Macau

Blogs are not blocked in Macau! I have quick, easy access without a VPN that disconnects irrationally. Yea.

After the kids had Chinese class this morning, we took the 1:30 ferry from Shekou Port in Shenzhen to Macau. Our hotel is called Pousada de Mong Ha. It's about half way up a hill towards the Fortress of Mong Ha which was built in anticipation of a Chinese invasion after the Anglo-Chinese War in 1841. The Pousada is run by the Institute for Tourism Studies which trains students in the tourism industry. All the students eagerly help. We ate dinner tonight in the Educational Restaurant. Sofia was a little nervous for the students when the teachers kept intervening to make sure they placed the napkins just so on our laps, and served the water just right, and cleared away the silverware that we wouldn't use for our particular dishes.

The food at the Educational Restaurant was excellent: homemade fettucine with truffles and parmesan (guess who got that?); African chicken with courgettes; roasted quail; bacalhao with potatoes and cream, a Portuguese dish made from dried cod fish; and baked sole. The good food almost made up for Jacek's three strikes last night at a western restaurant on campus in Shenzhen. He's going to blog about that, but suffice it to say that, in his words, his meat "tasted like sandpaper with disinfectant." I tried it too. Bad. Very, very bad. Inedible.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, however, could taste as bad as the poison candy our neighbor gave Sofia on Monday at Lakefront Fairyland's celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Republic and the mid-autumn festival all rolled into one. (Lakefront Fairyland is the name of our apartment complex.) Sofia warned Stirling the candy was bad, but he tasted it anyway. Then I did. We didn't vomit, but I wanted too. Rat poison could not be worse. Just now, in a neighborhood market here in Macau, we saw some candy wrappers with the same fruit on them. Do not ever eat durian fruit candy. Not even to save your life. Jon Winokur in a travel book described the odor of durian fruit -- and I would add taste -- as “pig-@*%#, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock." The Oxford Companion to Food analogizes the smell to "civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs." Just think, they make a candy out of that.

Yes Pork, No Box

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

I don’t have access to the blog or email tonight.

Isabel and I needed our Chinese-speaking family members today at lunch. She had Chinese class today on campus, but Sofia and Jacek stayed at the apartment to do other homework because their Chinese teacher had a family wedding to attend. Isabel and I made it to our regular eating spot, the dirt cheap second floor cafeteria, just a few minutes after it closed at 1:00. We went instead to a new Hong Kong style café just down the row. The food was good, but there were complications. I tried to order the baked rice with eggplant and pork but without the pork. The menu was in Chinese and English and the waiter nodded and smiled when I pointed to what I wanted and said “but no pork” several times. It arrived with a pork sauce on top. I had hoped for a successful vegetarian dish so I could let Sofia know about it, but no go.

Isabel ordered a delicious plate of spaghetti with meat sauce. She loved it, but it was too big to eat all at once. We called the waiter over and pantomimed putting the rest of her beloved spaghetti in a box for us to take home. He smiled and nodded again and took the plate to the kitchen. A few minutes later, he sent the bus girl over to clean up the table. We waited. He stood watching us then went back to the kitchen. We waited. Finally, I said to Isabel, “Let’s go check.” He was standing at the front counter. We pantomimed again putting the beloved spaghetti into a box. He glanced at the kitchen, back at us, then strode back into the kitchen again. When he came out, he just stood there staring at us. Taking a deep breath, he said something in Chinese to another waiter who pantomimed the disposal of the beloved spaghetti into the garbage can. Oh well. Maybe next time we’ll learn to say “box.” I wouldn’t dare try to say “doggy bag.” Who knows what that would get us.

Jacek at the Mid-Autumn Festival Party

Jacek recited a poem about the Mid-Autumn Festival (October 3) at the School of Transnational Law's party on Wednesday evening.

DaFen Oil Painting Village

Yesterday, we went to Dafen Village, which isn't separate from Shenzhen but its own little enclave towards the western side of the city. Dafen is an oil painting village. Shop after shop after shop sells oil paintings, many of which are copies of famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa, others are of andscapes, and many are paintings of famous people like Alan Greenspan, Marilyn Monroe, Penelope Cruz, Che Guevara, and Barack Obama. A few shops sold what I would call "original art" rather than copied art or copied styles. Occasional shops sold paintings done in acrylics or silk embroidery or cloissone or water colors. The further away from the main entrance, the smaller the streets and the shops got. Some turned to selling the raw materials for painting or framing or stretching canvases on wooden frames. Sofia found an ity bitty funky clothes store and bargained her way into a pair of red flowered pants (wait until you see them!) and some knee-length puffy pants.

