My Journal

Bonehead Maneuver

2007-04-02T22:15:00.000+08:00

On Saturday night, my Chinese cellphone fell out of my pocket as I was exiting a taxicab (if you ever saw me climb in and out of one of these tiny cars, you would understand). Anyway, I kept calling it and no one answered. On Sunday morning, I got the “the phone you are calling is powered off message”. So off to get a new cellphone. In China, the GSM-based phones are all driven off SIM cards, which has the phone number and the phonebook stored on it. I could really care less about the physical phone, but the SIM card was what I really wanted back. That was not going to happen. In August, I had someone who spoke Mandarin help me obtain a phone. Today, I was going to try it alone to see if I could do it. So headed back to the same store that I used in August. As rode my bike down the street the second time looking for the shop, I could not find it. I then realized that the huge hole in the row of stores was the place where the building used to be that held the phone store. Uh Oh, this was getting harder now.

I ventured off and found some other stores that sold phones. At one store, the cheapest phone was $250US AFTER negotiating. I continued on. At the next store, after negotiating down to $150US for the same phone, the box came out with a different banged-up phone in it. So I moved on, getting farther and farther away from the main shopping districts and getting better prices. I finally ended up close to the big Electronics mart and went in there for the phone. I was able to get the same model for $93US. Now comes the fun part..trying to pay for it.

The first thing the sale clerk wanted was my name..No Problem. Then I thought she asked for my phone number..yep, she did..I responded that I needed to buy the phone and a phone number. I did not know my phone number, yet. This put a huge crimp in the process. Apparently, you need to have a phone number in order to physically buy a phone…go figure.

So I asked to buy a phone number / SIM card. This is a process of looking through a typed list of numbers and picking the one you want from inventory. Some numbers are more expensive than others. The number 4 is considered unlucky in China since it is pronounced very close to the word for Death. So I picked a phone number that had a 4 in it to save me…$4US. I had to take my sales slip to a cashier and pay for the SIM card…a process with a lot red stamping of pieces of paper and an official receipt with some more red stamps on it. I take the receipt back to the sales clerk and then start the process to purchase the physical phone again. She was happy now that I had a phone number to fill out the form. Now, I had to go back to the same cashier with a different receipt and go through the stamping process again. This time, I noticed a Visa acceptance mark and tried to use my credit card to buy my $93 phone. That would require my passport so they could photocopy it, and they also wanted to photocopy my credit card. I paid cash.I went back to the sales clerk and made her assemble everything, switch the phone menu to English and test the phone to make sure it worked. 3 hours later, $150 US lighter, I have a phone again. More importantly, I was able to do it by myself.

Superbowl MONDAY

2007-04-02T22:13:00.000+08:00

After years of gearing up for Superbowl parties on Sundays, I am beginning to wonder why the NFL doesn’t just move it to Saturday night. Based on the time difference, the Superbowl starts at 7:30am on Monday morning. Now, I am sure that the US has productivity issues on Monday morning after the Superbowl, but we clearly had it! We joined 300 of our closest American friends at the Goose n Duck to watch the game. Apparently arriving at 5:45am is not good enough to get a good seat in front of the Big Screen TV. We got a feed from ESPN with different announcers and did not get to see any of the commercials. We all agreed that it is harder to go to work right after the game than suffer through a short night of sleep on a Sunday night.

Trying to Beat Jet Lag Again

2007-04-02T22:10:00.000+08:00

After spending almost 2 weeks in the US, I am now back in Beijing. I landed on Friday night and opted to join some of the team members snowboarding on Saturday again. I am hoping that some fresh air, exercise and bright light will allow me to convert easier. It is a beautiful day and the slopes are full. After a couple of hours and numerous runs I am completely exhausted. I do not recommend snowboarding when jet lagged. It did help me get some great sleep on Saturday night until one of my “buddies” called me from the Superbowl festivities in Miami at 5:22am Sunday morning…

Hong Kong for Dinner

2007-02-01T14:56:00.000+08:00

After leaving the park around 6 after a full day of fun, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up. I was the only one who wanted to see Hong Kong at night. If I had caved, the team would have gone to bed. I got them into a cab to the Kowloon Ferry. We headed across the harbor and the fog to Hong Kong proper and everyone was rejuvenated. We hiked up the narrow streets and hill to restaurant / bar district and camped out at a streetside table to people watch on a Saturday night. What a great experience that was. Hong Kong has a very cosmopolitan population with varied styles and electric atmosphere..either shopping or clubbing. It was great to be outside in warm air, sightseeing and watching the action.

Even though the weather was not the best, we all agreed that Hong Kong would be worth another trip!

Hong Kong Disneyland

2007-02-01T14:55:00.002+08:00

We get to the Disneyland Hotel late on Friday night and are grateful and relaxed. Think Grand Floridian / Coronado Beach Victorian hotel with great service and Pacific Island ambience.

To me, it is impossible to have bad time at a Disney resort. It is made for magic! I get up early and go for a swim in the outdoor pool. I am the only one out there. After a breakfast with Mickey and Friends, we head for the park.

We are not sure what to expect…researching it on the web was hard based on the telecommunications issues. When we get there on Saturday Morning, we do a loose plan of attractions.
It is a small park, but crowds are thin so we were able to see most every attraction. We also re-rode the bigger attractions multiple times.

Hong Kong

2007-02-01T14:55:00.001+08:00

A few of us decided to take a field trip to Hong Kong this weekend. We got a good package deal to stay at Hong Kong Disneyland. So off we went on Friday evening to my second city in Asia. I keep forgetting how far Beijing is from everywhere. We had 3.5 hour non-stop flight to Hong Kong. If memory serves me correctly, flying 3.5 hours due South from Philadelphia would put you deep into the Caribbean islands. We land in Hong Kong and I am again amazed at the scale of the airports in Asia. This airport is huge – 80 gates all capable of handling the biggest planes made.

New Passport – Part II

2007-02-01T14:54:00.000+08:00

I called the Embassy on Friday afternoon to see if my passport was ready. It was. I asked if I could pick it up on Monday, and they said fine. On Monday, I went over to the Embassy and the guards would not let me in. The Embassy was closed for Martin Luther King Day. This should have been my first clue that I was going to have some issues.

I returned first thing on Tuesday Morning and got my new passport. As they were punching holes in my old passport to cancel it, I had a chill pass over me signifying the point of no return. I should pay more attention to that chill in the future.

At the Public Security Office to “transfer” my Chinese Visa to my new passport, reality set in. There is no such thing as transferring a visa. You have to re-apply. It takes over 5 days (I am supposed to leave in 3 days for Hong Kong) and requires a number of documents (most out of my control or possession).

The quote of the day from a visa official: “You can probably talk your way past the guards at the airport and get a new visa in Hong Kong. It will be faster.” I could not keep a straight face.

We called our relocation specialists and they started a fast-track process. Then came the next bump. I needed my resident permit for a new visa. My permit had a typo – it was issued and expired on the same day, instead of being good for 1 year. In order to get a new resident permit, I needed a valid visa. In order to get a visa, I needed a resident permit --- checkmate..

Again, our relocation experts got a new resident permit in about an hour…and my visa came back in 2 days…but stress was very high for day!

Next time, I will sit in Philadelphia for a day….

Ancient Observatory

2007-02-01T14:53:00.000+08:00

Almost every day, I drive by a surviving section of the Second Ring Wall of Beijing which has some ancient celestial orbs and gauges on it. Today, we decided to take a closer look. The most amazing artifact (to me) is a large orb with the stars plotted on it. It is amazing from 2 aspects: it was made in the 1600’s, which is earlier than I thought the heavens were mapped and more impressively, the large orb was cast in metal. The engineering alone is rather complex for something that size.

Chinese Military Museum

2007-02-01T14:52:00.000+08:00

Sunday afternoon, I headed for the Chinese Military museum with one of the staff from my favorite German restaurant. Most museums do not have English translations, so I needed someone to assist. Wang Chun (Tony) had never been to the museum, so we both learned a lot. There were many leftover trophies from the Korean war from Japan, US, Canada and other European countries.

The museum, surprisingly, had a wing dedicated to the cultural revolution and Mao’s ascension to power.

Shijinglong Hua Xue Chang

2007-02-01T14:51:00.002+08:00

The first time I went snowboarding, no one wanted to come with me…I was the sacrificial lamb. The second time, one other family joined me. This weekend, we filled the van with 9 people and had to turn 2 people away! We went to a different mountain this time, the first ski mountain in Beijing. They advertised 7 runs. It was really 7 lifts/tow ropes. 4 of them emptied onto the same slope. It was steep and icy. We like Nanshan better, but we are glad we tried something different.

Japanese Coffee

2007-02-01T14:51:00.001+08:00

This past week, most of our team went on a roadtrip around China. For the morning carpool, our building has Xing Bu Ke (Shing Buck Ka = Starbucks) where we get morning fuel for the entire van. Since I am not a coffee drinker, this was my first experience getting the morning order. At 7:20am, there is a line and people fidgety waiting for their morning jolt of Starbucks. I had been “coached” the night before on how to order the coffee… a “Large Coffee of the Day” in Mandarin. When I got to the counter and spouted my rehearsed line, the barista replied in perfect English. “You want Japanese Coffee?”. The guy behind me was Japanese (and spoke Mandarin) started chuckling…In English, I asked for the “coffee of the day”. The Japanese guy behind me was now laughing hysterically. “Da Ben Ri Ka Fay” is what I wanted to say..”Da Ri Ben Ka Fay” is what came out of my mouth. Reversing those two characters changed Coffee-of-the-Day to Japanese Coffee. I have now perfected the right order and can get the daily order without a hassle, however my colleagues still send me out for “Japanese Coffee”.

Coal Hill / Jinshan Park

2007-02-01T14:50:00.000+08:00

Just North of the Forbidden City stands a man-made hill from all of the dirt from the moats and lakes around the palace. According to Feng Shuai principles, the north side of a house should be protected by hill to block the cold North wind. The wind was from the West today, but we got some amazing pictures of Beijing from this once-tallest point in the city. There was virtually no smog. What is not captured in the picture album is the sounds emanating from the park. There were literally hundreds of people singing in different groups, each trying to out do the other groups. Add to that various performers from a man playing Simon and Garfunkle on a saxophone to elderly couples ballroom dancing in the park brought an interesting perspective to this ancient park.

