Working for Ford Motor Company
Am living in Michigan and working for Ford this summer. Blogging for the business school here.
Beijing on 200Y a day
Adults - the interwebs may crash out at any minute, so who knows when you'll get this message. Also, Geoffrey keeps distracting me, I think he wants attention or something. Spoiled.
So, backwards to Friday. Waiting around for supper, Kelly and I decide to go up to the Sky Dome Bar on the 47th floor, which is neat, but the smog means you can't see much of the city. But we had fun doing a last night's bit of hanging out. Just when we got back from that, the tailor shows up with Kelly's crazy red silk robe and my sexy and slick black with red dragons dress and we both felt totally spoiled and rich and ran around the hotel showing everyone who agreed we totally topped all the suits.
Saturday morning, one last round of shopping to help Kelly get more pearls, then off to ride the maglev at 430kmph to the airport, Kelly and Dan acting like kids in a candy shop - so excited they are at the speed at which we are flying. We get to the airport - I wait on Kelly to check in, then we eat airport fare and I wave Kelly through security, gather up my suitcases and trek to the other side of the airport to station myself at the arrival gates. About an hour and a half later (roughly an hour after his flight arrives) Geoffrey comes through the gates looking rough in his wrinkled blazer, skewed tie, bleary eyes and sleepy smile. I can tell he's happy to see me and about to fall asleep on his feet. I get us on the maglev at which point he perks up because even a sleepy engineer appreciates the awesomeness of maglev and first visits to China. He's thrilled at the speed and smoothness of the maglev and as soon as we get off and out of the station, is taking pictures of all the smog and constrution.
I've been typing for about ten minutes now, during which time he's been pacing back and forth between the end of the bed and the bathroom mirror admiring his new jacket. He's rather pleased with himself. I don't know why since I picked it out and bargined for it. I am a good barginer - am generally getting between 20-25% of their starting price (and most tourists get about 50%). Now he is trying on his new ties. He is cute.
We make it to the train station and I settle him inside of a Papa Johns. While he claims he is not hungry, he eats half the pizza when it arrives, which I'm sure made him feel better. The smog, which doesn't agree with anyone's system, was really getting to him. It was a bad day to arrive in Shanghai, but I knew we were getting out of there and he just needed sleep on top of his food and would be fine.
Geoffrey and I had a sleaper car to ourselves (which surprised me as I'd heard the train was full) and though I expected him to crash immediently, he spent a good bit of time looking excitedly out the window at all the scenery. He finally went to sleep - we both agree that sleeper trains are much nicer to travel in than airplanes. Having your own cabin and being able to walk around and stretch out to sleep is so nice. I think he woke up disgustingly early, but I don't know as he just sat and looked out the window more and I slept on.
We arrived in Beijing bright and early Sunday morning, grabbed a taxi and made it to our hostel, which is down an alley, but right across from a subway station. I was amazed that we were able to check in so early, but it was nice as he most certainly needed a shower. Which turned amusing as we discovered that the bathroom we had more resembled a ships bathroom with everything piled in on top of everything. But we managed to get clean and then decided to start with suits so he could get going on that project.
First we stopped at the silk tailor where I was getting my wedding dress made.They only had the under-layer complete which was rather see-through and so I was a bit embarassed standing there as the guy made sure everything fit just so. Geoffrey informs me it looks very nice, but no pictures yet. Want to talk about a slip for a wedding dress, I'm glad there's more to go on it!
Next we went to the suit tailor and Geoffrey browsed styles and fabrics while I tried mine on (and he chatted with one of the tailor assistants and tried to explain to her that he had flown over the North Pole. I am jealous, I only flew 600 miles from the North Pole). Then he ordered lots of suits and an overcoat and we decided that was enough and got out of there. Its waaay too much fun - all this tailoring.