We arranged for a driver from the University to take us to church today. It took 45 minutes to get to church and 20 minutes to get home. Thats a little more than an hour of travel rather than our usual three plus hours. Whatever it cost, it was worth every penny to enjoy a quieter more relaxed Sunday.

I'm an excellent horse and a fine climbing tree. I substituted in nursery which helped me feel right at home as that is my home ward calling. Ten kids rode my back, climbed my legs, poured water back and forth between their cups and smashed play dough for a fun two hours.

Chinese Bar Exam

Many of my students took the Chinese national bar exam last weekend. In my discussions with them, I've explained that in the US you can only take the bar exam after finishing law school. Plus, each state has its own bar examination which means that if you move from one jurisdiction to another or want to practice in a neighboring state, usually you have to take another bar exam. I didn't go into the intricacies of waiving into a bar or taking an attorney's bar exam. Our system of federalism isn't the Chinese way.

Students attribute their expected results on the Chinese bar exam to work. One student said to me "I don't think I'll pass. I didn't work hard enough in July." In the US, it seems more likely that a student would attribute failure to not being smart enough or the instrinsic difficulty of the test, rather than work and effort. Another student took the exam for the third time.

Day Two of Comparative Constitutional Law

Today was Day Two of my class at Peking University School of Transnational Law. Fifty-four students are in their second year, all of them in my comparative constitutional law class. We meet for two hours at a time on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. Six students didn’t show up either Monday or today. When they were missing on Monday, I figured they were just exhausted from taking the Chinese bar exam over the weekend. Today, I began to wonder. The other students in the class said the missing ones were “on their way.” Who knows what that means.

I butcher my students’ Chinese names. Many of them have also chosen English names, but some understandably have a strong preference for their Chinese names. Today, I tried and tried to get one woman’s Chinese name right. Finally, she grimaced and said “Professor, you may call me Yvonne.” Sometime between signing up for law school and my class, one woman changed her English name from Ingrid to Sophia. When I called on her, she was absolutely superb: well prepared, well spoken in English, able to argue.

Police Interviews

My police station interviews were entirely anticlimactic. Two twenty-year old Nanshan District police women with very chic hair cuts sat in a tiny office, reviewed my documents, and stamped them red. After we drove 40 minutes and a guard shone an infrared thermometer at my forehead, a Shenzhen City police officer did the same. Then I was done. Nobody asked me any questions. Nobody poked and prodded me. I must have passed the body check. A week from now I get my passport back and, having a Z work visa for a year, I am eligible to get paid.

Pedestrians

Cross the street at your own peril. Pedestrians do not have the right of way, even if they are already in the cross walk, even if the stop light is red and the walk sign is green, even if they are small children. Luckily, in Xili Town, our section of Nanshan District in the city of Shenzhen, the traffic is quite light so we don't wait too long to cross the street. Still, I grab Isabel's hand and we scurry across as quickly as we can.

54 Characters and Around the World in Three Hours

In Chinese class this morning, Isabel and I counted 54 characters that we know. Well, we know that we have learned them even if we can’t always remember exactly what they mean when taken out of the original context. We know months of the year and days of the week. We know numbers, which help us know months of the year and days of the week. Chinese months are first month, second month, third month, etc. Days of the week go from first day on Monday to sixth day on Saturday, with Sunday labeled with a word (ri or tian) other than a counting word. Hào means number. Hăo means good.

Jacek, Isabel and I traveled around the world in three hours. We ventured from Egypt to Cambodia to Africa to Thailand to the Alps to Niagra Falls at Window of the World. I’m not much of one for theme parks, but I did my motherly duty and took them. They loved it. The indoor skiing and snowboarding building struck me as the most bizarre. They rent “keeping warm clothes” for $1.50. It costs $12 an hour to snowboard or ski down this little icy hill enclosed in concrete. Jacek begged to do it. How could I let him ski in subtropical China when he comes from a state that declares it has the Best Snow on Earth? He’s convinced Stirling will let him when he goes back. My glasses fogged up when we stepped back out into the real world.

