I am on the plane returning from a week-long trip to Hong Kong and Shenzhen China. This was my first international travel in more than 10 years. I've missed it! If you knew me back in my traveling days you know I love to write about it, so come along.
One of the benefits of working for a humongous corporation is that on international travel one can travel in business class. When I purchased my ticket for this trip it so happened that the cheapest business class fare was on Cathay Pacific, a Hong Kong-based airline that is considered among the best for long haul flight comforts. So, unusually, one of the things I looked forward to about the trip was the flights! I had never flown with a "pod" seat before, or even a seat that lays completely flat.
Both flights were on Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. My trip over was in "new business class" on a brand new plane. My return trip was in "current" business class. New business class is a little roomier but they were both quite nice. The seat is adjustable in many ways including lying completely flat. Each seat has a large TV on which one can watch dozens of movies or TV shows, the live map that shows where the plane is along the route and even a live camera mounted on the belly of the aircraft. I've got a lot to write about so just suffice it to say that Cathay business class was wonderful.
It is 13 hours earlier in HK and China than in Boston. I couldn't figure out what the best sleeping schedule would be on the plane to try to sync to HK time upon arrival so I didn't even try. I slept for a few hours on the 15.5 hour flight but not enough. I arrived in HK at 6:30pm on Monday evening and found my way to the Airport Express train into the city. My immediate question was, "why can't we build systems like this in the US?" The Airport Express is quiet, efficient and fast. I estimate we reached 80mph. It takes 24 minutes from the airport, which was built in the 90's on an outlying island, to the city center.
Once in the city center I transferred to the subway system to get to my hotel in the northern outskirts of HK near our first work site. The subways are also modern, clean and efficient.
The weather for my entire trip was perfect - in the high 60s and low 70s with no noticeable humidity. The locals think it's "cold" and they are all wearing jackets with some in full-on winter coats. Meanwhile I was in short sleeves; maybe changing into a long sleeve shirt in the evening.
In addition to my first international travel in some time, this was also my first business travel of more than a couple nights since I met Carol and also since I had children. I knew I'd miss them! But through the wonders of modern technology we were able to video chat once or twice a day on our phones! The 13-hour time difference made it pretty convenient for me to call them at their bedtime when I was getting up and at their breakfast time when I was getting back in the evening. Being able to see my wife and girls' faces every day made a huge difference!
The reason this post has taken so long is I've been sick since my return (cold -> sinusitis -> bronchitis) and haven't had the energy. The remainder of this post was written on December 27.
The largest DNA sequencing center in the world is at BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute but now a standalone company). Merck is one of BGI's biggest customers and we sequence thousands of samples every month at BGI. That generates terabytes of data per week and we have to somehow get that data back to our US data centers so our scientists can analyze it. My main job for the past year has been to streamline that data delivery process. The purpose of this trip was to meet our counterparts at BGI and enhance data delivery even more. I traveled with my coworker, Blake, who does all of the real work. I'm just a manager.
Our first day of meetings was at BGI's Hong Kong office. This is BGI's production center where most of the sequencing is performed and analyzed (although the analysis is performed remotely by bioinformaticians at BGI's Shenzhen site in China). The most popular DNA sequencing machine at the moment is the Illumina HiSeq. These machines cost about US$500,000 each. BGI Hong Kong has almost 100 of them. We were given a great tour of BGI HK and met with the director and the IT staff. They also took us out for a delicious Thai lunch. I didn't know it but this was the start of a string of great meals we were to eat.
Tuesday afternoon after our HK meetings were complete, a cross-border car hired by BGI picked us up to take us to Shenzhen. It is only about an hour trip. He delivered us to the lovely Sheraton Dameisha Resort at the eastern edge of Shenzhen on the South China Sea.
Wednesday morning our BGI host, Sifei, picked us up at the hotel and drove us the short distance to BGI Shenzhen. We had very productive meetings in the morning. Blake and I have been working with BGI via email and teleconference for almost a year and it was great to meet all of our counterparts in person. We also gained useful knowledge about BGI's organization and processes that will help us work with them in the future.
For lunch, Sifei took us, along with Rena and Dennis who had traveled from BGI HK for the meetings, to dim sum. It was fantastic. See the photos. I tried everything except the chicken feet.
