Beijing, it Turns Out, Does Actually Suck (part 3)

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.

Beijing, it Turns Out, Does Actually Suck (part 2)

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.

Beijing, it Turns Out, Does Actually Suck

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.

Sometimes Even Big Kids Get In Trouble

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.

Things Start To Feel Normal After a While

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.

This is Dinner

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".

Humans Are Cheap

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!

There is no West Virginia

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.

Everybody is Better than Me at Ping Pong

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.

More Information About The Internet

Interesting Q&A session with - who else - James Fallows as a follow up to his article a few months ago about the crazy firewall.

I Did Not Feel The Earthquake

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.

Update: Mindy is safe and happy too!

How (not) to do the Silk Market in Beijing

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:

1. Be polite, but always stand your ground.
   
2. Make sure they produce your change before you give them the money.
   
3. 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.

Progress Is Being Made

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.

Wikipedia is Accessible Again

Hopefully nobody starts any new riots; I don't want to lose YouTube and Wikipedia for the month of May, too.

Microsoft Sucks

Zing.

The Humid Season Starts on April 27th

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.

Even Mr. Fallows Says So

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.

Sometimes you Work on Sunday

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.