I restrained myself from posting about the Safari Park adventure because I thought the kids would write “I fed chicken to an adult tiger! I held a tiger cub! I have the pictures to prove it!”

No Hospital and Typhoon Koppu

Stirling is feeling much, much better. His fever broke shortly before I posted last night and stayed down through the night. He’s still weak from not eating, but things continue to look up. No hospital was the right answer.

The remnants of Typhoon Koppu delivered the buckets of rain that flooded our streets last night. Sofia, Jacek and Isabel danced outside in the still pouring rain this afternoon. The wind tore signs off of buildings and kept many of my colleagues at the law school awake during the night as it crashed through their windows that don’t quite close all the way. The Hong Kong stock market cancelled trading this morning.

Hospital or Not?

Stirling had a fever of 101.5 yesterday evening, the shakes, body aches, head ache, exhaustion. Cold showers and Aleve helped bring his temperature down over night, but this afternoon it was 102 again. Add to the earlier symptoms, cramps and all that goes with a stomach bug, and I started to get worried. He thought he had heat exhaustion because he had been out and about walking around in the heat and humidity yesterday. I figured that heat exhaustion wouldn't go on for so long, and if it did, he needed to go see a doctor.

One ex-patriate I called for advice, someone who has lived in China for decades, said that he would consider going to a Chinese hospital, if and only if, he were bleeding to death, and then only maybe. In all other circumstances, he would go to Hong Kong, even though he and his family live three hours from the border. He is married to a Chinese woman whose parents were both doctors. Their stories convinced him that the chance of something going seriously wrong were just too high, although it was likely one would get adequate care. He'd helicopter his two-year old daughter to Hong Kong before setting foot in a Chinese hospital. He recommended that, if we couldn't get Stirling's temperature down, we hire a car to drive from our apartment straight to Adventus Hospital in Hong Kong. At the border, Stirling wouldn't have to walk; he could just cower in the back of the car strung out on fever reducers to make it past the temperature check. He thought the private car service would cost about $100 and excellent health care in Hong Kong a couple of hundred more, even if Stirling had to spend the night. The big catch though is that my permanent visa hasn't come through yet, so I'd either have to send Stirling alone or with Sofia as they both have multiple entry visas. I don't. And, our cell phone probably wouldn't work in Hong Kong because it doesn't have an international sim. And, he might not make it past the temperature check. And, there is a typhoon dumping buckets of rain and flooding the streets.

Another ex -pat that I talked to, thought the Hong Kong idea was overkill. He figured there were good hospitals in Shenzhen, places where foreigners regularly went, where they were even willing to have babies, but he and the other ex-pat in the room didn't know what hospital that would be. They gave me the phone number of Liya Rong, a native Chinese woman who has lived for nearly twenty years in the United States, but is now in Shenzhen to be the assistant dean at the School of Transnational Law. She recommended Beijing University Hospital where she took her daughter last week because she had a cold. That is where she herself goes as well.

The good news is Stirling's temperature has dropped down to 98.6 degrees. He was able to eat a banana and keep down the Sprite I gave him. He looks extra skinny, having not eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours. I think, I hope, I pray his temperature has broken permanently. And that the rest of us don't get whatever it is. And that the typhoon passes before we do.

Shoes

September 13, 2009

Chinese don't wear shoes inside homes. At church, which is held in a home, everyone takes off their shoes at the door and puts them in shoe racks or piles them on the floor. So far, we've all come away with our own shoes, but I can imagine finding more attractive shoes than my own. There is a degree of informality, almost levity, in everyone padding around in bare feet or just socks at church. Sofia would prefer the world without shoes, so going barefoot at church is a nice perk. When the fix-it men came tonight to unclog one of our bathroom drains, they hesitated at the door and asked about their shoes. Given the job to be done, shoes were in order, but it took Jacek several tries to convince them that crossing the threshold clad would not incur our wrath.

Saturday in Shenzhen

September 12, 2009

Isabel successfully posted to her blog today about the trip to the Safari Park. She'll likely add pictures tomorrow, but it is worth reading today. She requests that you please start with Shenzhen Safari Park: Part One then move to Part Two.