Snowboarding

2007-02-01T14:49:00.000+08:00

I went back to Nanshan for a half day of skiing on Saturday. This time all of the slopes were open so I ventured up to the top and the expert slope. It was an icy narrow run with large moguls. I started down and a Chinese man with a death wish went flying by very close to me, hit one of the bumps and launched into the air. He lost control and slammed into one of the icy moguls and tumbled/slid down the hill into a fence. I realized that getting down this slope was based not on my ability but on the other skiers’ ability. I clicked out and downloaded on the lift. I had no desire to go to a hospital with a ski impaled in my leg. The weather was another clear day and it was good to get outside of Beijing to clear the lungs of smog.

"Things I never dreamed of having to do: Renew my passport while in a communist country…"

2007-02-01T14:48:00.000+08:00

My Chinese visa expires in February. I planned on re-applying for another one when I returned to the US at the end of January. Talking with one of our visa experts, a passport needs to be valid 6 months beyond the desired expiration date of the visa…oops..my current passport was expires in early ’08. So, I could spend a day when I return to the US sitting in the Philadelphia passport office getting an expedited passport or I could try to get a new passport while in China and just get a new visa when I get back to the US.

So, off I went to find out if I can actually get a new passport in Beijing. It turns out that the US Embassy processes passport renewals, so off I went on Friday afternoon to start the process.

First, I had to get 4 AMERICAN standard passport photos in Beijing. It was not as hard as I had anticipated.

Then off I went to the US Embassy in Beijing. The security is very tight around the US Embassy. I entered and walked down a closed street towards the Embassy. I was stopped every 100 feet by 4 guards who did not speak English and asked for my passport before they would let me proceed. I had a long way to go, so put my arms in the air and held my passport above my head as I walked down the street. 5 more Chinese guards stopped me on my way. At the 10th guard (American), I get told that they liked my cautious approach and had not seen that before as I walked a cool kilometer down a gauntlet of security people. They had radioed ahead :-)

I was feeling very uncomfortable as I got to the Embassy. However, I got the best service ever from friendly people at the Embassy. They said that my new passport would be ready in 7-10 days and then I just needed to go to the Chinese Public Security Bureau to transfer my current visa to my new passport, which would take 2 days.
I was feeling very good about this approach. Sure beats sitting all day in Philadelphia.

Taiwan Earthquake

2007-02-01T14:47:00.000+08:00

On December 26, there was an earthquake off of the coast of Taiwan which broke most of the fiber telecommunication channels between Asia and North America. Up to this point, life on the far side of the globe was bearable since there was inexpensive email, web and telephone access to the USA. The cable break made it very hard to do use of these forms of communication. From my apartment, I could not bring up any website in the US. My vonage/voice-over-ip phone would not work and I could not access my other email accounts with any reliability or frequency. It demonstrated how much I depend on telecommunications for news and living while here. It also made me feel very isolated over here.

Coming Home

2007-01-02T13:04:00.000+08:00

After 4 months of working in China, I have to say that it has had a positive impact on me, but it also comes with some sacrifices.

As I rocket over Siberia heading for the North Pole (pretty cool close to Christmas…I wonder if I will see Santa!), it is a good time to reflect on the year.

I am grateful for the opportunity to experience a new country and culture in one of the fastest growing economies of the world. It has opened my eyes to some of the great things that we take for granted in the USA:
- safe food, for the most part
- freedom to have a family of any size
- OSHA, EPA, FDA and any other agency that ensures quality and safety
- Moon, clouds, stars and clean air
- Ability to vote
- Freedom of the press
- Freedom of Google and the internet
- Real Diet Coke served with Ice

This has come with a greater sacrifice from my wife and children. My wife has had to be a single parent during a busy time period, where our schedules physically overlap for 5 hours in any 24-hour period. I am very lucky to have such a great partner.

It will great to spend more that a jet-lagged week with the family!

Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, and may you too have a great holiday period and a Happy New Year!

Last Minute Change

2007-01-02T13:03:00.001+08:00

My actual departure date has moved around a lot based on some scheduled meetings on Dec 18, 19 and 20th in Beijing. As a result, I have changed my return date at least 4 times on my wife and kids (and rarely in their favor –always extending my time), which has resulted in some interesting phone calls home.

I had settled on returning on Tuesday Dec 19. My meetings on Monday ended at 1:30pm. On the way back to the office, I wondered if I could make the 5pm flight. (I usually leave for the airport at 1:30pm for the 5pm flight). A quick call to the airline and I decided to go for it.

There was one small problem: I had not packed yet. The airport is an hour from the office and my apartment. So I raced home, literally packed 3 large bags and 2 carryons in less than 20 minutes. I figured that if I got my passport and had a credit card, everything else would be a bonus. So armed with snowboard, suitcases and briefcase, we got to the airport…

Every thing was going great until the China interpretation of TSA rules and regulations kicked in. The entire 777 had to go through one (1) metal detector for special screening. Every bag gets a hand search. It took forever. I got in my seat 8 minutes before the door closed. Way to close for comfort…I obeyed the flight attendant and shut off my email.

Then I remembered that I had not let my wife know that I am coming home early. Hopefully, it is a nice surprise for her.

Laundry

2007-01-02T13:03:00.000+08:00

Sunday Night – domestic day – my laundry has piled up and needs to be done. My Italian washer/spinner combo decides to have an episode on me. The main breaker (not the circuit with the machine, but the entire apartment!) keeps tripping as I try to do my first load of wash. It plunges me into darkness.

First let me explain where my breaker box is --- above the kitchen sink. Even for me to reach it, I have to lean against a metal sink (that has water near it) and flip a door and flip the breaker in the pitch black. Now, China runs 220 volts vs the 110 in the US (220, 240 – what’s the difference?). My washing machine is in the kitchen and is connected the same pipes as my sink. If something is wrong with the machine, I really don’t want to get fried. I put on my thickest sneakers, put plastic baggies on my hands and felt for the breaker to flip. The lights came back on and I started the machine again…10 minutes later, it tripped the breaker again.

My washing machine is a front loader. So I flipped the breaker again, popped the door of my machine open and promptly flooded my kitchen with soapy water. And proceeded to finish the load by hand in my bathtub.

I hope it is fixed by the time I get back…I really do not want to do that exercise ever again on a Sunday night.

Snowboarding in China

2007-01-02T13:00:00.001+08:00

Before Thanksgiving, I learned that there were a number of small ski areas outside of Beijing that open on December 10. I brought my snowboard back to China after Thanksgiving (sorry, no pictures of me, my luggage and my 6 foot snowboard stuffed in a Jetta Taxi cab from the Beijing airport to my apartment – there were 5 cabbies betting that we would not fit :-)).

So this past Saturday, I ventured about an hour outside of Beijing to Nan Shan Hua Xue Chang (Nanshan ski village). It has 11 trails (1 double black, 2 Blues and the rest greens).

Here is the low down on Nanshan...think Doe Mtn/Bear Creek. Tons of beginner slopes, 2 blues and the double black was not open yet.

Double Black - narrow, steep mogul trail that funnels into an immediate 175 degee cattrack with nothing but that red snowo fence to keep you from sailing into a ravine. That ranks as a double black in my book.

2 Blues - short runs (longer to ride the lift than ski the run) but fun. Slopes are covered in my favorite Pennsylvania Blue, but good for edging.

Great snowboard park and tons of open space to teach kids how to ski / board.

Unique to China:
Entrance fee to get to ticket booth to buy lift ticket. If you have a reservation, you need to go BACK out and get refund of entrance fee...ugh.

People will ride the lifts (quad and double) without skis or boards on. If in the middle seat at disembarking, they will run over the back of your board to get out of the way of chair...makes for interesting lift accidents....

You need to be aware of people BEHIND you. Right-of-way concept on roads NOT replicated on slopes. I saw some nasty takedowns and one girl almost took me out (she went over the rear of my board and swung me around).

People stopping at the actual lift after being queue to wait for friends (when you are in the chute)....

Nanshan strategy when I go again:

I will be there at opening and get off the slopes at 2.

Skiing blues and the one black + park is safest. Bunny slopes away from palmo lifts also great.

I will eat a different lunch there. (different story)

I will not EVER, EVER use the cesuo(cross between toilet and outhouse) there EVER again.

I will buy pijou (beer) down the street for 2 kuai vs the 25 kuai for a skunked 10 oz bottle of Heinekein.

From 2 onwards, there is great entertainment watching the novices and neo novices careen down the slopes and a) take someone out, b) self destruct into a yard sale, c) get overrun by another a).

With renting a car and driver for the 9 hour excursion, the whole day cost me 50 USD. Not bad.

Lao She Tea House

2007-01-02T13:00:00.000+08:00

I got an invitation from a colleague to visit the Lao She tea house for dinner and a show. My Chinese surname is Sun and he has called me Lao Sun for a while. The show at the tea house is based on a Chinese fable about the Monkey King ---- Lao Sun! They do an amazing show here with shadow box theatre (paper puppets), voice mimcry, clowns, acting and kung fu exhibitions in an intimate setting with great food…and tea. Another great cultural experience that you cannot find easily in the United States.

Lights Out

2007-01-02T12:59:00.000+08:00

The lights went out at prime dinner hour at my favorite German restaurant, Schindler’s. It was pitch black. There was some quiet laughter, the staff quickly deployed candles and flashlights and everyone kept eating in an orderly manner. No one left. In the US, there would have been shrieks and everyone flooding out of the restaurant. In fact, people kept coming in for dinner. Loss of power here is treated like an everyday occurrence and a mild nuisance. What a different cultural response and perspective.

Weekly Trek to the Belgian Steakhouse

2007-01-02T12:58:00.000+08:00

We have a weekly standing reservation for any and all team members to come to Morel’s to have dinner on Friday night. Based on the retreat, we moved it to Saturday night this week. After dinner, we usually explore the area in the Sanlitun Embassy area. We went shopping in the Yashow Market for a while (Christmas is coming :-) ) and then we discovered “The Den”. It is a decidedly British pub with foosball and 1980’s music playing with soccer and rugby on the TV. We had a great time escaping Beijing on a crisp, cold night. We could have been in any city in the US. It was a great place to know for future reference as the weather turns colder and nights longer.

