Remember that bullshit about me being so happy to live with less than I'm used to, having so few clothes and possessions, and free from the desire to purchase all that dumb crap that I know I don't need? Well, I ended up buying a shitload of clothes while I was here. See below:
That's 4 knock-off polo shirts, 5 t-shirts, 9 pairs of shoes, two tailored jackets, 1 tailored suit, and 12 tailor-fitted button down shirts. Half of this stuff was purchased in Beijing at the silk market, and half in Shanghai at the South Bund Fabric Market. The total cost for everything seen here was about $600.
The only reason I don't feel like a total hypocrite for buying all of this stuff after talking about how much I hate spending money is that I feel like I was taking advantage of a time in my life when clothing is the cheapest it will ever be. When am I ever going to get custom fit shirts made for me for $10?
I can't imagine that its very common for people to sue one another here. Specifically, it must be fairly rare for corporations (and the government, obviously) to face a lawsuit from an individual.
My theory - not that anybody asked, or that I've made an attempt to research this in any way - is that Chinese cultural conventions and legal customs are much much older than those in the US. The United States is less than 250 years old, younger than the modern concept of corporations and only slightly older than the liability laws that permit Americans to bring a myriad of stupid suits every day. So maybe because America was formed within the context of all these modern legal concepts that people seem so much more careful to protect themselves from fault.
I want to say again that I have no idea what I'm talking about. But some of the things I've seen here seem so dangerous and negligent that I find myself dumbfounded. I guess there are no Chinese Ralph Naders.
The thing that scares me the most is the window-washers in Shanghai. On every building in the city (except for one near our apartment that looks to have a two-man apparatus) the window washers hang from a single rope. They dangle off the side of 50-story buildings with one rope, a squeegee, and two hip-holstered buckets of water. The looks to be merely tied around their waste too, but I have to believe that they have some kind of carabeaner thingy that holds them steady.
This is four guys cleaning our work building:
closer-up:The next scariest thing about Shanghai is rain. When it's wet, this place is infinitely more dangerous. The steps mike is descending (one at a time, 10 second rest between each one) are the subway station steps at one of the most populated stations. The picture doesn't do a great job of showing this, but the stairs are uncovered near the top, meaning that a river of water is constantly pouring down these steps. Most shoes slide like ice skates on the slippery stone surface, and that we've managed not to crack our heads every time we go to work on a rainy day is a testament to extreme patience, guard rails, and lots of luck.
This is an even worse picture of a construction site near our apartment. That's a tractor on the left though, digging out a sidewalk while pedestrians and cars pass right through the middle of the site. Twice I've had to dodge giant backhoe loaders on the way to work to avoid having my head taken off. Another time, a tractor ran over the front wheel of a guy's scooter, and nobody even looked twice. For most of the time we've been here, a bridge has been under construction that crosses a popular pathway of ours. If it were to collapse during commuting hours, dozens of pedestrians underneath would surely die. My first two weeks in this city were spent wandering around wondering "are you allowed to do that?"
He's back out on the corner like nothing happened tonight. Even though we had a Chinese speaker with us when we visited tonight, she didn't find out shit. All he said was that a "quarrel" happened last night. Nonetheless, he said he built himself an all-new cart today and was back in the saddle.
Just after 10pm tonight, Mike and I headed down to our favorite street noodle vendor. We've been visiting the same guy on a regular basis for our entire three months here. We affectionately refer to him as "noodle man" and continue to patronize his noodle stand even though there are about a dozen similar stands lining the corners of the same intersection.
We get noodles from noodle man quite often. Three nights a week, probably. He seems like such a nice guy. I would guess that he is about our age, clean cut, and always really jovial and upbeat. He tries to speak English with us, and Mike can communicate the basics with him in Chinese.
Noodle man has a variety of noodles (chow mien noodles, thinner more spaghetti-like noodles, thick flat noodles, and rice) that he fries up in a propane-powered wok with all kinds of mysterious oils and powders. Noodles costs four yuan (like sixty cents), and its easily enough food to fill you up. Lately Mike has been visiting drunk and tipping noodle man ridiculous amounts of money. The most egregious was the fifteen dollar tip - on a sixy cent meal - a few weeks ago. This may or may not have something to do with what happened tonight, but it is certainly part of the reason noodle man is always so happy to see us.
The intersection where noodle man works is in the middle of the red light district near our apartment. Keep that in mind.
By chance, I brought my camera with me because I'm leaving the country next week, and wanted a picture of noodle man before I left.
Tonight, he wasn't there.
This was bizarre because he's occupied the same spot on the same intersection every night (except Saturdays) since we arrived. The other vendors were all in their normal spots, but no sign of noodle man. Though we were confused by his absence, I took a picture anyway, and ordered 10 meat sticks (skewers with various types of meat - ten cents each!) from the guy on the far right.
Notice also that the street is completely deserted.
After snapping that picture, I walked back up to the meat stick vendor where my food was cooking. As I arrived, a van screamed into the intersection from the south and screeched to a halt. Inside were about six men dressed in military uniforms. Before I could even tell Mike to "look!" every one of the food vendors had spun their carts around and were running with them down the street away from the van. Each of the carts is mounted on large bicycle wheels. Apparently this is why.
So within five seconds of complete calm, Mike and I are standing alone in an intersection, fifteen feet from a van gushing uniformed men. Suddenly, police cars with lights on and sirens blaring came from the north, south, and east, trying to contain the scattering vendors. Luckily, the vendors we were dealing with fled west. The policemen seemed to consider chasing them but decided not to. When it was clear that they weren't being pursued, my vendor stopped running, boxed up my still-cooking food, and jogged the container back to me, where I still stood, quite stunned, in the intersection.
After the police cars arrived, so did a large truck. It looked like a blue dump truck. This got parked right in the middle of the intersection, and another load of policemen dismounted from its large open bed.
By this time, a crowd had formed on the other side of that dump truck. People in their pajamas were still pouring into the street. We crossed the intersection and worked our way into the forming crowd to witness the commotion. What we saw were six or seven policemen wrestling with a Chinese man. The man was struggling against the officers' attempts to wrangle him, and as they tried, he was repeatedly thrown into the side of the dump truck. When they spun him around, we couldn't believe what we saw.
It was noodle man!
I have no idea where he had come from, because his cart - like I mentioned - wasn't in its usual place. But there he was, in the middle of the fracas. While he was being wrestled by the military dudes, another group of people were systematically dismantling his noodle cart. First one policeman disconnected the propane tank and disappeared with it around the other side of the truck. Next they removed the wok and food from the top of the cart. Then a number of officers hoisted the cart up into the bed of the dump truck and started securing it.
Mike and I were the only two white people in the crowd (about one hundred big now). I'm not sure exactly what our presence meant, but we were definitely drawing attention. A few Chinese people began talking to us, in a manner that seemed (to both of us) to suggest that they felt an injustice was being committed, and wanted us to help somehow. Unfortunately, we didn't understand a word of whatever they kept repeating. An officer noticed the conversations, and quickly ushered the Chinese people away, an obvious warning against talking to us.
