CHINA 2016: DAY 5

18 OCT

There really isn't much to see in Shenyang - being an industrial city, I find that the only redeeming place to visit is the Shenyang Imperial Palace, which was where the actual imperial palace and capital was in the Qing Dynasty until it moved to Beijing.

There are, however, several parks, and we visited one called 棋盘山, literally translating to "chessboard hill".


Within this park was another "park" that features several buildings that were apparently used as filming sites for dramas and movies.

And a large lake that is the center of the park itself.

Autumnal colors had completely set in by then, lining the roads with bursts of oranges, yellows, and reds with specks of green.

There was another hill that you could climb in the park, but we opted out due to the effort required, and there was only one handrail on one side that was covered with ladybirds.

On the way back to the city, we stopped by the Scitech Outlets. The area was experiencing a water shortage and none of the toilets could be flushed. And most of the prices of international brands seemed to be even more expensive than retail.


Dinner was, once again, at 新洪记.

CHINA 2016: DAY 3 & 4

16 OCT

Since we were still in Beijing and we were to have breakfast before picking up Miss Wang, we opted for Yonghe King. I recalled that there was one branch right behind Scitech Hotel (where we stayed in some number of years ago), but apparently it had moved to about a couple of blocks away.

Yonghe King is a fast-food chain restaurant, but one which has soy milk and Chinese doughnuts as their main selling item. They occasionally also have rice dishes on their menu.

After breakfast and picking up Miss Wang, we headed to the Great Wall. Now, the Great Wall is broken up to several smaller "segments" that are distributed across an area. The one we went to this time was the nearest to the city, thus not as high up and less cold than the one we went to a few years ago (higher up and more popular, called Badaling).

Miss Wang and my mother stopped at one of the plateaus, where there was coffee and food. They chatted and shared snacks while my sisters and I proceeded to climb up from the nearest tower to the next.


Being a clumsy person, i.e. someone who is able to lose balance and trip on flat ground, the climb was anxiety inducing. Some steps were knee-height high, but was only about a few inches wide. One particular lady climbed the entire thing without handrail support and in stilettos; a few elderly individuals took this as an opportunity for exercise, and steadily climbed and descended, while everyone else panted away.

Our next destination was the Summer Palace. It was essentially a place of relaxation and luxury, with a vast lake and hills surrounding the area. The last time we were here, it was in the dead of winter - the lotus plants in the water had rotted into oblivion and the smell permeated the place. But we were in the midst of fall this time, and the lotus and lily pads were still fairly decent. The weather was also cool enough to walk around and thoroughly enjoy the scenery.

Dinner was once again at a hotpot restaurant, but in a very secluded corner with pre-ordered Chinese dishes served with rice. Meanwhile, the smell of lamb hotpot wafted in around us.




17 OCT

The next morning involved a flight to Shenyang, where salted peanuts and a measly red bean bun constituted as an inflight meal.

After checking in to our hotel, my father's ex-colleagues brought us out for lunch at a place called 新洪记 that specializes in dumplings. They also have an interesting order system, where you pick out what you want to eat from a menu displayed over an area, and pick your fresh seafood from a tank.

The highlight - roasted lamb on burdock root skewers.

Deep fried tofu

Pan-fried dumplings. The filling here is called 肉三鲜

Steamed dumplings, same filling.

We were sent back to the hotel after some errands and reassuring them that we would be able to handle dinner for ourselves... which we did by raiding a convenience mart right outside our hotel. We picked one instant noodle cup each and loaded up the beer.

CHINA 2016: DAY 1 & 2 - BEIJING

Ever since my dad's death and our trip to Qingdao & Beijing, we've been planning a trip back to complete all necessary paperwork and the likes. And since he was stationed in Shenyang, Liaoning for most of his time there, our destinations also included the lesser known city.

For my first non-direct flight to anywhere, we took Cathay Pacific/Dragonair on 14 Oct from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, then Beijing. I shall first shamelessly say that I swiped ALL the utensils from all 4 flights on CX (because they did serve a purpose later in the trip), including the Haagen Dazs dessert spoon.

Our flight departing from KUL was delayed, hence we were rushed to the connecting flight to Beijing, flitting by all the shops and past several not-so-friendly Hong Kong airline and airport staff.