Retreat to the Country

2007-01-02T12:57:00.000+08:00

After a long week at work our small party of expatriates were invited to join the local company office on an overnight retreat to a corporate training ground about 2 hours outside of Beijing. So off we went after 5pm through the village of Shunyi to a facility run by Sinochem (Pictures are in the album). My first shock came when we reached the village of Shunyi. It is huge. It turns out the village of Shunyi has a population over 1 million people. There are overpasses, expressways, a central business district, etc. My definition of village is quite a bit smaller.

The facility is huge and an eclectic mix of architecture, but it exceeded all of my expectations. I had envisioned a yurt with no running water and got a French Provincial Room. There were some interesting construction techniques used, but very pleasant.

The place had a bowling alley, so some of us did that. I had to prove that a size 12 shoe (their largest) would not come close to covering my US size 14 feet. Bowling in socks is not as fun as I remember as a kid…

There was an indoor virtual shooting rang done with an HD projector. The attendants kept rebooting the machine in hopes that the focus would clear up. I finally jumped the counter, focused the projector manually and we promptly got an hour’s worth of free “hunting” on the virtual range.

And my favorite adventure came when we joined our Chinese colleagues for Karaoke. They put “Take Me Home Country Roads” on the box and handed me a mike. Well, the video was showing 2 ballroom dancers and the words were all wrong. I started laughing so hard that I couldn’t sing. My colleagues were not amused. I finally turned away and sung from memory. I think they were whispering that “the American doesn’t know the words to the song..”

We explored the property and found many interesting items the next day in this architectural experiment!

Putonghua

2007-01-02T12:54:00.000+08:00

This is the Chinese name for Mandarin. If you had asked me last year if I would ever need to learn another language, I would have laughed. I learned German in High School and College and have not used it in 20 years. (Most Germans speak perfect English, too)

I am now 10 hours into my Chinese language lessons and had to make a choice. Mandarin is a pictogram-based language. In the 50’s, a roman letter equivalent called Pinyin of each character was created with some symbols to show the tones. As I have adventured around Beijing with my dog-eared phrase book, Mandarin Hanzi characters are what people know. Very few people know Pinyin. I constantly have to show characters to communicate. So what is the choice?

Our language teacher shows the Mandarin Hanzi characters, says the word and does not write down the Pinyin equivalent. As more and more forms of the word “zuo” and “you” [Pinyin] came out, it was very hard for me differentiate which tone I should use. Second, I have come across very few signs and menus which use Pinyin (read: none). So, if you really want to learn Putonghua, the characters seem to be the right way to go.

With that decision, I now have to learn vocabulary, characters, pronunciation and grammar vs. Vocabulary/pronunciation and grammar. Over the past 2 weeks, I have committed more than 100 or so key characters to memory with pronunciation. I have also gained basic grammar principles. It is amazing how learning some key characters has opened up the world that surrounds me. Now, 100+ characters are .001 percent of the total characters in the language, but the basics are enabling me read and do basic communication at a survival level.

The picture of the Heinz Ketchup Bottle above is a great example. Of the 5 Hanzi characters, the last 3 say “ Tomato Sauce”. The first 2 perplexed me (and 2 of the wait staff at the restaurant) as to the meaning. “Hin Sure” is the pronunciation…which I finally got is “Heinz” picto-gramly in Mandarin. So the bottle is “Heinz Tomato Sauce” on the label…I wonder what a can of “Heinz Tomato Sauce” has written on the side of it????

I can now confidently get into a cab and tell the driver where to take me, order food in a full sentence, and say the names of most of my favorite restaurants.

What is also helping is a set of flashcards that I got at Barnes and Noble. They are instant ice breakers for wait staff and other patrons in the restaurants and shops that I visit. Our drivers have also gone through my flash cards to try and help my language skills and their English vocabulary.

When we first got here, you would get a standing ovation from Chinese people if you said “Thank You” or “Good bye” correctly. Using a complete sentence, instantly moves you to the center of attention…now if I could only understand what they say back to me….

Dongyue Temple

2007-01-02T12:53:00.000+08:00

Sunday morning following the Messiah concert, I decided to explore some of the Eastern part of Beijing on foot before the afternoon Lacrosse clinic. It was a clear, crisp cold day. In the summer, I decided not to see all of the temples within Beijing until I understood more of the history. Today was a perfect day to pick a temple to explore.

Dongyue temple sits 500 meters OUTSIDE the original city wall of Beijing. This temple has been ravaged many times over the years, but it now sits as an island in the middle of skyscrapers on one of the busiest streets in the center of Beijing.

Upon entering, I am overwhelmed by the number of red cards on strings hanging from anything that can hold a string. (see the photo album) The wind was whistling through the temple and these cards clacked in the wind. I later found out that these are “Good Wish Prayer Cards” that you purchase and bestow upon the 70 some odd Gods in the Temple. The Temple had many rooms with statues to represent 50+ areas of heaven, 20 areas of Hell, etc.

It is a very impressive display of architecture, devotion and belief to the Taoist gods. The fact that it still exists is also very amazing.

Culture and Commercialism

2007-01-02T12:51:00.000+08:00

During my week back in the US and while trying to recover from jet lag, I spent a number of the wee hours of the morning ripping our Christmas CD collection onto my iPod so I could return to China with some holiday spirit. I figured that the non-religious culture of China and the fact that Chinese New Year is in February would make December in Beijing a very quiet affair.

Boy, did I make another wrong assumption! Christmas is everywhere in China, which is really funny when you consider that Christianity and religion is not openly supported here. Santa pictures abound, Christmas carols are blaring in elevators and we even came across Auld Lang Syne in Muzak in a Men’s room of a Chinese hotel.

Upon my return to Beijing, I got a opportunity: a concert at the Forbidden City Concert Hall on Saturday Evening --- Handel’s Messiah! There is no way that I was going to miss this. Four soloists were imported from the United Kingdom and the medium sized hall was filled with mostly expatriates for the great performance. It was very interesting to watch Chinese citizens sing about God in English, while sitting in the Forbidden City. What a cultural experience!

It appears that the power of the almighty dollar in the US for Christmas is even stronger in China. I have started a “Christmas in China” photo album for glimpse at Clark Griswold in Beijing. Enjoy!

Things I Did This Week…and Would Not have done at home

2006-11-20T02:05:00.000+08:00

Reflecting back on the past 7 days as I pack up for the trip back to the United States, it was a good learning week.

Baked A Cake…in a crock pot. My apartment does not have an oven, and bread/cake products spoil in less than 8 hours based on the lack of preservatives. However, I stumbled upon a recipe that allowed Duncan Hines, my Korean crock pot and my ingenuity to create a small cake that became breakfast for most of the week.

A small group of teachers and administrators from my high school came to Beijing to recruit students, so I had dinner with a number of parents of potential students and alumni of the school. I was one of the oldest alumni there and quickly realized that I was the same age as most of the parents desiring their children to attend the school. The great part was that we all worked in Beijing and had something to talk about, albeit in broken in English or simple Mandarin phrases. I was able to meet other alumni in Beijing and also communicate in English with people other than the ones I work with.

We actually “spoke” to the waitresses at our favorite Japanese restaurant in Mandarin vs. pointing and motioning. We also discovered (after 15 weeks and eating at the restaurant 2-3 times per week), that there is a tepanyaki grill at the back of restaurant. So we ordered quantities, refills and food with mandarin numbers and phrases…we still lacked sentences, but it was good to no longer guess at how many and what was coming for dinner.

Met a Hall of Fame Lacrosse Player at our second practice on Saturday. John Phillips was elected this year to the Hall of Fame and visited Beijing to see how the development program was progressing. He is the former head of the International Lacrosse Federation and at 71, still had has the ability to scoop a ground ball and fire it effortlessly towards a moving target. His insight on the effort to grow lacrosse in Asia was a great 15 minutes that answered many of my questions.

Taught 30 University Students who were brand new to the game..how to throw, catch, scoop, cradle and use the field for lacrosse…in 45 minutes. 5 of them were natural athletes and went on to assist or score during the following scrimmage.

Shopped for Tea. No explanation required.

Negotiated for Pashmina and Pearls. The going price for Pashmina is now below 10USD. It is amazing to see how my perspective of prices has changed over the past few months. My frame of reference has always been the US market. What is reasonable in the US and what is reasonable in China are 2 vastly different numbers. I am now finding the “floor” price that many vendors will go (it takes a lot of time vs a native Chinese person), and am switching tactics to get a good price plus a few freebies on top. In either case, it is clear that the “value” of products vs that real cost are vastly different (and yes, quality can also be a variable on that continuum).

Went to a tailor for shirts and a blazer. We will see what the outcome is, but the fabric looked/felt very good and the price is fantastic for 6 shirts and navy blue blazer.

Ironed my pants….(I think my wife just fainted) because my washer/spinner has turned them all into a wrinkled mess.

Ended the week by watching the Michigan / Ohio State football game on Tivo/Slingbox delay from the States on Sunday night here…it was great right up until the middle of the fourth quarter when the 3 hour taping time limit ended the broadcast. So we enacted the backup Tivo/Slingbox in case this happened…and found that the backup Tivo owner had taped the Auburn / Alabama game by mistake. We settled for ESPN.com and looked at the play-by-play to see how the game ended. We all voted that the next big game will be watched live (3am/4am, etc) vs trying to time-shift to our schedule.

I am excited to get home “tomorrow” night and sleep in my own bed. I say “tomorrow”, since it is a very long day. I leave Beijing at 5pm, fly for 13 hours and land at 5pm in New York. I get to live Monday twice. Happy Thanksgiving!

Lacrosse – Beijing Clinic

2006-11-12T23:25:00.000+08:00

When I got to Beijing in August, I saw a listing for Lacrosse in one of the expat directories and sent a message off to the organizer. I didn’t think much about it until a week ago, when I got a nice email back saying that they had a clinic for students the previous weekend and 122 new lacrosse players appeared with only 4 coaches. They could use some help. On Friday afternoon close to 5pm, I got an email with the Chinese equivalent of MapQuest(read: Characters, not roman alphabet) on where to go on Sunday afternoon. It looked to be a place between the 4th and 5th ring roads (I live in the dead center), so if figured it would take me 2 hours on my electric bike to get “there”---not really knowing where “there” was.

