Shenzhen

Fourteen million strong and ablaze with giant LED screens, packed streets, and a relentless consumerist lifestyle, Shenzhen is like Times Square City. This is fitting, as we found ourselves here on New Year's Eve. Maybe it's the size of the population, maybe it's the city's temperate climate, but the sea of people we were immediately swimming in finally made real our vision of what we thought China would actually be like. The ebb and flow of the crowd was impossible to resist, and we were carried along, street after street, past endless retail shops, selling everything from meat sticks to mantelpieces, shoes to shoe-string french fries.

Using a public toilet will cost you thirty minutes of your night, but on the other hand, you can get on a carnival ride in thirty seconds. We know this because in the middle of all this commotion there had been erected a New Year's Eve dime store theme park in our neighborhood of Luohu. The rides cost $1.60 and there are no lines. I think Chinese people are afraid, but they loved watching the white people scream. We soon became the main attraction. In Shenzhen, more than any city we've been in, people gawk at us shamelessly. It's become so commonplace that we have accumulated a variety of ways to respond. "What the hell are you looking at?", "Quit looking at me", "What's a'matter? You never seen a white person eat meat on a stick before?" "Yes I know I'm too fat to fit into this skirt, I'm making fun of it, not trying to purchase it!", and so on.

Today we walked out of our dumpy but centrally located hotel to a radiant, glorious sunny day. Oh, how it warmed our backs as we walked to the Wal-Mart (a seldom exercised activity for us, in The States or abroad) to try to purchase budget sunscreen and bug spray for the tropical months ahead. No luck there, but we did buy peanut butter and jelly.

Afterwards, we went to People's Park, the most amazingly manicured and maintained park either of us has ever seen, even more so than the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, though New Jersey could hardly sustain most of the exotic foliage that made the park so spectacular. Here in the park we uncovered yet another Chinese mystery. When we were in the Guilin train station we saw a baby who had split his pants. We laughed heartily, and expected his parents to join in, but they looked confused. There were many babies in People's Park, and they all had split their pants. Apparently this is an intentional design, and we got to witness more than a few times its ingenuity. No wonder they don't sell diapers at the Wal-Mart.

Now we are back in the room, listening to Louis Armstrong and sipping instant Nescafé, something that we have been for forced to become accustomed to, and have actually started to enjoy. Coffee snobs, shake your heads in disgust.

-Davida and Ken