Play Fire
4/14/19 my chicken is cute, isn’t it? haha
Play fire is fun
Make a ball
Bounce it around
Blow it
kick it away
Tumble tumble
Let wind pick it up
The flaky little flame
I am a woman who likes to play fire
Go home
You scared little kids
Don’t want to burn you up
Hainan Island @ China (5) – Sanya Yanoda Park
Short story first: I often have interesting conversations with uber and lyft drivers. Last week, there is one like this: Me: “hey, this guy horned you for nothing?” Driver: “oh, I don’t take those stuffs personally.” hmm, from a statistical point of view, we probably would all agree that the error rate of our life is none-zero, then meeting defect(s) is just a part of a normal process ha 🙂
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Sanya has this hilarious rain forest park you have to visit. It has this strange name called Yanoda (呀诺达), meaning 1, 2, 3 in the local dialect. The company who runs the park also gives it more meanings, but even Chinese don’t quite understand them 🙂 I heard from our tour guide that this company is selected by the Chinese government as one of the role models, for it runs in a military style. All employees get up 5am and do military training. Every o’clock, the employees, at no matter which posts they serve, sings and dances to the music broadcasts in the park … lol . The park is quite far from the city center. So it is a good idea to book a tour with a tourist company. Then the bus transports you door to door, and you pay much less than go by yourself.
Probably attributing to the military style, everything here runs very seriously. For example, every tourist only can move around following a park guide unless he/she is told “free time from x to y at z zone”. Every such group has a name. Our guide talks to us like this “okay, Penguins, now let’s take a bath room break” lol
The first activity I went is called “stepping on a waterfall and playing the water” (踏瀑戏水）. It is a 10-stop obstacle course, where you climb up a creek to reach a water fall. Everybody is given a helmet and a pair of grass shoes. The first difficult point is like this:
You are supposed to hold the rope and swing across the creek. Only one people in our group reaches the other side without getting wet. The water is so cold but just reaches the chest though. The guide said there were girls who cried for “save me please” in the past as if she was drowning.
The next stop is to pass the creek (it is about 10 meters wide and it is deeper than a person in the middle) by walking on top of the chained tires. People follow one by one across the creek. The tire chain moves so much when the water gets deeper in the middle and where there were bunch of people crossing. So I was concentrating to balance. Then the girl behind me was cheering me up so loudly “Hey, DON’T WORRY, YOU CAN DO IT !” 😀 When I arrived at the other side and looked back, I saw the girl behind me was still standing at the start point and hesitating whether she should step out her left foot or her right foot. There was a long line of people backed up behind her 😀 “Thank you, the cute girl”
The most exciting stop is the last one where we climb up the waterfall. There is some chain installed on the rocks. But the rocks are still slippery, and it is super cool that the flying water just keep running into your face, head and body …
After climbing up the water fall, I headed up to the zip line. The zip line is setup between two mountain tops with very beautiful views. You feel like a flying bird freely soar on top of the tree tops. Unfortunately, the flying is too short and you quickly become a penguin after a few minutes, as the guide is waiting for you 🙂 The funny thing is that the park is bragging how safe the zip line is. Everybody at the start point is comforting each other that how even 2 years old or 100 years old can do it 🙂
There is also an activity where you can ride a swing on the cliff. I guess it feels like you are about jumping off the cliffs when you swing out 😀 But I run too short of time to do it in order to catch up our tourist group 🙂
Hainan people are very proud for this precious plant called Fragment rosewood (黄花梨 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalbergia_odorifera). It looks like this when it is only a few years old. It grows very slow, but when it is mature, it can be sold at 1000$/kg on the market. When passing these trees, the park guide is very excited and asks if any tourist wants to “adopt” a tree. To adopt a tree, each person pays 100RMB a year, there will be a label hung from a tree with your name on it. After you go home, you can email park employees to send you the live picture and video of the tree. Fragment rosewood represents good fortune for your career in the Chinese culture. So many people adopts this type of tree. Since multiple persons can adopt the same tree, the park can never run out of the trees :D. One of the girls in my group adopts a tree that brings good luck for her love life. I wish she already found her lover by now 😀
Some sketches on my trip
Vanish point 
Shading
The Empire 
Wandering
just hangout there 🙂 
more people are wandering
between dream and life (abstract)
“The last one explores the mysterious relations between dream and life. Sometimes, the dream provides prophet for life; sometimes, dream and life are intertwined to make a story. Here, I used a bit surrealism to represent the dream and used some bright color pencils to represent life. Do you see a dream, a life, a story or a bunch of flying objects?” 🙂
Oh shit, I should stop here. Did I just start to murmur like a crazy 😀 I must get too much morphine from museums lately!