We just got back from the Dongmen Market. It matched our low price expectations much better than last week's venture. Sofia got a t-shirt with Pleasant Goat on it for $2.00. Pleasant Goat, Beautiful Goat, and a bunch of other goats try to outwit Big, Big Wolf in a popular Chinese cartoon series. Isabel got a tiered peasant skirt for $3.50. At one store, the girls got six items -- three shirts and three pants/culottes -- for $30 or about $5.00 each. I was still too broad in the shoulders for the items I tried on. Jacek bought a couple of magic boxes and that was it. Stirling searched for baseball caps but didn't find anything.

We invited our neighbors to go with us. Mei, the wife, did. She speaks quite good English. I learned that both she and her husband are from Hubei Province. They graduated from the same school and both teach at the Polytecnic University. She teaches electronics, but laughed when Stirling asked if she was an engineer. We ate really, really bad, bad, very bad Chinese food from a street vendor. She went to McDonalds.

Week Annivesary in Shenzhen

September 11, 2009

Three purple velvet couches beckoned to us from inside the plate glass windows of Ping coffee. "Jacek," they smiled, "Come eat steak, medium rare." "Isabel, have some crinkle fries with ketchup," and winking they confirmed to her delight "Yes, we have ketchup." "Sofia, how about fish and cut fruit in a fanciful design? We'll even sit still for a picture, and look more blue than purple." "Kif, corn chowder with chicken?" "Stirling, escargot? A Western-style restaurant offers adventure, too." The three purple velvet couches celebrated our week anniversary in Shenzhen with us, down the street and across the canal from our apartment, an apartment with three small wooden stools but no couch and no velvet.

What are the chances that, the day after we set up the VPN, the electricity would go out and government workers would arrive on the 14th floor, our floor, to fix it? It seemed suspicious to me. Stirling, less paranoid than I, wondered why the government would care about us. Because we are accessing blogs that are on blocked servers? Because we are the only foreigners in our complex? Because a friend who lived in Beijing for several years figured every building in their complex was bugged? After dinner tonight, I asked our neighbor how often the power goes out. He said not very often, but that the breaker box on the floor needed replacing to help improve the air conditioning and circulation. I'm going with that explanation, especially since we still have blog access.

Hope for the Blogs

September 10, 2009

The technical term for hope is VPN -- virtual private network. Some of the teaching fellows here told us about the VPN they use as a way around the Chinese government's block on certain websites including blogs, Facebook, Youtube, and the like. The VPN is a little complicated, but Stirling subscribed to a service online and got it set up on our computers tonight. This means that you will soon be able to hear directly from Sofia, Jacek and Isabel about the tiger cub. It was real. Because you are reading this, you know that the VPN has worked. I have taken what I would have posted on my blog day by day and put it up all at once.

Body Check

September 9, 2009

There is no ice hockey here (what a surprise!) but I did have a "body check" yesterday. That's what Yvonne, one of the law school office staff, kept calling my health examination. In order to finalize my work permit visa, and hence to get paid, I had to get the standard health check-up required of all foreigners who want some sort of permanent/semi-permanent residence. Chinese who have been abroad for more than three months also have to get the checks. It's a fascinating idea. The exams are meant to help control disease and encourage healthiness, but in a country this large and with this many people and with many, many people coming and going across international borders, it seems a futile attempt at control and governance.

Yvonne took me about half an hour by car to a hospital specially designated to do such checks for foreigners, but first we stopped at a small photo shop to get my picture taken. Small passport sized photos are required for all sorts of documents, including the body check. I filled out a form with my name, passport number, and checked no to all sorts of diseases: tuberculosis, psychosis, diarrhea in the past week, cough, cold, sniffles, surgery, pregnancy, tumors, HIV, heart disease, and on and on. The registration nurse stamped my form, webcammed my face, scanned my right thumb, and pasted a bar code on my form and a small cup. Then, the fun began.

