Bryan in Hong Kong

Months in the making, the final cross-continent hoorah is one week away. It begins in Hong Kong, where Sam will arrive on the 2nd of June. From there, we head to the mainland, taking in a yet-to-be-determined city before heading to Shanghai and then overnighting it to Beijing. At least two days in the capital should provide enough time to explore a new section of the great wall and a palace or two (and of course a quick trek through the Forbidding City). Saturday night we’ll board the “Trans-Siberian” for Moscow, though we’re technically traveling the Trans-Manchurian–as we’ll loop up eastward around Mongolia to cross the boarder into Russia. Our “Deluxe Soft Sleeper” is where we’ll spend the next 147 hours (6 days) as we cross Russia heading west.

Once in Moscow we’ll spend four days exploring, though the details are relatively unplanned at this point. I assume we’ll be able to find some free time on the train to read a travel guide and think of something. Following Moscow, the next stop is the Ukrainian capital of Kiev where we’ll spend a few days taking in the former Soviet country and wrapping up the trip.

With any luck, on friday the 22nd, after a short layover in Warsaw, we’ll find ourselves in Chicago.

And that’s the plan.

Thursday we made a day-trip to Shenzhen, the boarder town just next to Hong Kong. Sun Zhe needed to mail some things back to Shanghai (cheaper from Shenzhen), I wanted to buy some Chinese language books, and Jin Gu just came along for food and fun.

If you’re looking for books in Shenzhen, Book City is the place to go. It’s a brand new mall with a variety of stores, including a separate foreign language book store, an art and design bookstore, a huge music store, and a gigantic Chinese bookstore (named something like “Book Experience”). The last one is the place to go if you’re looking for Chinese language instruction books. They have a great selection of material. I ended up buying the last two books in the series that we used at Purdue, along with some specialty book like “IT Talk” (ever wonder how to say ‘I’ve read your blog today, and left a message there’ in Chinese?).

I bought six books and two sets of CDs for a totol of 310 RMB (US$40). What a great deal. The selection was much better than anything I’ve seen in Hong Kong. For some reason, the HK bookstores seems to only stock books printed by HK presses (which are expensive, and don’t have a great selection–perhaps because not many people are learning Mandarin in HK), whereas the ones in Shenzhen had a full selection of mainland press material (which are really inexpensive).

To get to Book City, take the Number 4 line of the Shenzhen metro to Shao Nian Gong. You can’t miss it when you exit the station.

The pics from last week’s class boat trip are now posted. The boat met us right at Tsim Sha Tsui pear in front of the HK Cultural Center. We took it from there to Lamma Island on the southwest side of the main HK island. It was supposed to rain but turned out to be really nice weather. Once on the island we took a short hike to a beach, swam there for a while, and then finished the hike to the other side where we had a delicious seafood dinner. It was a great opportunity to hangout with everyone, since we’re not all taking the same courses like we were last semester.

It’s hard to believe. Three weeks from today I’ll be done, and Sam will be flying into Hong Kong. Still a lot to do: projects and finals, packing & shipping, planning the trip with Sam, booking tickets and collecting visas, and everything else required to wrap up the year. I’m starting to feel that things really are nearing the end here.

Everyone in the master’s program took a boat trip last Sunday to an outlying island, which was a lot of fun. I will make a post later. It was a nice opportunity to relax and just enjoy Hong Kong.