Dragon Tiger Gate

Sometimes it's just too hot to do anything outdoors so yesterday's sunniest hours were spent at the cinema across the street (which by the way has a history going back over one hundred years).

The movie selection is a little bit odd. When I came here they were showing Octopus II, a by all accounts terrible low budget German monster movie with an average score of 2.6 (out of ten) at the Internet Movie Database. Not only that, it's from 2001. I definitely want in as a movie purchaser around here.

Just a few days ago, however, the movie that stands the biggest chance of becoming this year's box office king premiered, Hong Kong's Dragon Tiger Gate. The daytime tickets cost 25 yuan and soon I was sitting down, soy-bean milk drink in hand and expectations at a moderate level, remembering a trailer I saw online a couple of weeks ago where action and pop stars performed computer and wire enhanced gong fu while wearing too big wigs.

Wang Xiaolong (Donnie Yen) and Wang Xiaohu (Nicholas Tse) grew up as brothers but have since then become estranged. Xiaolong entered some shady business as a bodyguard for a man who became his guardian when his childhood home went up in flames. Meanwhile, Xiaohu has been hanging out at a school and gathering place for martial artists called Dragon Tiger Gate.

It should be noted that my Chinese is not that good and that although I got some on the spot translation help, certain fine plot points might have flown by over my head. As it soon turns out though, this is not the kind of movie that delves in fine plot points.

As the movie starts Xiaohu heads into a restaurant where a fight quickly erupts. During the chaos one of Xiaohu's friends get his hands onto a powerful amulet which supposedly gains its wearer power over the criminal underworld. Countless thugs are sent out but Xiaohu fends them off using high kicks and several improbable moves, allowing his friends to leave with the amulet still in their possession.

In order to get it back the mobsters send out Xiaolong and a couple of hundred bad guys but when Xiaolong encounters his brother he decides to switch sides and the two are soon fighting for the same cause. They are suddenly joined by a bystander who gets dragged into the chaos - it's Shi Heilong (a nunchaku-wielding Shawn Yue) and our trio of heroes is now complete.

Heilong wants to perfect his skills at the Dragon Tiger Gate but is humbled by the teacher (Yuen Wah) who beats him repeatedly with a shoe. Things are looking even bleaker for Xiaolong. His refusal to return the amulet has put him into a dangerous position. He basically wants to quit the whole mobster gig but loyalty towards his superior leaves him unable to decide on the best course of action.

A series of events soon push him, along with Xiaohu and Heilong, towards an inevitable path as the Really Bad Guy (complete with cape and mask) makes his entrance. The heroes will need to hone their skills to be able to take on cape guy in his Evil Temple. Inbetween the obvious final fight we get treated to the usual fare: overflowing melodrama, revelations of the past, training sequences. I'm pretty sure not understanding the dialogue completely helped me enjoy the movie more. This is not earth shattering stuff by any means, just a glossy action movie filled with unbelievable combat and characters.

The fights are obviously the main attraction here and they're all visually entertaining. Donnie Yen has gone for a highly unrealistic coreography with tons of wires throwing actors all over the place. Computer graphics are also used on several occasions to provide extra eye candy.

Most of the fights see a single protagonist take on several disposable enemies. Donnie Yen gets to use a staff against a small group of armed antagonists in what is probably the movie's most realistic fight whereas Shawn Yue throws around his nunchakus all over the place while Nicholas Tse aims hich kicks at opponents' heads. The final fight sees the boys perfecting the techniques they learned in a previous training sequence and Donnie Yen hands out several meaty elbows and knees.

All in all I found myself entertained, a little bit against my will. This is very glossy and shallow stuff but it's easy to get dragged into the kinetic fights and stylish visuals. As far as hot afternoon entertainment goes, Dragon Tiger Gate was a success.

Chaos!

Sometimes it really sucks going outside. Not because of the overwhelming heat, not because of the risk of falling into a sewer (this happened on my first night here, luckily enough my foot struck more or less solid ground about a metre below ground level), but because it means having to confront the thousand-headed hydra that is Chinese traffic.

A few decades ago, cars in the ownership of common people were a rare sight. Nowadays it's quickly changing and the government has implemented a kind of bidding system to keep the number of cars from escalating out of proportion. I'm not totally sure how it works but when new license plates are made available people are invited to bid on the right to use them. The road network along the coast is highly developed and could probably swallow several more cars, so that's not the problem, at least not yet.

