Shenzhen!!

I just got back from Shenzhen (the city practically adjacent to Hong Kong in mainland China).
My camera died in Shenzhen, so most of my pictures will come later from Elley (the student with whom I stayed who will be at Purdue in January). Until then...

Here is a picture of the cool fish that some lucky American will get from Elley. These fish are made of thread. By the way, since I mentioned that I don't like putting pictures of myself on the web, I feel obligated to point out when I do it even in a roundabout manner. See my reflection in the black "water"? Well, I do. Does that make me paranoid?Here is one of the simply beautiful tea cups in which I was served the most delicious, woody pu'er tea ever. Elley's father is a true tea connoisseur and traditional Cantonese traditionalist. Below is the tea service carved from the root of a tree on which Elley's father served both green tea (quite good) and pu'er tea (fabulously delicious).


It was very hard the second night of my stay to turn down a repeat of the preceding night's ceremony, but after a fabulous day of walking and shopping and eating and talking, I was ready to crash happily into bed (so I did).
Thankfully, the first night I was in Elley's house, she & her parents gave me time to photograph some of their exceptional pieces of art. Below is an example of a dragon providing water to a fish below.

I figured that I would note that, amidst the shopping in Shenzhen, we hit up one supermarket full of Western goods. I smelled something like grilled beef -- Western-style charcoaled beef -- and I followed the smell to this counter, full of cooked goods. Amongst these goods you will notice turkey wings. It worries me that no other part of the turkey was in sight...

Also available for your eating pleasure... (drum roll, please)...
Is it a crocodile or an alligator? Thanks to Jack Hanna and a hundred trips to the zoo as a child, I can look at this and say, "This looks like a crocodile to me," and feel pretty confident that I am right. It's snout is pointier than I would expect an alligator's to be, but maybe I am just used to American alligators. It would be kind of funny if Chinese alligators had pointier noses than American ones =)

For good measure, I'll through in a picture of a library and music hall (conveniently placed right next door to one another)...
... and a close-up from Elley's camera...
(oops -- there I am again...)
... and a government building reminiscent of an Olympic stadium...

(my photo above)
(Elley's photo below)

I have done a totally unsatisfactory job conveying what a great time I had in Shenzhen. The entire time, I was telling my friends that I would have to bring my mom there. When she and I go, I hope we can go to the restaurant Larry/Li Ye's dad took us to hidden up by a mountain lake that grew all of its own food (plant and animal) and used fish caught from the "totally unpolluted" lake over which we sat and into which I through my peanut shells to feed the fish (extra flavor for future patrons).

Here is one of the pics from Elley's phone of the very cool boat sitting in the lake below us:


When Elley sends me her pictures (UPDATE: she has.), I can elaborate more on the wonderful morning teas and other meals we enjoyed. I think the most important one to show off will be the bee larva dish we had at the place that Larry's dad picked out for us -- and those larvae were absolutely fantastically delicious. I have always found that I have enjoyed eating bugs every time I have been served them, but I think this is because I rarely eat fried food, and I just like the crunchy saltiness of the experience. I attribute it to the bugs, and voila, I like eating larvae.

Yep. Bees & bee larvae in a fried egg mixture.

Before we went to that lake, we had visited a sports facility that was under construction for the 2011 Summer Universiade international sports meet. It had a bike track that I figured my brother and dad may particularly appreciate seeing. I was surprised by how smooth the surface was not due to its relatively loose wooden plank construction. Is that normal -- to have slightly disjoint planks on such a track?