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[ LA Chinatown Trip ] : 2004 March 6 -saturday-

This is my second LA trip report! Well, just like the Antelope Valley Trip, this trip was not really planned.. .. The day before, my Indonesian roommate invited to go with her as a guest to Chinatown for a tour and "all you can eat dim sum" for $12. We are supposed to meet at the De Neve Turnaround (It should be "Dykstra Turnaround"!!) at 11AM. We didn't have time for breakfast and arrived there early.. at around 10:45AM. No one was there except for the bus!

old school bus
it was parked there a long time until we boarded the bus. .. The bus driver brought his kid along for some reason.. . (sweat drop rolling down) I wonder what they were doing when we were eating lunch and walking around? shopping ka na? :D

We waited around until we officially left at 11:45!! We waited for about an hour!!!! Turnss out that the trip is actually organised by the Chinese Student Association (CSA).. and those officers seemed to arrive late!! How dare they waste our time and make it start at "Chinese Time"!? Well, most of the people that went on the trip aren't international students at all. There were quite a few half Chinese/Caucasian people who went. Some were in the "HAPA" club for these kind of people! I never heard of such thing!!! The CSA members split everyone into small groups with one of their members as a leader. Our group included 2 girls that were half Chinese, 1 guy from Spain, 1 ABC guy from San Francisco, and 2 people from Argentina. The group leader was, coincidentially, my roommate's student in the Physics 4AL lab she is a TA for! That guy seemed so surprised having his TA in the group that he announced to everyone that my roommate is his physics TA! hahah!

So we rode this old beaten up orange school bus and started our way to Downtown LA. Since it was kind of late, there was the usual LA Traffic Jam. If only we left earlier and on time..!! My roommate fell asleep in the bus as usual. We arrived at the Union Station near Olvera St, which has a Mexican night market. There was some sort of Native American dance with huge feather headdresses.. We went to the Chinese American Museum(425 North Los Angeles St, www.camla.org) although we were so starving.. we should have ate breakfast! The museum had exhibits about the first Chinese immigrants to America and had some art exhibits. It turns out that the original Chinatown was destroyed to make room for the Union Station. The building that the museum is in is the last remaining original building.

Chinese American Museum Front
The museum building is quite an old building with wooden stairs leading to the second floor. The second floor was an art exhibit of a Chinese guy named Tyrus Wong. He was born in Guangzhou and immigrated to the US when he was 9 years old. He is now 93 years old and is the oldest living Chinese-American artist in the US. Working for Disney, he created the preliminary atmospheric sketches that set the tone for Disney's "Bambi". I got this information from a pamplet, BTW! :D

"Group B"
(Left to right) Rachel, forgot her name!, ABC guy, Spain guy, Jack, the CSA leader, my roommate, me, Argentina guy(behind), Argentina lady. Whoever took this picture cut all our legs... .

After a very quick walk around the museum, we finally went back to the bus to go eat lunch! My roommate andI was quite starving at this point.. We went to "Golden Dragon Seafood Restaurant"... At the entrance is a sign saying that each dish of dim sum is $1.50. .. I had a bad feeling.. Usually when my family of 6 people go out to eat dim sum in Sacramento, the total price is around $30!! So when my roommate said that it was unlimited dim sum for $12, I thought it was very very expensive! Perhaps it is some famous place so it would be so pricey. I also thought it would be like a buffet.. .. Nope.. that is all wrong!! We didn't even get to select what we wanted to eat. The group leader did all the picking for us! We just sat there and ate. We ate BBQ pork buns (too sweet), Pork and vegetable buns, Ha Gao (Shrimp dumplings), Shui Mai, turnip cakes, assorted meat balls, pork spareribs, shrimp cheurng fun (I didn't get to taste it!), and fried gyoza(outside layer is too tough). Then we had some beef fried rice that was so moist and wet.. (One girl said that it is very tasty! .. . uh..it wasn't that good) Hong Kong style fried crisp noodle with squid on top (the noodles look "ayashii" as if it was artificially yellow and it wasn't even crisp at all!).. Chinese Broccoli/mustard (Gai Lan) with Oyster Sauce that was kind of weird tasting... the oyster sauce was more sweet than usual. Then for dessert we had taro and coconut jello. Our group leader then said that we should go now, but one of the Argentina persons said that she wanted to try some of the orange "flan" ...she was talking about mango pudding! haha. The best tasting food was probably the taro and coconut jello.. the rest of the food was among one of the worst dim sum I've ever ate.. and for me to actually taste it as bad should mean a lot.. My tastebuds aren't usually that "refined" and I can eat most things finding nothing wrong with the food while other people complain how bad it was..

After dinner, we walked around the area. Our group leader actually try to explain Chinese culture and even gave us tips on bargaining in those Chinese shops. For example, his technique is if an item is $20, he would put $15 in his pocket and give $5 to his friend. When he pays for it, he finds that he only has $15 in his pocket.. so he asks if he can get it for $15.. if he can't then he will ask his friend to "borrow" $5.. sneaky, isn't it?! Some of the girls couldn't resist and bought those little explosive throwing toys, 6 boxes for $1. My roommate seemed amazed by them.. it appears that she never saw them before! (sweat drop rolling down) We also went to a Chinese Herb/Medicine place and the other international students seemed interested in all the strange things and smell in there. There was also a street similar to "Ladies' Street" in Hong Kong.. stands full of cheap China goods.

