Wishing everyone a very prosperous Year of the Dragon!

(h/t Nicki and Erik or the “Live 龙 and prosper” idea!)

So the other day I decided enough was enough and started fresh. As this is my personal blog, I wanted a design that was fun, interesting and showcased various things I like. I also wanted a bit of a sandbox that I could play in with new CSS3 and HTML5 goodness. And so the 2012 edition of the site was born.

One of my objectives was to make the site lighter (in weight, not colour), but still be a bit of a visual smack in the face. As such I’m using CSS instead of images for display elements wherever possible — true, this is a good practice all around, but one that is easily ignored or forgotten when you’re eager to get things “just so”. Fortunately CSS3 support is pretty much across the board now (thanks for joining the group IE9, your dusty nametag is by the door), and that opens up a huge palette for a Web designer to play with.

This has resulted in a theme that uses only about 10KB of “layout” images, not counting the various background photos (which can be customized page-by-page — see the about page) or the slightly heavier home page due to those big social icons.

<rant>
However, if you still happen to be using an old browser, things are going to look a bit sketchy for you. I spend a lot of time making client sites backwards compatible, and it’s frustrating. Next to bookkeeping, it’s about the most mundane and irritating part of my gig. The truly insulting bit is that there are few things simpler than upgrading to a modern browser, and yet people refuse to do so. And this is why for my site, my site, I’ve said “to hell with it” and have barely given those fools a code line of consideration (if you are part of the 2% that come here using IE6 or IE7, I just called you a fool, de-fooling yourself is easy). A modern Web experience and browser security obviously isn’t a priority to people who are using 10-year-old browser tech, and I’d be doing them a disservice by enabling them to continue using it.
</rant>

Anyway, the design still has little ways to go, and there are lots of small (and largely long-forgotten) legacy things that will need to be dealt with (the downside to running this blog for a little more than 8 years now — seven of which have been in China — is that the way I laid things out in the past is a far cry from the more standard way I do things now, lesson learned).

One other change is that I’ve done away with Disqus for comments. As a rule, I try to avoid 3rd party integration for things that core software does well enough. I wanted to give Disqus a try though and so had installed it with the last update (a year ago). Overall, I like Disqus’ functionality, and I like that it pretty seamlessly can be enabled and disabled (you’ll notice all comments made during my Disqus trial are still there and still in the proper hierarchy). It also has some great SNS integration. However, I do a lot of work with WordPress, and I’m used to the WordPress way of managing comments. Because of that, the Disqus system never really felt comfortable to me.

I think that about covers it. Hopefully the new theme is as enjoyable to visit as it was to put together.

In contemplating what having lived in China for three-quarters of the last decade means to me, I find it interesting that in a lot of ways I feel less sure or informed about this country now than I did in the past. It is, in the truest sense of the term, more or less “home”.

It is less home in all the ways you might expect it to be. Seven years on and I’m still consistently astounded and confounded by the way things are done here. Survival has forced a tempering of tantrums over every petty irritant and ignorance experienced here, but many things have also lost their “that’s so weird and cool” luster. Dirty and dangerous just aren’t as charming as they used to be.

What’s more, my Chinese language skills are still in need of a lot of work. I’ve spent next to no time in recent years improving my language abilities, and it shows. Like many an expat I’ve met, I hit the point where I could get by, and motivation was superseded by necessity. It has, in part inadvertently but in part intentionally, created a wall around my life here that prevents me from any hope of true integration with my adoptive land.

But as much as I still fumble with my tones and vocab, the toughest barrier to really feeling like China is home is that no matter how I feel about the place, I’ll always be a “laowai”. Granted, running a site called “Lost Laowai” illustrates my embracing of the term, but on a personal level, never fully being accepted by the community in which you live is tough.

Added to this is the constant pull of other “home”, the one which I now visit for a holiday, and where all my friends and family have been busily going about their lives for so many years without me. I can’t say I miss them in the ways I did when I first left Canada, I barely know their lives now, but I do miss being a part of it all. I miss things that I didn’t even really know or understand before I left. The value of holiday dinners, having family a short drive away in an emergency, people who have known you longer than your time in any one place.

