The rest of the weekend for 8/28/10

After the matchmaking site visit, I had lots to do, exchange a belt from the knockoff market, buy a book (on visiting certain cultural areas in China), etc. I decided that after 4 hours of walking, I needed a break so it was either a movie or a meal. I went to the theater to find out when the English version of "The Expendables" would be showing. Discovering, that I could get in right away, I went in, ate a zone bar and checked my pedometer, 5 miles done with lots more to go. The movie was crummy, I would recommend staying away. I then went to a restaurant that featured fresh juice and salads and thoroughly enjoyed myself. A great find that will be revisited frequently. I left the restaurant and discovered a nice shoreline park which will be ideal for taking photos of the opposite side, if I can get there early in the morning as the sun rises on that side of the river. Will revisit one day.

Then I took the metro to the other side and began walking back toward where I started the day. I found out that I was very popular. Many Chinese women approached me to ask the local pick up line, "Where are you going?" (All those years being single and I never knew that was the line to use.) By the time the 5th or 6th person approached, I must have perfected the look of absolute disdain and disinterest that the ladies stopped their approach before even getting near me. One man did invite me to someplace for a "Sexual massage", I guess this wouldn't be like the group foot massage I got a few weeks ago. I was also popular with the watch selling crowd, but now that I have my own knockoff, I just ask them if they want to buy mine, turning the tables and quoting a ridiculously high price. It gets a smile and moves them on to the next sucker.

When I got near the end of my trek some co-workers messaged me about dinner, which, while I wasn't interested in eating, I thought it would be a good way to end the day hanging out with some people whose company I enjoy. When they want to go to a bar at 10 PM after a poor dinner, I turned for home and got in with 25,000 steps or 13 miles of walking. My dogs were tired!

Sunday was a lazy start and then a trip to the electronics market with my Canadian co-workers. I tried to buy a camera lens but wouldn't pay what they wanted for a 6 year old lens. (The seller didn't even understand that Canon puts date codes on their lenses, so he was selling this at an almost brand new lens price.) So we decided to leave and head for a different area for lunch. On our way out of the market we came upon a lady making sugar cane juice which I had to try (adding to my list of dragon fruit, hawthorn and pear juice, etc.)



This looked like so much fun, I had to try. Guess what, this is not an easy way to make a living.



A rainstorm came up so I had a chance to use my umbrella that I've been carrying around for three weeks without a single chance to use. I only went back to the Metro station and back to the apartment to escape the crowds and catch up on some stuff.

The end of another interesting Shanghai weekend.

Saturday in Shanghai

I woke up a little bit shocked to find that it was 77 degrees. I can now say it wasn't hot here! It's not supposed to last but let's enjoy the moment, even if the humidity was 80%. I decided to take advantage of the nicer weather and walk all day. This time there are a lot of photos to capture what I observed today.

I began by walking a few miles from a faraway train station to People's Park. I encountered an unusual scene that was worth spending some time to understand. There is an area where adults, typically parents and grandparents post specific information about their children. (Sometimes the poster is the person looking.) This is a live market for matchmaking. Of course, I couldn't understand any of what was written except the year of birth. I saw people's posting with year of birth ranging from 1957 to 1985.



It's a sad but interesting place that hopefully my photographs capture. Although, mostly these presentations are just sheets of paper with vital personal information, there are some people sitting there with photos and other particulars waiting to speak to passersby who are seeking mates for their child. Many people are taking notes on the potential candidate for review later.



As with most things, a secondary market has emerged. For those of you who get Yiddish, we have a bunch of Yentas. Yes, matchmakers, think about the show "Fiddler" and the song. I observed two matchmakers who will use their special talents to find you a "perfect match". Here are two of them...





Then there was this smart young man who set himself up on a seat and interviewed prospective candidate who were also there looking for a live match...



THe last one struck me as sad probably because I could understand the words. First a lady placing her information on a wall...


And then a close up so you could actually read what she put there.



No funny comments, no special moments, just a little slice of life. More on the day later.

P.S. There are also some videos of the scene that I'm linking here. If you want to watch click on the video link and make sure to let it fully download before you begin watching.

Pay attention to the dates on the lists in the background.



This one is a matchmakers at work...

Meeting with Government officials

I got back to my apartment and found I had several messages about needing to attend a meeting with a government official on Thursday afternoon. I was nominated because our local American leader was in the U.S. and they want to have a U.S. person as part of the group going to meet with the local Chinese group. I was driven there with one of our Staples local management team members.

It was another beautiful day in Shanghai and I will say it was hot here. We get to the official's office very early so we're escorted into another official's office to await our lawyer. They are prepping me for the next meeting, no A/C and hot tea which you have to drink out of respect for your host. Without getting into any particulars of exactly why we're there, we are just letting the local government officials know we are still interested in a positive outcome of a matter they need to push forward to the next level of government. Our lawyer arrives so we have a brief pre-meeting with her.

At precisely 2 PM, we are escorted to the local business district official's office. (His business card says, "Vice Warden" but I'm told he's really deputy governor.) They insist that I sit in the "seat of power" directly across from the vice warden. After polite greetings and another cup of boiling hot green tea is presented, the government official begins to talk to me through the interpreter saying all the politically correct things about the importance of Staples to the business community and how they appreciate our presence, etc. My response is in line with his, "We are honored that he took the time to meet with us, that we appreciate everything they are doing for us, how happy we are to be located in the Changning district, etc." Then with apologies to me, our lawyer says, correctly, that they will continue the meeting in Mandarin for expedience. I agree and sit there to listen, hanging on every word like I understand. Of course, I realize how little vocabulary I know. Hey, most two year olds wouldn't keep up this conversation either!

