Christmas in Hangzhou

For me, a significant part of being somewhere for a year is spending Christmas there. This was in fact the first Christmas without my family but that did not affect much. The Chinese love to celebrate, so there were decorations and seasonal songs in every store. The Koreans from the international dorms are also really into Christmas so we ended up having Christmas dinner all together at an Indian restaurant. We chose this place because everywhere else was either booked out or far too expensive for Christmas. Places were marking up to 600 RMB per person. At the Indian restaurant, which is usually quite busy, there were no other customers and we had a private room to ourselves.


West Lake on Christmas day.

After lunch, we walked around West Lake to one of the many Haagen Dazs icecream stores to have dessert. We had fondue with seasonal ice cream. Following this, the Koreans had to return home, so it was just me and 3 other Australians. We decided to take a trip on a boat around the lake which was quite lovely.

Later that night, we all went to a Christmas concert at the Hangzhou Grand Theater and then to a coffee shop downtown. At the end of the day everyone was tired. It was a good Christmas.

Robotic Lawn Mower

In connection with our robotic vacuum cleaner project, we worked on a long term project with the same client for a robotic lawn mower. In this project, ZJU was combining a number of its mechanical, electrical, robotic, and design teams with the engineers from the source company. That meant a few things but the biggest effect of working with such a large and specialized team was that our job as designers and thinkers was shown in full light. Sadly, most of the requirements of the finished product were predetermined so we did not get to go though a complete design process to find the consumer needs. Instead, we concentrated more on facilitating the work of the engineering team from an elemental design efficiency standpoint, as well as outward styling and communication with the client and various ZJU teams. In addition, Lab 318 and Lab 127 were providing the modelling as we had a few fulltime CATIA seats on our permanent team.

My role on this project was as a consultant to some of the aspects of the design team from Lab 318. Although I was not directly involved in the design, I aided in the design of algorithms for path finding.

This project is obviously quite large and many months by many people were spent on it so it was not worked on by the design team every day. However, it was really interesting to watch as over the months the product came together into firstly a finished concept, then a prototype and finally go preparation for manufacture. As my involvement was limited to research and some advising on certain aspects, I was not too worried about how things went on the project. Instead, when it was the center of every one's attention, I could watch closely in an effort to understand the subtleties of their immense pipeline and learn more about the Chinese design method.

After watching many meetings, of which I could only understand the drawings and 1 in 100 words, I found that in general their overall method is similar to that which we would discuss at RMIT. That said, their concept methods and development methods seem to be a bit different. For concept work, they would not research first then build a set of parameters and sketch around that idea. Instead, they would guess what they were making and do a lot of concept sketches, then build backwards to get a well designed set of interior workings. In the outward-in process, although they would ship some of the work to engineers, they would continue to work with the engineers quite closely. For this particular product, we used Lab 127 to house the prototyping and development sectors so when the mechanics were being ironed out, this lab contained a few ID people, a few engineers and a few CATIA modelers. They worked one-to-one to build the good practices and effective structural design into the shell that the design team had previously carved out. Once a mechanical system was decided upon, the files were sent off to a prototyping company (the same one I burnt my foot at, in fact) who returned a fully functional frame a week or so later. I do not know much about the early history of the electronic systems for this project, but once we had a base to work on there was a motherboard strapped to it and tests were being run to develop a home friendly and functional robot. As far as I know, this process is still underway.

Upon reflection on my encounter with this project, I think I have now seen a product go from a list of needs on a piece of paper to a nearly consumer-ready, autonomous disk that cuts grass and recharges itself. Details aside, the fact of watching a near complete product pipeline inclusive of virtually every respect of the final outcome was pretty impressive. Despite my small role in this project, I learnt a huge amount about what can be done with design. It seems the value of this education is the communication I can help people have.

Kitchen Sucker

This project was for a subsidiary of FUDA and involved developing and combining a number of technologies they had been working on to create a stove system. The technologies they were trying to showcase included: a rotary exhaust fan system, a light that keeps vegetables fresh, a UV disinfection system for plates and a touch controlled electric stove top designed for the fast cooking styles common in China.

My involvement on this project was as a consultant in various aspects of the development and embodiment of the final outcome as well as in a site visit to inspect design realization and manufacture quality. I was not a core part of this project as it was ongoing from before I arrived and is even now still in refinement.

I think this project is not very interesting which is partly why I was not very involved. However, it is a great example of the differing needs between markets. First and foremost is the lack of an oven, something that very few Chinese households have. The features which were included are also interesting. In China fresh food is very important and often meat will have been killed hours if not minutes before being cooked. They prefer not to refrigerate things if it can be avoided as it is said to change flavor, so things like this LED system are rather important. Similarly everyone is concerned about cleanliness of things that they eat off, there is a zero second policy¹ in China, so a solution like UV plate disinfecting is a key feature. Neither of these things would be included in a western version of this project and of course it would almost certainly have a oven as well.