Wake up stories
Yesterday I waked up, I remembered my dream “I walk downstairs, and see you stand at the curb calling somebody. I say hi, you say hi”, then ~~~~~~ I waked up! OH NO 😀
This morning, I waked up and looked at myself in the mirror “ah, scary! I probably gonna look like this when I am getting 52 …” 😀
Hainan Island @ China (4) – Sanya Snorkeling
Sanya (三亚） is the tourist center of the Hainan Island. There are many tourists and tourist groups. You can easily kill a week or two. From Five Finger Mountain to Sanya, there are many buses daily. It takes over 2 hours and costs less than 10 dollars. You can just directly go to the bus station at the city center of five finger mountain and buy the tickets.
The famous beaches in Sanya include Da Dong Hai (大东海）, Ya Long Wan（亚龙湾）， look like this:
No wonder whenever my parents went to the national parks or beaches in US, they feel something wrong and scream “where are all the people?” These beach areas are like the strip in Las Vegas. There are many hotels, restaurants, shops, night life, and of course people from different countries.
There are many water activities on these “beach strips”. But all the tourist groups offer things like “half an hour diving (50+$)” “10 minutes jetski with a driver (30+$)”. Yet, there is a very long waiting line. Aha, I remember when I interned, my boss owns 7 or 8 jetskis himself. We basically go out to ride the jetski the whole afternoon ourselves on the lake Washington, lol
So i did some research and finally found a very remote island called Jia jing Island (加井岛). Some people said it is the only serious snorkeling site in Sanya. This island is not very big and no residents or any facilities like showers or bathrooms. The only way you can board on the island is to go with some tourist groups. These groups have tiny boats that can take you from the land to this island. There are no docks on the island, so only under the proper weather, we can board the tiny boats on the beaches. The trip costs about 300-500 RMB (dependent on where you book it), you have to book it on the Chinese websites like XieCheng (携程) and TaoBao (淘宝).
In Sanya, the tourist groups work with the client very closely as if your friends are organizing the trips. They called me 10 pm the day before the trip and tell me what to bring and where to wait for their bus. They also add me on wechat and sent me the trip pictures afterwards. The bus picks us up where we lived, and takes us to a dirty house located in a small town, and asks us to change swimming clothes right there 🙂 10+ women started taking off their beautiful dresses in this shared shower room, luckily I have all dressed up with my swimming suit, hoho. In the second stop, the bus takes us to a street food station to eat some local breakfast — special kind of sour noodle (陵水酸粉). It was sooooooooooo yummy.
This island has beautiful beaches, and surprisingly a lot of beautiful corals near the shore. But these corals are almost too shallow so you will need to be careful to not hit them with your fins or feet. There are many fishes and you don’t need to swim very far. I also see some crabs. Unfortunately, the water was very cloudy maybe because it was a raining day or maybe the water there is always cloudy?!
The tourist group brings some loud speakers and hosts a party on the beach. We also went out for some Chinese style jetski and banana boat ride in the rain. The banana boat is some inflation boat shaped like a banana. Then there is some jet boat towing the banana boat to make some waves. Many people fallen off the boats and scream…
In the afternoon, we were eating our bbq lunch on the beach. Some water police got onboard “who is in charge?” Silence. “it belongs to the government, and it is illegal to play here. where are your tour guides? …” Our tour guides all disappeared. After half an hour also, the water police left, our tour guides showed up from nowhere and continued their business cheerfully as nothing had happened. I sometimes love such chaotic scenes in China. Life is short, why waste so much time and energy to make up or follow whatsoever a group of people’s correctness? Sometimes, what is correct and what is wrong after all?!
