Virtual China '98
Lane Group
April 20, 1998
Author: Jackson Chow
Date: April 20, 1997
Temperature: 31 degrees Celsius
Time: Early in the morning of 1:00pm
Airplane: Dragoon Air KA 940
Group Leader: Mrs. Liang
Early in a cold morning around 5:00 am we had to meet at the Repulse Bay Campus. We all had to get on the bus and take a ride to the airport. We met our leader at the airport counter and we went through immigratoin together. We all went through immigration differently, it wasn’t very successful, and my group members were very complicated. It was very complicated because my group was lining up in the wrong line. People in our group were lining up in the Hong Kong Permit ID Card. When they were supposed to line up in the Hong Kong Resident only. There were only three people in my line so it didn’t take such a long time but there were about 15 people in my other group member’s line so it took a long time. When we all went through immigration me and my partners went to look at some of the Duty Free Shop for a while. When they were finished shopping we went to the boarding gate where they gave us very small raincoats. When we got on the plane it was very crowded some of the people slept, Vincent and Aaron were playing minesweeper and fooling around with the screen savers, 15 minutes in the air they served breakfast which tasted really horrible. The flight was bumpy and took about two and a half-hours, after an hour everyone was very bored most of us were fiddling around with the plane. When we landed we had to wait for soooo long to get through immigration because we went through as a group. It was a very small immigration area (4 stalls). The put our entire luggage in a truck, then we got onto a bus with a tour guide called Brain, he told us all about Xi’an. We arrived to the hotel and checked in at about twelve thirty.
AURTHOR: KABIR CHADHA
GROUP LEADER: MRS LIANG
DATE: APRIL 20, 1998 – 1PM
LOCATION: SOUTH STREET, ON THE ROAD SIDE.
WEATHER: 31 DEGREES CELSIUS.
A hot, dry day!
Hi! We’re a line of clothes hanging to dry just on the road side. We’ve had a rough day, all sweaty and all, and are just resting and taking a break from it all.
It’s a hot, sunny, totally exhausting day; the cars are zooming by. The dust in the air is more than adequate. Sometimes we wonder why we are hung here. We’ll probably get dirtier than we currently are, there is so much dust in the air. This is the pits, at this rate we shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds to catch fire. "Hey watch it," That car almost blew us away. Look at all those reckless drivers, wonder at an average how many accidents there are in Xi’an?
The only wish we have now is to have legs, we can’t wait to get out of here. This is so boring, people are just walking by, hope we were the center of attention. I hope our owners care about us more than they are showing us now.
"We are dry already, you can take us off now," It’s so hot, we’re burning. I wonder when they’ll take us off. We hope all of our days aren’t like this!
Name: Evelyn Kim
Group leader: Mrs.Liang
Format: What we did from 1:00pm till 8:30pm
Weather: hot very very hot 31degree Celsius
The first day in Xian
After arriving at the hotel, everyone kind of got the idea of how "Green" China is. The fertile land and how flat the plain is surprised me. And it is very interesting how nobody wore shorts in the hot and dry weather. When we arrived at the hotel, box lunches were waiting for us. We ate it and then relaxed for a while and then headed for the streets of Xian. I didn’t touch anything but the dust all around us got our hands and face all gray. Then we went through a market. In the market, there were thousands of little stores selling buttons, writing brushes, bean bags, stationary, knives, flashlights, toys, Chinese porcelain bowls and pottery. One interesting thing that most people saw was a 90-year-old or more woman who had bound feet. WE never saw it before and so we tried to take a picture of it trying not to make it look so obvious but it was very interesting. When we were passing by, all the storekeepers were all saying, "Xiang –gang" which means Hong Kong. I wonder how they knew we were from Hong Kong. Maybe just jeans and a shirt. At first when we were walking on the street we felt as if we were out of place since everyone was staring at us. Some of the people out there seemed unfriendly but most were nice enough to talk to us and give us directions. I found it nasty and disgusting and felt like puking after seeing people spit from deep down their throat and making weird noises.