Another way in which this project had an impact on me was in the prototyping. In the west, we continuously talk about how poor the quality of Chinese manufacturing is, but the reality it is only like this because the western companies push the budgets so low. In fact, the amount of highly skilled labour available in China is disproportionately large in comparison to most western countries and the level of manufacture quality available, if you pay a humane amount, is far higher than most factories in the USA or Australia can offer.

In this project FUDA, our client, was prototyping continuously and often members of the team would go and stay with them for a few days as they prototype-stormed to have a better inclusion of engineering and design with a faster turn around. What was really impressive is that the 2 people doing the prototyping were so fast they could make accurate, functional mock-ups in an afternoon and have production grade prototypes in a day or two. Before going to China, I had never seen quality and speed like this in my life.



¹Derived from the "10 second rule", which states that food that has been dropped on the ground is still safe to consume if you pick it up within 10 seconds of dropping it.

Vacuum Cleaner Project Zero

This project was a long term effort to create a great robotic vacuum cleaner. When I first interacted with Lab 318, the project was in its third revision and almost everyone had worked on some aspect of it at some point. Like our other long term fullscale project, the Robotic Lawn Mower, we did not talk about it every day. Also, because it was it was only a revision, we did not need to redevelop everything from the ground up. As far as I know, the task started as a face lift on the current frame and then some performance improvements were included in the mechanical object and software.

My role on this team was quite small in the grand scheme of things because most of the permenant crew were not English speakers. At first, I worked on some of the early concept work when the face lift was being set out. Later I worked as a consultant using prior knowledge of the end market place as well as knowledge of robotics and algorithm design which would be used to construct more efficient artificial intelligence. Finally, I went to the manufacturing facility in one of the later stints with the company's engineers.

This project was interesting because when I first saw the tell-tale shape of a robotic vacuum cleaner in the lab back in February, I thought that they may have worked on the original product. However, it was not until much later, after working in the same lab as the core team for about 3 weeks, that I was lead to understand that this one was made by another company. The company is FUDA, a long time client of the lab that dominates the vacuum cleaner market in China. Though the form of our robot was not all that different from early birds like the Roomba, it had been completely designed in house and seems not to have been a copy. I think their visual similarity is more likely to be an effort to capitalize on the success of the original.

Despite the mass of work assosiated with this project, it seemed never to really dominate the lab. This may be because our deadline was distant because there was a version already in the market but its effect on the working method was quite noticeable. It was hardly talked about until it was on the verge of completion, at which point we had a press conference with a number of local news companies.

As you may imagine, the team for a project like this is quite large. However, the industrial design group's connection was always very strong. At the moment, for instance, this project is in the hands of electrical engineers in Lab 127 for refinement of the motherboard, but they answer to the design team back in Lab 318 who are in charge of the human interaction so involvement is as high as ever.

Designing Interactions and Bill Moggridge

When we visited IDEO they had mentioned that there would be a book opening for Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge and that they would be going. We were very interested for obvious reasons so we went up to Shanghai again to attend this even as well as view a Design Korea exhibition.

We caught quite an early train to Shanghai and spent all morning looking at Korean design companies that were interested in providing work to the Chinese market. There was also a lot of student work some of which was breathtaking and quite a bit of other technology related stuff being put on display. It was quite a nice event and it included a few of the big companies like Momo Designs and Samsung. After this, we went shopping in Shanghai for a bit and then had lunch at a rare western restaurant. Then we walked for about 2 hours to the place the book opening was to be held. It was a small gallery and studio used by a local design and art group.


Some of the robots from the Design Korea Show

The talk by Bill Morggridge introducing the book was quite interesting and we got to meet up with a lot of the people we knew from IDEO from our previous visit. One of our team won a copy of the book. At one point, I was introduced to Bill but I didn't really know much about his work at the time so I did not talk to him for long.

The event was quite interesting and when we finally left we caught a slow train home that got in to Hangzhou at about 2 am.

In retrospect I obviously should have had some thing with more impact prepared for my interaction with Bill. He was kind and easy to talk to but I had been too busy to do any background research on him so we just talked about immediate things. I was not astounded by this man.