I pulled out my camera again and took about 3 minutes of video from my hip. Unfortunately, I didn't capture anything of terrible interest. Oddly, one of the military guys was filming the whole thing (with a video camera that had to have been made in 1988), so maybe if I can find out his youtube username we can all get some insight as to what the hell went down. Harhar.
The good news is that after the cart was in the truck, it took off along with most of the police cars and noodle man was released. He was still very flustered, and immediately got on his cell phone to start figuring things out.
If I find out anything about why the fuck fifty policemen decided noodle man (and only noodle man) shouldn't be in business anymore, I'll be sure to post an update. Though I don't imagine I'll ever know why ransacking a noodle cart is a higher priority than cracking down on the hundreds of brothels within the same city block.
Eerie also that today is the 19th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square craziness. Happy Anniversary, noodle man!
There is a three-floor grocery store called E-Mart that we've visited to pick up staples like alcohol, chips, and tp during our time here (we realized shortly after our first purchase that the apartment refills our tp, so we still have 19 of the 20 rolls we purchased in early March). This second floor, where the entrance is, contains the non-edible things like clothing and linens, toys, and household tools.
Upstairs pretty much has only electronic items, mostly appliances. Refrigerators, microwaves, heaters, and things like cell phones and MP3 players. Like most of the other places that sell electronics, this floor is a grid of brand-centric vendor stands, each manned with a few salesmen each. The stands are usually squarish, measuring ten by ten square feet, stuffed with products and a surrounded by a glass showcase separating you from the vendors themselves. Its eerie up here, mostly because its almost always empty. It's usually 2 salesmen to every customer. I've never spent longer than twenty seconds on this floor.
Downstairs has everything that Safeway might have, except for all the familiar products. It's a huge floor. It looks like equal parts WalMart, Costco, and Albertsons. Albertsons because of all the live sea-animals, which I'll get to momentarily.
I've spent a lot of time down here. You could basically divide the floor into six sections. Drinkables, Junk Food, Cosmetics/Cleaning, Foreign Food (hilarious), Meats, and Cooking Tools (drinkware, pots, ricemakers, etc.).
All of the alcohol is the same stuff you find in America, and its about the same price (as California that is, it's generally cheaper than in Washington). All the expensive wine you can buy is from France and Northern California. Or, for about 1/10th of the price, you can buy Chinese wine. We haven't bought much wine, but have gone through our share of scotch and rum for whatever reason. We buy a lot of beer too, but usually from the convenience stores. Its about 50 cents (US) for a 600ml bottle (one and a half cans) of TsingTao, which is the Budweiser of China.
The cosmetics corner is pretty normal too, except that I can't read anything, so I have to look at what the people on the bottle are doing with the product to judge what it does. We searched for fifteen minutes trying to find dishwasher detergent the other day. Apparently there aren't a lot of dishwashers in China, so that's why this stuff may not be so easy to get ahold of. Oh, and the dove body wash we got smells like dirty chemicals.
The foreign food section contains mostly boxes of crackers and crappy spaghetti, so that's where we spend most of our time.
One of the craziest areas is definitely the meat section. Here, you can buy whole (dehydrated, I think) chickens, or pigs lets that look like they were sliced straight off the hip. There is a section with various aquarium-sized tanks of fish, frogs, snakes, and other things that you can presumably pick up (either alive or dead, I'm not sure how it works) and cook for dinner.
I don't know if the frogs are sedated, but for some reason they don't jump out of the enclosure. Pictures below (chicken, frogs, turtles, snakes).
Friday was supposed to be our final day in Beijing (day three), and it wasn't quite as touristy. Actually, it was much more panicked and hopeless. Here's why.
Bonehead move #1 by me occurred weeks earlier. I can't remember why I booked an overnight train from Beijing back to Shanghai. I mentioned before that saving the cost of two nights in a hotel were factors in my decision (then I said "fuck you, don't judge me"); but somehow I failed to recognize that we weren't saving any hotel costs in Shanghai since, well... I LIVE THERE. (The cost of a one-way flight was only slightly more expensive than a one-way train ride.)
So, yeah, I'm an idiot. But after I realized how dumb I was, I thought no big deal. We'll just take the train back, I'll get to pretend I'm five-years-old and on my way to Capitola in that ugly Toyota box-van we used to have, and we'll be in Shanghai for all of Saturday. Then I thought "I hope our tickets arrive at the hotel on Thursday!" Guess what happened.
If you remember the convenient experience of online purchases in China, you probably already understand where this is headed. I purchased train tickets three weeks earlier, but adherent to Chinese Railway's motto, "fuck e-tickets and fuck planning ahead", tickets are issued (physically printed) no sooner than ten days in advance, and must be issued and delivered in the city from which you are departing. So, when I purchased the train tickets, I had to tell the vendors what hotel I would be staying at, and they said they would deliver them to our hotel on Thursday, the day before departure. They were not there on Thursday. Luckily, they were also not there on Friday. My calls and email to the vendor that booked them for me were going unanswered. It was 10:15 am on Friday morning, and my blood pressure was close to making my ears bleed.
The train was scheduled to depart at 7pm. Okay, I figured. We'll head down to the train station, purchase new tickets, and get our refund from ChinaTripAdvisor.com later.
When we arrived at the train station, it was a complete mess. People. Everywhere. There was one ticket window (out of maybe one hundred) labeled "foreign guest ticket office", which took an hour for us to find. The woman barely spoke English (not her fault, mine, I know) and did manage to tell me that the earliest train from Beijing to Shanghai with available seats would be Sunday morning. Staci was scheduled to fly home (from Shanghai) Sunday morning, so that wasn't an option.
We sat down on the curb outside the train station with most of our bags - we had already checked out of our room - and tried to come up with a plan. My internal dialog was very clear: "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck".
Staci was being a complete pro. If she was panicking, she didn't show it. We decided to head back to the hotel to make use of the internet. The internet fixes everything. We needed to figure out if flights were available on Friday/Saturday, and potentially find a hotel for the evening if we couldn't fly out on Friday.
We hopped in a cab headed back to the hotel. After one giant traffic jam, a few travel agency visits, an emergency phone call to a colleague in Beijing, some tense conversations (hard to believe it, but Staci was slowly losing confidence in my decision-making ability), and one business center later, shit was mostly figured out. We checked into a cheap hotel nearby, and later that night barely made it in time to pick up our boarding passes for Saturday's flight (hey, entrepreneurs of the world, introduce e-tickets to China, you're welcome).
Crazily, we still had time to visit the Silk Market on Friday, which were our only plans to begin with, so it was a success by most measures.
And because I can't stand the thought of writing yet another post about Beijing, let me just say that its too windy (and when its not windy its too polluted), and too crowded.
