Now, FOUR Years in China

This past weekend, 8 coworkers and I went on a weekend ski trip to Wanlong which is about a 4 hour drive to the north-west of Beijing and about 60 miles from the Mongolian border. Thank goodness for $9 massages because my shoulders and neck were in knots from the jaw-clenching, white-knuckle driving to get there.

My expectations were very low. Many of my companions had been last year and their story of staying in a nasty brothel-hotel with no (edible) food made me second-guess my decision to go. Loaded with a bin full of enough food, beer, and water to last through the weekend, my tired SUV delivered us to a seemingly nice hotel at the base of the slopes. By western standards, this would be about a 3 star hotel with nice clean rooms and amenities. We actually had 2-bedroom suites with kitchenettes. The hotel had a radiant heating system in the floor which kept the thin-mattress-on-the-floor style beds toasty.

The next morning we descended upon the ski area and were pleasantly surprised to see decent quality rental equipment, a good pro shop, and a seemingly well-managed base-lodge. Now, don’t get too lost in this description…we’re still in China and the lodge was full of people’s drivers who created a cloud of smoke akin to a Beijing industrial park. As with my last time skiing here, the binding adjustment process wasn’t a process at all, unless you consider “eyeballing” a process. I had to ask them to loosen one of the guys bindings as it was set somewhere between “Bode Miller” and “permanently fused”.

The chair-lift was another point of anxiety. In lieu of a comforting brand name like Poma or Doppelmayr, it had a Chinese brand and seemed to have lots of welded versus fitted parts. The armrest was a bit long and required that you push yourself away from the chair to exit. In combination with the unmaintained sheet of ice on the exits, you had to be very careful getting off the lift. In China, there seems to be a prevalence of this type of situation where pockets of danger live in a space between design-flaws and a lack of common sense.

One of my favorite parts of skiing is the solitude and peacefulness of being in the wilderness. The hoppity techno music blaring out of bullhorns from each lift tower sort of ruins the mood. I can’t imagine that people would escape the city for a weekend and not want a different mood.

Once off the lift, we were treated to everything we came there for…great skiing. And to my surprise, it delivered. The runs were long enough to tire out the occasional skier. The grooming and maintenance were great. As a matter of fact, there were moments on the trail when it was indistinguishable from a western resort. They are clearly in the early phases of a larger development and there’s plenty of room to expand. While the vertical drop isn’t huge, they could easily expand horizontally to at least 3 other peaks. The valley floor could easily support more lodging and their topology could support a large number of ski-in-ski-out hotels.

Another point to note was that it was neither crowded nor did it have the types of idiocy I saw at the hill near Beijing. Everyone on the hill was a pretty decent skier and those who weren’t were taking lessons. This was unlike the last place I went where first time skiers would point themselves straight down the hill and upon reaching terminal velocity, would tumble all the rest of the way down leaving a debris field of skis, hats, poles, glasses and so on. It’s quite terrify to share a hill with people like that. In contrast, Wanlong seemed to be the host of some good racing programs and a number of skiers there were practicing high-speed GS turns.

When it comes to skiing in China, Wanlong seems be a “skiers resort” and I think the distance to the resort is the key contributer. It’s too far for day-trips and because there’s only one decent hotel, the cost to an “experimental skier” would be illogical. Most of the skiers were wealthier Chinese and probably had previous ski experience from Western Canada, Europe or the U.S. and a lot of them owned their own gear.

While it’s physically impossible (unless they build a mountain themselves) for Wanlong to match a western resort, it’s very exciting to see a sport you love take root in a culture that is just discovering the concept of “recreation”. It’s probably like being in the U.S. in the 1950s here but in China, 1 year of progress = 7 and by 2015, there will be some great places and China will have it’s own version of the skiing experience…techno music and all.

After our 3 days in Hong Kong, we headed to Sanya for a little relaxation in the sun. Sanya is a beach resort town in Hainan Provence in the South China Sea and is really quite nice. I’d equate it to the Florida coastline where you can have good beaches but nothing so great that you would want to travel more than a few hours to get there. If I was faced with 13+ hours on a plane to go to a beach, you would find us in Thailand or the Maldives (which is our next destination).

When we arrived, it was apparent that it’s the primary destination for Russians. I guess they forgot that they can just as easily go to Florida now but the price was probably much better and maybe there’s some nostalgic commie connection. I’m still not sure what the draw is.

They were relatively well mannered, quiet, and basically polite. Being a minority amongst them was not as difficult as it would be amongst other (even english speaking) nationalities. There’s something really exciting about being in the presence of citizens from our former cold-war adversaries. It’s like we have some common experience where we all grew up fearful of getting nuked. It’s very cathartic to see our former so-called enemies doing the same things we enjoy doing - like going to the beach with our kids.

Anyway, the Russian people are an interesting group. They are physically as diverse as Americans and come in all shapes and sizes with equally diverse fashion. In general, they seem to have a cautious or guarded optimism which might be due to the instability of their nation for so many generations and an untrusting nature thanks to the legacy of their KGB. Only the children of these people seemed to laugh and smile with some abandon but you could still see a bit of their parents seriousness in their faces. Two generations in a stable economy should fix it. I’m wondering what the US will be like in 2 generations.