IDEO WEDO UDEO

After having returned from my summer holiday and then getting settled in the lab, people had started talking about changes that may occur and developments of the lab which may cause it to become more innovative. As I have discussed, a lot of it's work up until this point was more like that of a classic design consultancy. They have had a bit of competition in this sector and are interested in moving meta to get a competitive advantage. In discussion about this with some of my colleagues, I was reminded of that well known company IDEO and remembered they had a Shanghai office. I decided it could be interesting to pay them a visit and I knew that they were generally interested in seeing students and that sort of thing, so I sent them an email. The email address I had for them was defective so I tried a few other things to no avail. However, a few weeks later Soumitri and Simon were in town and Soumitri mentioned that he had the address of someone in that office through another friend. He gave it to me and when I sent the new address an email I got a response within a few hours. They were interested so we worked out a good time for everyone and made our visit.

The time we spent with them was interesting because we did not go with an idea of what we wanted from them and we did not go with anything to show them. They ordered some food for lunch and asked us to introduce our practice. They then talked about what they do and how their office in China interacted with the global company.

I was the team leader of this endeavor as I had originally expressed the interest. My involvement included initiating contact and scheduling as well as developing and managing relationship. Though we intended to continue the project, it is now over as many of the core people involved are no longer part of the lab.

This may not seem like a project as such, but if it is approached in that way the whole thing becomes a struggle to communicate well and offer a good client to costumer relationship. We never decided what service was going to be provided by whom or for whom but we had an interaction that needed to be managed. So I think we can think of it as a project.

Immediately after leaving the IDEO office all the Chinese students I was with started talking about how they thought this company could not work with Chinese clients very well and how it did not match the fast-paced nature of the Chinese market. This is of course true and I spent some time talking to a few IDEOers about this problem. In the coming years they are interested in opening up this office to participate in the Chinese design market more completely.

I learnt a lot from this little project. I learnt that people do respond to an honest request even when they are a design company that most designers look up to. I also learnt that everyone needs help thinking, even IDEO. Of course I also learnt a lot about how IDEO thinks and how they select people for jobs which may one day be important to me. This task built confidence and understanding in me and the team and has helped a few of the lab members get jobs and recommendations for further education programs.

As IDEO is a kind company, they gave us a few souvenirs including copies of the Art of Innovation in Chinese and The Ten Faces of Innovation in English.

After IDEO we went shopping and then to IKEA before returning home to Hangzhou that night.

Materials and Form

This project was a book for Ying Fantian that would be published under his name and the names of the editors. The book was to be oriented around the topic of modern materials and how they can be used in design tasks. Although the book was not well defined at the start of its writing, by the end it was to be something like a reference text designed to offer a standardized information model on the topic at hand.

My role on this project was as an assistant editor. My tasks were to help ensure that the English components were grammatically correct, to generate content at times and to offer suggestions on structure and style of the information used. In addition, I was extensively involved in the translation of parts of the text that started in Chinese.

This project was rather peculiar for a few reasons, but I guess the main one was that when I came aboard the task I was asked to do was to paraphrase an existing book on materials and put it in a usable format. It was then to be put directly into the project database. Following this, I was given another text with accompanying images and I was asked to extract articles again to expand our project database. These articles were slowly gaining Chinese counterparts as one of the other members of the lab translated them. At that time I was given the task of correcting other articles that had started in Chinese and then been put through the Google language tools to make them into rough English. I did a few single articles like this then just as I left the lab one Friday afternoon I was emailed a few documents accounting for about 200 such articles. I was going away that weekend and would not have my laptop so I spent most of that night working with another native English speaker from the international dormitory to translate as many as we could before I left. At the end of all this we had a huge bank of materials information in Chinese and English with images that had been sourced from a variety of locations including other books and undocumented websites. What I found peculiar here was not the fact that it was a lot of work to write a book, but that in China we did not have to make a bibliography or anything like that and we seemed not to have to think about credits on the images. On a few occasions I tried to ask if this was actually the case and the person I was working with would try not to understand as much as possible. (I am also guilty of having done this at times during my stay there.) I did not mind that I was participating in what we in the west call plagiarism - it was just an odd way of doing things and I was not too used to it, so I asked questions some times.

As it may sound, I was not well informed about some aspects of this project, and was not involved in it's management at all. The person in charge was not in the lab and the person in the lab working on the project was doing all she could to fix things up in the time frame and with a small budget. She was basically doing everything except the English half, which is what I did. She was not the best of project managers and most of the time I had no idea what was going to happen next.

I think this project changed the way I look at books. Firstly, it made me realize that writing a hundred pages is not that hard. Secondly, I was shown firsthand just how useful it is to have good information sources. Thirdly, I was exposed to back-end practices and fourthly, it was made clear how not to do a project like this in the future. Being a design student who has trouble sleeping because I often can't stop working, I was continually thinking about ways to do this task better and ways to make it more useful for the end user. Sadly, I was not able to do much to affect these aspects as the project was quite rushed and I had very little say.