The second day in Beijing was Thursday, and we'd decided to try and see the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. The day before, a lady offering tours of the Great Wall found us at the Forbidden City and had offered an air-conditioned private car, with an English tour guide for 300 RMB ($45 US). Though far more expensive than the public buses (around 50 RMB per person, I think), it was nice not to have to figure out transportation schedules ourselves, so we opted to pay the extra money.
In hindsight, I wouldn't do it again. For one thing, it ended up costing 50 RMB ($7 US - I know, shutup) more than advertised because the section of the wall we visited (Badaling, the most popular) was only accessible via toll roads at the time, which we had to pay for. If we'd have read the business card carefully, we'd have known this, so no biggie. Second, we were hounded awkwardly for tips after the tour was over, which I refused to give because of the following points. Third, we were taken to two different tourist traps (a Jade factory and a tea house) and forced to stay for 30-45 minutes at each place. These places pay our 'guides' a commission for bringing tourists in. The particularly bothersome thing was that we were forced to skip the second destination of our tour (the Summer Palace) because we ran out of time after spending almost an hour and a half at overpriced souvenir shops. Fourth, our guide wasn't much of a guide at all. She spoke English well, but she didn't have anything knowledgeable to say about the Great Wall, and didn't even accompany us on our walk. So when I look back, the 350 RMB we paid was basically just for convenient transportation - which isn't so bad, because it was a 45 minute trek, and a taxi would have cost around 400 RMB from what I understand.
The wall itself was pretty amazing. Like I said, we went to the most popular section of the wall - at Badaling - which meant that there were a ton of other people there. Badaling is so popular that every person and piece of literature we consulted said that we'd be crazy to go on weekends or holidays. If you're considering the trip, I would (blindly) recommend the Juyong Guan section, as everybody (in the know) did to us.
The Badaling portion of the wall extends outwards in two directions from the entrance gate, climbing up large hills on both sides. The more popular direction (by far) is to the right. So, being the obedient little tourists that we were, we headed right.
As the pictures hopefully show, it makes for really pretty scenery. I was surprised by the fact that most of the other tourists were Chinese, forgetting I guess that a fair share of American tourists make their way to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Even funnier, Staci and I must have looked unique enough that we were asked to be in dozens of pictures, and I noticed dozens more were taken discreetly by the more shy ones. This continued to happen all over Beijing. We felt like Brad and Angelina worming our way through the throngs of paparazzi. We both kind of liked it, though any more than four days and I'd have probably started freaking out.
I blabbed for too long again, so days 3 and 4 will be another post.
I'll qualify that in a second, because the Chinese people are a prideful bunch, and I don't want to offend the hordes of them that tune in daily (ha). In fact, the only thing that every taxi driver in Shanghai with even the slightest command of English wants to know (in addition to your destination) is what you think of Shanghai and China.
That's sort of the problem, I guess. Those taxi drivers - the English understanding ones - all seem to live in Shanghai. There is very little English in Beijing. That's part of my qualification above - the biggest problems I had with Beijing weren't problems with the city so much as they were with me being in a foreign place without the ability to speak the language.
So anyway, when Staci and I visited Beijing at the end of April for four days, I didn't like it very much. We took an overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing. I thought an overnight train would be fun, and I was worried about money at the time, and it was cheaper than flying, and we saved a night in a hotel, and... fuck you, I really like trains, okay? The experience reminds be of being young and sleeping while my dad drove to Capitola (a six-hour trek). My parents would build beds in the back of the van, and we'd get transferred into the car at 4am, asleep the whole time. By the time we woke up, we'd be a half hour from Santa Cruz. I can't really describe why I like it so much, except to say that it feels productive to be sleeping and going somewhere at the same time.
Our train was a little awkward though, because we shared a four-bed compartment with a middle-aged Chinese guy. He seemed nice and all, but its such a small amount of space that it was a little uncomfortable for strangers to share. I'd definitely spring the extra $100 for the private compartment if we did that again.
So we arrived at 6am on Wednesday, and luckily managed to check into our hotel (Wangfujing Grand Hotel - it was great!) a little after 7am. We were lost for an hour while cabbing, asking for directions (pointless!), and walking around to find it. Thank god we did because from what I could tell, I was about twenty minutes from being castrated by my loving lady friend - she was acting tough, but I'm sure memories of the night we almost had to spend in a freezing Cinque Terra phone booth were lurking in her still-groggy mind.
That day, Wednesday, we walked the Wangfujing shopping district, which is a crowded sea of shops, food stands, and people. After that, we headed over to the Forbidden City, and took a (lame) guided audio tour. The tour route spit us out on the north side of the park, so we needed to walk all the way around it to get back to Tienanmen Square. A rickshaw driver tricked us into paying way too much for a ride that ended up being only halfway back. Tienanmen Square was impressive, but a little boring.
That night, we headed to the Silk Market, which is a warehouse-sized flea market known for being the Mecca of fake products. That experience deserves its own blog post, so I'll hold off except to say that we purchased a few items but decided to leave when the shouts of "I Hate Americans!" in my face got too intense to continue shopping casually. Awesome.
This is long already, so I'll write up days two, three, and four in another post.
A friend just explained that she would not be able to go out next weekend because she was grounded. She came home too drunk from an outing last week, and her parents were upset. Its not uncommon for children to live with their parents until they're married.
She's not married. So there she is, twenty-nine years old and grounded for the weekend.
Luckily, I've been keeping partially completed posts in a draft state. If not, I'd be forgetting at this point that things are much different than they are back home. Things like driving habits, the rate of construction, the apparent lack of civil liability, the varied cost of clothing, and all these other things seemed so odd before, but seem so commonplace now. Hopefully I can pound these nuances out into written form while I can still remember why they seemed strange to me in the first place.
Well, far more often than it should be anyhow, especially considering how cheap fully-cooked alternatives are. Sometimes I feel like all I've ingested for the last two and a half months are noodles and alcohol.
There are no "meat and potatoes" appetites in China, just "Tsingtao and beef noodle".
Two quick points related to how cheap human labor is.
Most people at our building have personal drivers. You see them all milling around, smoking cigarettes outside of the building in the morning in their nice, foreign cars (Audis, BMWs, VWs). The taxi drivers take them to work in the morning, and pick them up at night. Same person every time, same schedule, no calling or waiting or fuss. The cost for this service: $250 each month. You'd pay the same in San Francisco for about a week of (real) taxi service, without any of the convenience.
My friend wanted to purchase an item from a large online store here in China, but couldn't find out how to pay with a credit card. He called up, got an English-speaking person and asked them how to pay with his credit card. He was told that if he purchases the item with a credit card, they send somebody out to his door to swipe his credit card for him. How crazy is that!
This has nothing to do with China, but I can't help myself.
In this article, some fuckhead named Kirk talks about winning West Virginia in November -- the issues that are the most important to America:
“I believe it’s a shoo-in for McCain because Obama supporters are not going to vote for Hillary and Hillary supporters are not going to vote for Obama,” said Kirk. “At first, he seemed like a neat person, but then the flag pin and the pastor -- it didn’t ring a bell. Well, it did -- an alarm bell.”
