April 8, 2008 Hong Kong, China Eleven years since the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese government, and crossing the border between Mainland China and Hong Kong is still an ordeal. It took Fiona Zhu and I nearly four hours to travel from Guangzhou...
April 8, 2008 After two weeks in China's Guangdong Province, I saw my first day of unequivocal sunshine on April 6th in Guangzhou. It turns out the old Chinese saying about this festival season was wrong: sometimes it does not rain at Qing Ming. But Fiona Zhu told me...
April 6, 2008 Guangzhou, China Fiona Zhu and I took a taxi to an old Xiguan great house yesterday. The house is now a museum, displaying the lifestyle of rich merchants of the past in the Liwan neighborhood of Guangzhou. The old Chinese home was like something out of...
April 5th, 2008 Guangzhou, China Yesterday, Fiona Zhu and I went to the Haizhu Wholesale Market, a giant warehouse where hundreds of stalls sell the trinkets, baubles, kitsch and downright junk of a consumer society. Mainly we're talking about the things no one...
April 4, 2008 Guangzhou, China Yesterday, Fiona Zhu and I walked to Shang Xia Jiu, which literally means "Up-Down Nine," as in "Up and Down 9th Street." The long pedestrian avenue crosses the old town center, but it's also one of the city's trendiest hangouts. It's...
April 3, 2008 Guangzhou, China It’s another wet, cloud-swaddled morning in Guangzhou, the city’s towers and apartment blocks floating in a bath of white mist. Perhaps it’s for the best. This industrial city might otherwise look too starkly gritty and real in the full...
If you’ve been waiting for the next installment of the search for my Chinese roots, please excuse the slight delay. As Marcia Brady would say, “Something suddenly came up.” It turns out I can’t manage a travel story every single day, unless I neglect my clients. So,...
March 31, 2008 Bok Sa, Toishan, Guangdong Province, China Another misty, rainy day and night in Toishan. I haven’t really seen the sun since I walked out of the airport in Hong Kong seven days ago. I do recall one five-minute reprieve when the clouds parted just long...
March 31, 2008 Bok Sa, Toishan, Guangdong Province, China Yesterday, we paid our promised visit to Old Mr. Ma Wen Hui. When we arrived, his granddaughter Ma Jin Feng and her mother Kuang Cui Lan flung open their doors and eagerly shepherded us inside. We passed...
March 30, 2008 Bok Sa, Toishan Yesterday I took a laxative in the wee morning hours, but it didn’t kick in until afternoon, and even now I still feel full of crap. All the doughy dim sum in the mornings, and white rice and rice-based foods all day long aren’t helping....
Cara Lopez Lee is the author of They Only Eat Their Husbands. She’s a winner of The Moth StorySLAM and performs in many storytelling shows, including Unheard L.A., and Strong Words. Her writing appears in such publications as Los Angeles Times, Manifest-Station, and Writing for Peace. She’s a traveler, swing dancer, and baker of pies. Cara and her husband live in the beach-town of Ventura, California, where they enjoy tending their Certified Wildlife Habitat full of birds.