BGI has almost 4000 employees, mostly in Shenzhen. They hire a lot of people right out of college. BGI has dormitories right next to their offices for employees who are transitioning from university life to professional life. They also have a large cafeteria that feeds 2000 people at lunch. We ate lunch there on Thursday. The presentation - a buffet served on metal trays - is not very attractive but the food was decent.
Wednesday evening we took a taxi into one of Shenzhen's shopping districts called Dongmen. For the first hour we just wandered aimlessly through the crowded streets. There were lots of Christmas decorations everywhere, including very large lighted decorations that covered the entire sides of high-rise buildings and big light displays along the pedestrian shopping streets. Prices were interesting. I saw nice looking winter coats for less than US$20 and men's dress shoes for US$8. But electronics, even though they are probably made on the outskirts of Shenzhen, were priced the same or higher as in the US.
We debated a lot about where to eat. I was being more choosy than usual because I wasn't feeling well (head cold and jet lag). We finally found a Japanese restaurant in a mall and slapped together a yummy miscellany of Japanese dishes.
Some observations about Shenzhen:
We saw many cyclists riding (slowly) along the center jersey barrier on very busy high-speed roads. Some were even riding the wrong way. Some had kids on the back of the bike.
On a walk during a break on Thursday we saw several factories with adjacent dormitories. The BGI site was formerly a shoe factory.
In Shenzhen cars definitely have the right of way. Pedestrians wait. Although I noticed that when an approaching vehicle is at a certain distance pedestrians will enter the road and the drivers generally slow down to allow the pedestrians to cross.
I saw one dad on a small motorcycle with three small kids along. Two were on the seat behind the dad and the other was on the gas tank in front of him.
Thursday we had a brief meeting at BGI Shenzhen and then spent much of the day working by ourselves in a conference room. We had accomplished everything we had hoped for. Late in the afternoon we were given a tour of the Shenzhen facility and then driven to the border crossing back into Hong Kong. The HK subway system extends right up to the Chinese border adjacent to central Shenzhen. We crossed the border without problems and took the long subway ride into central HK.
We had to purchase our airline tickets far in advance of the trip because the fares rise dramatically once the departure is less than a month away. At the time of purchase our meeting schedule was not confirmed and we wanted to make sure to leave enough time. So we planned to arrive on Monday night and depart for home on Sunday. Once the agenda was confirmed, it left Friday free. So we ended up with two whole days of free time in Hong Kong before we would head home.
I have a neighbor who travels to Hong Kong twice a year. It so happens that the night before I departed she appeared at a neighborhood holiday party just after arriving home from a HK visit. She gave me some good tips about things to see. One was to go to the Intercontinental Hotel bar in Kowloon because it has floor to ceiling windows with a view across the harbor to Hong Kong. That was our first stop when we arrived back in HK.
You can read the history of Hong Kong on Wikipedia. Hong Kong proper is an island that Great Britain basically stole from China after the First Opium War. After the Second Opium War, Britain stole the Kowloon Peninsula across the harbor from Hong Kong. Then later Britain annexed the New Territories which are the mountainous area between Kowloon and the Shenzhen River. All of that area is referred to as Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong skyline from the Intercontinental Hotel was indeed impressive. Even in non-holiday times it has a lot of large lighted corporate logos and names on the tops of skyscrapers as well as lighted features on the facades of the buildings. For example, the Bank of China building has vertical and diagonal "beams" that light up in various animated sequences.
For the holidays many buildings in HK have animated lighted decorations covering entire sides of the buildings. So the HK skyline as viewed from Kowloon is a huge light show. There are even lasers that occasionally beam from the tops of buildings and scan the sky.
The first thing I noticed in HK is that no one jaywalks. It reminded us of Seattle. We did it once in a while because we just couldn't stand to wait for the signal to cross an obviously empty street. We were also apparently juicy looking targets for touts: I couldn't walk 50 feet in central Kowloon without some guy asking me if I needed a tailor or a watch. On rarer occasions one would ask me if I wanted hashish.