An hour and 45 minutes into my ride northwest of Beijing into the University area, I found myself stopping people and comparing my map symbols with landmarks. Just like the US, 1 in 4 people sent me the wrong way. I finally started comparing symbols on gates to my map and found my destination…or so I thought. University campuses in Beijing are larger than US campuses and “lacrosse” is not a known term that people can understand. Anyway, I finally got to the “field”, which are also multiple basketball courts hidden between apartments and dorm buildings.

On the bike ride out, I was hoping that most of the students would understand English and then realized that none of my current Mandarin vocabulary comes close to helping teach lacrosse. Oh well, another adventure in the making.

Today, there are over 100 students from 7+ Universities and only 5 coaches to run a 2-hour practice. I was lucky to have Jiang Bo be my translator. She has been playing Lacrosse for one month and gladly helped teach the drills and translate my goofy terms like the “box” – the area between the head and shoulders where the stick head should be protected. The term “cradle” literally translates to “rock the baby”, so teaching the students how to cradle, first meant breaking the natural position they held the sticks when they heard the term..ugh.

Most of my students spoke survival English – what is your name, where are you from, where do you live; I do not even speak survival Mandarin yet. The head coach asked the 3 Americans to do self-introductions – In Mandarin, I either said that “my name is Chris” or “I am hungry Chris”. I am pretty sure that I mispronounced it but they appreciated the effort – I got a bunch of giggles.

Since lacrosse equipment is not available in Beijing, 150 kwik-stix were sent from the US. So we learned the basics with these short sticks and wiffle balls, both men and women at the same time. We ran drills for an hour then broke into 10 person teams and went full “field” for the next hour. It was very gratifying to watch my pupils pass, throw and scoop the ball after such a short period of time and be effective on the “field” both offensively and defensively.

The ride back home took almost 2 hours through very industrial and dirty areas of Beijing. My bike battery died about 10km away from my apartment, so the last hour was a brutal, slow pedal with 2 hills/ramps to ascend. It was great to spend an afternoon interacting with new friends with a common link and watching people learn a new sport.

Teaching lacrosse in Mandarin is definitely harder than teaching in English, but the outcome is just as gratifying.

Medicine in China

2006-11-12T09:28:00.000+08:00

I have always been relatively healthy and do not frequent the doctor’s office. Most visits to the doctor have been Emergency Room related to accidents, breaks, stitches, etc. Before coming to China, I got all of my shots and stocked up on some basic supplies (Advil, Imodium AD, Pepto Bismol, etc) and made sure that my health insurance covered any emergencies in a foreign country. By having a physician spouse (who will tell you that I am the worst patient) who diagnoses me at home, I do not need to take many trips to see a doctor.

When I came back to China last week, my right foot swelled to the point that it could no longer fit in most of size 14 shoes. I spent the next few days doing what I normally do for foot/ankle injuries --- elevate, ice, rest over the usual 3 day recovery period. My wife had 2 potential diagnoses determined via phone calls – who needs house calls when you can have phone calls :-) I also did not rest it as much as I should have, but I tried. I gave myself until this past Friday (1 week) for it to show signs of improvement before visiting a local doctor.

I walked into the clinic yesterday at 10am with no appointment and was out by 2pm. I had 2 X-Rays, Full blood workup, Consult with a female German doctor who spoke English, 2 different prescriptions prescribed and filled for $255USD BEFORE insurance. I have to say that my expectations were very low and they were exceeded. I was shuttled quickly to X-Ray, watched as the technician digitized and printed the photos, then off to the lab to get blood drawn, had to wait a little bit for the blood work to be done, but it was entirely reasonable. Then back to the Doctor’s exam room for diagnoses. She and another colleague examined the X-Rays and initially concluded nothing. (Yes, for you Radiologists reading, they also sent it to a Radiologist who will look at it on Monday for final verdict). She gave me her thoughts on why she is diagnosing my ailment and sent me to the internal pharmacy (which has the best selection of Western OTC items that I have seen in Beijing) and billing. I was impressed with the service.

I also must say I probably could not have gotten the same level of service (and certainly not at that cost!) without pulling some strings at a doctor’s office or hospital in the US.

Now I am steeling myself for the phone calls and paperwork to get reimbursed by my insurance company. I bet that I will spend more time and effort to get less than $50 back than it will be worth.

Right of Way

2006-11-12T08:52:00.000+08:00

Now, after riding my bike during rush hour and really looking at how rotaries work, it is clear to me the concept of right-of-way does not exist here.

There is a rather difficult drivers test that is administered here, but based on the random rules (or observance) it is clear that it needs some other additions.

Granted, bike and pedestrian lanes on the sides of roads make it harder to turn on and off roads. However, no one gives way until it is clear that an accident will occur and whoever is first gets to go.

I have kept my biking to the roads with separate bike lanes or wide bike paths and have found that you constantly have to be aware of all vehicles and bikes around you. Vehicles coming in from the right typically do not stop at lights or they block the bike lane and stop right in front of you. In fact, I now assume that they will stop directly in front of me. Buses have speakers so you can here them come and can see where they are going. Cabs tend to be the worst at cutting off bikes. It makes it hard to enjoy the scenery but with no right of way, but at least everyone has a fair shot.

Transportation

2006-11-12T08:45:00.000+08:00

Since most of the travel is by foot or by cab, there is a relative radius around some of the destinations that one visits and then is ready for more. So, I have been around the relatively easy walking distance of my apartment in central Beijing more than a few times. I have wandered down little alleyways / hutongs and discovered some of the poorest areas of town 100 yards from some of the most prosperous areas. I can watch people on the Wangfujing Mall, or they can watch me (most do the latter). At the end of the day, my explorations have been planned based on a taxi ride from the hotel to a certain point and back or setting off on foot from my apartment or getting off at a random subway stop and walking around. After 9 weeks, I needed to get somewhere else for an adventure, but did not know where to tell the taxi driver to take me…so I asked for a bike store early on a Saturday morning.

What I thought would be an easy task of purchasing an inexpensive, basic bicycle to use in the city turned into a shopping nightmare. In the US, I really hate shopping for clothes, because my larger-than-average size makes it hard to find items that fit. Little did I know that I was about to have the same problem with a bicycle!

I found a large (~27” wheel) basic, black, muddy bicycle for sale for 140 yuan ($17.50). Perfect price, could use some cleanup and looked to be about the right size when I sat on the seat…but then I took it for a spin. The handle bar design in China positions the handles directly inline with rising kneecaps for every turn of the pedal. I almost toppled the bike with 2 pedal rounds based on my two initial pedal strokes. So bicycle hunt now began down a street with many bicycle shops. At about hour 2, I had now moved to the name brands that we all know – Trek, etc. and my price of 140yuan was now 3500yuan (US prices). A 3500yuan bike will require a 200yuan/20lb lock to ensure that it remains parked for more than a few minutes. I then noticed that electric bicycles were being sold for 2500 ($300) yuan, but more importantly, the handle bar design was one where I could actually pedal the bike. So I picked a vibrant color to ensure that I would be seen (bright orange) and off I went exploring…3 hours later.

Now an electric bicycle is a cross between a bicycle and a moped. It has a 50 lb battery that can be charged by coasting/pedaling or plugging into a wall. It moves at a 20-25 mph on the flats with pedaling. If you do not pedal, it is a very slow and sluggish machine. Any hill requires a good deal of pedaling to make it up. It is still undersized for my frame, but it now allows me freedom to go to shopping, grocery store and restaurants without being a slave to cabs and point-to-point directions.

The next adventure was to find a helmet. They are very rare except for motorcycles. It took 2 weekends to find a series of motorcycle shops that sold helmets and a number of hours to find one that actually fit me. In the end, I found one that looks like an aviator helmet with a big red star on the front. There is no way that someone is going to hit me and claim that they never saw me!!!

Random Items

2006-11-11T07:09:00.000+08:00

I cannot figure out why older gentlemen wander the streets of Beijing at night in their pajamas. I have now seen this on three different occasions in three different areas and cannot figure it out. It must be a cultural thing. But a weird cultural thing..

It finally dawned on me that most of the advertising here does not have Asian models. Billboards, mannequins and ads all use western models. While China does not want to be “westernized”, anything that associates itself with the West sells. We returned to our little restaurant down a hutong from the office the other day for the second time in 3 days. The owner pulled one of our mandarin literate colleagues aside to quiz her on who we were, where we worked and why we liked the restaurant. We are certain that our patronage will turn into popularity for the place, and therefore raise the prices. I am not sure that minorities frequenting a place in the US also drive its popularity and profitability. It is very interesting concept and reality here in China.

NASCAR vs Formula 1

2006-10-12T20:19:00.000+08:00

Before NASCAR was an official sport (I denote that by being shown on network television over the weekend), I went to a few races when living in North and South Carolina. Some of my college friends (and their parents) taught me some of the strategy involved in NASCAR and enlightened me to the sport. Enlightened means aware and should not be confused with fanatic reverence. I am always interested in the last 10 laps (much the same as NBA basketball) to see if there is a close finish. Other than that, it really does not draw much effort or emotion from me.

Sunday October 8 was a different enlightening day for me. I started it at 3am based on my body clock not quite adjusting to China, yet. By 10am, I had unpacked, gone to the gym, gone back and forth to the French grocery store and was looking for something to do. The Baseball playoffs were on (Sat Night in the US is Sun morning here), so I decided to find a place where other people might be watching baseball. It turns out there is a 24x7x365 “sports bar” in Beijing – the Goose n Duck – “GnD” for short. So I took the 30-minute cab ride to check out the baseball game (I hope). When I got there, there were a slew of Americans cheering the game. Apparently, I had the most sleep, since most had been there all night and were finishing their revelry.

When the game ended, the next wave of fans appeared for Formula 1 racing. Apparently a big race in Japan was the focus of the attention. Germans, Australians, Britons, French and Canadians all congregated for the race. (Yes, note the lack of Americans, except me).