It was around 10-15°C throughout the trip in Beijing, and slightly cooler and colder in Shenyang, mainly due to stronger winds since Shenyang is further north, closer to Harbin. We were picked up by 曹師傅, who ferried us and all our luggage to the hotel in the south of Beijing - 行者居酒店 (Xingzheju Jiudian). We had substantial conversation about the differences in culture, economy, food, education, and workforce between Beijing (or China in some perspectives) and Malaysia (particularly KL).


It pains me to say that I'm a bad blogger for not taking pictures of the hotel, but then again, it wasn't really sight for sore eyes. While the lobby looked decent, the front desk staff seemed unprepared for non-Chinese speaking guests, and upon entry into our room, it was to our dismay that the lighting was extremely limited, with no storage space whatsoever, and a dismal "bathroom" which is just a room with a sink, toilet, and shower system haphazardly placed. And to the left of the door to the room, was a goddamn window to the corridor. They carved out a small corner for the main pillar of the building, but for some reason thought it'd be a good idea to make it a window.


And while retrieving our room keys, we were told to not open any yellow (gold?) boxes next to the TV if we were not using them, as they charged 15 Yuan for each box opened. Lo' and behold. We had a feeling that this was some sort of hanky-panky love hotel, which was made even more apparent with the room layout that seemed to not encourage long-term comfortable stay.



There were no fast food joints within our block (the nearest one was about 2-3 blocks away), so we headed to the hotel restaurant (which was thankfully open) for dinner.


15 OCT

Our hopes for a decent breakfast/morning were also dashed when we went down for the complimentary breakfast - apart from some plain sandwich bread, plasticky margarine and jam, all other food items were Chinese dishes that would usually be served for lunch or dinner back home. There was no coffee or tea, only soy milk and orange juice (that turned out to be as hot as the soy milk).



We met our tour guide, Miss Aileen Wang, in the lobby - she was a nice lady in her 50s, who had a decent command in English and a penchant for ancient Chinese history. Our first destination was 天安門廣場 (Tiananmen Square), and into 故宮 (Forbidden City, or Imperial Palace).


Apparently, the Chinese national holiday had just passed (11 Oct), but it was still tourist season in China. Hoards and hoards of people were on the streets, wearing different items to signify that they were a part of a specific tour group, and we later found out that majority of these people were local Beijing citizens, coming out on a weekend for some quality time.


Thank god for underpasses, though. Given Beijing's wide roads and busy traffic, crossing a 5-lane 2-way main road bustling with cars, buses, and motorcycles in the dozens would be quite intimidating.


The crowd was particularly inundating when it came to actually going through Tiananmen into the Forbidden City. The Chinese don't particularly have a wide personal space circle, and have no problem just squeezing that extra bit in crowded places - which is something that makes most of us fairly uncomfortable.

The compound of the Forbidden City didn't look much different than that time we came in the dead of winter ... apart from the glaring differences in human traffic. The Aileen pointed out the reason indirectly - she was pointing out the glaring lack of trees in the compound to discourage intruders (also known as 刺客). The lack of greenery that transformed throughout the seasons rendered the palace a place of eternal stillness (apart from the raging crowds of tourists), with the buildings and pathways constantly being worn away by time, nature, and human traffic, and then rebuilt and refurbished and maintained by the Chinese government.


We went through the Imperial Garden which was just at the back of the entire Forbidden City - numerous 吉樹 (lucky trees) of various shapes dotted the compound, and there was a small 'hill' of sorts made from apparently imported rocks.


We exited to the back of the palace, where we walked along a road lined with tourist buses, counters selling tour packages to Badaling Great Wall, trams, and maple trees. It wasn't long before I actually realized that most trees lining the streets in both Beijing and Shenyang were either maple or ginkgo trees.


Waiting along the side of a road for our car was scary, especially given Chinese driving, but I noticed also how crisp the air felt despite buses and cars swarming the intersection. If this was somewhere in KL with the same amount of traffic, you could potentially just turn grey from all the dust and exhaust and carbon monoxide emitted from all the vehicles, but a lot of buses in Beijing ran on electricity, which was why the air didn't feel even more stuffy.