Flag pins and former pastors. Awesome America. Reminded me of this.
We got some ping pong lessons today. Mike and I had been playing each other daily for the last few weeks, and we were at the point that we thought we might be able to hold our own (or at least not get destroyed) by the local engineers.
Not the case.
A really nice engineer, Xinjie, took pity on us during our match today to give us some tips. He showed us the proper way to serve. Its crazy, see below:
He proceeded to spank me 21-8 (5 of my points were earned when he was kind enough to serve the spin-free way) and Mike probably as bad. Mike and I have vowed to work on our wrist action until we can give the worst engineer in the office a close game.
Apparently Beijing was rocked pretty hard by the earthquake, but I didn't even know it happened until somebody told me. I'm not sure if being 20 floors up would help or hurt our changes of noticing, but we're all safe and sound.
I promised I'd write about our not so awesome day at the Silk Market in Beijing, so here it is.
To close our first day in the city (after visiting Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City), we headed over to the silk market, which is a place famous for great deals on fake... everythings.
Watches, purses, shoes, jewelery, golf clubs, electronics, you get the idea. Its like 5 floors of mayhem. Vendors grab your arm, lots of broken English gets shouted in your face, and you learn very quickly that you can't move through the aisles efficiently and be polite - you must choose one or the other. It's definitely an experience.
I had already purchased two belts, and Staci had picked up a purse or two after being there for an hour. I started negotiating for two pairs of Deisel shoes. The lady started at 1600 RMB for two pairs of shoes. That's over $200 US, which is as much or more than I'd pay for the real ones in America. Every vendor starts like this, apparently for the 2 people in the complex that don't realize that everything here is fake.
I ended up getting the price down to around $40 US per pair, which I thought was decent. Right before I pulled out my money to pay, some European gentleman slinks by behind us and kind of whispers to me that I shouldn't pay more than $15 US for anything. I wasn't completely sure whether to believe him, but I didn't think I had anything to lose. I turned back to the lady I was dealing with that I wanted the shoes for $15 per pair.
She flipped out. She pointed at the gentleman that had enlightened us and screamed at him. "Why you playing games?!" and "What you doing?!!!" Unhappy, she turned to me and said, "OK, give me $30" Thinking she'd conceded, I pulled out 200 RMB ($30 US) and handed it to her. She reached in my bag, removed one of the two pairs of shoes, and quickly handed my money to her male co-worker, and tried to push us out of the store.
I forced a laugh and said quickly "noooooo, thats not fair". And then I asked for my money back. She refused, and the gentleman that now had my money started to walk away.
This time, I flipped out. I mean, FLIPPED out. I went from playful to raging in about 2 seconds when I realized what was going on. First, I tried to stop the guy who shoved my money in his pocket. "Hey, I don't want these shoes, give me back my money." All he would reply with is "That's impossible". My blood pressure is rising just thinking about all this.
I then got up in the lady's face telling her she was dishonest and cheating me. She was screaming back at me that I was cheating her by seeming interested at $40 per pair. I was making absolutely no headway in getting my money back, so I just kept getting louder and more aggressive. Everybody within 50 feet was watching us yell back and forth. Poor Staci was just trying to keep the peace.
I escalated to "You dishonest mother fuckers! I don't want your fucking shoes, so give me back my mother fucking money!" It was bad. At one point I threatened to call the police, which delighted the guy that had my money. I found out later that he'd have won if the police showed up, so I'm glad I didn't press on that. People nearby were shouting too, one of the little Chinese boys watching kept yelling "give him back his money!" which I appreciated.
While the show was on, Staci was working with a vendor from a nearby store to resolve the situation without anybody going to jail. The other vendor found the shoes that were removed from my bag and put them back in, but at that point I didn't want anything from these people. Staci was begging me to go at this point, and all the nearby vendors knew my screaming wasn't good for their business, so they convinced me to just take my two pairs of shoes and leave.
As we walked away, the cheating bitch screams "I hate Americans! Money! money! money!" It shouldn't have affected me as much as it did - but she got in my head. I was still enraged, but I immediately felt ashamed that I'd given her a bad impression of Americans. I'm over that now, though. Fuck her.
We went back two days later and avoided that booth like the plague. Everybody else was upfront and honest and fun to talk to and bargain with. For anybody visiting in the future, here's how it works (mostly from an email I sent mindy a week before she arrived):
Have fun at the silk market. There are only three rules:
Be polite, but always stand your ground.
Make sure they produce your change before you give them the money.
The more it looks like you've already purchased, the less you'll get fucked with over prices. They'll know you're not just yanking them around, and they'll know that you know how the system works. We actually brought bags with us (from our hotel) the second time we went specifically for this effect. It worked.
Here's how an average shoe purchase works:
Me: How much for these new balances? Them: Oh, these are very good quality. These are 1700RMB. Me: Oh dear, thats too expensive. Give me your best price. Them: Ok. Ok. I do special deal for you. This is for friend. Not for business, this for friend. 1650 RMB Me: Haha -- thats still too expensive! Its ok, thank you. Them: Ok (grabbing me) Ok, what is your price? (handing me a calculator) Me: (typing) 150RMB Them: (utterly shocked) NO! No, that is below cost! Don't joke! That price is for other shoes, of cheaper quality. This real leather! (sometimes they actually burn the leather with a lighter. we saw this trick many times) I can't do that price. Here (grabbing calculator) is my best price... 1250 RMB Me: Okay, thats okay. Thank you, I'm going to look around. Them: No no no! Ok, name your price. Give me a little more. Me: 150 RMB Them: A little more Me: 150 RMB Them: 500 RMB Me: 150 RMB (this goes on for 4 minutes) Them: 400 RMB Me: No thank you, and politely leave store. ... wait for it ... Them: (shouting at my back) Okay - fine. 150 RMB Me: (I walk back into store) Them: Okay. 200 RMB Me: No. (I walk away again) Them: Okay okay okay. 150 RMB Me: Give them the money (but wait until they have the change to give back to you in their hand) Them: You drive too hard bargain (acting very displeased) Me: Thank you for the shoes. Them: (happy again) Thank you! Come again! Me: Huh?
Its a very strange process, but it was almost the exact same script every time. I think they pay about 40 - 60 RMB ($6-$8) for each pair of shoes. So anything upwards of 100 RMB is profit to them. Again, not totally sure this is the case for all things, but hold your ground and it usually works out. NEVER NEVER NEVER pay anything even close to the actual US price, even though they'll insist the things aren't fakes.
I'll include pictures in another post of all the crazy stuff we bought.
China just got a lot less dangerous for fingers. Remember those pull-tab diet cokes I mentioned earlier?
Check this out - stay tabs. Now, I don't know if this change was prompted by me specifically, but I definitely didn't see anybody else covering the diet-coke-in-a-pineapple-juice-container issue. Perhaps they figured that the onslaught of western people arriving for the Olympics required these drastic changes.