Simon, my newfound teacher from Australia, was nice enough to walk me through some of the strategy and statistics and favorites for Formula 1 racing. At the end of the day, I think it is a much more interesting and exciting “sport” than NASCAR. The cars have to accelerate and decelerate through hairpin turns, the crews get to tune the cars on their own and experiment with engines and tires, the speeds are faster and the strategy is more intense based on the course layout. Either way, Michael Schumacher was 17 laps from victory when his drive shaft decided to leave his car, eliminating him from the championship. It is a team sport, not a driver sport, unlike NASCAR.

I then realized that Formula 1 is an international sport and NASCAR is US centric. That means less money for the sponsors from consumers for the same time period based on advertising revenues. It is sad to realize that a better product exists, but is marketed poorly vs a poor product with better marketing. Formula 1 is a much more exciting, but doesn’t have the consumer marketing behind it. Someone should tell Fox that.

Contingency Plans

2006-10-12T19:32:00.000+08:00

For the better part of 5 years, my professional life has revolved around planning and anticipating the moment when something does not happen and having a backup plan waiting and ready to go. I had an epiphany a few nights ago trying to get home from work about complacency.

The usual commute for over the past 2 months or so has been hailing a taxi at the two neighboring hotels from my apartment and work. It is very painless since the bellmen at each speak English and tell the Taxi drivers where to go. (The path is corrected along the way, but the destination is clearly articulated and understood by the driver with little effort by me).

After over an hour wait the other night, an empty taxi was neither available nor appearing at the hotel near the office to take me back to my apartment. Our Mandarin literate colleagues were already home, the cars and drivers were off for the night

In the US, I take for granted that I can get home via my own car. If that is not available, I can call my wife, beg a colleague or take a bus home. For the most part, transportation has always been a non-issue and taken for granted.

So now, it is dark, after 7pm and I am well beyond walking distance from my apartment with no available taxis in sight. So I left the hotel bellman and struck out on my own to hail a cab in the financial district. 20 minutes later, my epiphany occurred. I was still standing on the same street corner trying to hail an empty cab.

There is a scene in the movie the Terminator where the robot is trying to select the best insult to hurl at the landlord knocking at the door – each phrase flashes on the screen and is dismissed in honor of the perfect insult. I went through the same selection process:

1) “I can take a bus”…how much is it, where is it going, where do I get off..Bad Idea
2) “ I can take the subway”...where is it, where do I get off, how much is it..Bad Idea
3) “I can walk”…yeah, right!

This is the moment right before panic sets in when you realize that all of the viable options do not make sense, so you try to hail a cab harder and faster (which I did!). I really did not have a backup plan to get home that night and that frustrated me.

At that moment, an empty cab came to a stop in front of me, the driver understood my lousy Mandarin pronunciation of my complex and off we went home.

I now have figured out that a subway stop is a block away from the office and another one is in my building. It is much cheaper and faster to take the subway than a cab. So my contingency plan is now a cab and my main commute method has changed to the subway.

I miss the Mandarin lessons during the commute and am getting used to being the tallest and only Caucasian on the subway car, with the mandatory stares that come with that. However, my commute is more predictable now and I have a contingency plan for basic existence.

Back for October

2006-10-12T19:30:00.000+08:00

My week back in the US was great! Playing with the kids was awesome. My wife needs a pedestal for being the head-of-house, chief-driver, class-mom, primary-care-giver and doctor-extraordinaire. I finally powered through jet lag on Thursday afternoon with a final nap just in time to leave on Friday morning for China, still unclear of what time zone I was actually in. I got to spend Thursday afternoon at my son’s soccer game on a picture-perfect fall day, with little clouds in the sky. It is a great memory as I exited the plane on a smoky, humid Saturday afternoon in Beijing after 25+ hours of traveling. Going back and forth to the US twice in 3 weeks is not something that I would advise anyone to do. It was worth it to see family and friends, but my mind and body are not synchronized. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to recover from Jet Lag after this trip.

Jet Lag

2006-10-05T13:29:00.000+08:00

I am back on a plane heading north to the US as China starts their weeklong holiday. Apparently, everyone in Beijing leaves and goes someplace else while other people flock to Beijing for the week. It is the time of year with the best weather in the city and the past week was spent planting flowers in Red, Yellow and Green displays all over the city. Trying to get to the airport today took an extra 30 minutes based on everyone exiting the city. It is still amazing to me how the drivers just make up lanes and weave through traffic with no regard to lines or speed. There is a toll booth on the Airport Expressway which was causing a backup. There are roughly 15 lanes to go through and pay the toll. There were at least 35 “lines” trying to get through 15 lanes and if any gap emerged, a 36th line was created by some driver trying to edge his way through. And the horns were blaring. It was the definition of chaos.

Now, amid this chaos was a very smart operation by the toll both collectors to speed up the process. There were people wearing orange vests wandering through the traffic morass ahead of the toll booth collecting exact toll money and handing out a receipt. The cars then just flashed the receipt as they sped through the gate. Imagine if the NJ Turnpike decided to have this flair of customer service during the holiday periods. It would make life much easier for everyone. I am not sure what type of insurance the orange vested people carried as they were in harm’s way, but it would be much safer in the US.

So my experiment last week to cure jet lag really did not work. I spoke too soon in my entry on Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday, my body rebelled. I fell asleep at lunch on Monday and could only sleep for a couple of hours on Monday night. Tuesday was another tough day trying to power through the time difference. As of Thursday, I felt fine and was almost adjusted, just in time to do it again. So I have now accepted that I will have to go through Jet Lag. It will take me at least 3 days or more and there is nothing I can do about it. I have renewed respect for those people who do rotating shift work on a weekly basis moving from first to third and back again. It saps a lot of strength from the body.

Lunch Adventure

2006-10-05T13:26:00.000+08:00

The weather today was the most beautiful day that I have experienced in Beijing. It was crystal clear, mid 70 degrees, just a little wind with zero clouds in the sky. As a result, we ventured outside the building for lunch with one of our Mandarin literate couples. The goal was to try a new Chinese restaurant for lunch. We wandered up the street to this little corner restaurant where you order at the counter, grab a seat at one of the tables and the food is delivered to you. As we entered, one of our Mandarin guides asked what I wanted for lunch…as I looked up at the menu on the wall and saw only Mandarin characters...I just laughed…I had no idea what to get or what the choices were. So the usual routine is to do a quick scan of what other people are eating and point to that. The variety was too large, so I went the other usual reply of “You pick!”. Now there is a certain amount of trust (actually, quite a lot) that goes with that phrase and our Mandarin literate colleagues are getting very good at knowing the different limits that each of us will go. For instance, some of people have the “No small bones” rule, while others have the “No beady eyes staring back at us” rule. Anyway, so we sat at the table and waited. This used to be my most anxious time, literally worrying whether or not I will like whatever comes as I sit with hunger pangs growing. Now, I treat it like Christmas. It is a real surprise. Today, the largest bowl of noodles with lamb came out. Which led to the next task of the day: eating a bowl of long, stringy noodles with chopsticks and not wearing the broth as you literally slurp them into your mouth. Again, watching other’s techniques lead you quickly to the conclusion that there is not one correct way to do it – you need your own style. I am not quite sure if anyone could finish the bowl of noodles, but I did manage to not wear any of my lunch. It also led to our conversation about Italian food and pasta. We had a chicken and the egg debate about where pasta started. Was it brought to China by explorers or was it brought back to Italy from a visit to China. We opted for the origination in China and brought to Italy.

As we strolled down the street back to the office, a number of small stores were selling nuts, popcorn and other treats in preparation for the upcoming holiday. We also walked into a bakery and saw some fresh moon cakes being prepared. As others got cookies and treats to bring back, I stood near the entrance using all of my self-control to not get something. The case in front of me had fresh cream puffs (I am a sucker for cream puffs). So I asked for just one; the clerk articulated that I couldn’t get just one, the minimum order was 5 (nice sales work!!). So I got 5 for 3 kuai (about 40 cents). Now like the moon cakes, when you bite into something, it is sometimes a surprise. I have stopped eating the sweets in China since I have found them too sweet for me. Close to eating sugar cane, actually. So I bit into the cream puff expecting a very sweet center and was pleasantly surprised to find a very light fluffy and perfectly balanced center. I quickly handed out the rest of the bag to the others and it was unanimous that they were good. So both the restaurant and the bakery will get more business from us.

Moon Cakes

2006-10-05T13:25:00.000+08:00

This is the week that leads up to National Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival. It becomes a weeklong holiday for most people and a vacation week. It is interesting to see that other cultures also celebrate the harvest and bounty from the agriculture of the Earth. This week was spent obtaining and giving out gift boxes of Moon Cakes, which celebrate the harvest moon. At first, I thought this to be more like the fruitcakes that people give and receive politely during the winter holiday period. The moon cake is a small, dense (more muffin or pound cake like) with a filling in the center. They come in elaborate boxes and are shared. The most common filling is an egg yolk, which was interesting but this brought up the fruitcake analogy to me. However, we also got some wonderful surprises: nuts, pork and ice cream! And unlike fruitcake, these do have a shelf life.

I’m Back!

2006-09-23T23:06:00.000+08:00

One very short week in the USA and I am now back in Beijing. I had a wonderful time catching up with family and friends, playing tennis and doing chores around the house that had been waiting for 4 weeks.

I tried not to switch time zones, so I pulled Navy time: 8 hours up, 4 hours in the rack, 8 hours up and 4 in the rack. Since construction is still going on in the house, my 4-hour nap during the daylight hours did not really materialize. Anyway, jet lag has been much easier with that schedule. I have only had a 2-hour drowsy stint on a colleague’s couch so far.

Saturday, September 23, 2006 was a beautiful, hot, smoky day in Beijing so we opted for a day excursion to the Beijing Botanical Gardens and Wofo Temple outside and northwest of Beijing. The place is huge and on a scale unimaginable. We found a nice creek with a plank walkway that meandered up the mountainside to the December 9th Memorial. We have no idea what December 9th memorialized because that was all that was written in English. We had a hard time deciphering the tree tags, but we did have a good time walking amid the (we think) sequoia, poplar, ginko, various pine and willow trees. We also found an amazing rose garden.

The evening was spent having the first Beijing cookout with colleagues: chicken, burgers, beans and franks, homemade applesauce and finished with S’Mores on the griddle. The night sky was clear, and there were no bugs. A great Saturday night to cap off a week of travel.