Suddenly Jack Bauer appears. I am sitting there in a pool of sweat. The A/C appears to be on, everyone in the room is quite comfortable but I have sweat continuing to pour out of my body. I slip off my suit jacket (I"m the only one with one on) and I realize they are torturing me. The key way to torture someone is to control their environment, right, so they serve me steaming hot tea, have no cool air circulating and they are all ignoring my plight. Of course, there's also a huge clock in my field of vision, so I'm imagining when the meeting will end so I could begin to return to a normal state, while feinting my interest in all the words I don't understand. This goes on for 50 minutes while the clock goes tick, tick and the sweat goes drip, drip. At some point I must have run out of sweat because, I stopped sweating and now was just downright uncomfortable.

The meeting mercifully ends on a positive note as our team made some good points to the Local officials. They continue to meet when we leave and we head to an air conditioned auto for the trip back tot the office. I go to bed thinking, I hope I didn't do or say anything wrong.

Friday afternoon, I was invited to go with the same local Staples' executive to view our distribution center to see our operations. At the end of our visit, he says, "Let's stop by the local official's office for this area and have a brief visit". So we go to a beautiful and seemingly underutilized district office and proceed to the #2 local official's room. Well, he must have gotten the word from the other guys that they could wilt me with no A/C because, of course, his isn't on either. (Did I say it was ..., oh, never mind). This guy is going one step further in his Jack Bauer torture. He isn't satisfied that steaming hot tea and no A/C is enough, he politely asks if it's okay if he smokes while we meet? Of course, I smelled the strong cigarette odor when I entered his office, so this was no surprise. Despite all of the witty one line comebacks, that quickly raced through my head, I decided to just give enthusiastic approval to his question.

This meeting was low key and very friendly. Just the three of us in his office, with me sweating profusely again. Thankfully, this was only 30 minutes of sweating and I had no business jacket on, so I survived. I did realize during this meeting that I'm not very good at speaking with an interpreter. While the officials i met with all spoke directly to me, I tended to answer looking mostly at the interpreter, not the officials. I need to pay attention to this next time.

Okay, so Friday night it was off to Korean BBQ and another Jerry Seinfeld moment. We go into a very popular, very nice restaurant as a group of six people. Because, I'm tall, I always try to position myself at the end of the table so I can stretch my legs away from the table if necessary. This turned out to be a real good move.

Korean food is very tasty and there are a lot of different things to eat, some I really liked and some, not so much. The meat, which is cooked right in front of you, was very good and a welcome relief from some of things I've had in Shanghai and the various sauces made it easy to find ones you liked to enhance the flavor. All good. There were some things that I found uninteresting due to texture, taste or spice. Seinfeld fans may remember the time Jerry was served mutton which he couldn't eat, he continually sneaked the undigested pieces out of his mouth and into his napkin. Well, I continually took the things I didn't like and moved them from my bowl to the server's table next to me on a low shelf so no one would notice. While it appeared I was eating everything and cleaning my plate, the not so good stuff was being shuttled to the servers table for someone to clean up. This will probably disappoint the Korean member of our team from Canada who was absolutely enjoying himself with every bit of food that was presented. (Of course, he had a digestive issue related to this meal the next morning, but that's a story for a different day.)

A very interesting last three days!

Easy Trip to Hong Kong? Not for me!

A very wild week for me. There were two Seinfeld flashbacks and two Jack Bauer incidents too. So without apologizing to those who can't get the reference like my silly brother who won't bother to watch even the best Seinfeld episodes, try to live these with me.

On Wednesday, I needed to go to Hong Kong because my Visa is only for 30 day stays so I have to get stamped out of China and then I can legally return. I have no limit on the number of re-entries I make but I have to go by the 30th day. Wednesday was the 29th day so I went and planned that in case something got messed up I still had one more day to leave.

My flight was at 9 AM. I left my apartment at 6:45 for the 45 minute trip to the airport. Even with Shanghai's reliable transportation, it took longer than expected due to large crowds on the trains. I arrived at the airport counter at 8 AM when Jerry Seinfeld appeared in my life. I had a ticket and seat on the flight but found it was taken away and given to someone else. (Jerry has a car rental reservation but the company had no car, so Jerry says, "You know how to take a reservation, but you don't know how to keep a reservation.") Of course, I was stunned by this and asked if there was any way to get on the flight. I was told the flight closed 45 minutes before the departure, but of course, this was 60 minutes before departure and I got the blank stare, the call to the supervisor and the standard answer which was, "We can put you on standby for the next flight in 2 hours". Being resourceful, I asked about a different flight to Taiwan which left 20 minutes later or 1:20 minutes from that point and again was told no. A call to the supervisor and another no but I could go to the ticket counter and maybe they could help me. Of course, my thought was, by the time I get there and ask my question, that flight would be closed too. I went anyway and was told I couldn't use my ticket for Hong Kong to go to Taipei because they just couldn't do that (even though they bumped me, they had the cash for the HK ticket, etc.) Then I asked about going to Taipei on a separate ticket and was told it was too late to buy a ticket for that flight! Doh!

So, it was now wait two hours for the next flight on standby and see what that brought. So, I did get on that flight, Exit row, no less. The flight required waiting at a terminal gate for a buss to take us to the airplane which of course slows everything down. Decent flight, arrival was later than expected, customs was slow so I get out of security at 2 PM. My return flight was at 5:30, requiring an airport appearance at 4 PM. Since it's 25 minutes by train each way to downtown, I decided to stay where i was and hang out in the airport, have lunch and just take my flight home. Good plan. I got enough HK $, different than China $ to pay for my meal. After that I decided to check in early, like 2 hours before my flight to guarantee my return. No problems there until it came to the final step and I was told I needed to pay a HK airport tax of HK$120 ($15). Could they take China $? No. Could they take US $? No. So it's back to the cash machine for more HK $.

