Streets

Just a street picture to show the slopes typical of the city.
Many street names were also spanish in origins because of the Hispanic influences. To my surprise, I was told the state used to belong to Mexico. I was surprised becos Mexico seem too far south to that. So much for my sense of history! Till today, there's still a strong Hispanic influence and population, and I think even a strong proportion of the tourists would have come from Latin America. Sometimes though I would think they're Chinese becos they have difference features and skin colour, till they speak.

There are of course also many Asians here. We had lunch one day at a Chinese restaurant, whose owner was happy to give us a bit of history. Many of them speak Cantonese here, so i had assumed they were from Hong Kong. As it turns out, they were mostly from China, Guangdong province. Increasingly others were coming, so Putonghua is getting more common as well. The owner also gave us some perspective on property prices. A studio with a toliet, and no kitchen, would have cost US$1,700 a month to rent. Property prices are also very high. I was later told the kids population in the city was falling becos families couldn't afford to stay and were moving to the suburbs.

The other pic is what Siyuan had. The food was surprisingly good there, better than most of the places we ate at in Hong Kong. haha