Sure, Beijing is keeping up the asshole front on that silly Tibet issue, but proved today it appears willing to concede that most western people are too stupid to use a pull-tab aluminum can. That's a victory in my book. Is China finally ready to host the games? Indeed.
The weather was pretty mild during my first two months in Shanghai. Somebody said the city has a similar climate to Washington D.C. - whatever that means. I don't really know what D.C. weather is like, but you might. It has rarely rained (maybe one day every three or four weeks), but I usually needed a sweatshirt or a jacket to feel comfortable walking to and from work through March and April.
On April 27th, that all changed. It seriously got hot overnight. The most noticeable aspect is the humidity. It hadn't been muggy at all, but now you can't escape it. I sweat all the time. Its particularly embarrassing in a crowded subway train. I'm in flip-flops and shorts, and my forehead is perspiring, while locals are in full suits, comfortable and dry. I've stopped working out in the morning because my body temperature wouldn't return to normal until like 2pm. Even crappier, the air-conditioning at the office is a 9-5 thing, and we work late most nights (and weekends).
I've heard - from a white guy, so who knows - that most Chinese people don't wear deodorant. He said that the people he has talked to think its hilarious that westerners wear chemicals on their armpits to keep them from smelling.
Even though it sucks to feel smellier and less-evolved than the people around you, its worth it for the nice weather; mid 70's, clear, and warm all day.
See James Fallow's post today about the crap you go through trying to order things online. Actually, his troubles likely stem from the overwhelming volume of people trying to use the site at the same time, but its sort of related.
Reading what he said reminded me of another nuance of urban Chinese culture that I haven't really mentioned - nobody stands in line. I touched on this a while back when talking about the subway system, but I've noticed it many other times.
For instance, we really like this one fried dumpling stand across the street from work. You order at the cashier then take your receipt to another area to pick up your food (its all to-go, there's no seats). If its even remotely busy, there will be a small line for the cashier. Inevitably, it takes twice as long as you first expect, because people just walk up, ignoring the line, and hold their money in the face of the cashier until they're serviced (usually right away - as the cashier doesn't seem to have any interest in enforcing the order).
This blew my mind the first time I saw it. Blew my mind. I wondered, did they not understand that we were waiting also? Perhaps they didn't see us at all? Or maybe were they in some kind of dumpling emergency? As it kept happening, though, it became obvious that some people just didn't care to wait in line. This happens everywhere. Its frustrating to no end, but I'm too big of a pussy to do anything about it, or to cut myself. I get my revenge by blogging about it. Take that, you rude sons of bitches.
May 1st in China is a national holiday called "May Day". This year, May 1st was a Thursday, so Friday was a day off as well. But that made Friday a free day off, because it wasn't an actual holiday. To make up the workday, Sunday, May 4th, was designated a 'working holiday' and deemed a workday like any other.
So everybody came to work on Sunday. I don't know why that weirds me out so much, but it does. And even though I'm prone to superlatives, this really will be the longest official work week of my entire life.
Everybody spits in China. I notice this most on my walk to and from work. It's one of the reasons that having my music playing too loud is dangerous. When the music is blaring, I can't hear the 8-year-old in front of me scraping all the goo in his throat and sinuses, preparing to unleash. Nobody checks behind them before they let it all go either -- its apparently your job as a vigilant pedestrian to dance when a spitter sends one flying for your shoes. Pedestrians have a hard job in this country between the cars, motorcycles, and loogies.
Its not just little kids though. Everybody spits. Old, young, men, women. And I'm serious, its not just a little saliva -- they're weighty, snotty, big-boy projectiles. Kind of gross, really.
Holy flying fuck why is this so hard. All I want to do is buy a flight. Please, charge my credit card. Oh, you must have misunderstood me. I said "buy a flight," but you heard, "email me 2 forms to print, fill out, sign, re-write my credit card number 4 different times, scan, and send back to you, then talk on the phone for an hour while you process it."
Yes, I give you permission to charge my credit card. Oh, your manager also needs to hear me say that I authorize it? Yes, manager man, you can charge my credit card. Whats that? You'll have the authorization department call me in an hour to confirm that I want the charge to go though? How wonderfully helpful!
What do you mean where do I want my goods delivered? Its an e-ticket, right? Oh, I need a receipt of my e-ticket to pick up my e-ticket? Ok, how do I get that? I need to arrange to meet you at my apartment? How easy! Terrific, when do we meet?
2 train tickets, 1 plane ticket, and 1 hotel reservation. Same horribly cumbersome process each time. It has to be some pretty severe law that says purchasing things online should be harder than re-financing your home. Or maybe somebody high up in the government is heavily invested in scanners and fax machines.
I worked late a few weeks ago and left the office around 10pm. After taking the subway to my stop, I was cruising towards my apartment at a really brisk pace. I always like walking through crowds with my iPod blasting. I'm good at navigating the masses. I dodge old people and squirt through groups of slower walkers like a slow-mo Barry Sanders - with my own soundtrack. I'm sort of psycho about it (surprise). Nobody around me knows that I'm always racing them to wherever I'm going. Well, Staci knows, as she is constantly forced to deal with my compulsive galloping on San Francisco sidewalks; "Slow DOWN idiot!" Anyway, T.I. was rocking the fuck out of my ear drums and I must have been damn near jogging down Huangpi Nan Lu when I caught a glimpse of somebody gaining on my in the corner of my eye. The road is well-lit and always populated, so I didn't immediately fear for my life or anything, but I could tell somebody was keeping pace with me, and it weirded me out.
My breath got shallow when I could tell she was shouting at me from behind. I assumed I was about to be in trouble for something. Not knowing whether or not to stop or actually start running (haha), I turned around just as she was tapping me on the shoulder. She was a little out of breath, and I could now tell that she had been jogging to catch me. I stopped in front of Ark, pulled out my earbuds and glanced around for signs that I was about to be kidnapped, but she just smiled unabashedly back at me and said "Hello?" I tried to be nice, but I undoubtedly looked confused, because she quickly stammered in barely-understandable English that her teacher told her to stop me. I looked around again. No teacher. She then motioned in the direction I was going, and I gathered that she wanted to walk with me. I tried to remain polite, but I was immediately suspicious that I was being tricked.
Friends at work have told me that they've been approached by women that appear interested in you, and suggest sitting down for coffee or tea. However, the ladies are paid a commission by the establishment they bring you to, which is why they tend to have very specific tastes for local coffeehouses.
As we walked towards my apartment, she told me her name was Vicky, and that she had been attending English classes for the last several weeks nearby. She said that her teacher encouraged the students to converse with English-speakers they saw in the city as a means of improving her conversational skills. She told me she worked as a waitress at an Australian restaurant nearby, but was learning English as a means to a job as a businesswoman. By the end of our conversation, I was convinced that she really just wanted to talk with me in my language, but it still struck me as rather bold. No matter her intentions, I can't imagine being approached by somebody in that manner even in cities as 'friendly' as Seattle or San Francisco.
