Music I Like From Hong Kong

For me, checking out local music is as much a part of preparing for a trip as reading Lonely Planet guides. Since my family is headed to Hong Kong in November, I have been keeping my ears peeled for music from Hong Kong. Bandcamp pickings are a little slim. By that I mean #hongkong is not a very active tag, not that the music is bad. But I still found a few things I like.

Herman Wong

I discovered Herman Wong ( 黃瑋中) in a tag-hopping Bandcamp Daily blog post. His album Let’s Be Real? caught my attention for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s guitar focused, and compared to the 90’s Cantopop I mostly associate with Hong Kong, it’s really mellow and pretty. That might be partly due to the fact that Wong sings in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. I was suspicious of the #Mandopop label at first, but thanks to Duo Lingo, I could pick out the word “gao xing” in the lyrics.

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Gong Gong Gong 工工工

Technically, Gong Gong Gong is a Beijing band. But one of the members of the guitar and bass duo is from Hong Kong. They cite inspirations ranging from Bo Diddley to Cantonese opera, West African desert blues, drone, and electronic music and the result on Phantom Rhythm 幽靈節奏 (幽霊リズム) is as weird as that sounds.

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tfvsjs

Don’t ask me how you’re supposed to pronounce tfvsjs, but their album is called zoi 在. I almost didn’t include tfvsjs because the first track on zoi appears to be 4 minutes of silence. Suspecting a failed upload, I almost moved on, but I tried another track and I’m glad I did. This is some seriously noodly, mathy guitar wrapped around Cantonese melodies that makes me feel like a cat chasing a laser pointer.

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Vanity Alive

I was starting to wonder, but then I found Samsara by Vanity Alive. There is heavy metal in Hong Kong. As you may have guessed from the title, Samsara has yogic themes. Less obviously, it’s filled with meaty riffs and the only words are in the titles. Language is no barrier when there are no lyrics.

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The Ancient Mental

The Ancient Mental is a little more djenty than I usually listen to, but I listened to their album Philomath and I liked it. I think it’s because there is also something vaguely classical about the guitar to my ear. (I also loved the subtley punny name.) Speaking of names, their most recent release is a single called Vanity of Vanities. I wonder what it means that Hong Kong metalheads are so focused on ‘vanity.’

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Noughts and Exes

And now for something completely different. The first song by Noughts and Exes that came up was “Heart” off of their self-titled album. How appropriate, because they could easily be mistaken for Seattle’s The Head and the Heart. I love that kind of straight-forward, emotional, folk with big harmonies.

If everything goes to plan, this post will publish on my first full day in Hong Kong. And I hope it feels as welcoming as Noughts and Exes.

ByGD

Waterfront Property

I don’t know what this building across the street from the beach in Qingdao is. Is it a fancy hotel? A fancy mall? A fancy government building? We were too sweaty and dirty from playing at the beach to check it out up close. But in my imagination, it’s the private villa of a Bond villain who spends his days scheming to turn the city’s best public beach into a private one.

ByGD

Music I Like – Death Metal Mold

It’s supposed to be a compliment when someone say’s “They broke the mold with that one.” It implies that no one else will ever be quite like it. But the truth is, most of the time, we’d rather hang on to the mold and keep making more things like the first one. Death metal (and near-identical twin, blackened death) is one of those things. A good death metal band can not be distinguished from other good death metal bands using words. They are all born from the same mold. But the ear can hear differences within the formula that make some stand above the others. Here a few albums in the death metal mold that I like.

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ByGD

Future Site of Qingdao Metro

When my daughter and I were in Qingdao a few years ago, we saw these fences covered with Metro signs everywhere. The advantage of central planning is that you can build a whole system at once. While cities in the U.S. have to plan and budget public transit one rail line and painful public process at a time, Qingdao was building an entire citywide metro system at once. It was scheduled to open later in the year that we were there, and I would love to go back and see what a difference it makes. Qingdao really needed a subway system. The city sprawls over hills and around waterfronts. Subways are simpler than buses and taxi drivers in Qingdao are brats. It must be so easy to get around Qingdao now.