Okay so its off to the terminal for my wait and I had my Mandarin flash cards with me and learned some verbs, to arrange, to make, to cut, to sign, etc. I'm up to 500 words but can't really speak yet. I'm just sitting there minding my own business but at 5:15, I'm starting to think, I missed the boarding for my 5:35 flight. I go to check and find that it's now 6:15 but at this airport, we will load through a jetway so we can relax and just wait.

Easy flight, slept 2x, refused the food, except their little Dixie cup of ice cream they serve for dessert. Easy pass through customs and on to the Maglev. Hoping that at 9:20, they were still running. Maybe things were starting to go my way, despite being late arriving and having to walk across the entire airport, there was one more Maglev trip at 9:40, so i just made it. Here's the Wikipedia quote on Maglev... "Maglev, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using magnetic levitation from a very large number of magnets for lift and propulsion. This method has the potential to be faster, quieter and smoother than wheeled mass transit systems." This is amazing. Smooth and fast. It got up to 300 kmph (or 180 mph for those of you stuck in the non-metric world). The top speed this can reach is 450 kmph. This $7, 10 minute ride is like being on a rocket ship! Very cool! It takes you to a connection to the Metro train so my return trip home was very smooth.

Ways of life in Shanghai

Observations along the way today...

I decided to walk from my area to an open market and then a park. The open market was supposed to be just at the end of one of the local streets. I guess I was saying "Yeah yeah, I got it" when it was really, "Huh?" My wife thinks all five of us in her household have this problem, but this time as I walked away from an empty lot, I thought, "Hmm, maybe she's right once in a while." So it was on to the park.

The walk to the park was through a local neighborhood so the sights and sounds were authentic. At one point, I felt like I was in a Chinese Seinfeld episode. Non-Seinfeld fans bear with me. You may recall a classic explanation of someone spitting on Kramer and Newman at a Mets game. Jerry uses the U.S. Government's illogical explanation of the one bullet theory with JFK to show how the person the guys thought was spitting on them was clearly not in the position to hit both. He ends with, "That's one magic loogie" (One definition I found for loogie is: A mass of mucous and saliva that is forcefully ejected from the mouth onto a person.)

So I'm walking down the street and the guy coming the opposite way tries to set a world record for size and strength of his loogie ejecting it with a fury rarely seen, just missing me. I walked away and thought, "If that hit me, it would have knock me down!" (and I would have been scarred for life.)

So it was on to a stop at Ichido, which is a local company that has many branches around the city. Their product is fresh and tasty and has become a favorite of mine for walking around food since most of the fast food is not good. I bought a croissant there the other day as a change of pace from the breakfasts here at the hotel because the lady here just doesn't know how to cook an egg other than burnt. So I a take bite of my croissant and it's soft and flaky and very tasty, mmm, pretty good. The second bite was a bit of croissant with a hunk of hot dog! Let's just say, I was quite surprised and decided to not finish this croissant. Now, I am very careful what I buy there. I don't like these kind of surprises.

So what is qian zi? Well, I didn't know either but I saw these people playing a game using a badminton shuttlecock. (I didn't know the thing they hit in badminton was called a shuttlecock either.) So using a badminton net and a small painted court, there were three players per team using anything but their hands to project the shuttlecock over the net. Kind of like hacky sack but with a shuttlecock and a net. I asked for permission to take photos which they thought was quite funny so I sat there and entertained myself for a while. Below is a sample and you can see more by clicking on this photo as it is a link to more...

One note, you are better off right clicking on the photo or video below and selecting, "open in a new tab" so to can continue to read the blog while this loads and also you won't have to go backwards to get back tot he blog. To see all the photos, after you right click and the link loads just press the right arrow key to scroll through the photos.



To get a feel for what these people are doing you can also look at a short video (20 seconds) that I took of them. The best way to watch the video, is to open in a new tab as instructed above and then immediately go to the bottom of the video screen and press the pause button so the video can load and you will avoid 20 seconds of herky jerky action that will take 2 minutes to play.



There were also a number of Mah Jong games going on in the park but even though I know what flower is, I don't know my crack from my bam (mah jong terms) plus I didn't have my 2010 mah jong card so I didn't try to play. It's actually ma jiang in Mandarin, but I don't want to get picky. Of course, at one game with three men and and one women, if you had to guess who was the only one not smoking based on my earlier blogs, who would it be? (If you don't know go back and re-read all of my blogs)

This week I go to Hong Kong on Wednesday (to renew my Visa for another 30 days) and try to add another 100 words to my Mandarin vocabulary. I bought Flash Cards on Saturday so they will get a workout while I wait for Planes, trains and automobiles.

Shanghai weekend - Shopping for bargains

This was my planned weekend to see what bargains I could find in the knockoff markets around Shanghai. Of course, I didn't "need" anything but you never know what you find. Before I confuse you with the foreign exchange here, one U.S. dollar equals approx. 7 RMB (local currency) so 100 RMB is around $14 U.S.

I went to one market that was absolutely empty which is a very good sign for shoppers as you know the sellers will be anxious not to have you walk out and go to the next stand. Basically, there are approx. 10 different tpyes of shops that just keep repeating in random fashion throughout the 100 stall market. While I didn't buy anything because I wasn't in the mood yet, I did investigate how low the prices might go which helped me later. I was hungry and underfunded so I got back on the subway after a little while and headed to another market that is set up the same way.