After we parted, I realized that the English class she claimed to have just left was across the street from my office. I entered my apartment with the uneasy feeling that she may have quietly followed me for several miles on foot, through the subway, and up to the driveway of my apartment. Point: Vicky.
I can't get enough of him! Another eloquent post about the teetering nature of this big crazy place:
"I think if more Americans came to China right now and saw how hard so many of its people are struggling just to survive, they too might ask: What are we thinking, in considering China an overall threat? Yes, its factories are formidable, and its weight in the world is huge. But this is still a big, poor, developing nation trying to solve the emergency of the moment. Susan Shirk, of the University of California at San Diego, recently published a very insightful book that calls China a “fragile superpower.” 'When I discuss it in America,' she told me, 'people always ask, "What do you mean, fragile?”' When she discusses it here in China, 'they always ask, "What do you mean, superpower?”'"
This article (by the wife of, my man, James Fallows) addresses an interesting question about internet content in China. Namely, do the Chinese people want a completely open internet, or do they think its the responsibility of the government to filter objectionable content. I'm not sure what the government requires in terms of divulging participants answers, or if the participants fear their answers might be turned over, but the article does say:
"As required of all public-opinion polling in China, either the survey or the surveyors must be approved by the government, and some topics that Westerners might have liked to see addressed directly, such as censorship, were not."
This question seems a lot like the "is race still an issue in America?" question. Everybody says "I don't have racist feelings, but all my friends do." I could imagine people saying the same thing to a (government sanctioned) survey of this kind, where a person's answer is along the lines of "well, I don't think the government needs to filter my internet, but it should filter theirs, so I'm fine with a filtered internet."
Nevertheless, its interesting to read things like this:
"Alongside outside criticism and internal pressure for liberalization, other evidence suggests that many Chinese citizens do not share Western views of the internet. The survey findings discussed here, drawn from a broad-based sample of urban Chinese internet users and non-users alike, indicate a degree of comfort and even approval of the notion that the government authorities should control and manage the content available on the internet."
My first reaction was 'of course they're fine with the censoring, because they don't know what they've been missing for the past 30 years'; a view which I expect is shared by a lot of western people. But to think this is to assume I know whats best for everybody. I don't want to sound like a sympathizer to a stifling or oppressive government, but on the other hand, I've realized since being over here is that the picture thats been painted of China in the west (especially in regards to the monstrous, evil government and its control over people) isn't very accurate.
The article goes on to say that many people fear the negative aspects of the internet (online fraud, pornography, addiction, exposing children to filth, etc), and want such aspects censored. Those negative aspects have been perpetuated by media reports, growing in numbers over the years, often reporting the dramatic details of personal tragedies which involve internet usage. (She also subtly reminds us that all media outlets are either directly or indirectly state-influenced.)
As crazy as I tend to think the government is for exerting this kind of control, it feels almost like a logical slope to be descending when you think about where this place was 35 years ago. We're lucky that our freedoms in America have been intact for hundreds of years, but we can't expect that nations with a more volatile recent history are going to embrace this scary new technology as openly and wholeheartedly as we have. Depending on the reports you read, there are now (as of last month, some say) more Chinese internet users than American internet users. The fact that people here want to dip their toes before diving head first isn't as strange as you might be led to believe. Its happening... just be patient.
This game is everywhere! I love Liar's Dice, so I'm always excited to walk into a bar and hear the clacking of the dice on the table. Its pretty much the only drinking game I've seen played, and its played at every club I've been to.
The clubs stack the reserved tables with cups and dice. The only difference between the Chinese version and the one I'm used to is that the loser of a round doesn't have to give up any dice. That means that there is never an actual 'winner' to the game.
Oh, and because there are hand-signals for all Chinese numbers that you can form with a single hand (not just up to five like our dumb hand-signals) its possible to play quickly without even speaking, which is useful in a loud club.
There is an artsy district a few miles away from Xin Tan Di that I definitely couldn't find without a three-star taxi, but it contains a maze of tiny alleyways filled with shops, bars, and even an illegal casino. Mike, Bo, and I headed out there this evening to visit some friends of ours. Mike had actually been there since three, so when Bo and I arrived he'd already been drinking and playing dice at Amay's bar for several hours. A tiny chalkboard at the corner of the alley had a picture of a frosty mug on the front and the question "Fancy a cold beer?" written around it. This was Mike's doing (forgive him - he's Australian). The bar itself is very small. Maybe 8 feet by 25 feet. Its decorated beautifully inside. The furniture is especially well-chosen. Five perfectly-sized tables are staggered along the long sides of the walls, each accompanied by a pair of the stools that I've always called "Asian style" - 4 slanted legs supporting a low, slightly curved rectangular seat. A number of ornament-style lights with colorful paper wrappings droop down from the ceiling, mostly out of the way. It doesn't feel as small as it is, which - believe me - is a real accomplishment.
The bar area itself is probably smaller than most wet-bars in many American homes. Its a 3x3 foot protrusion from the corner directly opposite the entrance. Along the far wall from the entrance/bar is a collection of eclectic drawings and other artwork on paper binder-clipped to a large bamboo sheet that covers the wall. Soft jazz music was playing while we were inside; Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald tricked me at times into thinking I was sitting in an upscale Queen Anne boutique.
The long shelf that runs the entire distance of Bell Bar (named apparently for the string of bells Amay festooned from the beams along the center of the place) contained a case of free Taiwanese cigars. They were some kind of tobacco wrapped with green leaves instead of brown paper and didn't smell all that bad when Bo smoked one. Above our heads were the signatures of the bar's patrons, in as many languages as there were names, sprawled with a white felt pen on the dark wood ceiling. I didn't think I deserved to ask to put my name up there, being my first visit and all, but I want to leave my mark by the time we leave (and have a Chinese name).
Amay is a pretty amazing person. She's the owner and bartender, though she doesn't know how to mix cocktails. I should say that she doesn't know how to make _tasty_ cocktails, because she does make some interesting looking drinks for sure. At our party on Friday night, every time she came back from the kitchen she was holding a drink of a different exotic color. All we had in the way of food coloring was some blue caraco and a white coconut-flavored mixer, but she managed to make one of her drinks bright orange and another one dark purple. Today, she presented me with something to try, and all I could tell was that it was bright green and it contained beer. It tasted like a minty corona - not bad, but not something I was eager to have another sip of either. She didn't take offense when I told her I was going to stick with the ones in the bottles.
She also owns a clothing shop nearby, as well as a coffee shop in which she employs her sister and a friend. Her English is heavily accented, but definitely fluent. As we were playing liar's dice tonight, I asked her how she learned to speak so well, and she sort of launched into her entire story, which I thought was fucking amazing. She told me that several years ago, she started working at a restaurant, washing dishes. Within a year, she was managing the entire place. She stayed on, learning about the restaurant business for another two years, but then decided that she wanted to augment her business skillset by getting some sales experience. She found an opportunity that required that English, which she didn't know. So she got a book and also immersed herself in English-speakers (at a tourist hotspot) for a week; She picked up enough to show her would-be boss that she was committed to learning on the job.