I, and the hundreds of others like me at the hospital yesterday, went to nine different stations and got some part of our bodies checked. It was all remarkably efficient despite the masses. First, the most competent phlebotomist I have ever encountered drew my blood into two vials. I hardly felt the needle prick. Second, a doctor barked at me to take off my shoes and stand on a cool machine that measured height and weight remotely. Third and fourth, a diffident doctor swabbed my throat, pulled on my ears and peered in, and stuck a little plastic tool, newly removed from its package, up my nostrils, right after another doctor let me keep on my glasses for the eye exam. Fifth, the ultrasound doctor ran a wand over my abdomen and pronounced me okay - no tumors today. Sixth, a technician took a chest xray or at least it seemed like he did. There is some debate among my colleagues about whether that part of the check is real. Seventh, a harried doctor made me lie down and pull up my shirt for an EKG. Higher, she said, higher. Yikes. She stapled the EKG print out to my form. Eighth, in a ladies' room with only Chinese toilets, I peed in the bar coded cup and left it on a cart in the hallway along with tens of other samples. Ninth, a dentist took a quick look inside my mouth in a room that smelled like every other dentist's office I've ever been in. Somewhere along the line, someone took my temperature as well.

In seven work days, I'll learn if I passed the body check. Then I get to go to the police station for an interview.

The following "Body Check Plus" is not for the faint of heart. If you are sqeamish or embarassable or shy or work with me professionally, please stop here.

I have never given a urine sample on a Chinese toilet before. Please google Chinese toilet or porcelain hole in the ground. Hence, I peed all over my hand. There was no toilet paper. The sinks had upside down buckets in them with signs - and exclamation points. I don't know what the signs said, but I got the message when I turned the faucets and no water came out. I eyed the sink longingly in the dentist's office. I was finally able to rinse my hand off over a garbage can by the water cooler in the reception area while Yvonne and I waited for another colleague to finish his body check. I didn't explain to her what I was doing. She didn't ask.

First Day of Chinese Lessons

September 8, 2009

Stirling, Sofia and Jacek are in one class. Isabel and I, the very beginners, are in another. It is hard. I am old for new language learning. But, I did recognize the character for da (big) - like a person standing with arms outstretched - on several signs. When I learn another 799 characters, I'll be minimally literate. I know there are four tones; I just can't distinguish them yet. Or make them either.

Monday Night Swimming

September 7, 2009

We invited the six teaching fellows and other visiting professor over to swim at the pool tonight. Three of them swam with us and then Sofia, Jacek and I joined them for dinner at a little outdoor restaurant about a twenty-minute walk away. Matt Smith, one of the fellows, speaks excellent Mandarin and ordered all the food. This was the third time this week that they had been there, but now that the beautiful waitress has passed the civil service exam and will start a new job tomorrow working as an attendant on a bus line, my guess is they won't go as often. For the first time, Sofia had multiple vegetarian options: eggplant, tofu, tofu skins, some green skinny vegetable a little bit like the stalks of green onions. Even so, on the walk home she said "I don't know how long I can eat this food. I want hummus."
We start Chinese lessons tomorrow morning.

Getting to Church

September 6, 2009

Church is close! Only a four minute walk to Bus 43, then a 45 minute bus ride past the Eiffel Tower, Roman Coliseum, Egyptian Pyramid, and Renaissance Village (a theme park called Window on the World), then Bus 113 for 45 minutes to the Sea World stop (just what it sounds like), then a twenty minute walk through the guarded gate of Jiang Villa (an international expatriate compound) and up tree lined streets to House 66. An hour and fifty minutes times two means we were on the road for longer than we were at church. Maybe it will get faster by five minutes or so when we know what streets to take in Jiang Villa. Maybe we'll have to take two cabs at least part of the way. With five people in the family, one Toyota Camry sized cab doesn't work so well. We got far fewer stares around Jiang Villa than in our neighborhood. Here, the entire kitchen staff at the University canteen turned and stared at us when we first went in. All forty of them twisted around in their chairs to stare as we negotiated the dinner line.

Jacek and Isabel met a nine-year old neighbor boy at the apartment pool. I heard him practicing his English with his mother over in a corner -- "I want to play" -- after hovering on the edge of the jacek's and Isabel's game for too long. Jacek did a cannonball and then spent seven minutes trying to explain the term, mostly in Chinese. By the time the conversation ended, it looked like some of the adults who had joined in understood a cannonball was a big, big splash. My book pages got all spotty wet.