Last night was Russian Christmas Eve (Julan Calendar) and the hotel hosted a huge outdoor celebration and buffet supper with live performances and fireworks. We could have attended but didn’t think it would be kosher. After watching from afar and seeing how it unfolded, we could have attended and would have probably had a great time. It was quite a nice surprise to be exposed to another nationality on this holiday.

By the end of our holiday, we were starting to crave the presence of anyone from a native english speaking country. There was only one family from South Africa with very thick english accents. As we checked out this morning, a group of men arrived. Not only were they speaking english with an American accent, but they were also speaking ina way that sounded more familiar…Texan!. Yep, in the most oddball beach resort in the world, a group of oil company guys from Dallas came to have an offsite meeting after spending a week in Beijing. Trust me…after a week amongst Russians and Chinese, you can tolerate any differences amongst US regions.

There’s also something cool about being in what is considered “Red China” and being able to check into a Holiday Inn, Sheraton, Marriot, Crowne Plaza, etc. on the beach. While these are western chains, their market is the burgeoning middle-class China (and Russians) though the service we received was western quality…even better.

Hong Kong has many ethnically Chinese people…but it’s hardly Chinese as a I know it…which made it great. Last week was one of those weeks where my health was a bit down and my tolerance for anything Chinese was at an all-time low. It’s like I saved all my “China-days” for Christmas week.

Bad health, especially when it’s aggravated by pollution (which is a by-product of everything that’s wrong here) makes you crave the western world in ways that are to describe. It also turns you into a major bigot who secretly wishes that an obnoxious mainlander would try to shove his way past you in line just so you could throw an elbow into his nose. We refer to this as “wanting to tee someone up”. No, I wouldn’t actually hit anyone but the fantasy sure seems to help.

FYI. For safety and security reasons, I will NEVER blog about future plans or movement. Thus, I can report that we just had a great holiday in Hong Kong and Sanya - a beach resort in Hainan, which is an island provence in the South China Sea.

New Years Eve in Hong Kong - Magical
For NYE, we (us and another family from Beijing) splurged for rooms at the Grand Hyatt overlooking the harbor. At 8, we watched the harbor “light show” where all the buildings along both sides of the harbor dazzle with a display of lights. Because it was NYE, they included syncronized firework display launched off of boats. Afterwards, we had a nice dinner and headed back to the hotel where we watched the countdown concert on a local HK channel. After a few minutes, we noticed that when the stage lighting in the show would change colors, the same would happen across the harbor and it took only a second to realize that we could faintly see the live event. This was pretty cool…especially at midnight when they did a small fireworks display. Actually, I was surprised their weren’t more fireworks but they save those for Chinese New Year. Overall, it was nice evening.

New Years Day Kicking Around Hong Kong
Hong Kong might be my favorite city in the whole world. Being my first trip to Hong Kong, I was immediately blown away by the aesthetics of the place but soon followed by my surprise at how civilized it is. No spitting, honking, hacking, littering and so on. Being a (former) British colony really seems to work.

We spent the morning shopping and I was so thrilled to buy real shoes that fit. That’s HK in a nutshell…they don’t monkey around with protectionist duties, taxes and nasty games against western companies…they are simply another big city with the same brand names that we are used to in the U.S. It sunk in when I was at the grocery store and could buy a 12 pack of Energizer AA batteries. It didn’t feel hard at all to exist there. Everyone spoke english.

Later that day, we went to the peak overlooking the harbor where we took in the amazing view and had a dinner at (of all places) Bubba Gumps which is a chain of Cajun-style seafood restaurants based on the Forest Gump movie. Ok, so we’re typically “too cool” to fall for the Hard Rocks and Planet Hollywoods of the world, but in that specific time and place, with a lingering Beijing hack, it really hit the spot to have a real western meal. As a matter of fact, it was probably one of the best meals I’ve had in months. That’s what living over does to you…you crave tastes of home and are willing to sell your principals to get it.

Hong Kong Disney
Once we sold out for the movie-themed restaurant, we might as well go all the way. Yep. We went to Disney. As we pulled into the parking lot, I was quite optimistic we’d have the place to ourselves due to a lack of cars and busses. What I failed to realize was the subway stop which was feeding hordes of people into the ticket queues. But to our delight, it wasn’t terribly crowded and we could easily repeat some rides.

Hong Kong Disney is much smaller than any of the US Disneys (Disnae ?). It’s only the Magic Kingdom with Adventureland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. There’s only a couple rides in each but it was still fun because we left feeling like we did everything. After the 8 pm fireworks show, we took the subway back to our hotel and slept very well. The next morning we departed back to the airport to head to the second phase of our holiday in sunny Sanya.

Shenzen
If you don’t fly into Honk Kong Intl., you can save a few hundred dollars per ticket so we opted to fly into Shenzen which is on the China mainland and is home to many manufacturers of, well, 40% of everything you and I buy…period. It’s just another big, nasty, polluted Chinese city on the other side of the Hong Kong harbor.

Once there, we took a Turbo Jet ferry to Hong Kong. I was hoping we would get to ride on a gas-turbine hydrofoil, but those seem to all be replaced with high-speed diesel catamarans. The ride only takes an hour and a half and you get to pass under the Tsing Ma suspension bridge with incredible views of the mountains on both sides of the harbor.