In the end I think the book has not yet been published. I am not in the information chain on this project so I may never know what's actually to come of it.

Translation Tasks

Between major projects and smaller projects there were even smaller tasks such as helping translate a page or so from English to Chinese. The reasons people needed things like this would vary quite a lot but often it would be to do with impressing clients or customers by showing more international influence. In industries like this in China, it seems that international connections are directly akin to value so they are used whenever possible.

In my work translating I often found myself rewriting very rough translations, from people in the lab or Google translator. I would often work with a Chinese student to help ensure that the meaning was coming across appropriately and it was not uncommon that we would find some concept that could not be communicated. At a time like that, I would research into the area at hand in an effort to find out what they were talking about. On a number of occasions I was told not to change things too much but in general the results were quite readable as far as I could tell.

Some of the projects that I worked on in this capacity include the Tire Pressure Gauge, the Automobile Air Cleaner, a Text Enlarging Device and Visa as well as other applications for schools and that sort of thing.

Wireless Tire Pressure Gauge

This project is a combination of custom tire valves and a central display unit that can warn of pressure loss in any of the tires. Our task was to give an existing system a face lift and make the central control system easier to interact with. We worked on this project for more then 3 months. It is now in production.

My role was consulting, which in this case meant branding and copy and just about nothing else. The project was underway before I joined Lab 318 and I only had a chance to become involved towards the end.

I thought this project was quite cool once I got involved and knew what was going on. The device worked by having a wireless valve cap on each wheel that would transmit pressure information back to the central unit on the dash of the user's car. It would indicate if there was a flat or if there were pressure differences between the tires.

In the copy that was written for this product, some statistics were stated that claimed that more than half of the serious automotive accidents today are made worse by inappropriate tire constitutions and that this device would substantially increase safety I do not know it this was true but if so it seems like a revolutionary product. At the time I had not seen anything like such a turn key solution.

Automotive Air Purifier

This project involved designing a small device that would filter the air within one's car and indicate its quality or health threat at any one time. Our task was to modernize the look and feel of the product and help integrate the new technologies better. The project was short term and the product is now in production.

My role was that of a consultant, although it ended up including concept development, presentation copy writing and branding for an international market.

Strange though it may seem, the awareness of Chinese people about air cleanliness is quite high and given the feature-oriented technology market, many products are sold that offer readings of air quality and breatheability. As it is a common product, I was asked to look at the way people lived and interacted with this sort of technology from a outside standpoint to offer pointers on design for the final product and product strategy. I was introduced to the project about 3 days before leaving Hangzhou for my summer travels and told that I should keep an eye on the way people did things in different parts of China and try to observe emergent habits involving small personal devices that could make our product more appropriate for the cramped marketplace. I did this; however, when I returned from my travels the project had already started, as a few of our full time staff had been working on the form for some time. They were then implementing the technology within and thinking about how best to market their new product. I was put on with a group of 2 or 3 other people to develop the copy and brand identity of the project.

The technology used in this project included carbon catalytic converters and ultraviolet light to ensure clean, oodour-free air.

This was an interesting but small task so it was out the door before anyone had a chance to get sick of it. A few weeks later, we presented it to prospective clients at the Canton Fare in south China as a representation of our work.

Weddings and Photos

In China, it seems that people are always getting married and subsequently always having wedding photographs taken. Unlike the western world, this is quite a lengthy ordeal and often extends well beyond the wedding day. The tradition is to create books and books of images of the couple in various situations and doing various things. The outfits can range from Indian traditional clothes, to pirate outfits to native American costumes to typical wedding clothing underwater with scuba gear over the top. The couple will spend a lot of time and money ensuring they have an appropriately eclectic set of albums.

In order to support such a strange industry, many places that would usually be professional photography stores often team up with costume stores that stock rent-able outfits designed specifically for this purpose. It should also be noted that almost all wedding dresses are rented, regardless of the price of the wedding. Also, the bride does not just rent one gown - she often wears up to 10 different gowns on her wedding day alone.

As well as the odd photographs, couples usually like to take photos in beautiful places with traditional wedding clothing (western style). So whenever one goes to a pretty place like West Lake, it is likely that a number of wedding parties will be spotted. Perhaps a few brides and grooms and a photo team. Interestingly, there is not a huge concern about shoes and the bride will often were sneakers under her dress. Also the weather seems not to affect their propensity to go on such photo making expeditions. They are there rain or shine.

Qian Dao Hu

The Lake of A Thousand Islands, or Qian Dao Hu, is in a remote part of the extended Hangzhou city and takes about 3 hours to get to by bus. I went there over a long weekend with a friend, because everyone had told me it was a worthwhile trip. The township gets its name from a lake which forms part of its coastline, which has many small islands. However, they say in reality it is closer to a few hundred than to one thousand islands.