We walked to the "Twin Golden Dragon Tower", which is basically a structure of two golden dragons that goes over the broad street. We just took pictures of them. Next, it seemed that our leader got lost. We walked around and our leader had to ask some guys for directions! :D We then went to the Tien Hau Temple. It had Chinese and Vietnamnese on the signs. The Temple was quite small, but I never really entered a temple in America before. The front had a large tripod with many sticks of incense. You walk in and there is a large table of many offerings: oranges, fruits, oil, etc.. There are also the divination sticks (don't know what to call them), and two blocks of wood in a mango-like shape and color. Our leader wasn't too familiar with going to the temple. He is from LA, but can speak mandarin. So he couldn't really explain and answer everyone's questions. He did explain those mango blocks are for praying and answering your questions. You bow to the gods with it for 3 times and drop the blocks. The answer to your prayer depends on how the blocks land: right side up, upside down, or the extremely rare case, on the side. He said that in Taiwan, there was an incident where it fell on the side and did not fall down! The monks put a glass barrier around where it dropped and now its part of the exhibition! haha.. Our leader didn't know too much about the divination sticks, where you pray and shake the container full of sticks until one stick falls out. Every stick has a different number. You look at the number of the fallen stick and go to where the fortunes are put. Your fortune is the one with the same number as your stick. Well, the ABC guy in our group was interested in doing it and asked our group leader how much did it cost. He didn't know so the ABC guy asked the temple lady there. She wasn't a nun or anything and was wearing ordinary clothes with some other guy. "How much is this?", asked the ABC guy as he held up the container of divination sticks. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW MUCH?", roared the temple lady. Boy, did she sound very offended!! She probably thought that he was asking how much was the divination sticks, not how much did it cost to get your fortune! One of the girls in our group had her mom come along and she explained to us that you usually put some little donation in the box.. Feeling unwelcome, most of us, including the group leader, went outside. We were talking outside until the Spain guy and some others came outside. He tried to get his fortune.. but no one told him how to do it.. he said that he just took a stick out, and asked the temple lady what was his fortune. The temple lady said that she couldn't tell him his fortune! How stupid! Well, she must be quite mad..!

After this, we went into the Chinese Confucious School. A Taiwanese and American flag was up on the building. Inside, the classrooms were very tiny. People asked about the meaning of the lion statue in the auditorium, but the group leader didn't really know. We went into a classroom and the group leader gave in introduction to Chinese language. Actually, he asked the girl's mom if she knew how to write the character "turtle" in Chinese, but she didn't know so he went to ask the school personnel!! Turns out that he doesn't know how to write Chinese! He later came back and wrote how the picture of a turtle evolved into the Chinese character.

After the school visit, we didn't have much time left! Our last stop was the "Sun Yat Sen Memorial". I thought it was going to be a museum or exhibition, but nope.. . it was that statue we passed by when riding on the bus!!

Sun-Yat Sen Memorial
It seems that all Chinatowns must have a Sun-Yat Sen memorial. I was surprised that the LA one is just a statue and a plague. The one in Sacramento (which doesn't really have a "chinatown") have the statue and a small museum! Behind the statue is a small square that a kung-fu school is performing... . Tourist area..

It was in the shopping area street.. and I was a bit surprised how there was much more people walking around compared with last time I went there. My roommate bought a mobile phone strap for $1. I wanted to get some Chinese watercolor rice paper, but I didn't see any for sale.. and we didn't have time. We looked at the very grotesque multicoloured wishing fountain there. What a sore to the eyes!! People were throwing coins there trying to get it in the tiny cans. Our group leader came and said, "You see that "wisdom" sign there with its tiny can? Well, "true wisdom" is that you don't throw money in!" haha..
We took a quick look at Sun Yat Sen's statue and read the plague. It was about 4:10 already! However, everyone was gathered around a martial arts show by some school. There was one black guy that was doing "drunken kung-fu".. The soundtrack was techno style.. yuck. Most of the students' performance was kind of bad.. . They don't seem very balanced.. as if they can't stand up straight. And, their arm motions seemed very orchestrated, as if they were robots.. there doesn't seem to be any meaning in their motions, as if they were just doing things mechanically!

At 4:20PM, we boarded the old school bus. We were all exhausted and hot. Our group leader said to my roommate,"When I go home, I'll take a nap and start working on the lab report!" My roommate fell asleep on the bus. . the ride was quite long and we arrived back at UCLA around 5PM. We took a whole group photo in front of the school bus and said our good byes... . Back at our apartment, my roommate and I drank a cold glass of non-concentrate orange juice.. We then discussed how bad the food was and how we were "ripped off" of our $12. My roommate said that she wasn't even full and wanted to eat more dim sum! Well, it was a fun trip and I met lots of different people.. Our group was really great.. Thanks to my roommate who invited me to tag along!

Return ride to UCLA
Everyone was tired.. it was quite a hot day walking under the sun. I was also tired.. but my roommate once again almost immediately fell asleep during the bus ride! The ride was long once more because of LA traffic.. too many cars in LA... .

After trip group pose
All the people wearing the identical black T-shirts are CSA officers. Can you find me? I'm wearing a brown jacket and yellow orchre T-shirt and I'm kneeling down in front of my roommate, who is wearing the bright light blue shirt.

(photos taken from CSA homepage: http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/csa)