So I took him upstairs to make an attempt at choosing some Chinese food, but I didn't do such a good job. It was good, but a little too spicy and Geoff wasn't sure of some of the stuff I put in the soup. The little eggs seemed to confuse him. And we struggled with the noodles, to the amusement of the people sitting at the table next to us who finally leaned over and gave us a chopstick and noodles lesson. I think they were as amused by us as we were at them helping us.
Then we made our way to the fake-antique market, which Geoffrey has promised to bring me back to when we have enough money to ship things home. We bought some chopsticks and a few other silly little things, but the really pretty stuff there is the furniture and art and that wouldn't make it home. Oh well. Geoff took lots of pictures during the cab ride of buildings, he seems to think they are neat or something ;)
We went back to the hostel to drop everything off. I moved some stuff from one bag to another and then turned around to ask Geoff if he was ready to go out again, only to be greeted by snoring. In no time at all, he had crashed out. I guess he's not completely over jetlag as he did the same thing again to me yesterday. The desire for food finally roused him and we went off in search of the elusive Pizza Hut and ended up walking all over in the dark and eating at a KFC. Geoff apparenly saw some lady boil a live frog, which disgusted him. So now I have to hear about parakeet eggs and boiled frog from him all the time. We must be more careful in the future about Chinese food so that he will have good food experiences over here.
Tuesday, after breakfast at McDonalds to help Geoff recover from the traumatic boiled-frog experience, we went to the Forbidden City. We had a Chinese guy take pictures with us, at least five more offer to be our guide for the day and finally made it inside. It is nice having Geoff around - everyone hits on him rather than me.
The Forbidden City in a nutshell: Tall red building with fancy green and gold roof holds yellow throne. Walk around. Repeat. Very pretty, but they seem to be on a theme that they liked and so repeated it again and again and by the time we'd walked to the end of the main area (its huge, btw), I think I'd managed to exhaust Geoff again. We waked back to the subway and back to the hostel and snore snore he was asleep again.
I managed to drag him out of bed again with promises of a "kung fu" show and a re-attempt at finding the Pizza Hut. He was sluggish and I had to repeat this many times before he started moving, but finally got him up and off to the show we went. Bought cheap tickets, so we were somewhat amazed at being front and center (until half-way through the show when we couldn't see for the smoke billowing off the stage). It was a neat show, mainly focusing on feats of toughness for its attraction and stealing more from ballet than kung fu for the rest of it, it was still impressive. After all, I can't do hand springs with just the top of my head. And Geoff, as tough and manly as he is, probably cannot lie on a bed of swords, put a bed of nails on top of him, have a person lie on top of that and then stack on top a cement block to break. I can break the cement block, just not so sure about all the other sharp objects. And then we found the Pizza Hut.
This morning, we went in search of a Starbucks for breakfast which turned into another long walk around Beijing (this city is huge, one block on my map takes a really long time to walk and none of the alley-ways are labeled on my map so we get a little turned around sometimes). But we found it. And then headed back to the tailors for the first fitting. Geoff looked wonderful - I am especially taken with the overcoat. Then we had to find an ATM. I took out money no problem, but the ATM ate Geoff's card. Not good. But! I had a cell phone, so was able to call the bank and, with only minor confusion while they found someone to translate, managed to get Geoff's card out of the machine. He was pleased with this, but now we have to make sure he can use it in the future.
Went to (and I hate to admit this) Hooters for lunch. Because we were waiting on the ATM guys to come and it was the closest thing that wasn't KFC. And Geoff had been wanting to go there, I think he thought it was funny. We had a cute little waitress, but mainly we were waited on by the cute manager who spoke excellent English and was very chatty with me once Geoff had to run back to meet the ATM guys. We didn't get any more money out, but we did get his card back. We'll solve the money problem tonight when Geoff can call his bank back in the states. We then did some more shopping for ties and a sport coat for Geoffrey. Tonight we are getting pizza at a local restaurant with the china-track students and then tomorrow we are headed to the Great Wall and Ming Tombs. We still have a lot to do in this city!!!
