Another Day, Another Stamp in the Passport

End of the weekend and what a weekend it's been. On Saturday the entire group headed over to Macau. It is interesting to compare Hong Kong and Macau considering they have a similar recent history but couldn't of had a more different past. Macau was settled by Portugal in the 16th century during what I assume is the peak of their power. From there it appears Macau has been almost ignored by Portugal and left to its own affairs. Macau lacks a metro type transit system an instead relies on buses. The streets are narrow and usually filled with people as the sidewalks are even narrower. After coming back to Hong Kong from Macau, Hong Kong seems empty. Hong Long developed as a wealthy city which can be seen in the money they put into their transit and parks while Macau seems to rely on money made from gambling. It's pretty much the Las Vegas of Asia. Macau also has some interesting church ruins which unfortunately fail to compare with Antigua. Later in the day I found myself in the History of Macau museum wandering around when two Chinese students came up to me and started talking. David and Ten, the students, are both second years in university in China and they were looking to practice their English. They both spoke English quite well and proved to be a great source of information regarding the history of Macau and China as a whole. I asked them what they thought as far as Hong Kong and Macau being a part of China and they both looked at me like I was stupid for asking such a thing. They both saw the cities as 100% China. Later in the day Taiwan also came up and again they both asserted it is without a doubt part of China. We also discussed the life of a student in China compared with the west and it was interesting how similar we are. Ten mentioned that he gets most of his cultural view of America from the TV show Heroes. They were both pretty shocked to hear that American students are not swimming in money. Once we left the museum it just so happened half the group was standing outside so I offered to introduce them to 'proper' Americans and while they were both excited they turned to me an asked, how do we greet them? Should we shake their hand? And while greetings were very American, being head nods, this just highlighted cultural differences.

On Sunday, after going to an English church I found myself in yet another museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art. It was fascinating to see both modern Chinese art as well as ancient pottery, some as old as 5000 years. Many of the modern paintings told the story of the incoming western culture versus traditional Chinese culture. My favorite was a room with a wilting lotus with white words of an English poem falling around it like snow. The story here is that while the west comes and wilts the lotus (Chinese culture) in the end the lotus never dies and the snow melts away. Seeing much of the art also helped to highlight the history and China and the importance of the dynasties. Every piece of art instead of getting an approximate date was given the dynasty from which it originated. Hopefully some of those names and dates stuck as this is how much of Chinese history works an will be important to know.

I have really enjoyed my time in Hong Kong and as much as I love this city I am excited to get to Xiamen on Wednesday and really get going.

Random thought: Chopstick rests are the greatest invention since urinals in pot-a-potties! (Let's not argue over which came first, it's really a chicken or egg thing)

P.S. I had some more pictures to include but the internet is choosing not to cooperate, I'll try and post them later.