New York, New York
2/24/19 Sunny (this morning, I was listening to something about the Cancer research. I realized that people can have so much misunderstanding about very basic knowledge. A postdoc I knew once told me that a girl he had a date with does not believe the earth is round ?!?! so I decide to add this “1-min science” thing in front of my blog. Like going to a concert, it is common that there is an overture or prelude before the actual symphony, ha!)
1-min science. Human brain is not bigger than, e.g., the elephant’s brain, but we are smarter than elephants because the proportion of brain/body matters. Chimpanzees and humans have a similar size body and brain. But according to wiki, human beings have 86 billions of neurons and chimps have 28 billions of neurons. Running a brain consumes much energy, chewing raw food entire day cannot supply enough energy for human brain. It is the fire that makes cooking possible so we can more effectively absorb nutrition and keep our brain running.
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Lately, I malfunctioned a bit more than I supposed to. At some point, I have the illusions like “is this cold gonna stay forever?” “Am I taking the right pills (considering there are 5-6 bottles on my counter)” LOL—- totally, we should develop “Alexa” for personal medicine management: take instructions from pharmacist and dispense the right doses at the right time for you! My doctor said “I wish I can prescribe you a beach vacation”. “Ah, perfect!” I so quickly booked a ticket to NYC 🙂
Planning trips to NYC, the first thing is to check these wonderful theater venues. The Lincoln center is the home of the metropolitan opera, and the New York Philharmonic. Anytime you go, you can easily find good operas and classical music. The Met opera is just cool! I have not seen similar venues or qualities anywhere else (A violin player once told me that the operas in Vienna are much better. Man, I need to check that out). Each opera has beautiful costumes, wonderful voices, live classical music accompanies, and sometimes, interesting stories. It is often sung in different languages like Italian, but in the Lincoln center, there are screens on the back of your seats, and you can see live translations. The opera is long, typically starting at 7:30 pm and ending at10:30pm or after, and has two breaks. It is fun to go around during breaks., as the opera house is very nicely decorated and all the people are dressed up seriously. The opera house even offers dinners between the breaks. The ticket of each opera is very affordable, $30-40, if you don’t mind sitting far.
There are always interesting stories when I visit the Lincoln center. Last time, I sat besides a cute lady. She studied at the Columbia University long time ago and moved to San Juan to be a professor, Recently, she fell in love with tango after her husband died. She then came to NYC every year to dance Tango and watch opera. We had so much fun to talk. Then at the end, we both decided that “alright, let’s don’t leave our names and contacts to each other, see if we can meet again. Sort of romantic, lol. We also talked to a guy sat behind us, he lived in NYC many years and performed as very small characters at various shows, and he wrote poems when he is not acting. He was telling us about his book on Amazon during intermissions. NYC is never short of interesting persons!
Another top venue for classical music is Carnegie Hall. I think it is the home of the Julliard. I like their small concert halls for Piano recital, chamber music. There are top artists who perform this venue. For example, this year, there are Yujia Wang, Yoyo Ma and Mitsuko Uchida on the list.
Of course, when you come to NYC, you’ll need to visit the Broadway. It is less academic and I think everybody enjoys a broadshow. I like many of the dances in broadway shows. The stage and sing and live accompanies are also attractive to many people. There are many choices of broadway shows at any given time. TKTS located on the times square has the last minute tickets. It is typically cheaper (50+$) than you directly buy online or in the box office. But if there are popular shows you want to watch, you probably should not wait till TKTS. For example, if you look at tickets for Hamilton a month from today, it is 800$ with very limited choice of seats. It will be surely sold out when you arrive in NYC.
