Wondering with Wind

Photo courtesy of Shanghaiist 

This is an old image, and stories about Tomson Riviera, the 110,000 RMB/sq. meter apartment in Shanghai have been online since 2005 (read here and here).

Today, an investigation result about Tomson Riviera since June 2007 was released: Shanghai real estate and and department has ordered “Tomson to sell at a reduced listed price or put all its properties out to lease”. This is a strong action in the move to cool down the over-heated real estate marketing in China. What’s the government’s next movement?

Bodhisattva Water Cave is the best known cave in Yangshuo, China. The whole cave is about 3 km long, runing through three mountains. The bottom level of this 2-level cave is an underground river which is about 2.5 km long. Two things to do in the cave: mud bath and fishing/swiming. On above adverstisement/description of the cave at the entrance, it is claimed to be the MUST VISIT in Yangshuo area.

View of the inside of the cave. The name “Bodhisattva” comes from the Buddhas shape stone in the cave. In fact, there are much more other strange sharped stones in it!

I was cheated to crawl through this extremely narrow hole when the cave guide said we have no other way going futher! It was painful on the other side of the cave, but such a relief when I made to this side. Even a smile on my face!!! We walked without crawling when we were back!

Mud? Chocolate? We were fighting. It took me about 1 week before I can’t find any more mud in my hair! You can borrow clothes like these from the cave guide if you don’t want to ware bikini or wash or throw away your own nice T-shirt and pants.

Hand in Hand with my cavers! We come, we see, we conquer! I have to endorse our cave guide who took great pictures for us in such back condition and keep my DC clean. The tempreture was hot high enogh in April for us to explore more of the underground rivew or the waterfalls. We didn’t see any fishes, and nore of us would swim here. – All above images were took in 2003.

This is an image from George. Check out the story of their recent trip to Yangshuo.

One of the best things for me to live in Shanghai is to be able to eat Hairy Crab (毛蟹) from every late Autumn to early Winter, or even to Chinese New Year – Spring. The name “hairy crab” is generated from the outlook of this fresh water grown crab – many small hairy on the crab legs. Its official name is Chinese mitten crab. The better quality of the fresh water, the better the crab. By review and word of mouth, the most famous hairy crab is Yangchenghu (HCH, 阳澄湖) Hairy Crab which is from the name of a lake. Don’t be surprised if you are see all hairy crabs are advertised as “yangchenghu hairy crab” in free markets, in restaurants or in supermakets.

A decoration of fariy crab harvesting scene in Yuyuan Garden, Shanghai

How to find native Yangchenghu hairy crab, but not fake or “immigrated” ones? Here are a few tips I come up which are not 100% guarantee:

1. Go to YangchengHu city. The chance you encounter a native HCH crab in local is at least 50% higher than in non local place.

2. Go to high end restaurants which care for their reputations. There your chance to eat a real HCH crab is very high, if you are not worried about $$$. It is not uncommon that they will sell you a 250g crab for $40. If you are in Hong Kong or Beijing (places that are far away from Shanghai), you might need to pay for the air ticket for the crab.

3. Go to your Chinese friends and ask for their “relationship” (Guangxi). This is my approach. My ancle has some clients who have very close and good relationships with HCH crab growners. I am 99% sure that I eat the REAL HCH crabs. A “guangxi” is likely to cheat you in other stuff, not food!

4. Research and find the certification labels stick onto the crabs in markets. I have to warn you that the cost to make a label can be extremely low in China.

These are well cooked crabs with certification label on it. The best and easiest way to cook crab is to simplily steam them for 15 minutes (8) with source made of soy bean souce, vinegar, suger and minced ginger.

Can you tell the difference between the two crabs on the right image? 🙂 The upper on is a femail crab and the lower one is a male. Keep the following saying in mind if you are as serious about hairy crab as I am ”September Female，October Male”. The best season to have female crabs is September in Chinese lunar calendar and October for male crab. To keep it simple, 2 weeks after Mid Autumn Festivel is the best season for female crab!

This is a male hairy crab! Now it is the right season for it! YUMMY…

————————————————————————————————-

Update on Dec. 17, 2007:

I mentioned in my previous post that “Jinmao Tower is no longer the most visible building from The Bund on Lujiazui in Pudong, Shanghai”. Who is the new landmark?