Homeward Bound!

2006-09-23T22:59:00.000+08:00

September 14th and the day is finally here to head home to be reunited with the family—yippee!!!! My pictures of the family have started to become too routine. I need some new fresh ones to capture the changes and expressions of Fall. I am really excited to get home, but I dread the actual day since it I live it “twice”, mostly in seat 3K. I starve myself of sleep after a very stressful workday – I go to bed around 3am Beijing time and rise at 6am Thu morning (6pm EDT Wed 9/13). This is to ensure I get some sleep on the airplane and be ready to go when I actually arrive home around 7pm on Thu Night in Delaware, 25 hours later.

I find that the actual job of packing a suitcase is hard to do. I am officially saying good-bye to summer as I fold the shorts and polo shirts into the bag, trying to calculate the space required to bring sweaters and sweat shirts back. The nights have been getting progressively cooler and the “rumor” is that heat does not get turned on until Nov 15. You have to love a country that dictates when you can use heat! That is still a number of weeks away. I will hopefully survive!

The morning is spent in meetings, but the airport run begins at noon with the usual Beijing Smoky Sky (you can’t see it…). As I wait in my third line to collect the same information given in the last 2 lines (name, passport nbr, purpose, DOB, etc) during the airport check in process, I start doing a mental count of workers to passengers. The ratio is roughly 1:1, yet I am still standing in a line and waiting 15 to 20 minutes. I then get to the security checkpoint. I have already removed all toothpaste, hand sanitizer (except for a really small bottle) and liquids to get through. The Beijing airport has reserved security gates 16-19 for those lucky people going to the USA. Your bag goes through the X-ray machine, you go through the detector, you then stand on a box and get wanded as you watch your bags get opened and emptied..everything is hand searched. My small bottle of hand sanitizer is discovered and confiscated. Then my safety net of CVS baby swipes is also confiscated as contraband. This further proves my point that they just don’t want you to be clean in China.

As I waste my time in the Spartan terminal waiting for the flight and firing emails off to the East Coast at 3am in the morning, I start creating my wish list of items / things to do when I reach Terra Firma in the good ol’ USA again:

1) Hug my wife for being such a Saint while I was gone
2) Hug and play with my kids because I miss them
3) Drink a REAL Diet Coke with lots of ice in the cup
4) Walk outside and look at the stars and moon, because I have only seen them 3 times in the last month
5) Brush my teeth with the water running and dunk my toothbrush into it as many times as possible (Seriously)
6) Play tennis
7) Surf www.google.com just to make sure there are no mandarin characters on the page (and read what they actually mean again)
8) Have the biggest, crunchiest salad with all of the fixin’s because most of my veggies have been cooked beyond all recognition
9) Grill something, just because I can

As I go to board the plane, all of our carry-ons are searched by hand again to ensure no liquids (or babywipes are brought on board). This even astounds me more as I watch 35+ strollers with newly adopted Chinese babies get on the plane and all of the wipes are confiscated. I hope someone told the flight attendants!!! They will need more tissues!

It has been an incredible four weeks with me learning something new every day. Either about myself (patience is a virtue..), the culture (look at the speaker even as the translator translates the sentence.. silent death stare while listening to the voice off to the side), or the city (never,ever go on Ping An avenue…ever..). Living vicariously through colleague’s children on the weekend or cleaning dishes and clothes with new equipment and lousy instruction manuals.

I always say that I have a good day when I learn something. I have had 4 weeks of good days. I just never thought it would be unplanned learning.

The Summer Palace

2006-09-12T00:01:00.000+08:00

The adventure of the weekend was to go to the Summer Palace, in the Northwest suburbs of Beijing. Because maps are not really to scale (at least the English/tourist versions that I use for survival), it looked like this was an average park on the outskirts of Beijing. Was a I surprised! It is even more impressive because you really cannot see any of the buildings as you approach the park; walls and trees hide them. So you enter through a gate and are now standing around a huge lake with impressive temples and views. We spent 5 hours in the park and covered about one quarter of it. What I found most impressive was the Chinese Naval Academy practiced on the lake. That means that the boats/ships had to be transported there…Beijing is not near the water…

The Picture Album link will show some of the scenes on this crisp, autumn day.

Architecture

2006-09-12T00:00:00.000+08:00

I continue to be amazed by the building styles in this city. Concrete boxes with small windows, near stunning new sleek construction, next to a power plant. Part is city-planning nightmares; part is pure imagination; the rest is history surviving. We do not have this timeline of history and renewal to consider in the US.

Check out the Picture Album link for some more examples

While speaking English is hard here, I am glad I am not speaking German..

2006-09-05T23:25:00.000+08:00

We decided to go to a Japanese Hibachi style restaurant on Monday night. The menu was in English, but the waitresses could only speak a few words of English. My colleague and I ordered what we thought was the surf and turf special for 2. After much confusion with the waitress, we were not quite sure what we were going to get. The first item to hit the griddle was bean sprouts. Right after that, 2 sunfish in all of their whole glory hit the griddle…when my colleague and I were growing up, we called them “sunnies” and we never ate them, we threw them back. We frantically searched for the English menus and pointed to Fried Rice as another dish to have. Right after the “sunnies”, the prawns hit the griddle…heads and shells included. Now, the fried rice was what we were holding out for. Then the beef and chicken (!) came out with the fried rice. Truth be told, the beef, chicken , prawns (hard to get used to eating the shell) and “sunnies” were actually quite good, but not what we were expecting.

As we were finishing up and laughing at how hard of a time we had and how surprised we were, this German couple comes up to order a dinner. They point and the waitress says, “two?”…they say, “ein” (one)… we realize that we were having a hard time, and that the German couple is far worse off than we will ever be. One of our other colleagues had pointed this out for people living in his building. People in China try to speak English. I have not come across anyone who tries to speak another language at first step. In fact, my basic dodge tactic for beggars and hawkers who yell, “Hello, buy this!”..is..”Sprechen Sie, Deutsch?” to avoid the gauntlet. They relent quickly.

PS – the German couple did get a good meal!

Domestic Labor Day Sunday

2006-09-05T23:17:00.000+08:00

Labor Day weekend was a changeover weekend for me. After 15 days of hotel living, I finally got to move into my apartment. So from Friday night at 6pm to 7:15pm, I packed up one room, had the porter take one of those large hotel dollies that allows hanging clothes down the middle of the street to the adjacent apartment building and unpacked into my new “home” away from home.

After the adventure to the Great Wall on Saturday, Sunday became the domestic day…and it was quite welcome. My colleague and I headed out to purchase an espresso machine, a quick automatic Tea Pot and some fresh groceries. After 15 days of lunch and dinners at various restaurants, I was ready to try my pots and pans in my new kitchen. We got our appliances and I spent some time at the Carrefour market getting an organic, imported, frozen chicken to make for dinner on Sunday night (quite a challenge in a foreign language).

When I got “home” and defrosted and cut up the chicken, I found more parts than I was used to. The Bare Naked Ladies song One Week sprang into my head…”The Chicken from China, the Chinese Chicken...have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’..” I thought about cooking all of these parts, but then lopped them off. Purdue Oven Stuffer Roasters have never looked so good.

So after that was done, I decided to use my new washer/dryer combo (this is not one over the other..this is the same machine that does both..no moving clothes) to do laundry for a reasonable price. The instruction manual was translated from Italian to Mandarin to English -- incomprehensible. I tossed it aside and decided to try it on gut instinct. I definitely got the clothes clean, but after 3 hours of “drying”, I took the clothes out and hung them up to dry. This was harder than I thought.

The Great Wall of China

2006-09-03T23:28:00.000+08:00

We got up early on Saturday morning and took a car north to Mutianyu, about an hour and half outside of Beijing. It is very rural, but urban sprawl is creeping closer. If there had been some wind to blow the haze away, I am sure the views would have been spectacular. Even with the haze, it is a very impressive engineering feat.
Click on the "Picture Album" link to the left to view the pictures.

Bike Ride on a Sunday Afternoon

2006-09-03T23:22:00.000+08:00

I spent last Sunday on a 3 hour bike ride around Beijing snapping pictures of some beautiful scenes and dodging taxi cabs and buses. No injuries (except the tops of my knees as they hit the handle bars..).

Click on the "Picture Albums" link at the left to view the pictures.

(This is a tad late based on techical difficulties ranging from the wrong camera cord in my bag, to locking myself out of my PC for a day or so).

Scene While Stuck in Traffic

2006-08-29T23:00:00.000+08:00

This is a typical scene in Beijing. Note the residential neighborhood, with an ancient pagoda on the left and an industrial complex stuck in the middle. The haze is constant here from the industrial complexes, lack of wind and miles of concrete without enough grass or trees.

Cabs

2006-08-29T22:30:00.000+08:00

One of this site’s fans asked for some pictures about the culture and people of Beijing. So, the format and topics will evolve to cover some of these items vs. the daily log. However, you all should know that the daily routine is captured here accurately. The language barrier extends the timing and effort required to get the simplest things accomplished. It is not like a lot of other activities can or are occurring besides sleeping, working and eating.

Since I spend between 2-4 hours a day in a cab, it might be good to share some initial insights. Beijing is more or less laid out in a grid, but it is a large grid with many shortcuts to go from major street to major street. Until recently, there were three levels (and prices) of cabs: older red cabs were the cheapest, green/brown & blue/brown were average, and black was the most expensive. Now, they all have to charge the same rate. Since the change, there has been a mass exodus/retirement of cab drivers and new, younger ones have flocked to the profession. We have some members of our team who will not get in a red cab; others will not get in a black one. I am starting to put more stringent qualifications on the cabs.

A red cab with a more mature gentleman (I have not seen 1 women cab driver, yet), will get my business every time. I have learned most of my shortcuts, some language lessons in broken English, some facts about the city in English and genuine effort to try to get me to where I am going, even with my strong Delaware Mandarin accent. These are typically the older cabs and cab drivers with the most knowledge. They want to learn from me and I from them. They also tend to be the most tolerant and observant on the road --- a good deterrent for near-death experiences.

Now, if a young man is in a red cab, I will not get in. These tend to be the new cab drivers that cannot afford the basic new cab. When you get in, they turn around and ask for the “best route”..uhh, I thought I was getting a cab so I didn’t have to think about the best route.

