The Continuing Journey to Xiamen

Hong Kong is now officially my favorite large city. Yeah, the pollution is not great, but it's the center of Asia. I even got to read a bit of Japanese, although most of what I could recognize was katakans, which is basically just foreign (to Japanese)  words in the Japanese sound system. Still, it's really neat. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long, but the time that we spent there was time well spent.

While in Hong Kong, we met Dr. Allard's friend Kevin, who works with the government in doing rescue archaeology. We went with him to an excavation of a burial site where there were quite a few Ming burials. It was my first dig site, and although hot, it was pretty amazing. But wait, there's more! We got to go see Hong Kong's repository of archaeological finds. Basically all of the stuff in Hong Kong that's not in museums was there. Very cool stuff. They had this one piece of pottery whose purpose evades them. It looked like a pot that had the bottom taken off of it, but there was no breakage, meaning that it was made that way. I like that there's still unknowns in this field. it means that anthropologists still have work, which means I won't be bored. I feel I've got to clarify that I'm not an archaeologist, nor do I plan to be. I like cultural anthropology, which is studying those still living. It's just that I like to see that there's room in the world for more academics. Anyways, I got to see the Hong Kong repository of archaeological artifacts. In case you missed that. And how amazing that is.

Now I'm in Guangzhou, on my way to Xiamen. We've got to spend a bit more time here, but I don't really have a problem with that. It's not Hong Kong, but it's still a big city with a lot of great stuff. I'm constantly amazed at the quality of chain restaurants here. We went to Pizza Hut for lunch today, and it's a real restaurant, not just fast food. Not to mention the fact that we gat a meal for three for around $4 US. I could get used to that. We should be headingout to some more archaelogical museums (just remember; me: not archaeologist, Dr. Allard: achaeologist) pretty soon, and maybe Dr. Allard's old school. It should be pretty fun. Stay classy, North America.