Lunch was at a place near the "Orchard Road" of Beijing - Wangfujin area. 趙先生涮肉 provided traditional charcoal Beijing-style hotpot, but as per the tour menu, our lunch was slightly disappointing (the food was good, don't get me wrong) while an old couple across from us munched happily opposite each other, dipping their thinly sliced meats into the hotpot in front of them.

Our next destination was supposed to be Jingshan Park, where a pavilion was placed upon a hilltop within a park that provided a view of the entire Forbidden City, but we skipped that destination (already more than 6000 steps just walking from the front to the back of the City) and went shopping.

Qian Men Emperor's Avenue 前門大街 is a shopping street lined with so many different stores, and little corridors that led to so many different hidden gems - from clothing stores, to stores that sold everything, to stores that only sold food, and in front of almost each and every shop was a small box with little white jars for sale - Beijing yogurt. Here, they sell for about 2-4 Yuan per jar, you drink it up then and there, then return the jar so they can reuse it (unfortunately, I made the mistake of not buying it here). I asked the tour guide, and apparently you could buy the disposable container version from only supermarkets (which we never got round to checking out).

We walked mainly through the smaller alleys in the back that led outward from the main street. Many of the shops seemed to repeat themselves throughout: local candy stores that had shelves and mounds of different types of local candy, stores that sold pretty much everything from ashtrays to fully functional electric toys, department stores that looked like all the rest of the shops but sold vastly different things are very turn and every step.

We stopped the longest at a crystals and precious stones store, where my sister was picking out crystal bracelets. We made a trip to one of the department stores, into the candy stores, and more before going back to the same store and she still hadn't come out. Turns out she won the grand prize in a lucky draw that allowed customers (who spent over a certain amount to qualify to draw in the first place) to purchase an item from a selection of gold and jade jewellery for a fraction of the price.


My mum and the tour guide were pretty much petrified, but as with many pendants my dad brought home previously, they all came with certificates.


We ended the tour with an acrobatics show called The Wonderful Han 漢風. Even before the performance itself, calligraphy pieces of a popular master were being auctioned off. The show starts with a young man wandering around and flipping the pages of a giant book, which seemed to open a portal in time back to Ancient China where emperor's still ruled the lands. Each performance seemed to signify a progression of the Chinese, from balancing lambs while in extremely flexed positions, to having 5 motorcycles performing stunts within a giant metal sphere.


The funniest, for me, was the Chinese yoyo performance. Ever since primary school, we're had Chinese yoyo performances, and fan dances for every single school event, so that performance was normal to me. What wasn't normal were the performers' headdresses. If you've seen some versions of Monkey King Sun Wu Kong on TV, you might recognize his feeler-like headdress that he sometimes wears, and it's also a popular costume feature for Cantonese opera 粵劇 (the more elaborate costumes). But instead of having two, they had one - right on top of their head, and to move them, they are had to constantly wiggle their head, which bears no connection to the yoyo performance, which is why I was left with the really huge question: why did the costume designer/producer think this would be a good idea?


Anyway this experience was different from the acrobatics show that we saw previously, which incorporated a few more stunt elements than the balancing/acrobatic performances we previously saw many years ago.


After the performance, we headed toward Vantone Tower 萬通中心 to a quaint place called 漢舍, which serves almost avant garde fusion style Chinese food. I have never had such delicious and moist fried fish before *drools


I'll end the post with photos of what we had for dinner:

 

A day to a government office

Sometimes it's hard to realize that a relationship is toxic when you're already reeling from so many different negative emotions at a time, but one of the general guidelines is that you always feel exhausted from trying to do and be so many things, but you're still not doing enough.


While this relationship has opened my eyes to how a healthy relationship looks like, it took one trip to a government office to just blow me away.


He needed to renew some documents, both of which can be done in the same building. For once, a drive to a government office to actually get proper stuff done and I wasn't behind the wheel. We set off after getting some banking stuff done, and there was a little mishap in terms of navigation (due to miscommunication), but we got there okay.


Approaching the counter, he got his number and we waited, and while we did, I scouted out the building for the other office that he would need to visit later.


All through the process of getting everything done, I mostly just sat and watched his blazer while playing mobile games. While he queued for the next number, I just sat and watched our stuff. I continued playing my mobile games, pausing a while to get some drinks from the vending machine, all the while people-watching and having relaxed conversation.


