Talk:NoisebridgeChinaTrip2

Preliminary Itinerary for Noisebridge China Trip 2:
       3-April-2012 -- Leave home in NA or EU for Hong Kong
       4-April-2012 -- Meet in Hong Kong
       4-April to 8-April -- Hong Kong
       8-April to 11-April -- Shenzhen
       11-April to 17-April -- Shanghai
       17-April to 24-April -- Beijing
       24-April-2012 -- Fly home (arrive NA or EU on 24-April)

Cost estimate for China trip:
       airplane to/from China: $700 to $900
       HK-SZ: $50
       SZ-Shanghai: $100
       Shanghai-Beijing: $100
       4 nights in HK: $100
       3 nights in SZ: $75
       6 nights in Shanghai: $150
       7 nights in Beijing: $175
       20 days of food: $330
You'll probably want a bit of money for playing, and souvenirs, too ($100 to $300?). But the above adds up to $1,080, plus air fare to/from China.

Stephen Balaban suggests:

• Eat Jian Bing - buy them from the street (they are egg crepes that
  

are great for breakfast)

• Go to ZhongGuanCun 中关村, this is technology heaven and is not far from 798
  
• Go to 798 and check out the Yuanfen~Flow incubator
  
• Stop by a Beijing Linux Users Group (BLUG) meeting -- Peter Junge
  

<peter.junge *at* beijinglug *dot* org> & Ollo "Barcode" barcode
<barcode *at* beijinglug *dot* org> are great guys

• I thoroughly enjoyed simply walking around and finding a park early
  

in the morning or later in the afternoon and just hanging out with old
people doing tai chi and water-brush calligraphy if I wanted to relax

Peter, of the Beijing Int'l Film Fest recommends (in Beijing):

• meet Matthew Gao Hong Wei and see his exhibit at Central Academy of Fine Arts
  
• digital media lab at Central Academy of Fine Arts
  
• Veggie Table vegan restaurant
  
• Beijing International Film Festival
  

Here's info on getting from Hong Kong to our hotel in Shenzhen:
Start from Mong-kok Station in Hong Kong, and go to Donghua Hotel:
trains from Mong-kok to Donghua Hotel

More info from Donghua Hotel website.:
Donghua Hotel website
(Thanks to Seeed Studio for booking this hotel for us.)

Proposed itinerary for Shanghai:
       Apr. 11th - arrival, presentation at XinCheJian Open House@7pm
       Apr. 12th - Etonnet visit?
       Apr. 13th - presentation/workshop at Ningbo Toyhouse (will take all day)
       Apr. 14th - electronics mall visit@9am, workshops at XinCheJian@2pm
       Apr. 15th - XinCheJian roboracing@2pm
       Apr. 16th - presentation/workshop at Hangzhou Onioncapsule (will take all day)
       Apr. 17th - electronics mall visit? sightseeing? going to Beijing.

Mike Zhao is only available for us to visit Etonnet in Shanghai on 15-April

Mike Zhao gets to Shanghai on 13-April, 5:25pm, United Airlines UA857
Mike will be in Beijing on 18-April or 19-April.
Mike leaves Beijing on 24-April, 12:00pm, United Airlines UA888

Info on hotel in Beijing -- called "Sitting on the City Walls":
Check in on 16-April, check out on 24-April
Sitting on the City Walls (Beijing) Courtyard House
Add: No.57, NianZi HuTong, JingShanHouJie, DongCheng District,Beijing
100009. P.R.C
城墙客栈
北京市东城区景山后街碾子胡同57号.
(景山后街中石化化加油站往东30米,胡同口为"全民健身乐园")
Rachel & Rick own the place, and this is their email: beijingcitywalls@yahoo.cn
Sitting on the City Walls' website

Conversing with these mean moms was really getting me down. I really enjoyed being a parent, but I hated having to deal with other parents because they did shit like this. Currently, Brondie was leading me by the arm to go wash my face; she led me into the office, to their bathroom.

I felt like she was taking advantage of me for being mildly autistic, non-confrontational. I was really regretting volunteering at the school. Never got any love for it except from my friend Geraldine, who was from the Philippines and liked to laugh. Otherwise, the other volunteers were always sneering at me. It was making me not show up; Handsome was always saying, "Take a break; it's not like they're nice to you when you're there so why do you keep doing it?"

I stared down Brondie and told her she wasn't coming into the bathroom with me, since it was only for one person at the time. Went and washed off my liquid liner.

"It's not off!" Brondie exclaimed when I emerged from the bathroom.

"It's not coming off," I said mildly. "My aunt is a cosmetic tattoo artist and she needed a model and I just so happened to be there. Free eyeliner tattoo. Hurt like the devil. But it's super-subtle. I don't know why you'd be offended by it. Don't you have better things to do than be offended by other people's faces?"

"You look like a whore," she said, as we walked back through the concrete jungle of the children's play area. A few kids stared at us.

"I'm not one and you'd be better off not calling me one," I said, thinking of all the many faces I used to bash in for saying stuff like this to me (I got a lot of that for being exotic in appearance and a tomboy), before I realized violence over words was stupid. But, oh boy, I really wanted to hit her. "Stop projecting."

Brunette mom with the thin red mouth resurfaced and this went on for a while, these two women calling me a slut and a whore and an embarrassment to women because I have tattooed on eyeliner. Meanwhile, I was calling them anti-feminist and they were calling me anti-feminist. This was before I started calling myself a post-feminist.

"It's not our fault you look like a slut," Brondie said. "We're just informing you of it so you can work on it."

I took a deep breath. "Violence wouldn't do any good in this situation. I realize you're jealous, and that's sad because there's nothing for you to be jealous of; you're an alright looking person. But you know, the new lady comes around and she's got stylish subtle eyeliner tattoos and a husband who's obviously into her..."

They laughed. Proceeded to point out all the tiny ways I was ugly.

"I know, I know," I said self-deprecatingly. "I'm a Monet, and my husband loves me anyway. I'm a poet and I know it."

I started to walk away, but they kept getting in my way.

"Listen, you guys," I said, becoming irate. "I'm not any kind of scarlet female. My husband and I are in a monogamous relationship. But he's a man, so he's not against the idea of polyamory; I'm the one who wanted us to be monogamous. But since you guys are so adamant that I must be a slut, I'm going to go home and ask him if we can be polyamorous so I can go fuck your husbands,"

"Well, then, we'll tell everybody that you're a pedophile."

I'm ex-human-traffic, from my early years. I'd rather take a running leap into a meat grinder than do anything like that to a child. Actually, the abuse involved getting hit in the head a lot, before I maimed the guy doing it to me. (This motherfucker has a glass eye, because of me.) So I had brain damage, and right then I was having a moment. My heart beat hard and my perception of self expanded around me and then disappeared.

"I didn't think people like you existed," I said quietly.