We arrived in mid morning and while taking lunch, 2 Chinese girls began to converse with us. They then offered to show us around town a little, an invitation we eagerly accepted because we had no idea what was what. They took us the the edge of the lake and showed us to a place where we could book day tours around some of the many islands. Then we walked back though the city to the other side of town where there was another coast of the lake. This area was like a large city square surrounded by shops. At the time, there were people but it was not crowded.

The girls left us, and my friend and I walked for a while only to run into one of the girls for a second time. She invited us to her house where her mother made boiled pork for us. Later that night, we went back to the city square with her. Now it was buzzing with life. People were renting out roller skates and there was a lot of other activity. My friend partook in this while I saw to some emergency work in an internet cafe. One of my classmates needed some help in writing some documentation for a few projects we were working on.

Later that evening, we went to the lake's edge and watched a beautiful fountain show. Fountain shows are quite popular in China but this was probably the nicest I have seen. They used lights underwater to colour it and had remote-controlled spray heads to achieve interesting patterns. It went on and on without repeating for quite some time.



The next day, we took a day tour around the lake to a number of the more major islands. They catered well for tourists of our calibre and provided a lot of interesting things to look at. There were monkeys, snakes, ostriches (which you could ride for 10RMB) as well as a mountain cable car that went up to a look out, each on their own island. It was very beautiful and had some of the clearest water I had seen in Chinese lakes.



The following day, which was our last, we went to the other side of the lake to see a activity park. It was ridiculously expensive so we just walked around before hitching a boat ride back to the main island. On the way home, I fell ill with a cold. I think there is some sort of trend here. Perhaps if I go traveling I should not return home, to avoid sickness.

Please view my extended gallery of this trip.

Qian Dao Hu

Outdoor Lights

This was a project that to develop outdoor lighting units. It was relatively short term but the company pressured us to be innovative.

My role on this project was as a consultant in early design stage but I was not heavily involved after that. Much later in the process I offered some technical knowledge in the use of production packages.

Real Fake Exercise Equipment

This was a brief project in which a Lab 318 client asked to have an OEM product re-designed so that they could compete with branded products they were already manufacturing for the Spanish and American markets. After completing some research we found that we were unable to make the supposed changes without breaching international and US-PTO patents. For this reason the project came to an early halt.

My role was as Project Leader so I had responsibility over the entire project. I was also involved as a research person so I worked with the rest of the group on patent searches and elemental design research in looking for solutions.

This was an interesting project because it asked me to do what western companies fear China is all about, copy. At first I had some concerns about its legality and so on but I soon realised that it was common practice and just part of the world so I made the most of the project.

It was also an interesting project because I was given quite a lot of responsibility and I was not managed at all during its course. In relation to this project I answered only to the Lab Manager. I was given a secretary to help manage information transfer because it was a research intensive project and I had 2 fellow researchers helping me read up on all the patents.

Patent searching is something that the workers in the Lab were quite used to as they would regularly have to approach projects similar to this one. I was amazed by how well they could understand the convoluted and impenetrable english of a patent while their spoken and written english was relatively incomplete.

When I reported to the Lab Manager that the project should be discarded because it was inefficient to submit to the clients needs given the circumstances of the protection in place by the USPTO, I was surprised that she was not affected and said, "OK, I will call the client tomorrow," and that was the end of that. I am not sure why it was so easy but for whatever reason we never really talked about the project again.

Upon reflection, I think nobody in the lab wanted projects like this though more than a few of them are likely to work again in such a context in the future. It seems to me that designers in China are not as they had been described to me and it was only market demand that made copying and so forth common place. The jobs available to designers in China almost all require such things, even in relatively high priced organisations such as Lab 318.

Dali and Going Home Sick

The last major stop of my summer travels was Dali, a city near a rather large lake sporting a few temples and a lot of minority culture representatives. Our time there was brief and perhaps the best part was taking a tour around a few attractions on the lake. That said, it was a nice destination and we had a great time there.


Traditional clothes to this region.

The end of my holiday had arrived so I returned to Kunming with Jenny and then flew home to Hangzhou. I had spent most of the travels quite healthy, apart from almost dying in Yangshuo. But in regards to my stomach, I had not had much trouble. The night before going home though, we ate at a restaurant known for its gut wrenching ability. The next morning I was fine but by mid afternoon I felt quite ill. I spent the entire flight back to Shanghai feeling awful but by the time we arrived I was feeling a little more lively. We then got a cab home to Hangzhou.