She got the job and was put in charge of a 40-square-foot clothing shop. Within a few months, she had allowed her boss to expand the operation four-fold. One of her regular customers was a German woman whose husband worked at a firm in Shanghai doing something financial. She arranged to work in the husband's office doing odd jobs (cleaning, translating, errands) so that she could be around more English-speaking people, picking up the language even faster. She worked at the office for free, just to learn while she worked. She proved valuable enough to the firm that they arranged to pay for her to live in an apartment nearby (and they paid the $800/month rent. Amay's rent before that was a mere $60/month).
With her new language skills, she negotiated with her boss at the clothing shop for the ability to set up her own business. Given an initial investment from the boss as well as a loan from a friend, she set up her own clothing boutique, coffee shop, and now bar/restaurant. She employs her family members, like her cousin and our friend, Hong Mei, at her shops. She just purchased the apartment building above her shop, and is looking to acquire some more space three doors down - which we told her she should turn into a one-room KTV. She's thinking about it.
(That's Hong Mei on the left and Amay on the right)
In any event, she's a driven lady, and we joked tonight that at her rate she'd probably be running most of the world in a few more years. In fact, maybe I should have finished that green beer after all - it might have contained some of her magic potion.
We've been out at bars and clubs lately, and one thing that I can't get used to is how hard girls will stare at guys. If this is what ladies feel like in America, then I'm sorry on behalf of all men for making you feel creeped out all the time. Holy shit it's awkward.
This phenomenon seems to be the most pronounced in bars that have a high white-dude ratio. Park 97 is a club in Fuxing park that feels straight out of the mission in San Francisco, right down to the clientele. We've been there a couple of times, and the staring is out of control. Granted, there are a lot of hookers there that are cruising for rich, old, lonely-looking white guys; but that doesn't account for all the hard looks.
One example. We met a girl named Lily a weeks ago after 20 minutes of direct eye-contact prevented us from ignoring her and her friends any longer. The last 10 minutes of our nervous conversation before Bo approached them went like this:
"Are they still looking over here?" "Jesus. yes" "Wow" "Dudes, they're total prostitutes" "They've got to be, right?" "Oh my god, they're still looking." "Should we go talk to them?" "Fuck that, they probably know Chinese ninja mind tricks to suck money out of my wallet" "AAHHHH, they won't stop staring - I feel uncomfortable" "They're total pros..." "Yeah, totally" "I don't know, maybe not?"
So Bo charged over there and bought one of them a drink, and they all turned out to be super nice, normal girls. We've hung out with them a bunch since, and mentioned that we thought they were prostitutes originally, which (I think) they thought was funny.
There is a really strong ex-pat community in shanghai. Sites like Facebook, SmartShanghai, and ShanghaiExpat keep people connected. In a way, everybody that speaks English is automatically a friend. Its very welcoming, and makes you really feel like a part of something. I've met people I really like from all over the place, and I certainly wouldn't have been brave enough to meet them had I not been so sure that they'd be friendly to me in return. Its neat.
Fashion designers, business students, salesmen, other engineers... it doesn't matter what you do, everybody wants to help you and talk with you out here.
From what I understand, Shanghai is a much much more pleasant city to live in than Beijing. Overpopulation and pollution has given the city the nickname of "the toilet bowl" from the people I've spoken with. I'm excited to at least spend a weekend or two there anyway.
Update: There is a deep rivalry between the two cities, so I'm less surprised now that I've heard so many nasty things said about Beijing.
The Subway system here is a spectacle. Wow. My first attempt to board a subway car was thwarted by a small-ish woman in her mid 40s who wedged her way between myself and my co-worker as I was stepping onto the packed train, fresh from the airport. She grabbed my shoulder from behind, and yanked me hard enough to lose my balance backwards as she propelled herself into the train, occupying the last square foot of floor space on the train. "Thanks bitch, we'll get the next one."
As the next train pulled up (90 seconds later) people from who knows where started crowding the subway doors. There are no lines in China. If there is space enough in front of you for somebody to wedge into, thats you're fault. Nobody waits for the people exiting to get off either. Everybody just moves forward - through each other. You push, you pull, you force your way into the train. The people trying to exit are unfazed as they push, claw, and punch their way out. Its very VERY uncomfortable the first few days, but thereafter it becomes sort of fun.
People definitely don't have the same expectation of personal space that they do on, say, Bart. It's common to see somebody jerking their way between a grandma and a 4-year-old to leap out of the train 2 seconds before the doors close, shoving them both as they do. I've never been closer than 4 feet (and 22 people) from sitting down. But honestly, I don't want to be. I'm so paranoid about being able to exit when my stop arrives that I usually ride with my face smushed against the doors.
It runs very efficiently. Doors are only open for about 20 seconds. Luckily, we live only one stop away from everywhere we ever need to be.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the subway stations are the method of payment. Similar to BART, you put money on a card and can carry a balance on that card. However this card has some kind of RFID chip in it, so you just get near enough to the subway gate and it knows your remaining balance and allows you through. Most subway rides are $3 RMB (50 cents). Even cooler, this card can also be used on the local bus system and to pay for taxi rides. Taxis cost between $1.50 USD and $3 USD for even very long distances. We had to take a 15 minute cab ride the other day. $3. Crazy.
You don't have to tip the drivers either (in fact, no tips anywhere - even restaurants).
Being in Shanghai with very few of my possessions and far away from my bad habits has helped me distill the things that give me the most joy from the rest of the cruft in my life that was just taking up my time. I've been here for almost four weeks, and I've spent around $350 (with no free food, remember). I can't remember the last month that I've had less than $1500 in charges (with all free food), which makes me wonder what the hell I was spending my money on, because my quality of life hasn't changed much.
The only things I brought with me were clothes (10 shirts, 2 jeans, 3 shorts, 1 sweater, 1 sweatshirt, flip flops, 2 shoes, 1 towel, and underwear), iPhone, mac book, and toiletries. When I get back, I should (have Megan help me) audit the usefulness of all that shit sitting in my house. Why do I have 10 towels? Do I really need 4 computers? Why Why do I own 40 candles? (Mom?) It's more of a burden than a luxury from this perspective, because that crap is tying me down.
Things I find that I don't miss at all are Television (not surprising), DVD Ripping (thank god), random internet time (still more of that here than I'd like), and eating (incredibly surprising). In fact, I'm not sure I don't enjoy eating, I'm just sure that since I got food poisoning last week, I've been kind of sick of Chinese food in general, so maybe that'll pass and the fat kid inside will repossess my body. I'm just kind of sick of noodles and broth. In fact, some meat and starch would be delicious right now. Or a salad. What I wouldn't do for a iceberg wedge and some blue cheese dressing. So gay, but so good.