The problem is that people have a tendency to drive like idiots.

Driving against oncoming traffic just to overtake a slow truck is not considered weird at all, just like using every means of telling other motorists that you're going to squeeze by is fair game. Taxi cars don't even have seat belts in the back seat. The countless scooters and other (mostly electric) motorbikes are used by as many as three persons at the same time, a small percentage of them donning helmets.

Crossing the street is usually quite safe but travelling by car or, worse yet, scooter can be a horrifying experience for someone coming from a country where there's no need for a "use of signal horn prohibited" sign in residential areas. Right now I'm still undecided as to whether people are really good or really crappy drivers. So far I haven't witnessed any accidents but looking outside the window I'd probably see at least a handful potential incidents waiting to happen in the following five minutes.

Keep in mind that so far my experience has been limited to "smaller" towns in well developed areas. Coming up next week however is a trip to Shanghai, where there's supposed to be somewhat of a traffic problem...

Two days in Suzhou

Spoiling oneself in China is incredibly cheap and more often than not very rewarding.

First off is the food. Breakfast in a diner costs 2 yuan (more or less the same in SEK). This could give you a bowl of hundun soup, delicious dumplings in a seafood broth, the only potential party poopers being seaweed and tiny dry white shrimp (shell and all), if that's not your thing. I'm OK with the former but close my eyes while slurping the shrimp.

Then there's baozi, big and soft wheat buns stuffed with meat, vegetables or sweet bean paste (or, knowing Chinese cuisine, pretty much anything that can be harvested, killed, dragged kicking and screaming out of the river or found underneath a rock). The crab incarnation is especially mouth watering.

Another breakfast option to consider is a kind of sesame pastry only found in Nantong, baked over open flame and stuffed with a dough that's part sweet, part salty.

To avoid sounding like a food critic writing a China special for Newsweek or something, here's a list of some unexpected dishes that have popped up on the table during lunch or dinner:

• jellyfish
• live shrimp in alcohol
• bull frog
• jellied fish skin
• duck wings, chins and blood pudding (I have yet to taste the tongues)
  
• pigeon thighs
• cow stomach
• rabbit legs

I've managed to try everything except for the stomach.

Bean curd with duck eggs:


Squid with eggplant:



I was completely oblivious to the world of hair massage before coming to China, but has since then come into contact with it on three separate occasions. It's a service offered by hair salons and consisting of a hair wash, upper body massage focusing on the scalp, maybe finished off with general grooming. The guy in Suzhou even spent considerable amount of time cleaning my ears. Best of all, he did it for free since that night's Cantonese restaurant had vouchers lying around on the counter.

An hour's worth of foot massage (at a place specializing in such treatments, of course) costs from 30 yuan for more or less an hour's work. This includes foot bath in some kind of herbal broth, a quick general massage, followed by more attention than has ever been spent on my feet before. Cool, but also a little bit surreal watching a man rubbing your toes for several minutes in a row.

Besides being touched by men and eating all kinds of crazy animals there's also been time for a two day trip to the city of Suzhou, a place trying to market itself as the Venice of the east. Apart from canals there are quite a lot of gardens worth visiting. I went to the most famous, the Humble Administrator's Garden founded in 1509. The place was very impressive, but the heat made walking around somewhat of a chore. The whole of Suzhou is run over by tourists both Chinese and western, which was made all the more apparent when visiting the major scenic spots. I doubt the humble administrator imagined tour guides speaking Italian, French and Spanish when he first designed his garden.



Day two was mostly spent at Tiger Hill, the "No.1 Scenic Spot of Suzhou" if the numerous signs all around town are to be believed. The bus ride there cost 1 yuan per person, and that included the pleasure of hanging out at these quite cool bus stops:



The hill is said to have a history of some 2500 years with numerous tie ins to folklore. This particular rock is called Pillow Rock, but unfortunately it failed to live up to its name.



The main crowd pleaser of Tiger Hill is its leaning pagoda. It's about 46 metres high, was built in 959 AD and supposedly leans at a greater angle than the Tower of Pisa. The signs therefore proudly proclaimed it "China's number one leaning tower".




Daoist temple in Suzhou:



Suzhou waterways:



All in all the Suzhou trip was pretty nice but marred somewhat by the countless tourist trapss kept in business by Americans who haven't learned the valuable words "bu yao" (don't want). Unfortunately that's not enough to keep the most eager salesmen away - I was almost kidnapped by a guy who wanted me to buy his Lolexes.