Though I began feeling better that evening I was still vaguely ill a month later. I think I had a stomach parasite but I never addressed it and now whatever was wrong is better. At least I feel a little less like dying every-time I see food.

Dali

Xishuangbanna and Damenlong

This place seems unlike other parts of China.

From Kunming, we travelled to south Xishuangbanna, a 10 trip on an overnight bus. Here we were rather close to the border of Myanmar and it looked a lot like Thailand. We only had a few days here and most of that time was spent eating banana pancakes because we found a restaurant that made brilliant ones which were the highlight of our trip to Xishuangbanna.


Me impersonating a tree root.

As a side trip, we decided to go 70km further south, making us only 10km from the border to a small town called Damenlong. Usually 70km of driving does not take too long, but on this occassion there was no road and there was a lot of mud as well as a few trucks stuck in it here and there so it took us about 5 hours. To remind us of our efforts, when we got there it was pouring with rain and a seemingly quite uninteresting village. Despite the telltale signs of a meal that would probably result in food poisoning, we had a few noodles while we waited for the rain to pass. The reason we had ventured to such a remote place was that the Lowly Planet guide advised it for 2 temples of the local religion. We visited one then shortly returned as we did not find it too intriguing. The return trip took closer to 4 hours.


Friends eating in Damenlong.

I think this insane day-trip was interesting because it exposed a lot more of the culture than might usually have been experienced. Life there is not at all like life in other places I have visited.

A few days later, we returned to Kunming for one night before going on to Dali.

Please view more photos of these places here.

Xishuangbanna

Kunming and Matilda

Kunming before the day starts and me without having washed.

The train was quite fun and a lot less interactive than my train ride to Beijing. There were four of us at this point but we were spread out between two roomlets. On a train like this, there are soft beds and hard beds. The soft beds are in lockable, air conditioned rooms with 4 beds and the hard beds are in open ended rooms in carriages without AC. We were on hard beds so it was quite warm. Our trip started at 9 am and would end the following day at about 6 am. Despite being too hot most of the day, the evening cooled down and we had a good sleep.


Matilda and Jenny.

The next morning when we arrived in Kunming, it was too early for most shops to have opened. We walked around, found an internet cafe, eventually had breakfast, and then got in contact with Matilda, a friend of Jenny's. She had a bit of extra space at the apartment that she was living in so two of us stayed at her house while the other two stayed in a nearby hostel. We did not do much in Kunming apart from eat brownies and buy pirated dvds. Also, 3 out of 4 of us (plus Matilda) got ill from food, something that Matilda and her friends say happens a lot there.


We were tired. This is Matilda's couch.

After a few days, we took a bus down to another city, Xishuangbanna. A few days later, we were back in Kunming for another night before going to Dali. Jenny and I eventually returned only to leave the next afternoon to go back to Hangzhou.

Da Zai

The view out my window.

From Yangshuo, we went to Guilin where we booked a train ride to Kunming for a few days later. We left Guilin the same afternoon to a small village high in the mountains called Da Zai. To get there, we had to take a bus along a series of mountainous dirt roads, but because there had recently been a lot of big storms many parts of the road were missing. These were in the process of being replaced by men working to repair them and there were piles of dirt and rocks that had fallen.

We eventually got there and on leaving the bus, we were confronted by a crowd of old women who wanted to carry our bags. We told them that would not be necessary and we were happy to carry them ourselves. It turned out this was a pretty stupid thing to do because although they told us it was only a simple 20 minute walk to the place we would stay they did not mention that it was actually 30 minutes and involved climbing over several mountains and many hundreds of stone stairs. During this process, one of my friends nearly passed out as we were carrying quite a lot of stuff. When we eventually reached the top, we were given rooms with amazing views. We walked around that afternoon and I ran into some pony problems on the mountainside.


Pony Problems. It was hogging the pathway. To my right is a steep drop off.

The next day, Jenny (one of the friends I had been traveling with) and I got up early and looked at the sun as it rose. It was quite nice but very small and way too early in the morning so when we returned to the guest house we both fell back asleep. In the next two days, we walked up and down the big mountain as little as possible, it was just too big and steep. Nevertheless, we did go down to the village below and tried to swim in a small creek. It was a bit too cold and because I had only recently been deathly ill, I decided I should not get cold.


These are local women showing us things they would like to sell us.

The local people were quite cool, although some of them spent a little too much time trying to sell things to me. They listened to really great music but sadly, I did not get any recordings. On other interesting thing here was that around mid-afternoon we would be asked what we wanted for dinner - chicken or pig. They would then kill the appropriate creature to make us a meal. At one of these meals I gave in to the efforts of one of the locals and bought 2 plain silver bracelets.