The stark difference here was this I wasn't expected to be the point of contact for everything that we did, and I wasn't expected to find out and remember what to do next and where to do it. There was even enough mental room to joke about registering for marriage right then and there to show my grandma who's so eager to "see all of us married with kids".


I never had this really relaxing, yet still mentally engaged "official" outing - with my mother, she took charge of everything so all I needed to do was be there and fill in the relevant forms; with my ex, it was always me stressing about where to go, what to say, how to say it, memorizing procedures, and being chastised for trying my best to get things done as smoothly as possible.


During this entire process, we joked about things, discussed possible goals and non-goals (stuff I/we probably won't want to do in the future), and made assumptions on why certain people looked the way they looked, or discussed how they dressed. Throughout the day, there wasn't any "your opinion is invalid"-oriented comments - it was equal conversation. I think this lady looks good enough as it is, perhaps he thinks that she could have paired her trousers with another blouse that was more plain to avoid clashing prints.


All this may also have been because I was no longer struggling with ill-fitting clothing, impossible sleeping times the previous night that made basic conversation almost impossible, and navigation to a place I was not familiar with. Not to mention the absence of the struggle and anxiety with talking to multiple strangers within the a time frame that I was intensely uncomfortable with.


And even after all was done, I didn't have to drive us home (though I volunteered to after lunch). The road that Waze led me to take was a familiar one, and while the passenger was also asleep, I didn't feel a blanketing sense of annoyance and irritation. The difference? I didn't have to drive us home, I chose to. And while the rush hour traffic annoyed me as usual, I felt much less in a rush to just get home and sleep - the concern was more toward how I can drive all the way home without waking him.


He seldom says "thank you", but he said it twice on that day. Once while we merged with congested traffic (because he knew how much I hated being stuck in traffic), and once before we slept for accompanying him to do all this mumbo jumbo, which to be honest, I'm usually more than happy to be a part of when I'm not expected to take all responsibility for a task that is essentially not mine.


Overall, I managed to get home tired, but not completely frazzled and irritable like I used to be. I think there's one word to describe how I felt that day: appreciated. Regardless of what I did, he didn't ask me to tone it down if I was attracting attention to myself, and he included my input into the necessary planning throughout the day.


So, to those asking me "why him?", here's one of the many answers.

What a relationship with healthy trust looks like

It's a regular Saturday, and I'm waiting for my shift to start so that I can go through players who are dissatisfied that their mediocre skill is leading to a mountain of losses - regular day in customer service, so to speak.


I was woken up by my grocery delivery, made a very heavy brunch, spent some time with the cat while watching the live action Parasyte movie, then set up my "work station".


The gym mates with suddenly suggest going out for coffee or karaoke. I opted for coffee because I do wanna do out, but karaoke would be too expensive, and I needed to work, or at least be on standby.


What's left was prepping, charging relevant electronics, and just sending a message to family saying that I'll be out of the house for a few hours, as well as an obligatory text to the significant other. The reply? "Ok"


#easy


Except...


about a year ago, I'd be damned if organizing coffee with colleagues was so easy.


In that other relationship, I'd be riddled with anxiety at the mere thought of going out with anyone other than him - and, yes, that included going out with my own family. If I really wanted to go out with friends or colleagues, I'd almost had to fight for it, and I never "won", because I would spend that entire time anxiously checking the time.


I would also nervously - and dreadingly - get home to a cynical interrogation about the content of my conversations, and if I dared say that I enjoyed myself, it would be sure that I will never request for a similar outing ever again.


This would also happen even if I went for an all-girl trip, so god forbid if there was a guy who brought his girlfriend along as well. I'd have this persistent guilt of wanting to completely immersed in communication with whoever I was going out with, but I'd have texts asking me if I'm done, what we're talking about - seemingly innocent questions that I've been conditioned to think as little "tests" to see how honest I was.


Any last-minute plans were a no-go, lest I would want to come home to someone who was sulking more than the cat who got its tail stepped on earlier. I'd be also paranoid that friendly, platonic interaction with any other guy would be a subject of confrontation.


###


I now live in comfort of knowing that my platonic friendships with other guys are nothing but just that - we talk shit about colleagues and people we know, throw friendly vulgarities with each other, and discuss various topics, mostly relating to work.


I wouldn't have to justify WHY I wanted to go out, because I just want to.