Beside shows, another important thing you’ll look into probably is “meals”. NYC has top Japanese food, mostly are located in the lower Manhattan and the east and west villages. “Cha’an” is the Japanese dessert place that you must visit because it is goodly “sweet” 😀 If you long for the Korean food, go to the Korean town located at 31-33 street. It has long waits, so please do not go at the normal dinner hours like noon or 6pm. The best Chinese food is not in Chinatown at Manhattan, but in Flushing. At Manhattan, I have been to “the Congee Village” which serves the authentic Cantonese food. I met my favorite comic drawing artist there, but i just peeked at her and did not disturb her, haha. There is also this famous restaurant called China Blue that serves the Shanghai food. I do not recommend it 🙂 In addition, Chelsea has some good casual seafood eats. Last but not least, don’t forget the famous katz deli, the New York piazza and many Michelin stars if you have more time at NYC!
+In terms of where to stay, I have lodged at different parts of Manhattan. If I go by myself, I typically stay at the lower Manhattan. It is near the Hudson river trail and the high line, you can do some fun runs there. There are many good restaurants and bars in the west and east villages. I like to go to the Small and the Duplex @ west village for live music at night (Columbus circle also has a very good jazz venue, but it costs 50+$). I also like this great Washington park so much. People sometimes perform piano there weekends.
If I go with the family, I typically live near the theater district, e.g., the Hell’s kitchen area, or near the museum mile and century park for easy accesses to the museums. Running in the central park is fun too, but I often get lost inside, lol. If it is Nov/Dec, you can also go to Saks at Fifth Avenue to see their Christmas Window shows at night. Unfortunately, a few independent book stores located near the museum miles are moved away. There is this beautiful book store called albertine. It is located right across the met, you shall visit. It sells mostly French books, but the bookstore is so beautiful and worths a visit.
Shopping — I like SOHO. In addition, I used to go to this Spanish brand Desigual, but my taste is moved to Uniqlo nowadays. When I first went to NYC in 2002, Brooklyn is nothing special, but I heard nowadays Williamsburg is cool. Hope to explore it sometime. BTW, walking over the Brooklyn bridge is fun too if you haven’t tried so!
Hainan Island @ China (3) – Five Finger Mountain (五指山）
2/10/19 (this morning I was driving “8” like a bee on the road and almost hit a police car coming towards me :D. Drive safely in snow seasons!)
Where are we going today?! Let’s say the five finger mountain (or Wuzhishan in pinyin). It is my favorite stop on the island. I like it because it is so raw and wild compared to other places I have been to in China. Driving from Haikou along the east coast, it takes about 3.5 hours. I booked a hotel called “Wuzhishan Yatai RainForest Resort” (五指山亚太雨林酒店) , highly recommended. It is five minutes walking distance away from the hiking trails , and the closet town is 15 minutes’ drive away. It is surrounded by mountains, clouds, trees, very beautiful. Especially at night, it is a good place to sit on the porch, watch the full moon, miss somebody alone or have good conversations with your friends. Facing such nature, you get to be very sincere to yourself.
cool dam in the mountain
as beautiful as a painting
tranquil and emotional
One of the biggest activities here of course is hiking (Chinese only though, remember? :D). There are two famous trails here. One is 2 hours long and the other is 10 hours long. I was totally excited for the 10 hours trail. The five finger mountain is named after its 5 important peaks. The 10 hours trail lead to one of them. But when I arrived at the trail head, the people dressed in an army uniform told me that “you are not supposed to hike the 10 hours trail this month, as the workers are building the stairs. The trail is closed” “%$#S&” The 2 hour trail lead you to a water fall. It is an origin of the second biggest river on the island. Alright, that’s an okay placebo for me. I always want to see the origin of a big river (e.g., the origin of the Colorado river since I visited the grand canyon). The trail has many small waterfalls and ponds. Tadpoles live here happily. I did not see many big-leave tropical plants but some plantains/bananas.
the origin of the river
my mom made to the top in her beautiful dress. BTW, you got to see her recent hairstyle, it looks like a “lion king” 😀
Besides hiking, this crazish activity called “red valley drifting” is a must-do. This activity is something between tubing and white water rafting. You are floating along a creek in a valley with the world class view where the rocks are red, and seeing the mountain from an interesting perspective. This place was once some sort of white water creek. The workers later added more concrete structures to increase the rapidness of the water for more fun.