Geoff says he is having fun and is especially taken with the Beijing subway for some reason. He's also taking lots of pictures of cranes. He would not let me take a picture of him with the chinese hooter's girl. Oh well.
That's all for now - we're off to find pizza. Hopefully will update more when I get a good connection again.
The End of China-class
kelly: I think the cleaning lady cleaned my blackberry
Sent at 8:05 AM on Friday
me: lol
does it sparkle now?
kelly: it was dirty
and now it isn't.
and it was moved.
me: oh that's ok, really, has yours organized any of your stuff?
kelly: they've put stuff in different places
like they'll take all my shoes and line them up under the desk
me: ours laid out all our bathroom stuff neatly on a towel
megan said her's folded all her dirty clothes
kelly: haha wow
ours reorganizes our bathroom every day
As I write this, Geoffrey is on his flight to Chicago and I have stolen Kelly's hot-pink China-phone so that if anything goes wrong, he can call me.
We had our last company visit today to ExxonMobil, a company which I think probably needs no introduction. Though I'm really not sure what tack to take when writing about them as their presentation was long, involved, highly informative and created a very mixed reaction. I'm cutting this short till I have more time to edit my thoughts.
After lunch, went shopping - mainly helped Kelly negociate for pearls for all the women in his life. I get better at it each time. Planning to get food soon. And expensive drinks somewhere fancy. Maybe on the Bund - pretend we're all British. Dunno, its getting late and I'm hungry and still have arrangements to make for tomorrow.
Lost in Translation
Thursday, March 19, 2009
"My friend...this for you..." the housekeeper-staff guy is trying to communicate something to me that clearly isn't true as he's saying this while handing me a digital camera. I explain to him that its not mine, perhaps my roommate's, but she isn't here. He is confused and has to run off twice to get someone to tell him what he wants to say in English. We finally get it straight that it is in fact my roommate's camera, at which point I don't mind taking it. But that was not at all the worst translation experience of the day.
More people in Shanghai speak English than do in Beijing, but it still isn't perfect and is often limited to words they use often. Straying outside this vocabulary causes endless confusion. And my Chinese vocabulary is still very limited, though I am learning to hear some of the tones when they're very strongly expressed.
We started this morning at Dell, which was slowly claiming a foothold in the China market, though they were having to do far more retail than they did in the states. The most exciting part was getting to hold a prototype of the new Adamo computer (smaller than the mac air - is there a competition going on here?) but still not as light as my Sony, only just as powerful and still without a built-in optical drive. I would think thinness would matter less than weight. But it seems to be sort of an "anything you can do, I can do better" contest.
After Dell and lunch, we drove over to the Pudong area (the newer developments, which means the city is a little more planned) to visit the China-Eurpoean International Business School - the top MBA program in Asia (or something like that, I can't keep any rankings straight anymore). Where we met a guy from Clemson who was delighted to see more people from Clemson. And they flocked together happily. We also got a tour of their fancy campus (probably one of the nicer schools in China) and a fantastic lecture on where a lot of the problem areas were in business in China and in China in general. And we got a confirmation that yes, in fact, what we're seeing is smog. The debate has been settled.
In the short break between our afternoon visit and supper, we had a visit from the tailor who, thinking she had everything done properly, had only sent a delivery boy, despite the fact that I'd told her I wanted another fitting. Several phone calls and lots of frustrating Chinese later (thankfully, one of the China-track students had shown up to help) we established that the skirt was not at all right and they were going to have to make a new one. Because who ever heard of pleats that didn't sit flat? Of course, translating pleats was complicated and explaining two-fold pleats instead of one-fold was even more complicated. And explaining that I was not going to pay for the suit until it was right was mainly frustrating. The suits here are cheaper, but I think the quality is much lower. We all showed up today in our new suits and shirts though, which was fun because we went from all grey and black to a wide variety of stripes and colors that expressed personalities much better. Dunno what a grey with purple stripe says about me...