The above image was taken from Yuyuan Park last weekend. It is the new icon of Lujiazui – Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC): Height: 492 meters (72 meters higher than Jinmao Tower), 101 floors. The skyscraper is estimated to be completed before 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It is a nice angle to view this ‘highest tower” in China from Yuyuan Park. (see official image below)

I heard about this building a long time before, as friends were circling the original design blueprints via email. The email was asking the recieptants to against the design because it resembled “two swords and the Sun” which are the icons of Japan and Japanese culture. (see right image.)

The owner and investor of SWFC is Mori Building Co.Ltd. (森海外株式会社), a Japanese company. SWFC Co. was found on 1995 but due to Asian financial crisis, the project was forced to stop until 2003. But after the design by KPF, an American firm, was publiced, a Singapore Chinese wrote a letter to Shanghai Urban Construction Department and pointed out that circle on the top resembed the national flag of Japan. Fengshui master also claimed that this building will hurt the Fengshui of Lujiazhui, even the design has been changed. The circle has been changed to an echelon. {Information in this paragraph is from this post.}
If you know about the anti-Japanese sentiment in China, you will understand why building a tower can be so difficult even in 21 century, especially with the help of Internet as information distribution/broadcasting method.

Anyway, I am not exciting to see this highest building in Shanghai, it is just another challenge for Spiderman.

This is picture I took in Apr. 2003 in Yangshuo, Guangxi, China. We were rafting on Yulong River and took a break on the river side. This sow was very freindly to her master as she is his pet.

The first time I got to know Santorini was from a book written by a famouse TV hostess Lan Yang. Will anyone forget the white wall blue dome under the blue sky on the cover? No, I never forgot it. I read travel blogs and do virtual tours on my dream vacations on the Web. Here I am. Sarntorini, a small, circular archipelago of volcanic islands located in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km south-east from Greece’s mainland.

Being one of the most beautiful islands of Greece, besides of walking around enjoying the breath-taking view, what things we can see in terms of sightneeing on Santorini? The Volcano (read a recent eruption research by National Geography), musuems and the beaches. Read the I found these interesting reviews about Santorini beaches on a Santorini vacation planning site:

“Instead of the “ordinary” sandy beaches there are also black-pebbled beaches, which a result of a past volcanic eruption, and the famous Red Beach, near Akrotiri, with its red-coloured sand. Water is most of the times quit deep,2m from the shore the depth can be already more than 3m, and quite cold, but the crystal clear water will more than compensate you….”

It is my second time ”visiting“ a black beach within the week. (Last time I ”visited“ black beach in Hilo Hawaii). Both beaches are formed from the volcano lava.

Red Beach

Black Pebble Beach – Perissa Beach
The site I found for Santorini is actually pretty cool – you can plan you whole vacation with it. Starting from locating it position on globe on a google map which is already annotated with local hotels and attractions. Then book your flight to/from the island and do more research on how to get around, and book your hotels sorting by price or reviews or region. On arrival, you can then decide what to do, what to eat and even what’s the fun at night! But it would be even better if there is a gallery section which i can preview the island better. I will definitely make this place my next vacation destination!

This is a sponsored post. 

Kauai tourism official website calls Lihei “Kauai’s county seat, as well as the center for business and transportation.“ Located on the east shore of the island of Kauai, it is the second largest town of the island. “Lihue” in Hawaiian literally means “cold chill “. Viewing from google map, you can also see Kauai airport is also on that area.

As a waterfall lover, I took a virtual tour (as usual) on Picasa images for Lihue’s waterfalls. Wailue Falls is recommended as “Not to be Missed” by Andrew Doughty in the guidebook “The Uiltimate Kauai Guidebook”. To visit this “higher-than-Niagara-Fall” waterfall, take Maalo Road (583) on the Mauka Side. The official height of the waterfall is 80 feets, but the author of the guidebook measured it twice with fishing line and the result was 173 feet! In addition to its own beauty, Wailua Falls is also well known as a place that Hawaiian men prove their manhood by jumping from the 10-floor-height fall. (I figured out this from the number of Taipei 101, 101 floor, 1670 feet).

Kipu falls is only 20 feet high, so it is a practicial location for men jump off (See below picture from Picasa). I have jumped from a 50 meter high tower for my first bungee jump, so I think I would love to try this fall if I can swim.

One of most interesting attractions to me in Lihue is Kauai Museum. It has a perminent display called The Story of Kauai. The artifacts, exhibits, and photographs in the collection show the history and story about the era preceding Western contact as well as the plantation period. I especially am interested in its history of sugar cane plantation history. Ninini Lighthouse sounds like an interesting place to visit, it is said that its light is using a 4.7 million candlepower light. Hmmm…4.7 million candlepower…

There are two major chain resorts in Lihue: Kauai Marriott and Hilton Kauai Beach Resort. An annotated Google map of kid friendly hotels of Kauai can be found here. More other choices of hotels in Lihue can be found here.