After some food and financial replenishment, I was ready to bargain (and maybe buy). I actually did need a belt so I decided to chase this first as it was the least expensive thing I was considering and something i needed. I investigated the product in a few stalls and then I decided to buy from one guy. Typical scene, he quoted me 280 rmb ($40) so I told him forget it and was ready to walk, that begins the back and forth where we settles on $5 which I thought was a little too high but it couldn't be more than a $5 overpayment right?

Now I went to look at watches. There are several levels of fake watches here and I wanted a good fake, so you go to their booth and ask to see the better watches. The guy takes you into a tiny room, slides a door closed so there's barely enough room for the two of you, detaches one of the molding type of ledges in the room, opens a door in the wall which holds maybe 10 cases full of the "good" knock off watches. For a brief moment I wondered if I was being set up with all the doors closing, secret panels opening, metal cases being pulled, etc. OK, at least he had my attention. I didn't like his first stuff so I told him to pull out the Rolex's. They actually looked pretty good. I guess my interest got his attention so he offered to sell me two of them for 5,800 RMB (around $800). Interesting, when I asked his price for one, he gave me a lower each price of 2,800 RMB. I told him I only had 1,000 RMB on me and after some complaining he agreed to sell one to me for just 1,000 RMB ($140). I told him I was going to think about it and then appealing to his greed, see if I could get more $ out of my bank ATM across the street.

I left his stall with no intention of spending that and proceeded to look for Tommy Bahama shirts which my brother in law, Ken, loves so much, but I'm too cheap to buy for $100. Hey, these make you look like Jimmy Buffet hanging out in the Florida Keys. This item I cut through the BS right to the good prices. The guy offered them for 280 RMB and I told him that I already had a price of 100 RMB, which was true because that is what I found in the first market earlier in the day. Begrudgingly they agreed and conceded that 100 RMB was their bottom price. (I guess they thought I would stop there.) Then they proceeded to show me 25 styles so I chose one. They thought I was going to buy like 5 and spend a whole $70 U.S. so they weren't happy but took my 100 RMB. So of course, I asked about a better price for more. Well, they were either at the bottom or faking it pretty well (in a fake market, who knows who is really faking it?) So the next one was only $80 and I left feeling pretty good about this purchase and will wear one tonight and see if I can avoid getting Peking Duck on it.

So who is waiting for me after searching the 4 floors of the mall? The watch selling guy. He offers to sell me the watch I liked for 300 RMB before I even said anything. I told him I wouldn't go to his booth unless he accepted 200 RMB, which he did so my Rolex bling cost a whole $28.



I also bought a Kobe Bryant basketball outfit as a gift for the guy I am mentoring here who is a huge Kobe fan, like my son, Michael, who incorrectly believes that Kobe is better than Jordan but that's a story for a different day.

I then went to an electronics mall across town to see what they had. While I was not terribly impress because I thought it would be less polished and more like a garage sale type of scene, I did search for one item. One of my co-workers from Canada asked if I could buy her a converter for her. I proceed to find one and pay slightly less than I did for mine a few weeks ago. The sad part is an hour later I found one in a regular department store for 10% less than the bargained price.

While there was nothing exciting, I did uncover a real find on this trip. It's call Beard Papa. Ever hear of it? Their sign says, "World's Best cream Puffs". It's a Japanese company that has a some new process for making cream puffs. They take the freshly made cream puff shell and inject the cream you choose into it. The cream puffs cost around $1.20 here. There are 250 locations in Japan and another 50 around the world. This is the Wikipedia description of the product... "Their trademark product is a choux pastry shell filled with whipped cream custard, available in vanilla, chocolate, and specialty flavors such as green tea, strawberry, pumpkin, Earl Grey tea, éclair, and coffee." Let's just say, they are worth a try. There are 22 U.S. mainland locations. There are locations in WA, NY, NJ and CA so a lot of people reading this either have one nearby or sometimes travel to where they are. Of course, there is one location in El Salvador (??) you could visit. I guess that's a franchisee. A nice unexpected find before I took a very long round about trip home on three different subways.

Thoughts on Life in Shanghai

I'm settling into life in Shanghai and my adventures continue. There are many things that are fun to do and life remains very interesting. Work is a constant challenge but we are winning some battles their too. Here are some observations of everyday things I see...

Crossing the street - The total lack of consideration for others by walkers, bikers, motorcyclists and drivers continues to amaze me. Of course, came up with one way to at least protect myself. When crossing the street, you can expect someone to ignore the green walk sign and from either direction, but mostly from your left. To combat this whenever I approach a crosswalk filled with people, I just move to the far right. My thinking is that if someone is going to push through making an illegal turn, they will have to go through 8 - 10 people to get to me. I call it my "people cushion"

Umbrellas - I am amazed by how many people carry umbrellas here. There is always a chance that a random thunder boomer will pop up and when they do, they can be pretty strong. I get that. What I didn't understand was the frequent use of these same umbrellas to deflect heat on these fairly warm days. (Did I say it was hot here?) Even that wouldn't be a problem except the average person is 5'4" to 5'6" add in the amount above their head they carry their umbrella and you have the approximate location of the eye socket on your 6'3" tall person. Since most people can't see above their umbrella, they don't make any adjustment to its location as I pass them going in the opposite direction. So what's the plan? First, I wear sunglasses at all times. Second if someone is carrying an umbrella that infringes on my vertical space, I just raise my forearm in front of me and deflect the eye attacking umbrella away. It would be humorous, if this wasn't a full time hazard you need be aware when you're walking here.