The things I've enjoyed most while I've been here these last two weeks are reading (3 books in 3 weeks - I'm a machine), working out, working, and exploring the city. Hopefully I'll make time to get to bed early, travel outside the city more, and maybe try to get good at meditating or something while I'm here. I'll go back to California a Buddhist zen master.
For as hard as the Chinese government cracks down on the Internet, they don't seem to give a fuck that there are illegal brothels operating everywhere. No wonder nerds think this place is so tight. So far, I've learned of at least 4 business that are generally fronts for prostitution. The funniest by far (and most common) is the Barber Shop. Less than 2 blocks away from our house are streets filled with barber shops, open until very late in the night. They have spinning barber shop poles and everything, and girls sit inside lurking out at the dudes passing by. So fucking strange. Karaoke bars, sushi restaurants, massage parlors, (and probably bath houses) apparently fall into that category as well.
Our apartment is so ridiculous. Its very expensive (even for S.F.) We have guards stationed at all entrances to our complex. We live in Xin Tian Di, a very modern, ritzy area of the Luwan district. Maids clean our apartment every day. We have gym facilities, swimming pools, concierge service 24/7, and the staff bending over backwards for us. I feel guilty.
Chinese people appear to love haggling. They also seem to know that westerners are uncomfortable with this arrangement, so they'll act like they aren't budging. I needed to buy a USB cable from the electronics mart, and the gentleman told me they cost $6 USD. That seemed fair. I reached for my wallet, and my buddy mike shouted "Ten RMB" (or $1.5 USD) and the guy said "Deal!". Thank god for him.
I bought some headphones on Thursday and I thought I was getting a great deal. The guy started out at 310 rmb ($42). I got him down to 265 rmb ($37) and walked away with them. Sadly, it looks like I still got taken; I found them online for $28 in the U.S.
Who knew that light switches weren't the same everywhere?!? I can't remember what light switches were like in Europe, but I don't remember them being as funny looking as they are here. In China, switches are actually wide panels that can be flicked up and down, kind of like a big flat see-saws. The trippiest part, though, is that you flick them down to turn things on, and up for off.
The switch in the picture is the one in my room (turned on).
The internet in China is VERY VERY slow, but thats not entirely the firewall's fault. There are only 3 main entry points for internet packets coming into china, and they almost all have to make round trips to US servers, but oh well. The censorship is definitely noticeable, but not as bad as I imagined. James Fallows wrote a great article about the censorship in a recent issue of The Atlantic, which explains how its done, why its done, and why even though its crazy, its not as crazy as some people make it out to be. People don't seem to care that much, and the ones that do get around it.
I can't access wikipedia, which is the biggest pain in the ass because its often one of the first search results. Worse, clicking on a wikipedia link seems to completely sever your connection sometimes (even for other pages). YouTube is accessible most of the time. Blogspot, Livejournal, and Wordpress blogs are almost universally blocked. Slashdot is inaccessible as well. Weirdly enough, sometimes I'll accidentally click on a link that was blocked the day before and find myself able to get through. Its more annoying than anything. I can already feel myself craving U.S. broadband.
The Shanghai office is in the downtown area near People's Square. The square is a bustling metropolitan center filled with shops and diners, coffee places, street vendors, and a shit ton of people. The office itself is on the 16th floor of a fifty-story building looking over the square. There are lots of skyscrapers nearby. We have just one floor here containing about fifty engineers, a few sales people, and various administrative staff (one in particular seems to truly be the 'mom' of the Shanghai office). The layout is very similar to the Kirkland office. That is, the floor is donut-shaped, with the elevator shafts in the very center of the floor. Though lunch/dinners aren't catered, the engineers here receive a per diem of about fifty RMB (seven dollars) which is more than enough to cover food at most places around here. There are lots of snacks, ranging from dried seaweed to pork slices to snickers bars.
The engineers are very nice, and very helpful. Chinese is spoken more often than English, but everybody seems comfortable switching back and forth. I walked into a "tech talk" (short info sessions about a new technology or project) a few minutes late last week. The speaker was giving his talk in Chinese to twenty or thirty people, and as I walked in I felt like an idiot for not thinking to check the language before arriving. But when the speaker noticed that I'd arrived, he announce a "language change" and continued the talk in English. The crowd laughed, and I felt embarrassed, but was certainly glad to be accommodated. Everybody speaks English fairly well here, and there are five or six more senior-level expats in the office that do their best to foster a silicon-valley-esque culture.
Shanghai is wonderful. China is different in ways that I didn't expect it to be, and very similar to the US in ways that I didn't expect either.
My first misconception was that China was a nation of strictly obeyed laws. I imagined people walking around, ostensibly scared of their government all the time; I thought the city would have a suspicious air, like citizens in 1984 or something. Gray and solemn. Shanghai doesn't seem that way at all. It's lively everywhere I've been. It even feels sort of free-spirited. People zoom every which way. People move quickly on foot. There are motorcycles and bicycles driving on the sidewalks. They speed way too fast for the number of people around, but manage to avoid people (usually). People shuffle into the subway tunnels, lining up for the escalator (instead of trudging up and down the 30 or 40 stairs). It feels just like so many of the other cities I've visited - and that has really surprised me.
The people I've dealt with in Shanghai are polite for the most part, though they seem to act with an urgency that seems rude sometimes. Waitresses don't have much patience for our English, which I suppose is understandable. We point, and they seem annoyed but take our order. The stores that want our money are well staffed and eager to serve. We get special attention for being white. Street vendors, restaurant hosts, and electronics vendors target us constantly. "He-lo sur. I can help you here!" They yell from across the street. Its kind of like Mexico in that respect. Salons, clothing shops, diners, and kiosks all have their agents out in full effect, sweet-talking the big pale people into patronizing their stores. They know tricky English phrases in perfect American accents, knowing it grabs our attention. The picture on the left is an electronics mart that you can't walk further than 15 feet in without getting asked by 5 vendors if you want anything they're selling.
The American establishments you see most often are (in order):
K.F.C
Pizza Hut
Starbucks
McDonalds
I don't get the KFC thing, but they're everywhere. Most American chains are expensive meals (by Chinese standards). A coffee is the equivalent of $3, which is outrageous, since meals cost between $1.50 and $4. Delicious meals too. Lots of noodles, veggies, chicken, and broth.
Oh, and as you can see I managed to find the Diet Cokes at the office, but they open differently than the push-in style tops in America. Who knew!?
Oh yeah. Dad and Megan - you guys are well represented here.
That's 4 knock-off polo shirts, 5 t-shirts, 9 pairs of shoes, two tailored jackets, 1 tailored suit, and 12 tailor-fitted button down shirts. Half of this stuff was purchased in Beijing at the silk market, and half in Shanghai at the South Bund Fabric Market. The total cost for everything seen here was about $600.