Last weekend I copied the first batch digital photos I took on 2002-2003 out of our 120GB hard-drive. I remembered I had a headache in changing photo titles, adding descriptions at that time. Now, in the era of Flickr and Picasa, everything is so convinient. So I want to 2.0ing my old pictures.

My first own digital camera is a Canon S50 which was bought in late 2003. So, all the pictures I took were from DCs of friends, when 2.0 mega pixel lense was main stream. Can’t believe we were so happy with JUST 2.0 mega pixel! 🙂

Today I am revisiting Kuala Lumpur, a city of the most kind and nice people I’ve ever been to. It was the second stop to pursuit a CPIM certification issued by APICS, so I must have visited here. The information in my photos show that I visited there from March 19-22, 2003. If you still remember, that was when SARS broken out in Canton and people around the world paid weird looks on you when they knew you were from Hong Kong SAR. Lucky me, I didn’t get any of these looks but warm-hearted and selfishless help. Dr. Yan-Goh Ng, head of Malaysian PICS (MPICS) helped me to get ticket back to Hong Kong when he knew that I need to get back the next day. He made phone calls and searched on line when I was working on the papers. Wonderful memory!

In 2 days, I would be mad on this F1 car because I missed my plane due to F1 event traffic on the way to airport.

We got a free ride from one of the people behind after we got lost.

A really amazing building.

Good Year is on the sky in Shanghai Bund, who else?

Two flying fishes！Who is on the ground?

Banks！

I haven’t visited Shanghai Bund for more than 6 years after I graduated in 2001 until yesterday. My parents-in-law are visiting us and we wanted to walk around the city in weekend. The bund obviously is our first choice of sightseeing. The weather wasn’t perfect, windy, cloudy and chilly, especially by the Huangpu River.

Things have been changed so much: Jinmao Tower is no longer the most visible building in Pudong from the Bund; Chartered Bank Building was redesigned and renovated by a team of international architects led by Italian designer Filippo Gabbiani, and was reopened in Nov. 2004. It is now no longer a bank; one of the Big Four nation-owned banks China Bank of Communications moved out of the Bund, but the other 3 (BoC, ABC, ICBC) of Big Four are still on the Bund. Wikipedia page didn’t catch these changes.

China Citic Bank

Take a real virtual tour on the Bund to see all the buidlings here:

http://shgov.city8.com/sh10951_BA1H-0.833_0.206_1.309.swf 

You wil need to install Flash 9 in order to take this grand tour developed by a Chinese map company city8.com

My father called me today telling me a recent trip my mother and him took to a farm called Qianjin Farm in western Guangdong province. I grown up in that sugar-cane-planting farm where my parents “devoted” their best time of lives. Sugar cane, sugar cane, I love sugar cane in the way that none of my friends can understand.

Well, I googled sugar cane and found sugar industry was booming before 1980s in Hawaii. How interesting! Ok, see what I found here:

“Tsunami – 1960

Hilo became a stopping place for explorers, whaling ships, traders and those curious about active volcanoes. By the 1900’s, Hilo had grown into a commercial center. The sugar industry was booming, a number of wharves had been constructed, the breakwater was begun and a new railroad connected Hilo with other parts of the island. Then in 1946, and again in 1960,two destructive tsunamis swept Hilo’s Bayfront causing the relocation of Hilo’s government and commercial life. When the town was rebuilt, a large park and roadway were situated between the buildings and the shoreline to absorb future tidal waves.”

How about a virtual tour to Hilo beaches.

Hilo is on the right east side of Big Island of Hawaii (see Google maps). It is your town to stay if you want to explore the east part of big island, including a black sand beach, rain forests, themmost heated pool and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The most well-known attractions in Hilo is probabely the Rainbow Falls.

What really interested me are a black sand beach called Waipi’o Bay beach revealed by Andrew Doughty from Wizard Pub. Inc on guidebook , and an oceanside lava swimming pool.

Black sand beaches

lava swimming pool

Here are some more great photos about Hilo I found on picasa.

A turtle found on Hilo black sand beach

Rainbow Falls in Hilo Hawaii

Add the following image on Nov. 19

black sand beach. 🙂