Dinner was at a famous Shanghainese restaurant that was in the neatest old house, architecture very german with lots of heavy wood, but a distinct chinese influence in all the carvings of dragons and bamboo. The food in Shanghai is spicy and sweet and I do not like it nearly as much as the food in Beijing. Am glad Geoff and I are headed back there.
Geoffrey just got offline and is headed to the airport, I of course, cannot wait to pick him up on this end. I just have to cross my fingers that everything goes perfectly from this point on.
PS: Margo pointed out that you can neither twitter nor comment on my blog. This is part intentional as comments mainly lead to a lot of spam and part due to the fact that I didn't have the time before I left to get the wordpress blog integrated again. So it's just plain old HTML. Sorry to be so boring but I can do HTML off the top of my head.
(sm)og in my lungs
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Walking to ice cream last night, laughing so hard was gasping for air, and the air I was breathing in was making me sick...
"This weather is odd, I can't tell what it is," standing next to me, on top of a rockery with a little round hall, one of my classmates is staring at the sky. "I mean, in my emails home I'm calling it smog because that's more interesting, but I don't know whether its smog or fog or what."
The sky today is grey. Blank grey. The weather is calling for sunny and 70s and I certainly don't need a jacket, but everytime I push the sleeves of my sweater up, I feel odd, like its wrong to be warm in such gloomy, but not overcast weather. Its not fog, it doesn't have the watery, drippy qualities of fog. It just makes the sky grey. All over. Blocks out the views of buildings. It's smog.
This morning we woke up disgustingly early to head out to Suzhou, a beautiful town that, thanks to the building of a high-speed train, is going to turn into simply another surburb of Shanghai. We first visited the Suzhou Industral Park (China-Singapore collaborative effort) museum where we saw yet more pretty models of development. With special effect lighting. Then we visited Grundfos - a Danish pump company. Pumps meaning water pumps and waste water pumps and other such delightfully unrecognizable gadgets. I was particularly amused by the pump-fountain in the foyer. After all, everyone knows a fountain has a pump underneath it, but how often do you see a fountain that puts its pumps up on pedistals as if they are art? After a presentation of their awesome ISO qualifications and charts about pumps, we got to walk around in the factory. Which was very different from CAT as there were no safety goggles, no green paths to stay on, and work actually going on (though the plant was a little more dead than it probably should've been). We also scared a few employees out of the company garden and koi pond who were taking rather longer-than-normal smoke breaks and quickly disappeared when we walked in with their manager. The back part of the plant, which was supposed to make waste water pumps, was currently devoted to storage. I guess their growth projections were a little optimistic.
After lunch, we visited the famed Humble Administrator's Garden, which was really more of a bunch of rooms (halls) built inside a huge garden. Which weaved in and out of a lot of waterways with rather massive koi. And by rather massive I mean, what we could see of them lurking in the rather unclean depths was far far bigger than two of my feet. I took lots of pictures which I plan to show to my koi-pond planning fiance.
Oh, and I should probably add a footnote about last night's St. Patrick's Day festivities. We went to O'Malley's, a giant Irish pub in the French Concession. And once you stepped inside, you left China. You could've been anywhere in the world. Every direction you turned, a different language was being spoken. Mainly English. The band was playing British hits, the bar was serving Irish beer and someething nasty called a "car bomb" which Kelly swore it would make his day to watch me drink one. I tried, it was disgusting. I don't like beer. Didn't stay out late because had to get up early this morning.
Acrobatics
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Two days of events to report - was too tried to type last night, so will have to make up for it today. Yesterday was quite busy and I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before and so was exhausted all day, though caffinating mid-day helped a little, as did a nap mid-afternoon. I must've been beat as I'm not much of a nap person.
Anyways, the first company we visited upon arrival in Shanghai was VanceInfo - a pretty awesome technology services company that recently (2007) listed on the NYSE and are rather proud of this. They believe that they are cheaper than India, which is where a lot of companies outsource their technology work and that many companies will look to them as a way to diversify their outsourcing. In the technology sector, it seems to be very China vs India, though of course the Chinese companies believe they will succeed because they have better infastructure.