You will get a rubber boat (shared with another person) and an oar. Once you are in the water, you are out of control. There are turns, falls, slides and swirls around rocks, under the waves, you never know. OH MY GOD YOU’LL GET ALL WET, SOAK IN THE WATER MORE THAN 1 HOUR, BUT SO MUCH FUN. At the start line, I saw some people wear raincoats and high heels —- Chinese people can be very amusing sometimes 😀
When you finish, there are showers and hot drinks. The place has a locker and they ship your goodies from the start line to the finish line. Shuttles will take you to the bus station. You’d got to go soon though, as man above 60(?) woman above 55(?) are too old to be eligible to even get the tickets :D.
Another fun experience is to hitchhike the bus from here. This place is located in the mountain and the middle of nowhere. The bus station here is sketchy. You only heard from the people that there will be a bus stopping here, but there are no official signs. The locals say “hmm, sometimes the bus may not stop too”. Now, you are in the middle of a wild mountain and watch the sun goes down. The hotel is 45 minutes driving a way. You look at a dog while the dog looks at you; you look at the women who are processing the betel nuts in the shop, and the bus still did not come. At some point, I was trying to persuade a truck driver who was shipping fruits to this shop to drive us out of there, but not very successful. Finally, a bus was coming; I was so fast out on the road and waving and jumping. I think I was willing to pay 100$ at this moment but they charged me only 3 dollars 😀
arrived for “red valley drifting”
a shop where you are waiting for a bus
Hainan Island @ China (2) – Haikou
2/3/19 (so many stupid walls are building !!! Yummy ice cream in the coldest day on earth :))
For the next two weeks comes the celebration of the Chinese spring festival. Thus the best place on earth to go is China. So today let’s continue talking about the China trip!
The Hainan island is located at the south of the altitude 23 in the northern hemisphere. Thus the entire island is tropical. Most people lived on this island used to be the Li and Miao minorities. Many of them nowadays moved to the central part of the island where the mountains are located. But you still can see the influence of their languages and food on the local tourist sites.
Haikou is the capital of Hainan. It is not until 1988 that Hainan becomes an independent province. There are not many differences between Hainan and other places in China from what I can see, except that people here are generally shorter and darker, and they are on scooters instead of on bicycles.
waiting at the dash line
The most interesting place to visit in Haikou is called “Qilou Old Street”. It is an area where the old historical buildings are preserved. “Qilou” in a word-to-word translation is “riding buildings”. It is an architecture style popular around 1900s in southern China where multiple different buildings are connected together on a same surface. The buildings can have different colors and have a mixture of European and Asian styles. The buildings are typically 2-3 stories high. The bottom is shops and the top is where people live. The height of the building and the width of the street often form a golden ratio to create a pleasant space as a whole. I heard that this style is also very popular in Taiwan, Singapore in the similar period of the time.
China has many similar old streets for tourism. This one is special because it is “real old” instead of “newly-build-mimic-old” :). Closing my eyes, I almost see my grandfather walking down the street to start his work. The street is almost the entire city back then; there are temples, post offices, markets, hotels. Interestingly, you can see “serve the people” “viva chairman” “viva communist party” these important slogans engraved on the surface of the buildings, as if it was 1970s in the major cities of China.
Another tourist cite here is called “Haikou Volcanic Cluster Global Geopark”. Compared to the big island in Hawaii, this park is like a joke. It displays a few lava stones behind the fence. Maybe I went to a wrong park?! Don’t get me wrong. This park is a fun place to visit. I saw many interesting tropical fruits sold in the market are growing in the trees here. You also can hike down to a crater (with stairs). But this park is so well-planned by people, and it is nothing like a volcano park.
There is also this place called “Huochetou million seafood square” (I literally copied this English name from their poster, so I am not taking the blame for its strangeness :D). This place has a seafood market and many seafood restaurants. Most of the restaurants take your orders and then immediately go to the market to buy the seafood and cook for you. So they are very fresh. The famous restaurant people like on Internet is called “Sichuan xiaohuzi seafood”.