Keep you updated - if I don't end up being shanghaied...

A week in review

It's been almost a week since I left Sweden and it's finally time to write a little about what's been happening so far.

First of all, it seems as if I can't access my own blog. Blogger's mainpage loads fine but the blogspot subdomain doesn't work. This means I can't read any comments. Please leave them anyway, this might be a temporary problem. :)

The plane from Copenhagen was two hours late, meaning that I first landed at Pudong Airport, Shanghai slightly past noon. Walking outside, the heat was stifling - like walking into a (slightly more humid, slightly colder) sauna fully dressed. Airport observation: the toilets don't provide toilet paper, something which apparently applies to most public restrooms.

Travelling north towards Nantong by car, we eventually left Shanghai and entered an area ripe with industrial plants on the way to the south banks of the Yangtze river. This is where the first real culture shock occured. While we were waiting to drive onto one of the ferries people in straw hats appeared, offering to sell corn as snacks - as well as live turtles. I never figured out if they were intended to be eaten alive, cooked on the engine block or used as pets...

Entering Nantong, where I've been located ever since, I was positively surprised by several things - the living standard, the cleanliness, the sheer ambition of the goverment in developing ultra modern cities along China's coastline. This is a small town, only 700 000 inhabitants, making me anxious to see what they've accomplished with Shanghai. (Hmm, wonder if pro-China comments will allow me to access my own blog? :) )

There are lots of things to do without having to travel to Shanghai. Eating certainly takes first place however. The first dinner was quite exciting: 20+ dishes, 20+ dinner guests and countless toasts. This pattern has since then been the norm for most meals here, including breakfast.

I've tried to eat everything they've offered me and most of the dishes have been delicious. Take these crayfish for example:



An explanation regarding the colour of my shirt follows in a few paragraphs. First a few more words about the food. Before coming to China I heard expressions about Guangdong people's eating habits, such as "everything with legs except the chair, everything that flies except airplanes". Jiangsu people (Jiangsu being the province I'm currently in) apparently eat everything from the sea except possibly oil rigs. I had to draw the line at some kind of snails though, trying them once was more than enough.

Inbetween meals there's usually some time for sightseeing. This is nearby a quite nice park. The picture was taken mere moments before my sweating became so intense that wet spots appeared all over my pants.



The weather can be quite devastating but the last couple of days have been quite OK. Here's me acting all faux Sinois in a shirt that was given to me before a visit to a Buddhist temple atop the nearby Wolf Mountain.





People are very hospitable. I'm beginning to worry that I won't have enough room in my suitcases for all the gifts, despite them being half empty on the way here. Hence the pink shirt by the way, not a colour that would be among my first choices back home. Here it doesn't really matter, I could probably show up dressed as someone in Village People without causing more commotion than I already do on account of being a westerner (of which I've only seen two others since leaving Shanghai airport).

So far the overall impression is definitely positve. The schedule for the upcoming week includes visits to the southern towns Suzhou and Hangzhou, said to be among the most beautiful in China. More pictures (and quite certainly a lot of text, including some minor nuances I didn't deem necessary to mention right away) will definitely follow!

Update pending

A thorough update will follow shortly (tomorrow or in a couple of days). Just wanted to point out that I'm still alive. :)

OK

I finally booked tickets - on Tuesday next week I will sail the welkin seas, bound for the distant shores of the Danish kingdom.
A later flight might be heading for Shanghai, China. Otherwise, be sure to check erikindenmark.blogspot.com for further updates.

The preliminary plan is as follows:

1. Arrive in Shanghai on the 19th. Spend a few days in Nantong, Jiangsu province.
2. Go to Lushan together with the friends encountered in step 1. Lushan is a famous tourist resort and one of Unesco's world heritages (together with such extravagant feats of human ingenuity as the Grimeton radio station of Varberg, setting expectations on an incredibly high level).
3. Visit various cool places in Jiangsu province and Shanghai. Hopefully survive the heat.
4. Go to Beijing. Be an obnoxious tourist.
5. Return to Sweden by Copenhagen. This will be on the 26th of August.

I hope to be able to update this page frequently during my time away. I just hope China's firewall will allow me to visit certain essential sites, such as Blogger and Flickr. Stay tuned.

Tags: General