But then, China is more home than any place I have ever lived.

It has become part of who I “am”. “Hi, I’m Ryan, I live in China.” It is the anecdote of my life. Whether I like it or not, my “foreignerness” has entrenched itself into my character. It is how so many of the people I know, know me. This blog isn’t about a Canadian, about a dad or about a writer cum designer. It is all those things, just as I am, but it is about a non-Chinese dude in China. I’m certain should I ever leave China, the disconnection with that identity will be a challenge.

It is also the homeland of my wife, and I cannot look at it or its people without seeing the reflection of someone I love so deeply. Through her, China has given me more patience and acceptance, as well as a much wider sense of the world and my place in it. Both her and her country have challenged me to grow and develop in ways I never knew I would.

Perhaps most relevantly though, it is the birth place and cultural identity of my son. The very fabric of me has quite literally been interwoven with China through him. Any chance that China wouldn’t forever be some sort of “home” disappeared the moment he cried his first half-Chinese cry. I love my wife, and I love my family, but I didn’t know love before my son — nothing in the world compares to that feeling. Apologies for the cliche, but creative literary devices are too complex to express how simple and true that is. And China, however indirectly, gave that to me.

And whereas Canada gets the distinction of being the place I grew up, the place I went to school, the place where I’m “from”; China will always be the place I became a husband, and a father — where I became an adult really. And for that China is definitely more home.

I’m not sure what the next seven years will bring. I barely expected to spend seven months in China, let alone the past seven years. But, for now at least, China is home, and I couldn’t be happier with that.

Anyway, check out this video to see what day one (yesterday) was like:

The competition is taking place in Riyuewan (Sun Moon Bay) on the eastern coast of the island, not too far from Sanya. And if you’re ever visiting Hainan, definitely check out the event’s organizer, Surfing Hainan, they offer very reasonably priced lessons, rentals and day trips.

See also: Hainan Riyuewan: The best surf beach in China

If being in the company of wild animals is a gradient; most Western zoos would be further towards “in the wild” and most Chinese zoos would be sitting much nearer the “waiting for slaughter” end of the spectrum.

However, after a very long, hot summer, the weather in Haikou is absolutely beautiful for getting out and doing some site-seeing. Conjuring up just enough cultural relativism to tuck away my misgivings and not ruin our son’s first trip to a zoo, we headed out.

The Haikou zoo is located in Golden Bull Mountain Park (金牛岭公园）Haikou’s largest park, pretty much dead-centre in the city. The entrance fee was 25RMB for adults and 10RMB for kids over 1.2m.

I’ve been to three zoos in my time in China: one in Jinzhou, a very small town that is essentially a suburb of Dalian; the Dalian Forest Zoo; and the Northeast Tiger Forest Park in Haerbin. The Jinzhou zoo was about what you’d expect for a 1RMB zoo in the corner of a small town’s central park. They had some shaggy camels, a bunch of hungry monkeys and one old sad-looking bear, which many years before had gotten loose and killed its keeper (but for a small zoo, apparently it was too valuable to euthanize). The Dalian Forest Zoo was actually pretty decent, and the tiger park was sad but impressive (watching a group of tigers take down a cow is something I’ll not soon forget).

The Haikou zoo fits somewhere between the Jinzhou zoo and the Dalian Forest Zoo. I was happy Casey had the opportunity to see these animals up close (though he was more interested in throwing leaves in the fish pond than marveling at the tigers), but it wasn’t without its sad moments. Sad as in, “awe *tear*” and sad as in “did you really stuff your dead giraffe rather than acquire a new one?”

Yep. The giraffe exhibit featured one large, semi-encased stuffed giraffe. Other surreal moments of the trip were seeing an exhibit of chickens and one of dogs. I kid you not, caged up in between monkeys were a random assortment of dogs (a pair of spaniels, two dalmatians, a German shepherd and a couple others). It’s weird, and maybe it’s because most of the more exotic animals I’ve only ever seen in cages, but seeing the dogs there was the most despairing bit of the day. It’s been pointed out to me that this is actually pretty common in Chinese zoos — even the Shanghai zoo features dogs.