Shopping malls - China has many large shopping malls to help quench the locals thirst for all things Western. These are great rest spots for me on some of the scorching days when I walk around the mall to get my body temperature down to a reasonable level. One thing I noticed is that although these malls all have three sets of doors to allow entry and then another group of three sets of doors 10 feet further in. These are all manned by typical mall rent a cops. On top of that, they purposely don't coordinate the doors so the two open sets are directly across from one another. So you have a large two way stream of people weaving through each other for egress and ingress. Hopefully, in the event of a fire, someone could make a quick adjustment.

Police Presence - Not much; The only armed people I have seen are around armored cars making deliveries or taking cash from some businesses. These guys do have serious looking weapons. I don't dawdle and throw out my street crossing rules because I don't like to be anywhere nearby in the event someone wants to do something stupid. IT is nothing like the feeling I had in my many trips to Mexico in the 90s, where every mall had a guard with some kind of automatic weapon and looked old enough to be entering middle school.

This is a fake weekend. I will be at a knock off market looking for bargains and then to and the electronics market with more of this type of stuff. Should be interesting. I'm passing on the eyeglass and fabric market some others are visiting. I will also be enjoying a Peking Duck meal with a group of co-workers on Saturday. Sunday, I have some photography work I want to do. Next week, I go to Hong Kong for the day to renew my Visa. (Don't ask, remember this is a third world country.)

Mandarin skills

My Mandarin studies continue. I have had 12 hours of tutoring and another 12 hours using Rosetta Stone. I know approx. 250 words or phrases, some I even pronounce correctly.

I looked at a language development site says the following are common traits for someone at my level and I think it's pretty accurate when describing my skills

* Can name a number of objects common to his surroundings
* Is able to use at least two prepositions, usually chosen from
the following: in, on, under
* Combines words into a short sentence-largely noun-verb
combinations (mean) length of sentences is given as 1.2 words
* Approximately 2/3 of what he says should be intelligible
* Vocabulary of approximately 150-300 words
* Rhythm and fluency often poor
* Volume and pitch of voice not yet well-controlled

Of course, they are talking about what a normal 2 year old can do.

I really want to get to the 3 year old level which is 700-1,000 words. I'm not where I need to be but for 3 weeks of study, I think it's pretty good. By 10/1 I expect to have reasonable fluency for getting around, asking for directions and ordering in a restaurant. (Not that I'm struggling in those departments but I am not doing it like a local yet.)

This leads to another subway story. Last Sunday night, I was returning to my hotel on the subway when I encountered a fairly large local family. I said hello in Mandarin to a young man (14 years old) and he said hello back in English. This started an exchange that with some encouragement from his family became entertainment for a whole section of our subway car. The boy was shocked to learn I was 55 years old (he thought I was more like 35). He told me to speak slower so he could understand my English better. (A constant battle for anyone learning a language and listening to someone speaking in their native tongue.) After a few minutes, he asked if he could take a photo of us together, which he promptly did with his cell phone. Another happy, cultural building experience. (I immediately went back to my room and studied my Mandarin some more!)

Shanghai Update

It's been a long hot week in Shanghai. It was 40 degrees Celsius today (102 F) and will heat up slightly to 104 tomorrow. I'd like to tell you how much I'm enjoying this recent warm up but that would be a lie. If there is a positive, it is that the skies are relatively clear so the pollution is lower than when I got here. (no real solace) In deference to the hot weather, I only walked 10 miles today.

I have been looking for a new place to live for the next 5 months as I feel like the very nice place where I am is just too far from the downtown. It does sit atop the Metro station so getting around is fairly easy. Thursday and today were spent apartment shopping. No different than anywhere else in the world, lots of junky places, some nice ones and some that just won't work. I have a budget for housing that I will stay within because if all else fails, where I am will be acceptable. I liked two of the 12 I have seen. One might be too far from the Metro but worry more about the other one as it might be too small to promote marital harmony, if you get my drift.

On the work front, we have had some breakthroughs on my assignment and the way to fix things is pretty clear. Actually getting it done may be difficult because it involves improving some of the computer information we use and none of that ever happens quickly. There is a good team here and we are certainly pushing ourselves to make the changes necessary to improve the business for Staples in China.

Since I've been taking the subway a lot, I noticed something interesting on one of my trips. I was standing against the doors on the side of the train where they don't open, and all of the women sitting on the opposite side of the car were staring at me. I was thinking, "Either there's something wrong with my attire or I must look pretty good today, these women can't take their eyes off of me." As I moved to get off the subway, the stares didn't move with me, so I thought that's strange and turned to see that the whole time they were staring at the TV monitor that was right next to me! So much for that ego trip!

Finally, on the home front. Jon is about to start his career as he begins training with EMC on Monday for seven weeks to prepare him for the first phase of his job in Tech support. Jeffrey heads to Arizona on Tuesday to begin his college career. Marissa has been told she will be getting a job offer from Ernst and Young so she enters her senior year of college knowing she has a job after graduation. Our house is on the market and we have had two very interested lookers. Hopefully, we will be getting a good offer on our house, soon. The nest will truly be empty.

Did I say it was hot here?

Steve

Some Shanghai observations

Here are some things I've noticed lately that might be interesting...

