Behind the curtains– an observation and analysis of residential buildings in Pyongyang

Observing and starking contrasts architectures of different cities and capturing different skylines has always been my favorite travel experience. The same, of course applies to Pyongyang–the capital of the mysterious regime of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

When most of us think of skylines, the first thing that pops up in our mind would be the unique and well-renowned scenaric view of Wan Chai and Central from the Victoria Peak of across the Victoria Harbour. The same applies to Pyongyang, but instead of Victoria Harbour, they have Taedong River; instead of Central, they have Mansuedae District; and instead of having a natural high-rise mountain like Victoria Peak to admire the beauty of the skyline from high above, Pyongyang(which directly translates to flat land) has built the Juche Tower to act as a panoramic skytower for stunning bird-eye-view of the cities buildings.

We can get to know more about the country itself from taking a look at its residential buildings. Residential buildings are the place in which locals really live in and observing them will give us a more realistic and down the earth understanding of a place, sometimes more realistic than what media and travel websites tell us. Residential buildings built under the rule of Kim Il Sung are mostly relatively shorter at 5-8 stories high, with different and bright eye-catching colors painted at each different level, like red, yellow and green. On the good side, this enhances the fairytale-like utopia of happiness and joy the regime was trying to create at the beginning of the Kim’s rule not long after the Korean War in the 1950s. However, they fail to impress me and I only felt dizziness and disturbance due to the abuse and improper organization of colors on their walls. And if you think about it, if the DPRK was really the utopia that they were advertising, happiness and joy should be expressed on the face of citizens, instead of artificially, forcefully and unnaturally painting them on building walls.

This starks great contrast to residential buildings built by Kim Jong Un, the current leader. In his era, residential buildings has caught up with the rest of the world, with innovative designs and modern appearance. Glasswalls and light decorations have already become the norm in the newly built residential buildings. When I was in downtown Pyongyang, I was really shocked by how modern the residential buildings look, resembling any major city like Hong Kong and New York. These buildings are tall, with around 20 stories in height, and at night, light decorations illuminate to create a symphony of lights to dazzle visitors. However, I started to feel everything is not that simple. If you thinking deeply, you will start to doubt: why would residential buildings need light decorations on the outer walls? Why are there only a few flats with lights on in these buildings? You will soon realize, that all these dazzling and bustling scenes are only one of the many ways the regime use to impress foreigners. Residential buildings, would not necessarily need light decorations. This is only a trick the government uses to make visitors how busy and bustle the city is, and they are imitating other major cities like London and Paris, which are often illuminated at night. If a building, especially a residential building in which people really live in, has high occupancy, then lights would be lit at most of the flats at night time, which suggests residential buildings of the city has quite a low occupancy rate. Another thing I spotted is that the flats with lights switched on at night are mostly located lower levels of buildings, which suggests that behind the fabulous cover of the buildings with innovative outlooks, residents would like to live at lower levels, probably due to the lack of elevators.

What I would like to bring out is that by observing even the most subtle details, everyone will be able to know more about a place and its people, and most importantly, the truth. For the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, under the cover of dazzling and eye-catching buildings, it seems to me that they are only trying to hide their secrets of poverty and unstable social environment. Just like any other dictatorships, the regime will soon be overthrown if they only contribute efforts on facades instead of winning the hearts of their people by improving their quality of life from the most fundamental level.

A break

So yep I just finished reviewing my second day yesterday. However, I would not be reviewing day 3 today. For a couple of reasons. Well firstly, it is not quite possible and feasible for me to review the whole day 3 in one blog, which means I have to cut it into half. However, I will be departing to Beijing tomorrow in order to get into North Korea. Typing out half a day doesn’t seems nice.

So what I’m going to do today is to talk a little about myself. Well, I’m just a teenage boy from Hong Kong who travels occasionally to pretty much random places. I remember I was in Iowa for 2 weeks for a summer school program. Then I asked my mum whether I could stay in Canada for a week before coming back home. I did not believe she approved my crazy idea and I stayed in Toronto for 7 days, living in an Air BnB room, without any freinds or relatives beside me when I was just 15. That was crazy I know. I’m so glad I did not die. I almost got lost in Niagara when I joint a tour to the falls and yup that was scary.