This is me on my way down. Yes, I am carrying a freshly tailored suit. I did not think that through so well.

During our stay, we found a much quicker method of descent, so on our last day we used this instead of the route that had originally been taken. We caught the bus back to Guilin where we stayed one night for one night before leaving by train the next morning.

Guilin seemed to be quite an average city so I do not have any pictures. When we went to pick up our train tickets, it seemed quite likely that the agency we had asked to book us a ticket had run away with our money. In the end, they turned up with tickets for a later train and we set off to Kunming, a 21 hour trek on a "hard sleeper" train that had no airconditioning, even though it was a 40°C+ day. However, the trip wasn't too bad and we had quite an interesting time.

Here is a collection of images from my stay at Da Zai

Da Zai

Luckily I was in room 11. 11 is my favourite number.

Yangshuo

Pretty nice view I think. Lots of little mountains.

Our first stop in our travels was Yangshuo, a small tourist city in Guang Xi province. It ended up being a 12 hour trip by bus - it was made longer because some of the roads that they would usually have taken were washed out by the typhoons a few days earlier. The bus we took was a sleeper bus, which meant that instead of seats, they had rows of bunk beds. The trip was quite good, although the beds were not quite as long as I'd hoped. Sadly, my phone was running out of power so it beeped a lot and I needed it on so I could stay in contact with Fan’s travel guide friend, Richard. Also, I had a temperature of 39°C for the whole night and was feeling a little sick.


Inches from death. Or at least a little sick.

When we arrived early the next morning, Richard met us and showed us around. He also showed me to a barefoot doctor, as my high temperature and illness were becoming an issue. The doctor looked at my tongue and gave me a poisonous drink with twigs that I was to drink 3 times a day for the next 2 days. She also said that if my temperature was not down by later that evening, I would need an antibiotic drip and some Chinese medicine energy solution. By that afternoon, I was beginning to feel better so I went for a boat ride with my other 3 friends to see some of the the famous mountains of the area. However, I began to feel unwell again by the end of the boat ride. When one of my friends went back to the doctor's place to pick up the rest of my medicine, the doctor was alarmed enough at my symptoms that she caught a motorbike back to my hotel room with my friend so that she could examine me in person. She determined that I was still too sick and that I would need a drip. (In China, drips are the preferred form of medicine for anything ranging from a cold to impending death.)

Her establishment could not offer such services, so we went to the establishment of a friend of hers from university, who specialised in drips and more Western medicine. This drip room was a small shop that opened out directly onto the street. They gave me the drip and complementary grapes.

That night, I sweated so much I had to change shirts many times and used every one of the shirts I had brought. The next morning, I felt a lot better and went for a bike ride to a place called Moon Mountain and then climbed it.

Moon Mountain was about an hour’s bike ride from the city. The mountain gets its name from a huge hole through the middle. They say that in the distance from every angle it looks like the moon at a different part of its cycle. In any case, we climbed first to the hole and then to the ridge above the hole. There were old ladies selling bottles of water at the top who were in much better shape than us. We were quite exhausted and they were casually running up and down the mountain with styrofoam freezers full of chilled water and juice. After that, we descended and returned to the city.


One of my friends Kayaking.

The next day, we went kayaking with Richard’s brother which was great fun except that we got exceptionally sunburnt and one of my friends ran into a tree, flipping her kayak and almost losing her camera in the water. The other friend who was with her had to jump in the river to retrieve the waterproof bag. He was very anxious to do this as it held his camera as well as hers.

On the way back from kayaking, we say a truck that had fallen off a small dirt road into a rice field. We had to wait while a crane lifted it back onto the road. This was quite cool and it was really interesting to see how the people dealt with such an occurrence. It was certainly treated a lot more casually than I imagine it would have been in a Western country. But perhaps that is because that kind of thing happens more often there.

That evening, we went to Richard’s house for cooking lessons. It was quite fun, although I think I will not open a restaurant just yet. We also got Richard advice on how to precede with our travels and where to go next. He was very helpful.

Here is a small collection of photos from my stay in Yangshuo.

Yangshuo

Back to Hong Kong

The view, looking north, from the Peak.

Before heading out on our travels, we had arranged meet a two friends in Hong Kong. These were the two friends that we would go backpacking with. I also had to pick up the suit I had ordered. This time, we knew our way around a little better and managed to visit the Peak as well as going to the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, as it had just come out in HK and would not be out in China for many months.

Mongkok makes Shanghai look like a village and Melbourne look like a distant training post.

We then took a train up to the border at Shenzhen and caught a overnight bus from there. It is important to note that the day before leaving HK I though I was dying because my wrists looked thin and the day I left I started to have some sort of cold.