1. Things some people don't want you to talk about. There is a list of them like Religion, Tienanmen Square incident, politics, one baby policy, etc. I have found most educated (and bi-lingual) Chinese are anxious to learn about the world and the world's views. They are willing to discuss most things and understand other culture's styles and beliefs. You're safe as long as you don't say what is being done here is wrong. Of course, that hasn't really stopped me.
2. They still embrace Mao as the key leader with Sun Yat Sen a close 2nd. Mao is more strongly embraced than any single U.S. leader you could imagine. In earlier trips to China, I observed Mao's photo on the wall of every home I entered. His power looms large over the country still today. I was told by someone that where people in the Western world might show their conviction by saying, "I swear to God", here, the strong comment is followed by "I swear to Mao".
3. Incense - Some people use this to make themselves comfortable with their environment and there is someone in an office near mine that burns some each morning. While it would be bothersome to my sensitive nose if I were next to him, I don't see it as a big deal. I cannot help but think of Archie Bunker each morning when I come in and smell it. I clearly hear Archie on a rant about people burning "incest". (Sorry for you youngsters who don't get this one.)
4. Smoking - A lot of young men smoke cigarettes, maybe not more than elsewhere, but I do notice it. What I really notice is that I have never seen a Chinese woman smoking a cigarette in public. I'm told the smoker population is 80% male. I looked on line and found this quote... "According to a World Health Organization (WHO) 1997 study, 63% of Chinese men smoke, but only 4% of Chinese women do." When I asked a young male about this, his response was, "It is not seen as attractive for a woman to smoke". You can fill in your own punchline here.
5. Ambiguity - I had an interesting meeting with a local person who is a VP for a large company and is pretty knowledgeable about how people here think vs. Westerners. His view is that Westerners want to resolve any situation quickly by coming up with solutions to issues and resolving them and moving on to the next thing. His advice was to always leave some ambiguity to any solution I find to allow the local team to have some flexibility to move and adjust before taking action. This is not being slow moving or faint of heart about tough decisions but more about making sure no one loses face in these decisions and subsequent actions. Good advice.
6. 1 Child Policy - Another taboo topic that I had a nice conversation about. What I didn't understand was that if you and your spouse are both from single child families, you are allowed to have 2 children. Of course, twins are considered a blessing and someone with more than one child from elsewhere in the world are considered blessed to have more than one child. (Of course, they haven't met my son Jonathan.)
7. Co-habitation - Interesting to me that cohabitation is not frowned on but seen as a normal part of life for many. I will note that the female's parents must approve the arrangement or it won't work.

One term I did learn to not use here was one that we use in the States for a mad scramble of people trying to do anything. They DON'T refer to that as a Chinese Fire Drill.

I can't leave without a photo of your intrepid blogger taken last weekend...

Weekend 2 in China

Friday night I went with some of my co-workers to a very nice area with no cars and lots of nice restaurants. We walked around for a while trying to decide what to eat. Sometimes in life, too many choices freezes the brain. Anyway, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant (first time for me). I ordered stir fry which was same as others I've had. We had some spring rolls which were very tasty, one with shrimp and the other with crab.While everyone else had a beer, I was interested in their fresh juices. I settled on a new one for me called "Dragon Fruit" juice. I guess this is a legitimate fruit that has an edible pulpy inside. The best thing I could say about the juice is that is was wet. Not thirst quenching, not sweet, just wet. It tasted kind of like drinking juice from the rind of a watermelon. Let's just say, I won't re-order that one. The rest of the group went off to a jazz club but it was 9:30 and I was fading and had an early start on Saturday, so good night to all.

Saturday, I went to two water towns outside of Shanghai. They are mostly commercialized with many gift stalls that I never entered. There were some authentic nice things to see from a long time ago, museums, gardens, Buddhist temples, etc. I was looking for interesting foods, street scenes and people to photograph and wasn't disappointed.





All of the photos can be found if you click on this photo but please note this will take you out of the blog where you can see a slide show of all of the photos on my website. You will have to use your backspace on your internet page to return to the blog:


Sunday began with a Skype phone call update with Susan. If you intend to travel outside the U.S. be sure to figure out the Skype thing before you go. You can even buy Skype call minutes to call from your computer to a mobile or home phone for like $.04/minute.

I left early to beat the heat and the crowds but I guess 7:30 AM is not early enough for either. I took the subway to an area called "The Bund", pronounced like fund. Took a nice stroll through a car free zone, a real treat around here, and then it began to rain. The Bund is a very fancy area along the river that divides Shanghai and attracts many tourists as it is the home to some very high end restaurants and hotels. I took cover under the awning of the closed Chanel store to wait out what looked like a brief shower. When I sat on the ground an security person came to shoo me away because that must be against the law to sit on the ground in front of a fancy store. When I stood up, he went away. Note: My son Jonathan would not do well here with all the restrictions.

The rain stopped so I proceed to walk around the Bund. I got some interesting photos of men practicing Tai Chi but otherwise, the Bund area, maybe a one mile concrete path along the waterfront, was crowded with locals taking photos of their loved ones with the building across the way in the background. I may have one of those on my photo page.



I then proceeded to walk through some neighborhoods on a 3-4 mile hike to my lunch destination which has been written up as the best hamburger place in Shanghai. It did not disappoint. The menu is all kinds of regular American food. I treated myself to a chocolate shake which almost made me forget about the burger because it was so good.

One other positive I noticed on today's walk was the presence of "traffic assistants" These people are there to make sure no one enters a crosswalk that is not showing a green walk sign and they actually go out in front of traffic to make sure no cars/bikes/mopeds make illegal turns and slow down the pedestrians. Very nice, now we only need about 50,000 more of these to make walking in this city enjoyable.

While I planned to see more, I decided to go back to my room and chill out for the early afternoon as I have already walked around 7 miles so far today. I decided not to go to the Expo since it is here for 2 more months and it might be cooler in September. did I say it was hot here? Well the humidity is now down so it's no as bad. I took a brief 3 hour nap before deciding where to go tonight.

Tonight, I went back to the Bund to see it in the evening on a relatively clear night. The place was absolutely jammed with people, tens of thousands in unending streams. I just tried to ignore the crowds and take my photos. I had some Japanese fast food for dinner, basically rice and beef with two tiny chicken legs and a salad thing for $4.50. I went to the Bund and took some photos and then got out of there.