I know some of you reading this already know me and think I’m more of a musician than a traveller. Well that’s kind of true. Music is my strength and interest and travelling and exploring everywhere is my what I would like to do when I’m free.

So yup that’s about it today. I’m departing to Beijing in the morning tomorrow and see you soon!

Kazakhstan Day 2. 2

Yep I’m going to continue review the later hours of my second day at Almaty and Kazakhstan.
So at the very same day, after we had lunch at Almaty, we rode our coach (which is so old that it seems like it’s made in the 70s or 80s) and approached the train station.

Well this is a photo of my train ticket, had not idea what it says

We arrived the train station early, so we toke a couple photos and me and my friends just kind of wander around the train station. I was looking for stamps for mailing postcards, unfortunately I couldn’t find them and I bought some magnets written ‘Kazakhstan’ as souvenirs.

The architecture style of the station really did came as a great shock to us. It had curvly arcs, sculptured walls and gold-painted ceilings just like the Russian-styled metro stations. The security check wasn’t really tight, I mean I just literally walked past it, without being required to take off my clothes or anything, big contrast when compared to the security checks in the States.

Whatever, it didn’t took us long to explore each and every shop in the station as it isn’t very big. Soon, we arrived at the rails. The rails are open-aired, and there are no fences or obstacles to prevent people from falling into railroads. On one hand that’s a little bit dangerous, but on the other hand, it allows me to take pictures so yeah, a coin always has two sides.

This is how it looks

So in was an overnight ride. We got to our rooms. They were crowded and small, with poor ventilation. Four of us cramped into a space with could barely four beds, with two overlapping each other. Whatever, it was great fun and experience to spend a night on trains like this. At first, we were worried about whether we will have enough food to survive to the next day (just kidding, we were just finding which cart the restaurant is located in), but we soon discovered that there are water dispensers at the rear ends of each cart and the restaurant is located at the 3rd cart, while our rooms were in the 8th cart. We rest a while and waited for dinner to come.

A random photo waiting to be served in the restaurant

I ordered horse meat steak with rice and coke. The horse meat didn’t taste bad, but it kind of taste like beef, not like the one I had earlier in Almaty. Whatever.

This is about it, I’ll be reviewing my following days soon. See you!

Kazakhstan Day 2. 1

So today I’ll be reviewing my second day of my Kazakhstan trip. We arrived at the KIMEP University at noon, and we learnt a lot about its campus, reputation and academics from student guides there. Well, the University is big, however, the facilities are not that new and some of them lack proper management. There are students from different countries studying there, Kazakh people, Chinese, Russian etc. When I asked a Chinese student why he chose to study there, he replied that the university is well-known in the Middle Asia area and so he wanted to receive quality education there. I later then discovered that some universities in Hong Kong like the Baptist University and the City University of Hong Kong also cooperates with KIMEP University and organizes exchange programs. Well it does seems like a famous and reputated university, but to be honest, I knew nothing about Kazakhstan before the trip, so it’s not surprising that I haven’t heard of the university.
What I remember most about the university was its Starbucks thought. It’s just shocked me when I saw foreign American coffee chains spreading its influence even in Kazakhstan.

A statue celebrating the university’s 25th anniversary.

So this is what we did on the first half of the day. I’ll be reviewing the rest tomorrow. See you!

Kazakhstan Day 1

So today I’m just gonna review what I did on the first day of my trip. It’s worthy to note that we actually spent half a day traveling on the first day so not a large proportion of it will be about Kazakhstan.

I read my diary just now and I’m just gonna summarize it a little bit.

It was 3/27, Tuesday, 2018. I got up at 5:00AM and arrived at the ahong Kong International Airport by 6AM. We arrived at Terminal 1 to check in, the took 2 trips of driverless trains to Terminal 2 for boarding. Well, Terminal 1 is more spacious, yet Terminal 2 has newer facilities.

So not long after we boarded the plane, and I thought it will be nice if I show you guys some photos.

Yup the screen says ‘Almaty’ in traditional Chinese, which is 阿拉木圖.

We took Air Astana to Almaty.

Just some snacks provided on the plane.

And here comes the meal!!!

An aerial view of some snow-covered mountains when we almost landed.

We landed! And this is how the Almaty International Airport looks like.