Cheese, Bread or Chicken

September 5, 2009

Today's Question: Which of the three is not to be found in Shenzhen: cheese, bread, or chicken?
Sofia, Isabel and I went with two of my teaching colleagues from the University to one of the big shopping areas in Shenzhen called Hua Qiang Bei. We took Bus 43 for forty-five minutes then transferred to the metro and rode for another 45 minutes. Hua Qiang Bei has more stuff than I've ever seen, ever. Enormous electronics stores, five and six story department stores with hundreds of little shops inside, the Women's World Market, the Foreign Clothing Trade Market, Gomz Electronics, McDonalds, KFCs, shoe stores, cosmetics stores, line the street on and on and on for miles and miles. Size-wise, the clothes in the stores work a little better here for Sofia and Isabel than for me. My dairy-fed Northern and Eastern European ancestors endowed me with more of a derriere than most Chinese. Plus, I'm just bigger in general but even extra-large wasn't cutting it.

We got lunch by pointing at food in an underground supermarket beneath one of the department stores. Three side dishes came with my rice. I couldn't tell exactly what was in each of them, but one was tomatoes with egg, one was something that tasted like squash with a chunk of meat, and the other was tofu with a sauce. I plunked the chunk of meat in my mouth and crunched. "Uhhh, this is boney," I said as I removed it from my mouth with chopsticks and delicately set it on the lid of the styrofoam container. After a few more mouthfuls, I traded dishes with Sofia. She's vegetarian but I didn't expect her shriek, "It has a beak. That's a beak. A beak, Mom!" On closer inspection, I confirmed that she was right. I had indeed chomped down on a stewed chicken head, but I didn't swallow.

Answer to Today's Question: Chicken is everywhere. Cheese and bread are nowhere. Chicken feet were on the menu in the University cafeteria this evening. No one chose them, at least not in our family.

Boiled eggs are a standard breakfast in China, often boiled in tea. Ours are just plain water boiled, but in the teapot, our single cooking implement. When I came back from the neighborhood market this morning carrying my flat of eggs - the second in three days, our neighbor stuck his head out and warned me. "I told your husband shopping is better at the Rainbow Market. High quality guaranteed. Don't shop at the corner market. Some things can be . . . fake." I was a little taken aback. "I bought eggs" I said, wondering how someone could fake eggs. "Probably okay." "I bought carrots and peppers and plums." "Fruit is probably okay. Don't buy meat. Meat can be a problem." That I can understand. I don't think I'll be buying meat anywhere, Rainbow Market or neighborhood market. Fake or not, I'm not sure I'd know what I was getting.

Greetings from Shenzhen

September 3, 2009

Well, it is true. Blogspot.com is blocked in China. Sofia was able to access her account from Hong Kong early Thursday morning Hong Kong time. But, none of the kids has been able to acces their accounts to update their blog since we arrived in Shenzhen this morning at 9:30. Stirling may have found a way to work around the block by using email. We'll try that tomorrow and see how it works.

Our apartment is a 15 minute humidity-induced swim from the Peking University School of Transnational Law where I will be teaching. The wet push from the South China Sea nearly knocks me over each time I step outside.

We met our neighbors. They offered to go with us on Bus #43 to the Rainbow Shopping Center to help us buy things we need: towels, a garbage can, dishes. The husband is an English teacher; the wife teachs too; the ten-month old baby is enormous. Through their screen door, I heard the mother counting with the baby this evening -- yi, er, san, si . . . .

This is how tired we all were this evening after our 14 1/2 hour night on the plane, four hours in the Hong Kong airport, and half hour ride on the ferry from Hong Kong to Shenzhen-Shekou. Isabel voluntarily went to bed rather than insisting we stay at the university for the students' movie night. Jacek let me touch up his teeth brushing without a complaint. Sofia ate white rice without many vegetables for dinner. Stirling is snoring next to me. I haven't collapsed . . . yet.

Blogs in China

September 1, 2009

Sofia, Jacek and Isabel have created blogs to help record their time in China. I learned this morning from a new friend in Shenzhen (our city) that some sites may be blocked, but we'll keep our fingers crossed that blogspot.com isn't regularly one of them. We look forward to your comments on the blogs.

Sofia -- http://sufeifeizaizhongguo.blogspot.com/
Jacek -- http://xiangqininja.blogspot.com/
Isabel -- http://bingqilingchina.blogspot.com/

Our flight leaves Salt Lake this evening at 8:25. We arrive in Hong Kong on September 3rd at 5:25 am. I think we'll make it. :)