See the photo links and here's a sample...

Pudong photographed from the Bund in the daytime, kind of blah...


Pudong photographed from the Bund at night, quite a bt more interesting...





By the way, I hate photographing buildings so don't expect a lot of these. Final walking total for the day was 12 miles.

Week 2 in Shanghai

So now that I’m into week 2, I guess things should be getting easier. Mostly, they are. I am still adjusting to the wonderful local food that has me searching for Western restaurants constantly. This week, I did sneak in an Italian meal plus Fajitas another night. I did have some nice Chinese lunches in a hotel where we were doing some training.

On the work front, there are several big improvement opportunities for the Staples business in China that we are trying to make happen. There seems to be a fairly constant stream of Staples’ visitors which makes life interesting and makes you feel less on an island by yourself.

Big plans this weekend, Saturday will be a drive out of town with a co-worker so it will be interesting to see the countryside. Maybe the air won’t have a taste to it. That’s normal, isn’t it?. Then, I’m headed to the Business Expo on Sunday with one of our visitors. The Expo is a big deal here as it is a business show that goes from June until October. The character that represents the show looks like a blue version of Gumby.



By the way, the weather is about the same, except that now that I can’t always talk about the heat, they’ve added in almost daily thunder boomers that make the Texas rains look like wimpy showers. I have finally remembered to put my umbrella in my backpack. They do have a pretty cool thing here I haven’t seen elsewhere. When you enter a building, they have an endless supply of skinny plastic bags for you to slide your wet umbrella into so you don’t drip all over the floor.

I almost knocked a moped driver on his “assets” yesterday. It seems we both wanted to be in the same place only I was standing in it and he was headed to it without slowing down. Another guy got hip checked into a wall trying to pass on my no passing side. So it’s a real treat to be here with the locals, at times. Finally, a fairly strange looking somewhat drunk local guy was sitting next to me on the subway and obviously was staring at this small book (Chinese-English dictionary) I was carrying. He leaned over toward me (of course, I leaned away from him) and said, “I think it’s great that you’re studying Chinese”. You could have knocked me over with a feather (or his breath!)

Food Shopping

This is not one of those stories about all the weird things they eat over here vs. what we are used to in the U.S. We know and acknowledge that Asian favorites are just different based on being in a different society where products are available not common in the U.S.

This is about Potato Chips. In Carrefour's this evening, I stopped to look at the Potato Chip aisle. Here is a list the Potato Chips that Lay's sells in this market:

Blueberry
Cucumber
Tomato
Lemon tea
Green tea
Lime
French chicken
Italian red meat
Hot and sour fish soup

Yes, these are potato chips! As the old Lay's commercial used to say, Betcha can't eat just one!

Shanghai People on Sunday, 8/1/10

Today was a little warmer than yesterday, if that's possible. (I remember my wife's Grandma Connie uttering the amazing words, "it's too hot to die" back in 1981 when she was in her last year.) It turns out the actual temp was 39 C or 102 F for those of you following along at home. I walked around with a couple of Staples people as we tried to find some key sites on one of the walks in the book I referenced yesterday. After a couple of hours, I had to bail on them because I wasn't enjoying it due to the heat. So after a couple of rest periods and a meal, I decided to walk to a book store located nearby. No problem found the bookstore which had many English language books and I will frequent this place again. Then I decided to find an electronics market looking for a converter, not just for the plug end but a 110 to 220, no luck.

Buoyed by this success I decided to walk to another bookstore approx. 1 mile away. Well, I got good and lost and getting overheated. After several breaks and more confusion, even with a map (who knew the road I was on was a huge circle?), I found my way to the metro to go back home. I bought a couple of Gatorades along the way, got back to my apartment and then slept from 6 PM until 3 AM. No dinner again.

I would like to let you know about the people here. While individually everyone is nice. A "ni hao" (hello) always gets a great response back from the locals, as does "zia jian" (goodbye). It feels a lot like NYC with less rules while you're out on the streets. Drivers are totally out of control. The lane markings are not even a guide, red lights don't even slow down right turners. With a countdown on the flashing green walk signs, it only gives the drivers a chance to lurch forward in anticipation of the light change. Add to that, bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles, all of which can be coming down the sidewalk toward you or from behind since they drive in either direction on either side of the street and you have total chaos for a foreigner. My guess is that with this many people here if you really enforced the rules, you would have a huge logjam with no movement. Also, drivers love to use their horns and flash their lights at each other but most are immune to this and don't react. Also, pedestrians are at the bottom of the food chain as drivers rarely slow down for pedestrians, they just lay on the horn and keep going, even with a green cross walk sign.

In public when walking around, it is similar. Everyone wants to beat you to the next spot. People queue up for entering subway trains without allowing anyone the space to exit which just creates a massive jam of people trying to move in both directions when the doors open. When buying my Gatorade yesterday in a supermarket, the guy who I "beat" by slowly strolling to the line for the cashier was so upset, he paced around me trying to find an angle where I wasn't looking to push his way in front of me. On subways, people race for seats and are quite satisfied when they find one.

A lady was trying to manhandle her scooter into her courtyard and was shocked when I held the steel grate open for her while she negotiated the weight of the bike up and over the edge of the step down she had to push it over.

The guy who finally told me how to get "un-lost" was someone I approached with trepidation with map in hand trying figure out how to ask him where I was so I could just catch the subway back. So when he asked me, "Are you lost?" in English, I was relieved. We had a nice conversation and when I left he chased after me to give a plastic holder for my map so it wouldn't get ruined.