My first impression

Some have asked me, how’s the airport in Almaty comparing to the one in Hong Kong? Undeniably, Hong Kong has a much larger and newer airport, with more entertainment, facilities, and restaurants. Yet, I recall witnessing officials, wearing Russian-style fury down coats, giving tourists an impression: “this country is very strict, don’t break the laws”. This also makes foreigners like me really curious about people in Kazakhstan: do they live in the same way like they did during the Soviet times? Or did they entered a new way of democracy ?

This is what I wrote in my diary:

So we arrived. We got off the plane, and passed through the security check. The first impression to Kazakhstan is that: is this the Soviet Union? The security guards dressed like generals, and there is still some billboards with some Soviet influence. Whatever, we got our luggage.

I apologize if I offend anybody but to be honest, that’s my first impression of the country.

Yeah and here’s another sentence that is in my diary:

Now on the bus, everything I see is like really poor, the houses are like about to fall.

I still remember this scene vividly, houses we passed by were all in Soviet-style and lack proper management and maintenance. This starks a really great contrast to Hong Kong, in which high-rise buildings fill most of the city’s urban areas.

And yes, I admit that my first impression on Kazakhstan is not that good.

At the same time, one of our classmates, unfortunately lost his luggage somehow, later you will know why.

So this a photo I took of a street, just outside the hotel. Streets outside my hotel have deep and wide ditches. We have to watch our steps as we walked all g the streets and be real careful not to fall into one of those ditches.

It’s not completely true

So yup, this section is about me realizing that Kazakhstan is actually not a bad place as a tourist destination.

Well next up I got a chance to understand the Kazakh culture. We visited a museum about music instruments of Kazakhstan. I discovered that some of the instruments resembles some Chinese instruments as they have a lot of similarities.

This is kind of interesting. When we read through Chinese history, we understand that the Kazakh people used to be one of our enemies invading our territory, but then we were there, in Kazakhstan, trying to know more about their culture. And yup, from the knowledge I gained in the museum I can tell you some Chinese instruments appeared in another form in Kazakhstan before entering China and getting popular.

On the same day, we also visited the Civic Square, telling the history of Independence and the wars of fighting against the Russian government, according to our guide.

Here’s a picture of it:

That evening, we arrived at a local shopping, in which we discovered many international brands inside, including New Yorker and Footlocker etc. Their appearance came as a shock to me as I thought that Kazakhstan would be a poor country and foreign countries would not set up their branches there. Turns out that I’m wrong.

How the mall looks. Modern and stylish, right?

That night we went on to a mountain in Astana and saw the gorgeous skyline of Almaty there. It’s another kind of beauty than the skylines in Hong Kong: the buildings are not as high as the ones in Hong Kong, yet they blend in harmoniously without causing too much light pollution. That night, we had dinner at a high-end restaurant. One dish stands out form the others, the horse sausage. The horse meat is actually quite tasty, but a little but too salty. One thing I couldn’t accommodate is that they like to put raw vegetables to plate. We then tried our fried rice with both meat lamb and horse meat. It tasted really nice. Besides meat, there was also some pasta in the fried rice, called Beshbarmark, which meant 5 fingers in Kazak as their ancestors used to eat them with 5 fingers. While we were eating there are even live performances of traditional Kazakh music. We enjoyed the experience very much.

Well I learnt one valuable lesson from the first day: your first impression is not the best way to make a judgement. I thought Kazakhstan would be a poor and underdeveloped country, turns out that the most luxurious side of the country is well-hidden in its city centres.

Well I’m going to type a half of Day 2 tomorrow, it’s simply too long to type a whole day into one blog. I’ll update myself soon, see you guys later!

Headstart!!!

So yeah this is my first post and yup, it’s 17th of April now and my Easter holiday has just begun. This Easter, I will be traveling to some cities inside North Korea, including Pyongyang, the capital, and also some other manufacture hubs of the country. It’s obvious that I will not be able to upload anything and update myself during the trip, but I will type my experiences as soon as I leave the country (leaving North Korea means entering China in case you don’t know).

In later posts I will be reviewing my trips in previous years as many of you have asked me about my experiences for some reason. The thing is I don’t know which country to start with.

I will update myself, see you guys later!