[Editor's note: For three days we are featuring excerpts from Simon Song's weblog, "My Trip to New York: It Worked!" ... See previous page for more details.]

American young people like doing exercises. They jog, go to gym, or do other kinds of sports. I remember that when I went to Washington D.C. ten years ago, I saw a lot of people jogging on the Mall and on roads. I like jogging, so I joined in.

This time, I see nothing changed. The only change maybe is that more people start their workout in different ways. Today, I went to the Hudson River Park, and even saw a trapeze school. That is pretty cool.

Before I went to the park, I trans passed Chinatown on the canal street, which ends at the Hudson River Park. That is totally different. Young people, Chinese or Vietnamese, they are struggling to make a living, legally or illegally.

So several blocks make two different worlds. The world is not as what Americans has said: people are born equal. People are not born equal, not between countries, even within countries.

I am always cautious about my stuff when I go to Chinatown. But yesterday, when Iris saw me, she said that I look like a typical New Yorker. Actually I changed nothing I think. But I was still happy to hear that, because I don't want to be noticed. I just want to be as common as anybody else.

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Tonight we went to a Chinese restaurant, not in Chinatown, but on the 2nd Av., between 55th and 56th.

The dishes were delicious and tasted just like the way we had in China. Chinese food here in America is generally localized. It fits more to the tastes of foreigners than Chinese. Even the most traditional Chinese dishes, like Kong Pao Chicken, taste strange. But since Americans, or foreigners, like them, they are fine. The chefs need to put their feet into the right shoes.

But in China, western dishes keep their originally flavor and taste. They don't change. Chinese people either like them and go to western restaurants, or hate them and refuse to enter. That doesn't matter. If you don't go, there will be others.

Here in New York, I'd rather eat a burger than Americanized Chinese food. I don't feel the right way after eating the strange Chinese food.