My trip to China

I mentioned a few posts back that when I don't have time to write in my blog that I ought to at least share photos. That is what I am doing today. These are some of the photos I have from my quick trip to China last October. I went for work, we were there for just 4 days and we had a VERY long travel day to get there due to cancelled flights. My only free time was when it was dark, so my photo ops were either from car/train/boat/plane windows (yes, I rode all of those in one day!) or at night. Either way, here's a small look into the window on Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhongshan, China...and a couple of Hong Kong where I didn't stay but just passed through.

This is my first view of China. That is Shenzhen across the river and we are standing on an elevated walkway in Hong Kong right near the border crossing.

This is a sidewalk in Shenzhen right outside the building that houses customs (at the border crossing). The weather was gorgeous and the air was MUCH cleaner than I expected.

Delivery guy on a bike taking a smoke break.

Billboards line the streets of Shenzhen.

This building (like many in China) was totally covered in scaffolding. There was lots of construction going on. All this scaffolding is made of bamboo!

We drove from Shenzhen to Dongguan. This is part of Dongguan right outside where our hotel was located.

This was the view from my hotel room window (we luckily had time to clean up before meeting our customers - we'd been traveling for more than 24 hours at this point!)

This was the pool in our hotel. I didn't get to use it, but it was beautiful!

This was dinner one night in Dongguan. In this restaurant, you pick out your food while it's still swimming in a tank and then they prepare it for you...

We had MANY dishes, but only a few of the photos are post-worthy. This was octopus.

And lobster. Delicious!

That night, we walked around Dongguan a little near the hotel with one of our customers as a guide. This is a huge mall right across the street from where we stayed. There is actually a Wal-Mart on the other side of this mall (we visited it...just to see). If everything in a US Wal-mart is made in China, was everything in a Chinese Wal-mart made in the US? What do YOU think? ;-)

After a few days in Dongguan, we traveled by car to Zhongshan for a night. One of our customers took us out on the town that night and we visited a part of town called Old Zhongshan. It was very cool - old buildings renovated to be current shops and bars. It reminded me a bit of Ybor City in Tampa.

Me riding/posing in a bronzed rikshaw.

Zhongshan at night.

The next day, we took a car, then a ferry, then a train and then two planes to get back to the US. This was taken from the ferry on the way into Hong Kong. Those are apartments. Can you say 'population density'?

This was taken from the train that took us from the ferry to the airport. It's hard to see, but it's like a bit of OLD Hong Kong tucked admist speeding trains and skyscrapers.

Finally, a shot of Hong Kong (also taken from the train) showing how lush the country is when you step away from the city.

The greenhouse - such as it is

Our little 'greenhouse'

I'm almost embarassed to post this as it's so pathetically ugly...but whatever. We don't have a true greenhouse. I really should add it to my side bar (perhaps I will before anyone even reads this!), but our plans do include buying a kit and building one ourselves. It won't be big...we certainly don't need big. But it would be nice to have a real one with vents, and doors and such.

In the meantime, I wanted to try something so that we could see how growing in the winter would work in our climate. I got this idea from the Square Foot Gardening book and I modified it a little to suit my needs. This is one of our garden boxes with a temporary greenhouse installed over it. I made sure that both ends opened so that I could reach all the plants easily enough.

The inside where you can see the duct tape, the top bar and how the ends go into the soil.

This is how it went:

1) remove all dead debris from boxes (including acorns...where did they come from??)
2) bend 2 10ft 1/2 inch PVC pipes in arches over the ends and stick them in the dirt
3) cut a 4 ft piece of pipe to be the top crossbar for stability and screw it in place
4) cover the ends with 3mil plastic, securing it with duct tape to avoid cutting/tearing it
5) cover the rest of it with the same plastic and secure the base with 4ft leftover 'grid' boards and nails
6) spend a week trying to decide how to best secure the top plastic to the end pieces
7) find plastic spring loaded clamps at ACE and use those to secure the plastic in place
8) mix compost into each square prior to planting to add more nutrients
9) plant!

Here it is all closed up. You can see the plastic clamps holding the plastic to the pipe.

We have mostly leafy greens planted. I did add a couple of onions, leeks, and one broccoli plant, but I have no illusions that those will actually work with our temps the way they are now. It does get to 60 during the day still, but with not much sun, I think the soil is too cold to sprout most things. Hopefully the lettuces, spinach, kale and chard will work, though. Again, late planting...I need to break this lousy habit!

I got word this evening that my visa was approved and that my passport is on its way back to me right now. I should receive it tomorrow which means that I am all set to depart for China on Saturday. I'll be vising Dongguan and Zhongshan, neither of which are tourist destinations. That's probably a good thing since I'll barely have any time outside of when I'm working to see anything anyway. I am flying into Hong Kong and supposedly staying at a really nice hotel, but I'll only be there for one night and probably won't get to see too much. It's an awful long way to go for 3 days. If I had my way, we'd not be wasting the money, the time or the crazy amounts of fuel to go there just to schmooze (essentially). But, when it's important to my boss..it has to be important to me.

I may or may not have internet access - so this may be my last post for awhile. I return next Thursday and once I've recovered from what is sure to be severe jet lag, I'll be back to posting. Until then "Zai Jain"!