Final set of comments. Shanghai doesn't close, ever. Sundays are like any other day. The guys doing construction across the street with three huge cranes began work with booming sounds Sunday at 6 AM, but I out-smarted them by not sleeping past 5 AM even though I went to bed at midnight. I'll show them they can't wake me up! Shoppers were again all over, the streets are crowded with families, restaurants are full of people, I'm looking forward to cooler days in a few weeks!

Shanghai weekend - Long Post

On this first weekend, I had a lot of interesting experiences.

On Friday evening we had a team building, which was karaoke and games. Very friendly and very fun with some nice talented people. We played a variation of phone tag where the native Chinese speaker would give a North American a phrase to repeat for others but by the time it got to the last person it was pretty jumbled. Then we did the same with an English native giving a phrase to the China team and watching them butcher it. Pretty funny both ways.

The meal was an altogether different story. It was a banquet ordered for us by one of the senior merchandising people. We arrived to find 8 cold dishes waiting on a lazy Susan for us to share. There were delectable goodies like fried pork skin, jellyfish, chicken pieces, pumpkin with flower petals, etc. Then began a procession of hot foods like shrimp with spicy vegetables, mushroom soup, a snapper-type of fish and crab. There were many things i couldn't identify and many that were not appetizing to me. I tried almost everything but not the jelly fish or the pork skin. The featured food was a cow's head. There were no eyeballs, tongues or other obvious body parts on the huge platter but the skull bone was there. It was served with some spicy peppers. The meat was tasty. The dessert was a soup with some type of white things floating, sorry, i didn't get the exact info on that one or try it and then mooncakes. The mooncake looked like a nice light sweet pastry.but it was filled with something my mouth didn't recognize so it got put aside. Mooncakes are usually filled with a paste like lotus seed or sweet bean paste. I should have known when i picked it up and it weighed way more than a light sweet pastry should have.

Saturday was a very eventful day. I took the subway to a huge mall area to scope out what was there. I also wanted a western meal so i could at least put some calories in my body, otherwise this will only be a weight loss story. I went to the Blue Frog which serves hamburgers with imported meat. A very nice burger and fries put me a good mood. So I went shopping. The crowds of people were stunning. The Chinese people are taking this consumerism very seriously and crowded into this 8 story mall in an endless procession of people. I went into Best buy to find a surge protector and was amazed by the high prices. No deals here. I also went to a book store to find a book on Shanghai that would better orient me to the city. Then I was on my way to interview a Chinese tutor. Stepping outside into the blast furnace was a bit of a shock as it's quite warm here now and the mall was cool. I bought two small bottles of water for $.20 each.

On my way to meet the tutor, which was another subway ride, I stopped at a Dairy Queen and got a Blizzard. Not exactly the same taste as the US but pretty close and they do turn it upside down to show the thickness just like they do in the US. the only problem is a minute later it's not so thick in this heat.

The tutor's name is Lillian, although I'm not sure what her Chinese name is. She works independently, has been teaching Chinese to Anglos for 8 years. She just finished her MBA. Several of you might ask how do you find these people? I went on the Shanghai expat sites and searched for tutors. Most companies charge $25/hour for private tutoring, while Lillian charges half of that. She just finished here MBA so she is quite smart and very nice. We have arranged for her to tutor me privately and then a lady who's here from Canada will also work with her. We met at Starbucks and after some discussion, I agreed to have her tutor me. The first session was very good as I learned a lot in just one hour. Our 2x per week sessions will be 2 hours, if my brain can handle it.

When we were finished, I took a long walk through a very nice shopping district to catch the subway a little further down. Did I say it was warm here? I kept going into the beautiful shopping areas to get my body temperature lowered and then back out to the blast furnace. Finally catching the train and going to Carrefours to pick up some things for my apartment. Tide so i could do a load of clothes in my combo washer dryer, more on that later. A cup for me for China. Many of you at Staples know I used the same cup for 14 years so I wanted to get one for the China experience, which won't be 14 months but hey it was $1. I bought some other necessities like Oreos, chocolate covered almonds and bottles of water. I thought the water was a decent deal. It was 9.30 RMB (China $) for a twelve pack of 20 oz bottles. (They're actually 550 ml but I'll let someone else make the conversion.) That comes to .88 RMB per bottle which is like $.13 each bottle. Not sure it's Evian or Perrier but it looks clean. This water is just for walking around in my office and apartment, there are 5 gallon bottles of water in a dispenser so you can constantly drink clean water.

OK then back to the room via the subway again, an hour to get my body temperature back to below 100, a quick shower, back into the blast furnace to meet the Staples gang for dinner. (Did I say it was warm here?)

For dinner our group of 8 went to a Muslim restaurant, another first for me. We drank Black Beer (i had to try it and it was very good actually.) The food started coming and didn't stop again. We had two veggies plates, one with spicy green beans(?) and the other with some kinds of cooked green peppers (a large size). It was very tasty. Then came the flat bread baked in the restaurant plus skewers of lamb, some kind of lamb meat mixed with rice that you put on a small tortilla type of shell, a spicy chicken dish, I'm probably leaving something out but the dinner was very good and not expensive. we did leave a lot behind. This was my best meal in China, by far, a very nice surprise!

The photo is me getting some cold air from an air conditioner that didn't reach our table.

So this long day is coming to an end, but wait the team wants to go for foot massages. OK into taxis and off to get foot massages. We ended up getting shoulder and foot massages in one large room we all shared, very nice. My masseuse was a young blind guy who put me in incredible pain, cracked my back, and did a great job. This cost less than $10.

Me getting my massage and feeling pretty good.

Finally, into a cab with others and then to sleep. A really great day. (Did I mention it was warm here?)

Sunday will be a walking tour of Shanghai using an excellent book that Susan discovered was written by one of our Hopkinton neighbors who is a Shanghai native.