A classic Hong Kong Island Street. Note the tram to ecstasy.

Foshan and Fan Ginsong

This is Fan and me at a one of the largest ceramic showrooms. As you can see, my leg is still wrapped with a compression bandage.

I knew that Fan Ginsong lived in this part of China, so I had contacted him a few weeks earlier asking if he would be interested in meeting up. He was interested so I scheduled a time to go to Foshan for a few days. It turned out that Foshan was only about 2 hours drive from Zhongshan so it was not a problem for a friend and I to get there by bus. Fan then picked us up and took us to their international dorm (in China these often act as hotels as well as dorms) At the time there were almost no students because it was the holidays.

Fan gave a tour of the inner city and left us to walk around for the evening. The next day he showed us their student work from the previous year of graduates and then he took us to the more industrial parts of Foshan, we visited a few of the many furniture markets and ceramics show rooms. These were quite impressive - huge buildings full of furniture of many types. The industrial ceramics were also very impressive. Companies supply incredibly accurate mock wood, brick and stone for external and internal use in architectural settings that is visually indistinguishable from the real thing.

While in Foshan, we discussed the rest of our trip with Fan and he offered to ask a guide he knew in a city we had planned to visit (Yangshuo) to help us. He gave us the phone number of the guide and called ahead about our visit. This proved quite useful later in our trip. We left Foshan after three days.


This is a caterpillar. I saw it at a temple in Foshan

My 21st in Hong Kong

For my birthday, a close friend showed me around Hong Kong for a few days and took me to a great restaurant. We started out from Zhongshan on the morning of my birthday and took a ferry to Victoria Harbour, HK. When we arrived in Hong Kong, we secured our accommodation and then spent the day shopping in Mongkok (a shopping district on the Kowloon peninsula) where there are many camera shops full of rare stock and other nice things. I was very interested in getting a Leica CM or a Zeiss Ikon by Carl Zeiss. Of course, these cameras are several times my budget so I came away with nothing but it was nice to see them for a change.

That evening we went on a another ferry that took us around the harbour during the impressive Hong Kong Light Show. Eventually we got off and walked to a restaurant at Causeway Bay that was in the front of the Hong Kong Convention Centre. I was able to recognise the building because there have been a few Jackie Chan films that feature this building. In any case we had a great dinner and then a whole Haagen Dazs cake (bar one piece we gave to a child from a near by table). After dinner I was feeling "bao si la", (full to the brink of death) so we decided to avoid too much more food or activity after that.


This is the cake, it consisted of 1kg of icecream and needed dry ice to stay cold while we were aboard the ferry around the harbour.

The next day, we continued the quest to look at all the great things available in Hong Kong and walked through Causeway Bay (on Hong Kong Island). At one point, not knowing what to do next, we took a random tram just to see where it would go and for the experience of riding a tram. It ended up that the tram took us to some rather remote and industrial part of Hong Kong. We looked around the wharfs for awhile and then caught another bus. This bus went back to the very top of Tsim Sha Tsui, which was quite a long trip. We then took another bus back to Ocean Terminal, a huge shopping complex, and explored that for awhile.

After three days, we were to return to the Mainland but before that we looked around Tsim Sha Tsui and I had ordered a tailored suit. We would be back in a week or so to pick it up and meet other friends.

Our route back to China included a day trip to Macau which was quite interesting in comparison to Hong Kong. Hong Kong made me think of a Britain that does not rain all the time, where you can buy good local food and where there is an Asian drive for shopping. The public transport is great and most other public services are well designed. Macau, on the other hand, seemed a lot more like its father nation, Portugal. The roads are winding and city planning was done after all the buildings were built. The food is of course great because the fusion has had a long time to develop. I though that Macau felt a lot more European and seems to have retained more history. That said, we did not visit any casinos so perhaps my impressions could be skewed.


This is the Zeiss Ikon, probably my favorite camera.

Heading South

These are the friends that saw me off as I left Hangzhou. Younghee's Boyfriend, Younghee and Shemmy.

After returning from Beijing, I left my ATM card in Shanghai Airport and spent a long week back in Hangzhou preparing to head south. I was to go to a place called Zhongshan where the family of a friend of mine was from. We would stay there for about a week before starting off on an extended travel though mid-China.

Zhongshan was a rather small village but quite a nice place to rest as my foot was still healing. I was staying at the house of a friend's grandfather and essentially every day after Yum Cha, he would go off to play Mahjong for the rest of the day. We had a nice time not doing to much for a change.

After a few days it was getting rather close to my 21st Birthday so we across to Hong Kong. We would return to Zhongshan a few days later before meeting other friends and leaving for our travels.