If you travel with your family or a group of people including kids and elderly. I recommend Mission hills resort Haikou. This place has restaurants, golf courses, kids playing areas, gas station, supermarket, and importantly is famous for its warm springs. There are more than 100 warm springs in this resort. Each warm spring is designed based on a country and set up appropriate temperature, decorations, perfumes and teas. My mom and I visited it during night, and feel like we are doing some warm-spring crawl 🙂 The resort has very good service. You can immediately see the hotel stand when you exit the airport. The hotel has free and frequent buses that take you from and to the airport, the city, the shopping and restaurant areas nearby.
You can buy coconut anywhere on the street, 10-15 rmb each (1-2 dollars)
“a star is born” and more
This movie talks about a very simple story, but I just can’t hold off my tears.
“shallow” is written by Ali. Jack sings it on the stage. Ali has this very complicated hesitation when Jack invites her to sing with him on the stage — at that time, Ali is nobody in the music industry. Jack found her tallent, encourage her, and promote her. When you are a nobody and you work very hard, but still keep failing, you are not sure and you are not confident. At that time, some big people believe in you, selflessly help you, encourage you, point out how to improve, and promote you. You just can’t believe that’s real. Lady gaga performs this scene incredibly well, from “not sure” to “be completely touched by the song and Jack’s performance”, and then “bravely walk into this song”. As an audience, you are also totally submerged into the song with Ali, and it is so occupying your brain that nothing else around you matters.
“I’ll never love again” is written by Jack. The last scene of the movie is Ali sings this song at the Jack’s memorial. I think this song represents the best love you can give to a person. “It is so deep so intense so hurt so burning, I just couldn’t fall like that again”
Some other movies I remembered from the past year:
Crazy rich Asians: my colleague said he was watching this movie on the airplane. He laughed so hard and then the person sat beside him started watching it as well. This person laughed even harder 🙂 —- this must be a hilarious airplane journey.
Mission impossible: Very cool!!! Mission impossible and Borne identity are two of my favorite series of action movies. Watching ridiculous action movies is very relaxing to me; probably it is calling the violent aspect of my personality 🙂 I feel something is missing if a person keeps telling me you should be nice and tolerate shits. Instead, shouting and cursing sometimes make me real 😀
Three billboards outside ebbing, Missouri: this is a wonderful, thought-provoking movie. Very sad story to start with. But the movie is not about murder but about life. At these extreme moments, what will you choose? This movie reminds me of “Les Miserables”. It is questioning about fundamental people nature, and the movie does not give answers.
Shape of water: this movie is so thin. It gets the best movie in Oscar last year probably because Hollywood wants to tell people “yeah, we are very open and liberal, we not only support gay marriages but also support loves between aliens and human beings :)” What if you don’t even need to talk about “the love of aliens and human beings” as something special? Is this the least discrimination?
CoCo: I watched this movie at the beginning of 2018. Then in the late point of 2018, I suddenly understand “why this movie should be set in Mexico”. Mexican people value close people relationships and “remembrance”, maybe because Mexico is also a very densely populated country like China, Japan and India?
Before midnight: This is the last movie in the “before” series. Each movie in the series talks about the stories 10 years apart. Coincidentally, I watched the three movies several years apart, as if I am growing up with the characters. The series is a master piece talking about “romantic loves”. The main thing admirable here is that Jesse and Celine totally go flow with pure love and feelings …
Bridesmaids: It is a very fun movie. It is one of the few movies that I watched more than once. One of my favorite scenes is “Annie did all sorts of weird movements in the car to attract Rhodes’s attention on the highway”. In the old days, my best girl friend and me are also like that. I also like the love story in this movie. This movie tells that “compared to flirts and sex, caring about a person is like a stone, heavy and powerful!”
IT’S THE TIME OF THE YEAR!
1/20/19 (yaya, SNOW! I must be crazy? I like the snow storms more and more! Besides cross-country ski and hotpot, I also “can” devour random books like a monster in the dark at night :))
