Category Archives: Travel

Why HSBC Sucks

By David Xia | Published: January 18, 2010

HSBC is not "the world's local bank" as their motto states. You'll find branches in 86 countries on every single continent, but each region's HSBC is an entirely separate bank.

I opened an account in Hong Kong's HSBC  last summer. When I left the country, I left behind a sizeable chunk of change in the HK HSBC account. Now I want it back so I can close the HK HSBC


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Also posted in Comedy | 2 Comments

Chinatown Bus, Worth the Risk?

By David Xia | Published: December 22, 2009
If you ever step onto a Fung Wah bus and notice dozens of them hanging inside, DO NOT GET ON. Here's why...

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Also posted in Comedy | 1 Comment

Summer Embers

By David Xia | Published: September 21, 2009
Some experiences are seemingly unremarkable when we live them and prove to be significant only afterwards, glittering like gems hidden under layers of cortical detritus and beckoning us to unearth them through reflection. Other experiences are not latent and are immediately meaningful.

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Five Reasons Why You Should Visit Xiamen

By David Xia | Published: August 24, 2009
Located in China’s Fujian province across the strait from Taiwan, Xiamen is a bustling coastal city offering all the usual amenities for travelers with Western sensibilities as well as a rich plethora of traditional Chinese culture and customs.


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Also posted in China | Leave a comment

Why I Wouldn’t Live in Hong Kong

By David Xia | Published: August 14, 2009
"For creature comforts, Hong Kong is unsurpassed, but Hong Kong is culturally barren. Living there is something like living inside a cash register."

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Tai Mo Shan, Done

By David Xia | Published: August 1, 2009
A sign reading "No Trespassing," a ten foot high fence wrapping all the way around, barbed wire everywhere? Sounds like an unambiguous invitation to me.

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Also posted in China, Nature/Outdoors | Leave a comment

Getting Away From the Machine

By David Xia | Published: July 29, 2009
There’s a digging machine at a construction site near my workplace in Hong Kong Central. Enormous, cylindrical, and piston-shaped, it prepares the foundation of a new building on Pedder Street by driving a sheer metal shaft at least two feet in diameter into hard, raw concrete. When steel collides with stone, the ground shakes and an ear-splitting clangor pulsates through the air as the threatening piston trembles and rises to strike again. An auditory manifestation of the city's pace of development, the piston slams into the ground again and again – a metronome beating out the urban tempo.

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Also posted in China, Nature/Outdoors | 1 Comment

“It’s like all the Mexicans in NYC just stopped working one day.”

By David Xia | Published: July 20, 2009
Imagine every Sunday all the Mexicans in NYC with low-skilled jobs stop working, go to Wall Street or Times Square, and just throw one big street party.

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Also posted in Books, China | Leave a comment

What Is a Trowel?

By David Xia | Published: June 26, 2009
From: David Xia To: CEO HK interns Subject: DID YOU SAY HIKING?!?! Dear fellow CEOs, A question first: are any of the guys bothering with getting a tux for the Ivy Ball?

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Also posted in China, Comedy | 1 Comment

Massive, Harmonious Madness

By David Xia | Published: June 23, 2009
A day spent experiencing HK's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is enough to put any urban-dwelling American to shame.

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Also posted in China | 1 Comment

Megamalls and Clumsy Change

By David Xia | Published: June 22, 2009

When I left NYC there was no evidence that the Sun exists. When I landed in HK, there was still none. The first ten days of my stay were filled with cumulonimbus clouds and grape-sized rain droplets. Stepping outside is like entering a sauna or breathing with a hot wet rag smothering your face. The CEOs here are taking three to four showers a day to gain short-lived relief from all the humidity-induced stickiness. Some brief musings about HK:

  1. HK (and China for that matter) is not ethnically diverse compared to NYC. The city’s 95% Chinese.
  2. There are so many mega-malls that look exactly alike. Armies of cleaning staff ensure they are all freakishly clean.

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CEO HK Interns

By David Xia | Published: June 20, 2009
Columbia University's Center for Career Education (CCE) will, no doubt, post on its website photos of Columbia Experience Overseas HK interns who look like they're having way more fun than anyone has a human right to by being treated to free Cantonese food and an open bar at an upscale bar/lounge. (You know Philia Lounge will be a nice place even before you go because of its website. There's no way a bar that's not doing well is going to deck out its website with Adobe Flash and eerie techno music.) But here are some additional flattering pictures of the CEO contingent.

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Also posted in China | 1 Comment

Kowloon Tong

By David Xia | Published: June 17, 2009
Columbia's Center for Career Education has provided us interns with free housing during our internships in HK. NTT International House is an eleven-story dormitory of Baptist University, which is nestled in the Kowloon Tong (九龍唐) district.

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Also posted in China | 1 Comment

“I was picked on at school.”

By David Xia | Published: June 13, 2009
  • airline: Cathay Pacific
  • distance traveled: 8,066mi (12,982km)
  • time to destination: 15hrs
  • cruising altitude: 31,998ft (9,753m)
  • outside air temperature: -49 degrees Celsius
  • in-flight dining: terrible
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="477" caption="Takeoff over Winthrop, MA"]Takeoff over Winthrop, MA[/caption]

My seat in 36A is next to the window in the wing section. My mom once told me the wingbox is the strongest section of the plane, but I later found out it's not necessarily the safest. You can die in a plane no matter where you're sitting. Thinking about Air France Flight 447, I mentally plan out my escape plans for various scenarios: fuselage coming apart in midair (à la Lost), water impact, etc.


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Also posted in China | 1 Comment

World’s Biggest Dildo Factory

By David Xia | Published: June 9, 2009
It’s t minus ten hours before I wake up at 4am for a direct flight to Hong Kong via Cathay Pacific, and I am as excited as an intravenous drug user who’s won a lifetime supply of needles, to put it mildly. Here’s one reason why: a mere 2.0km from where I’ll be living in HK is a place that once housed one of the biggest dildo plants in the world.

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Also posted in China | 6 Comments