Alas poor Tony, our (nearly) 21 year old cat, has passed away to the great mouse hunting place in the sky.

Born in 1988 in Perth Australia, Tony moved to New Zealand in the early nineties and lived in Westport and various suburbs of Christchurch, before retiring to New Brighton in 2001. Tony managed to hold his own until the end, and was the boss of all the neighborhood dogs, especially Shadow - our dog - who always lived in Tony's, er, shadow.
Tony was particularly well known for his very loud and strident meouw, and also for his inability to scratch with his left paw due to damage from a road accident. The resultant "scratch by proxy" sewing machine effect always caused us amusement, and Tony got some pleasure too.
Tony was a real character and we'll all miss him.

Hong Kong is about a big of a culture shock as you could get after a month in mainland China. To suddenly surrounded by people of all nationalities and not the only Westerner in town was the biggest change.

Click on the thumbnails for bigger pictures.

Now I am not a big fan of shopping and all that big cities have to offer, so my day off in Hong Kong was to be spent exploring some of the hill areas that surround the city.

First up I took the ferry across from my hotel in Kowloon to Central. Ferries in Hong Kong are cheap and plentiful, and are a great way to get around.
A 20 minute walk took me to the Peak Tramway, which gets you quickly up to elevated ground and great views across the city.
There are a lot of walking tracks in this area,and they are popular with the locals. The 50km Hong Kong trail a well-known walk, and is usually done in stages.
I chose to do a loop that took in the Pok Fu Lam reservoir. This was a fair hike as it involved descending almost to sea level, and then all the way back up to the Peak. The reservoir is one of the main sources of water for the city and I saw fish and turtles swimming in it.

The temperature was around 30 degrees and 70% humidity, so it was a hard grunt. I scrambled up a river bed and found a great rock pool to take a dip in - that was bliss! After a short break for lunch in my hotel, I took the underground train out Tung Chung on Lantau Island and the to the large gondola that takes you up to the Tian Tan budda. The gondola is the biggest in the world, at least according to my Singaporean companion in the cabin. It really does take about 25 minutes for the journey so it is massive.
The Budda is pretty huge too. The Po Lin monastery is quite a spectacle. Lots of people were praying and holding incense candles
I was quite taken with the Path of Wisdom that leads you to a display of wooden pillars inscribed with Chinese buddist sayings. Overlooking a misty and brooding hillside, I thought this wa a fitting note to end my Chinese journey on.

Tomorrow I leave the mainland for Hong Kong after a month of teaching here in Hangzhou. What a fantastic journey it has been!

The department laid on a fantastic meal for me and the rest of the team. Here's a couple of pictures:

This one shows my teaching team -at left is Gavin, to my right Kathleen. Behind me is Prof Wong's daughter. Prof Wong is head of department.

This one shows the whole crew and some of the spread we gorged ourselves on. This was the second feast of the day. Boy am I looking forward to burning off some of those calories!

I'd really like to extend my warmest thanks to those who made my visit so pleasurable. It was an absolute delight to get to know all of you and I really appreciate all the hard work by Gavin and Kathleen especially.

Until the next time!

Thanks to my amazing powers to cyber-transport myself to New Zealand from China, I am able to compare the NZ results on Bing with the Chinese results. Here are the images, let you decide...
( I am guessing that massacre and protests will be removed from "related searches" in the near future. This is what we call a bug...)

Chinese version:

NZ Version:

China's attempt to control the internet via a client side package known as Green Dam seems to be faltering according to Information Week
Add to that, the software appears to be ripped off from a combination of US software maker Solid Oak and some illegal use of BSD licenced Open Source image recognition software - OpenCV - according to The Register

Futhermore, according to The Register, the Chinese software actually makes calls back to the Solid Oak servers.

To cap it all, Green Dam also is potentially a major security hole, as this Register article points out.

Until a few days ago, this software was supposed to be mandatory on all new PCs sold in China from July 1st. Thankfully the Chinese government have backed down on that decision.
Chinese people are not that stupid. If it is optional, no one in their right mind will install it.

PS If I get time, when I leave China, I will try to install this software on a virtual machine and take it for a spin. It is hard to find the download page though via the maze of Chinese menu items.

It always seems to be party time outside the Wu Mart shopping mall on a Sunday evening. Things were just starting to warm up after I took these two videos. There was a fair bit of American Hip Hop, breakdance stuff happening.

The really weird thing is that nobody applauds at all apart from when a rather androgynous and handsome Gok Wan-esque character who seemed to have an identically clad entourage of fans got the whole crowd absolutely, er, interested..

Did I feel out of place? Not a bit...

Breakdancing Xiasha, Hangzhou from Andy Scrase on Vimeo.

Dancing competition, Xiasha, Hangzhou China from Andy Scrase on Vimeo.

Thanks to Gené for these pictures.
Click on the thumbnails for a bigger version.

Just in case you didn't get that..

Juices Flow
Rear Ward
Everydog has his day
Biss ever his marsis is soss oxxs
Love and Marriage
but not dogether

Today we visited the historic town of Xitang, which is an hour an a half drive north of Hangzhou heading towards Shanghai.

It is a fairly touristy spot, but lovely nevertheless. I was accompanied by Gené, Joyce from the College, and a driver. We also had a tour guide who was absolutely tiny and whose charm was inversely proportional to her size.

The town is built around a set of interconnecting waterways criss-crossed by bridges. It dates back more than a thousand years and in recent times has been used as a film set for, perhaps most notably, Mission Impossible III with Tom Cruise.

Click on the picture thumbnails to see them full size. Some are bigger than others. There are some lovely gardens here. The photos below are taken in the Drunk Garden, so-named because of its intoxicating nature. It's hard to capture it on film, because of the small confined courtyards that comprise the garden.

Staying on the drunk theme, we also found an interesting bottle lined alleyway that was begging for a derelict called Andy. Things move pretty slowly around here. the dog and the old lady weren't going anywhere fast. The picture on the right shows (L to R) Joyce, our tour guide, and Gené Below we see Joyce and Andy getting their Karma together before lunch. We weren't particularly keen on either the live wriggling snakes or the miniature (and live) Lobsters (crayfish) shown on the right. Here's a few more tourist shots On the left below is the restaurant where we had lunch. Judging by the photos on the wall, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep had also eaten here. (Tom filmed Mission Impossible III here but apparently Meryl just dropped by to say hi).

We found some traditional Chinese opera singers (centre) and their manager seemed very keen for us to get out on stage and take photos of them, much to the amusement of the onlookers.

Finally for this set, Gené does what only women know how to do, namely go shoe shopping, although it really is very hard to find anything to fit any of us Westerners here. Finally, I would like to say a HUGE thanks to Joyce and to the Water Conservancy and Hydropower College of Zhejiang for providing myself and Gené such a wonderful experience in Xitang today.