In the newer cabs (green/blue), older gentlemen again get my business for the same reasons. The younger guys tend to be more aggressive and death defying.

The black cabs (if they will pick us up) tend to have the best English and the most talkative to practice their English. Our biggest challenge is communicating with a cab driver. Usually, the doorman at that hotel translates your destination to the cab driver, gives you a card with directions back to the Hotel in Mandarin and off you go. Once you hit the streets, you are at the mercy of the driver. I have been trying to learn the name of my hotel so I can get a cab anywhere. Grand Hyatt translates to Dong Feng Jun Yue, but you literally have to get the pronunciation of tones correct for anyone to understand. Jun goes down and Yue goes up. Again, with my strong Delaware accent, I have been tonally challenged in my quest to communicate. So I pull out my little card and the driver repeats the name. My usual response is, “That’s exactly what I said!”. Anyway, I finally got a language lesson from our cab driver in the black cab this weekend. He explained to me the Yue means Moon and I need to go up in the tone. And Jun needs to go down. Dong means East, yada yada. Then while I am practicing and he is correcting me and while he is driving down a 4 lane crowded street, he says that he will write out the pronunciation for me. Keep in mind he is driving and swerving while writing this. The attached photo is the pronunciation guide that I got from him to help me get back to my hotel. We have had a good laugh over this.

Thu – Aug 24

2006-08-25T23:54:00.000+08:00

My day started by being snubbed by the first 3 cabs in line at the hotel, who did not “know” where the office was when asked by the doorman. I jumped in the back of the 4th cab, handed him the direction card and pointed forcefully straight ahead without waiting for the translation by the doorman – it worked. As he started to turn the wrong way out of the hotel, I utilized my newly learned Mandarin words from a colleague of Left, Right and Straight Ahead. I took the cab driver down one of my favorite short cuts between 2 hutongs that is a one-lane road with 2-way traffic. It is a game of chicken with one car/bicycle/pedestrian veering onto the tiny sidewalk at the last minute as the distance closes between the oncoming traffic. This alleyway is about halfway to the office. The cab driver decided to get even with me by doing the Beijing Weave through traffic (basically, passing everything in sight from all sides, accelerating up to red lights, swerving in front of and around bicycles, etc). We made it to the office in 20 minutes and he only corrected my accent on directions 3 times; I did not require any caffeine for the morning since my adrenalin was already pumping full force. I consider this a success for the start of the day.

The morning work was uneventful. It is easy to tell when it is lunchtime, though. The email traffic slowly dies down as the East Coast goes to bed and by noon, the only messages are from our team to each other. It must be Lunchtime!

We are in a brand new building (the paint is still wet), so the café is temporary. As you get off the elevator, you have 3 choices the 10 RMB ($1.25US), the 15 RMB ($1.88US) or the 25 RMB ($3.13US) cafeteria lines. We have been doing the 15 RMB line; the 25 RMB may have pizza or some other western food choice, but that is the only difference we can discern so far. You pay with a stored value card (getting one is a challenge without a translator), but very easy to use. The scene is straight out of Escape From Alcatraz. You get a compartmented tray/plate, you walk down the line and scoop various dishes onto your tray, grab chopsticks and a drink and head for portable tables and stools in an unpainted, uncarpeted room. The food has been very good, but you need to eat around noon. The trays of food start hot, but are not really warmed. The longer you wait to eat, the colder it gets. Each dish is labeled with a Mandarin and English card. Today was especially memorable; the main entrée was “Pig Trotters”. Now, I am the biggest pork fan that ever lived. I will go out of my way to sample and eat good pork ribs. I had a hard time with the Pig Trotters; I could not find a decent amount of meat on them. I had mostly rice and some beans for lunch.

As the workday ended, I headed to the Jennie Lou’s market to get more breakfast foods (cheese and crackers) and dinner foods (crackers and cheese and Nutella).

The other time that is easy to recognize is 8pm. This is like the scene in Trading Places where Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy are preparing for trading to begin on the floor of the stock exchange by combing their hair in the Men’s Room before the frantic day begins. At 7:45pm, usually as we are finishing dinner, the blackberries become active again as the East Coast wakes up. Now, for most of our day (wee hours of the morning on the East Coast), we have been pumping emails and requests into peoples’ inboxes. Between 8 and 8:10pm, every single person usually replies to our sent emails. So in a matter of minutes we end up with 50 or so messages and our “second shift” now begins. Tonight was no different as I had an “8 o’clock” conference call (8am EDT / 8 pm BJ time). The “second shift” ends after 11pm and I call it a night.

Wed – Aug 23

2006-08-24T23:32:00.000+08:00

A warm, hazy day is emerging in bustling Beijing. I got up earlier to see if the commute would be easier. Breakfast is some cheese on saltines and I try some of the juices that I bought. I thought it was strawberry juice, but it tasted more like tomato (not one of my favorites). A closer look at the label revealed tomato, strawberry and carrots. Note to self, NEVER buy that again. I then pulled out a carrot, orange and something-I-didn’t-recognize that was really good.

As I wait in line for a cab at the lobby, I am beginning to put a pattern together of cab life. Most people get in the next cab in line, and are usually heading for the airport. When I ask to go to some other point in the city, most cabbies say they don’t know where it is. It takes me 3-4 cabs to get a driver willing to take me to my destination. That being said, I have now been in the city 5 days and find myself giving the cab drivers directions (via pointing and grunting) on where to go. Today, I had the cab driver re-trace the back route to the office and almost got there in 15 minutes. Unfortunately for me, Beijing’s traffic patterns with jug handles make New Jersey look like kids play and we overshot the building. It took us 30 minutes to double back. Somehow, I think that the cabbies just want the airport runs to get better fares.

Tue – Aug 22

2006-08-24T23:31:00.000+08:00

5:30am – I awake to the honking of a taxicab outside. Go to the gym and come back to try my recently purchased mystery breakfast dishes. I assemble the dried contents and come to the conclusion that one of the packets that I open looks and smells like beef jerky. I make the congee and have it with a cup of oolong tea. It is really pork, not beef. Not a bad meal. I’ll have to get more of the pork bowls.

My trip to the office (only a couple of miles) takes 45 minutes in rush hour traffic. I am going to leave earlier tomorrow. The day is spent setting up our desks, having a planning meeting, meeting with our partner and resolving issues. I leave the office late and need to get back to the hotel for a conference call. Instead of taking the busy thoroughfares, my cab driver takes me through some small back alleys and we burst out near a beautiful park north of the Forbidden City. As we make our way south, we come to the northeast corner of the Forbidden City where dozens of photographers are taking pictures of the sunset behind the walls. It is a beautiful scene that zips by before I can get my camera out. I get to the hotel with 30 minutes to go before a phone call and am trying to figure out what to eat for dinner. I am too tired to deal with communicating what I want to eat. I head back to the room and have peanut butter on saltines for dinner. My conference call ends after 9pm Beijing time. There was an article today in the WSJ about jobs in Asia are really 24/7, based on the East coast time zone and action generated from it. I felt like I was living in the article today.

Mon - Aug 21

2006-08-22T23:18:00.000+08:00

5:30am – I am finally over jet lag and wake up refreshed and ready to go.

We were supposed to start work in the firm office today, but the schools where all of the kids go are closed due to a lack of water, so we have postponed our meetings today.

The morning was spent doing some work in the hotel room. The real adventure came in the afternoon: getting a bank account and getting a Chinese mobile phone. I cannot think of a better way to spend my afternoon!

To get my energy up and get out of the hotel on a beautiful, windy day, I decided to wander down the Wangfujing Dajie mall where many tourists come to shop. At the end of the mall, I found a small Chinese Dumpling store packed with people eating lunch. All of them were Asian, so I figured that it must be good. As I sat down to order and the Mandarin menu with no pictures was placed in front of me, I realized why there were no westerners in the restaurant. I proceeded to point to three lines where I recognized the meat symbol and asked for 2 of each. The waitress patiently sat there with her pen poised to her sheet of paper with an unblinking stare. I tried it again. She still stood there unmoving. I shrugged my shoulders and she let loose a barrage of Mandarin. I smiled and shrugged again. A nice man at the next table leaned over and said in English, “the minimum order is 5 dumplings per type. She does not believe that you want 30 dumplings, but she has seen smaller people eat more than 30 dumplings. Do you really want thirty?” He helped me get my 6 dumplings of pork and celery, which cost me $.50US. This is how I learned what “San Shi” means…30. And for those of you counting, 5 dumplings would have been plenty; they should replace the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest with a dumpling eating competition. 30 would have been amazing!

On my stroll back to the hotel, I wandered into a large bookstore and headed for the children’s section. Every kindergarten child learns how to read, so there must be some good books I could use to help me learn Mandarin. I bought 3 literary classics to help me recognize symbols and learn pronunciations. My colleagues were making fun of my choice of “Bugs and Slugs”, but I have an ulterior motive that I will save for later.

I met my Mandarin / English literate host, who is helping me through the banking and cell phone experience and we set off on our excellent adventure. First was the bank account. China is a mostly cash based economy. My main method of getting Renminbi is an ATM withdrawal from my corporate credit card or my personal debit card. Each method has a different fee structure. I could also wire money to an account, which has a different fee structure. At the end of the day, it makes more sense to make fewer, larger withdrawals than more frequent, smaller ones based on the various fees. However, I am not comfortable carrying such large amounts of cash. So, depositing larger withdrawals in a RMB account and accessing via a debit card or Chinese ATM for a tiny fee makes more sense. I go to the ATM machine in the lobby and withdraw RMB from my US account. Now comes the fun part. The bank account setup process form is in Mandarin, my name does not even come close to fitting in the small box on the form, much less my signature. The teller lines at the bank and guards in the lobby make it a much different environment than a US bank lobby. I get my account setup, deposit my newly withdrawn RMB and am handed a debit/ATM card as I leave. It does not have my name on it; I must enter my 6 digit PIN and Sign at the POS every time I use it. Actually, a less painless experience than the US, but it would have been brutal if I had not had a translator with me.