Back in late 1997 I visited my good friend Phil and his wife while they were living in Hong Kong. I was there very close to the handover of Hong Kong back to China (HK is now a Special Administrative Region). I was fascinated by HK then and I was excited to return. During that visit Phil and Lysiane and I took the hydrofoil to Macau, which was a Portuguese colony and which was also handed back to China in 1999 (and is also now a Special Administrative Region). Macau has been a gambling center for a long time but in the past decade or so the casino business there has really exploded. I read in the Boston Globe last week that Macau generates US$30 billion per year in gambling revenue. The Las Vegas strip generates US$6 billion.
I was interested in returning to Macau to see the result of that growth. Blake was interested, too, so we took the fast catamaran for the one-hour trip to Macau on Friday morning and spent the day there. We explored the new area of western casinos (Wynn, MGM) as well as some of the asian casinos. The popularity of games is quite different there. Baccarat is the most popular game by far. We only saw two craps tables, at the MGM, and they were empty. I didn't see any blackjack. For lunch we bought yummy "pork chop sweet bun" from a tiny shop near the historic cathedral ruins.
Once back in HK we went to dinner at a place Blake had heard was good: Din Tai Fung. Their specialty is dumplings, but in addition to dumplimgs we also had several other dishes and we both thought the meal was fantastic. It turns out there is a Din Tai Fung in Bellevue across the lake from Seattle!
Saturday we devoted the day to Hong Kong Island. We started by taking the historic Star Ferry across from Kowloon. It was smoggy and/or hazy but the view of the skyline and Victoria Peak in the background was still good. We made our way to the Peak Tram, a funicular that carries passengers to The Peak. We took a walk along Lugard Road which circles the top of the peak and saw great views of HK. It is considered the most vertical city in the world (meaning it has a lot of very tall - and very skinny - buildings) and it looks quite unusual and interesting from above. We also walked past some walled estates that given their prime location in what is already the most expensive real estate market in the world are probably worth amazing sums.
Blake had heard from a friend about another good food spot, a small noodle shop popular with the locals called Kau Kee. So we walked there from the base of the Peak Tram. As we were told to expect, there was a 15 minute wait but the line moved very quickly. We were seated at a table with 4 other people and ordered our beef noodles; mine with flat noodles and Blake with rice noodles. A few minutes later they arrived. They were fantastic! In a trip that featured many good meals this was my favorite. Wonderful flavor.
From there we went in search of the Western Market. It turned out to be not quite what I was expecting. I was thinking it would be a large covered market like in Mexico with foods as well as household goods and clothes. It actually consists mostly of textile dealers with so many bolts of fabric stuffed into their stalls there is barely room for a person to stand. There was also a shop devoted entirely to metal models of transit buses at a variety of scales. Many represented specific routes in Hong Kong. I looked at them for quite a while as potential Christmas presents but the prices were a little too high for the level of appreciation I knew they'd receive.
Finally we made our way back to the Hollywood Road neighborhood for some Christmas shopping. My neighbor had recommended a shop where she bought some scarves. I bought a couple there for Carol and they were a hit. I also found stocking stuffers for the girls (anything with Chinese writing would be a hit) and I found some great Chinese pajamas for each of them.
Saturday night was our last night before flying home on Sunday. We thought we were going to have hot pot for dinner. But right next door to the hot pot restaurant was a Korean barbecue place and we decided at the last minute to go there. Either choice probably would have been good but our dinner was yet another fantastic meal. Beef and chicken on the in-table barbecue grill, plus varied kimchee and vegetables and finishing off with my favorite Korean dish: bibimbap. Delicious.
Early Sunday morning I took a taxi through empty streets to the station for the Airport Express train. I had breakfast in Cathay Pacific's business class lounge before boarding my flight home. Right after takeoff I set my watch back to Boston time, and after lunch I slept from midnight to 8:00am Boston time. I thought perhaps that would magically get me in sync. Wrong. I had horrible insomnia the whole week after I returned, sleeping only about 3 hours per night. That didn't do my cold/sinus infection any good and it only got worse. I finally went to the doctor on Thursday and was diagnosed with bronchitis. I've been on the sofa ever since. Feeling better today, though.
I hope you enjoyed the novel! Be sure to see the photos.
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