Watching the monkey’s play in their big enclosure was entertaining. I’m not entirely sure why some monkeys got to play in a big “yard” (with stuff to swing on) and some were stuck in little cages. And while sobering to watch, being only a few feet from an absolutely massive tiger got my blood pumping. I will give that to Chinese zoos, they allow you a dangerous amount of proximity to the animals. The zoo also has a (pair?) of tiger cubs born last spring. We didn’t get much of a view of them, other than to glimpse one loudly grunting while chewing on a bone as a somewhat nervous-looking girl cleaned its cage.

I think it’s obvious from my description that I’m a bit torn in my feelings of the day. It was great to get out, great to show Casey animals he had until now only seen in animated form, and great to dust off my camera. Chinese zoos, however, make it tough to forget where most animals sit in the scheme of things here in China.

Photos

Here’s a partial collection of the animals. Notably missing are the hippo and the jaguar — neither were overly cooperative in getting their photo taken — and the snakes/crocodiles, as you had to pay extra to see them. From the entrance of the reptile area, all I could see were cages of chicks and bunnies. We assumed that would be a pretty quick way to ruin Casey’s zoo experience.

Haikou doesn’t have a Starbucks. Or at least according to rumours, doesn’t yet have a Starbucks. However, unlike the rest of China, and much like India and Thailand, we do have branches of Coffee World and Pizza Corner.

The downtown Guomao Coffee World and Pizza Corner was the first Western restaurant we were introduced to after moving down to Haikou. I’d never heard of the chains before, but was looking forward to sampling something not steamed, stir-fried or boiled, and I wasn’t let down. Their pizza, while not earth-shattering and a far cry from the ‘za of home, was more than enough to subdue my comfort food craving.

Unfortunately, its distance from where we live made it a bit of a non-starter for regular visits. I think other parents with young kids will sympathize; when it comes to eating out with a toddler, close to home tends to win out almost every time.

We’re fortunate that where we live in Haikou has a variety of decent Chinese restaurants, and one crappy “pizza” place. As such, I’ve not really been left wanting, with the exception of not having a good spot to get a Starbucks-style coffee nearby.

But now we do. Not 10 minutes from our place is a newly opened Coffee World location, on Haidian Dao’s Wuxi Lu. This morning Maggie, the boy and I decided to take the spot up on its offer of 2-for-1 waffles and see if it was any good. It was.

Prices are about on par with what you’d expect at a Starbucks — iced coffee drinks run 25 RMB (med) to 35 RMB (lrg), and the waffles range from 22 RMB (plain) to 30-ish RMB for fancier stuff. Our berry-covered waffles were 27 RMB (and two for one!). The location is small, much smaller than the downtown spot; and lacks a Pizza Corner, so food is limited to waffles, NY-style bagels, some wraps, pasta, and other simple stuff. But still, it’s a nice addition to the collection of restaurants in our “18-month-old-meltdown-must-run-home” radius.

I should mention that Coffee World isn’t the only Western-style coffee shop (not to be confused with the plethora of UBC clones on every corner). There is a cute café called Milli Coffee just around the corner from the downtown Coffee World, and a newly opened one a few doors down from the Coffee World by us on Haidian Dao. It’s the spot I want to love, but can’t.

Milli’s old-sofas and ambient interior have a bit more charm than Coffee World’s polished cookie-cutter chainishness. However, both times I’ve been there its staff seemed more interested in practicing invisibility than serving customers. What’s more, the drinks are over-priced, especially considering their decor couldn’t have cost more than a day’s worth of iced cappuccino sales. I have a hard time paying a premium to sit on dirty second-hand furniture in a dimly lit place — but that might just be me.

And it has no 2-for-1 waffles (at least until the end of the year). But maybe the near proximity of both locations will be for the betterment of both places, and ultimately us iced-drink lovers.

So Starbucks, this is just to say, we still want you to come to the island, but in making us wait you’re going to have some decent competition when you get here.