Off we go to get a local cell phone. I will never, ever complain about Verizon or Cingular service ever again. This is would make a great Laurel and Hardy sketch. First, you pick out your cellphone model, and wait in line and buy it. My translator is sticking her SIM card in the phone to make sure it works. Then you need a SIM card to make it work (assign it a number). So you pick and buy the number with 50 minutes on it. Then we test the SIM card and phone (all features: dial, receive, SMS, Voicemail, yada yada yada). Then comes my favorite part…can you switch the menu to English so I can use it?…Now comes the better part. Monthly billing doesn’t exist. You buy prepaid cards and load minutes onto your phone. So I purchase the prepaid card and ask what the next step is? The reply was to follow the directions on the back of the card. I should have seen this coming, but I fell right into the trap…I turned over the card and it was in Mandarin. I was not amused. However, an unmistakable phone number leapt off of the card at me and Option 2 is English after it picks up…I had reloaded my phone with more minutes and was ready to go. 2 hours, 1 bank account and 1 cell phone later, I was a happy camper!

The night only got better as a colleague found a western grocery store that carried peanut butter for $2.50US vs. my $11 previous find. I also got Nutella and sleeve of Ritz crackers for reasonable prices. Now I just need something to put them on besides crackers. Bread is sold in 4 slice packages. It lasts less than 24 hours due to no preservatives. The same store sold DVDs for $1.50US (region 9). So I got 5 to entertain me.

Not a bad Monday…I went to bed sounding out and trying to translate “Bugs and Slugs”…

Sun - Aug 20

2006-08-22T23:15:00.000+08:00

4am. I can’t get back to sleep after 6 hours. My cellphone works, but email has now stopped. So I log onto the system and start clearing out email. I want to find a real grocery store today; I got a name from my colleagues. Based on the challenges with directions yesterday, I start the day on the web looking up the locations of the 5 Carrefour stores to see which is closest. This brings up the second major challenge here. When you hit the internet from the hotel room, the ‘net thinks you are in hong kong and defaults everything to Mandarin. So when get to the Carrefour site, it is in Mandarin. They do have an English site, but most English sites are not as robust as the Mandarin sites and this is true for Carrefour. So I use our next most useful tool: Google Language Tools. If the guy who invented this was with me right now, I would buy him dinner and beverages for life! It is wonderful. Anyway, I have google translate the mandarin site for me and I start looking up the addresses and locations. Now, if the google tools could only translate map pictures….

I pull out the best map of Beijing (these are not to scale and do not include all streets or street names) that we can find and start the word search puzzle of matching symbols to streets and vice versa. I am able to plot 4 of the 5 sites in about an hour.

Later, I take the marked up map down to the bell captain and the cabbie and we figure out the closest/fastest one to go to. If I had not done the homework, I would have been stuck again, since no one knew where these stores were.

When I get to Carrefour, I am amazed. It takes up half of a city block and is 4 floors tall. It is like a Target / Walmart, but also has other stores on the bottom level. The coolest part was taking the shopping carts up and down the moving ramps between floors. I traveled through the entire complex looking at prices of everything from socks, pants, clothes, and electronics to food. There really is a big difference between the native and imported goods.

When I got to the food floor, you could hear a commotion in the produce / meat section on the far end..it was more like cheering and bidding. I decided to save that for last and tour the other aisles. The goal was to get breakfast food so I did not have to buy the expensive hotel breakfasts every morning and see what the dinner options might be, in case I get tired of restaurants. Frozen breakfast foods were not at this store, English muffins did not exist and I do not have a toaster. I found the breakfast aisle and the choices were expensive oatmeal ($10), sesame and plum paste, and some instant noodle and congee bowls. I opted for the instant noodle and congee bowls. I have no idea what flavor they are, but they do contain meat (rou) since I know that character.

I also got a case of Diet Coke and seltzer water and then bought a sampling of the various fruit juice choices which are abundant here: orange, carrot/peach, apple, carrot/banana, etc. I will see what is good and what is not.

I then headed to the dinner section and found some instant noodles and soup. The directions will be challenging since they are in Mandarin and I am not quite sure what flavors I got. I have learned the symbol for jellyfish and eel and try to make sure that they are not on the label. And I splurged on $3 Knorr’s corn and chicken soup.

I then head to the produce and meat area to see what is going on. The meat / butcher area is self-serve. The butcher ground up meat, veal, beef, etc and puts it in big tubs. If you want dumpling mix, you grab the trowel and fill your bag your self and hand it to the butcher to weigh and mark.

I get to the seafood area and again amazed. Most of the fish are alive in big fish tanks. There are nets there and a fishmonger. You catch your own fish and put it in a bag and hand it to the fishmonger. He will gut it for you, if desired. I saw people use the nets and then there were some real pros that put a plastic bag over their hands, reached into the tank, snagged a fish and reversed the bag in one motion. It was amazing to watch. There were also live prawn tubs with the prawns jumping out and live crab tubs with crabs escaping. There were boys and girls chasing the escapees down and putting them back in the tubs.

I got to the deli counter and found the commotion. Throughout the store are people preparing different products having you try them to spur sales. At the deli counter, the hawker was auctioning off her stuff as people order similar competing products. It was almost a carnival atmosphere. She inevitably made the sale and everyone was having fun.

I found the roast duck area as well, where the butcher was carving to order. There were 50 or so ducks laid out. You point and tell him what you want, the knife flies and the meat goes one way and the carcass the other. It was interesting to watch.

While I stand out as a minority over here, my case of Diet Coke appeared to get the most attention in my cart today. Every one stared at it. Even the check out clerk was gesturing to make sure that I wanted all 24 bottles.

I met some colleagues for dinner last night in a nice courtyard restaurant. We had mushrooms, fish and tofu, Chinese broccoli, and some really sweet dough. Total bill for 4 of us to eat was $30US. We then went to the Hou Hai area where there is a lake with many nightclubs and patios around the lake. It is more like a European café setting where everyone strolls around the lake listening to the entertainment while there are people trying to get you inside or sit on the patio to charge you for listening.

I then came back in another wild cab ride to the hotel and crashed into bed at 10pm.

Sat - Aug 19

2006-08-22T23:06:00.000+08:00

3:00am – I wake up and cannot get back to sleep. The TV has Terminator 3, followed by Caddyshack in English with mandarin subtitles. By 5:30am, I am ready to do something else. In the past 24 hours, I have watched 5 movies, read a complete book and numerous magazines. I put on my exercise gear and head outside. The hotel is a couple of blocks from Tian’anmen Square, so I decide to jog over to see the presumed empty square. First, a block in Beijing is deceiving. It is very long, almost akin to 2 long blocks in New York City. When I got to Tian’anmen Square, it was packed with people. It was around 70 degrees and there were tons of kids flying kites, some shaped as eagles, others with multiple kites tied together. There were other groups of people exercising and others picnicking for breakfast. I was truly amazed at the number of people up and out before 6am.

I spent the morning on the phone with Cingular trying to get my cellphone to work and exploring the shops and area around the hotel to find a grocery store and see the different restaurants. A good example of the language barrier came with the hunt for a grocery store. I stopped at the front desk and asked for a “grocery store”. The hotel has a Chinese staff, but everyone is multilingual based on the clientele, if you get a French or German literate staff person, they quickly switch and get an English speaking person. However, the term “grocery” is foreign to them. So I got an interesting stare. I then asked for the nearest market and they pointed down a block to an open air area where people sell goods (not food). So I then asked where I could buy food and drinks and they told me about all of the different restaurants in the hotel. So I asked where I could buy food that I could prepare in my kitchen and they finally understood and gave me directions to a gourmet market in the mall attached to the hotel.

Food prices were interesting – 16 slices of Kraft American cheese $8US, a jar pf peanut butter is $11, a small box of Rice Krispies is $6US, Tsing Tao Beer is $0.40, Budweiser is $3.

I got some candy and sweets as a house warming presents for some colleague's children, who I am going to see in the afternoon. I spent the afternoon at the pool of their housing complex outside of Beijing. Getting there was another interesting challenge. I went to the Hotel bellman and asked if he knew where the community was and to get a cab there. He did not. So I went back to the room, fired up the computer, and looked up the address and wrote it down (in English). I took it back to the bell captain and we translated my address to see if he knew where it was. Abbreviations like “Rd” messed him up. After talking to 2 cab drivers, one volunteered to take me there. The cab driver did not know English. I made sure that I had my mandarin card that can get me back to the hotel and off we went. The cab was very good and got me to the community.

We spent the hot afternoon in the pool, literally, and then had dinner at the onsite Chinese restaurant. For the kids, it was their first Chinese restaurant experience and they were all good sports about it.

I got a cab home after dinner and then again tried to stay up until 10pm to power through the jet lag.

Thu / Fri - Aug 17/18

2006-08-22T23:05:00.000+08:00

The day begins at 3am on Thursday morning on a beautiful night in Bethany Beach, DE. Since the bomb scare and extra precautions at the airport, my travel plans had an audible at the line of scrimmage the day before. Instead of taking a train at 8am from Wilmington, I had to meet a car at 6:30 am to take me to New York. We got to Newark Airport by 8:30am and I was through security with luggage checked by 8:45am. My plane leaves at noon. The rest of the morning was spent staying awake and cleaning out emails.

The plane leaves on time and we have a long, uneventful flight to Beijing – flying over Canada, north of Alaska, over Siberia and then down into China. As I passed over Ontario, I was able to see Magentawan and Rhoades Island on Ahmic Lake. We arrive on time in Beijing at 2:30pm Fri – Aug 18 (2:30am Fri Aug 18 in DE). I slept about 4 hours on the plane, so this is a long day. I cleared customs and loaded into a cab with a driver who speaks no English on a hot, hazy and smoggy afternoon. I have a piece of paper with the name of the hotel and we start on our drive at 4pm. Traffic on Friday afternoons is horrific and my cab driver was determined to get me to my hotel quickly – weaving in and out of traffic, blaring his horn, using the shoulder to pass, etc. I was looking out the back window and ignoring my near death experience. I get to the hotel in one piece after a little over an hour in the cab (total bill = $12US).

Now my goal is to stay awake until 10pm to get over jet lag. 5 hours to go – spent unpacking, working out in the gym, having dinner (sushi in the hotel restaurant) and collapsing at 10pm. Elapsed time since leaving Bethany Beach is 31 hours. Number of hours spent sleeping is 4.