Then we went to the city wall, Xiemen, the west gate. We were walking along the wall. WE felt so close to the sun and we were all so exhausted. We tried to find a shade but it was still hot. It seemed as if we were walking forever to nowhere. We couldn’t see anything but the lining of the wall. Later on, we saw a little store. The storekeeper was very kind and gave each one of us a chair and asked if we wanted to wash ourselves. Also in the store were drawings of many different things and the lady also showed us a picture of a view of the gate at night with bright lights on. She told us that the hotel is only 3-4 minutes away so we continued to walk. Soon after that, we were back at the hotel. We got cleaned and prepared ourselves to go to dinner. At 6:30 we left for the restaurant. After spending 30 minutes on the bus we arrived at the Shaanxi style dumpling restaurant. Then we spent 2 excruciating hours eating and eating stuffing ourselves with dumplings. They had at least 20 kinds of dumplings all shaped differently. They were all stuffed with things like chicken, re beans, shrimp, mushroom, beef, meat, tomato, and vegetables and much more. At the end they gave us a hot pot. They boiled it for a while and then we put it tiny dumplings made out of chicken breasts into the pot and we each took a serving of the soup. The number of the tiny dumplings you get in your bowl determines how lucky you are. The more you get the luckier you’ll be.
This was a very exciting experience but everyone was very tired, we went back to the hotel and relaxed hoping that tomorrow will be as fun.
Name: Stefanie Wong
Group Leader: Mrs. Liang
Date: April 20, 1998 – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Restaurant on Miaohau Street
Weather: 31 degrees Celsius
Perspective of Cook
I really wish it were cooler. Cooking these dumplings is so annoying. I’m sweating everywhere. Whenever I open one of the containers the steam flies up into my face and burns it. I don’t understand why I always have to cook the dumplings. There are plenty of other people who could make them, but I’m always stuck with this stupid
job.
Why do they keep telling me to make more and more dumplings? There are barely any people here. I might not mind cooking the dumplings if there were customers ordering them, but there’s no one. My boss keeps saying, "We don’t want our customers to have to wait." I’m sure they won’t mind waiting just a couple of minutes. And anyway, there are plenty of dumplings cooked already and no one is eating them. Yet I still have to cook even more. Probably no one is going to come to eat the dumplings, and then they will go to waste.
It would be nice if people would eat our dumplings, though. Then I could make some more money. I wouldn’t have to cook all these dumplings for absolutely nothing, either.
Now what is this kid doing? Taking a picture of me? And he didn’t even ask! The nerve of him! Typical of these bratty little tourists. Now all of his little friends are taking pictures of me, too! What annoying little kids!
I wish that this day would finally end. I’m really exhausted and I just want to go home.
AUTHOR: LAURENCE HAN
LOCATION:XI’AN
TEMPERATURE: 31 DEGREES CELCIUS
GROUP LEADER:MRS. LIANG
DATE:APRIL 20, 1998 ;12:35 PM
To interview people I, Laurence Han has personally taken the expense of mine time to interview this very polite bellboy. He has been very cooperative with my questions and was quite happy to have his photo taken by our Epson Photo P.C. 500 it’s a great photo! It shall be displayed later in this home page. Here’s a little information on my Xi’an friend.
His name is Derek Wong; he’s going to be twenty-one this year.
He’s so young; you can’t really tell how old he is. He chose this job in the Bell Tower Hotel because it was a respectable hotel, job and the salary was quite high. His whole family has always been in Xi’an generations after generations. He wants to leave Xi’an but his family is holding him back. He really enjoys working in Bell Tower Hotel. His friends never left Xi’an before so he wants to be first to leave. He has a lot of friends but he hardly has time to meet and hang around his friends. He really likes to bike in Xian and he is very proud of Xian, his home city. He wishes that he could see the world and be rich. His parents are quiet old; he has younger brother that has almost graduated school. " Xian this year has had very unusual weather patterns, that is why my friend and I have not gone biking around Xian." Derek’s ancestors have been farmers for generation to generations. He has quite a wide range knowledge of farming.
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