Shanghai this time around is a totally different place, maybe because the weather is better, maybe because we're staying in a fancy high-rise hotel instead of a hostel on a side-street or maybe because we're visiting businesses in nice areas of the city. Everyone else is enchanted and seems to prefer Shanghai, but I still can shake the images of the trash all over the streets, the heavy smog and the pestering watch-sellers. We'll see how it compares to Beijing when I go back without the group.
Our second stop Monday, after lunch at a dumpling restaurant was International Paper (which, if you don't know what they do, I think you can guess from their name). The most interesting presenter for me was the general counsel of the company who talked about the Foreign Corrrupt Practices Act and how it left "wiggle room" for "customary entertainment." She also told me that practicing law in China was an undergrad course and then a bar exam (she then went on to become a US lawyer as well) but that there was no programs for US lawyers to get barred in China (but that this did not stop them from advising clients on Chinese law).
After running (literally) to Burger King for supper, we went to an acrobatics show at Shanghai Circus World. Which was cool. They did things I've seen acrobats in the states do. And then they did some things I haven't seen acrobats in the states do. For example, they had a high platfrom from which two guys would jump onto a seesaw, using this to catapult another guy into flips and then landing on a mat. Well one guy they catapulted was on a single stick, probably five feet tall or so, and they catapulted him up, he flipped around and around in the air several times before landing right in the dead center of the mat (it had a target). So it was a pretty awesome show.
This morning we visited another venture capital fund - Fidelity Asia - that focused more on long-term investments and, according to someone I talked to afterwards who has a better grasp of such things, tended to invest in the later stages of a company's growth, which he thought was just cheating. One interesting tidbit I gleaned, though, was that though they were big on integrity (this word was repeated how many times?), they didn't mind it if someone found a patent for a technology filed in the US (but not China) and copied (or reinvented) the technology to market in China. Afterall, the person filing the patent knew the laws and missed their chance. I guess that's the way business works...
We had lunch at a German cafe in the French Concession, a pretty awesome neighborhood in the middle of Shanghai that looks like a blend of French and Chinese architecture, complete with cobblestone streets, outside cafes and stone archways. We wandered around the neighboorhood for a bit - also stopping at a coffee shop where I got some "pure chocolate" to drink (it vaugely resembled a chocolate shake) but was delightfully yummy.
Our afternoon company was Crystal CG, the company that did all the graphics for the Beijing Olympics (you know that cool scroll in the opening ceremony? The CG fireworks? That would be them.). Someone asked about the CG fireworks as they made a bit of a stir stateside and the guy explained that it had been humid that day and while they had fired off the fireworks shown, it would not have looked so good on TV. They are also doing the Shanghai Expo and the London Olympics as they've shown they have the creativity and capability to handle such projects. They origionally started as a firm that did architectual renderings, but grew quickly into more of a CG production company. Their presentation consisted largely of showing us videos they had made, which were all cool and did a great job showing what their company was capable of producing.
Tonight is another networking dinner and then we will head to an Irish Pub (because they're everywhere in the world) to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Must find something green to wear...
Shoe Emergency!!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
And boy do I wish I was joking!
Backwards to the art district. Which was all modern and less my thing than the art museum. I like people that, you know, look like people instead of like balloons. Though what my tour-book said about the Chinese speaking out about politics through their art is very true. Had lunch at a little cafe and afterwards my server gave me an invitation to the opening of his exhibit. He was very cute and excited about inviting me. I then wandered around the "fake-antique" market, which had a lot of neat stuff and made me wish I had more room in my suitcase....picked up my one suit that was finished (and looks awesome) and hurried back to the hotel. Got to train station with group - ate - got on train - took off my boots and replaced them with shoe slippers - read - went to sleep.
"That's the only pair of shoes you brought?" the guy in the bunk above me is rather amazed at the concept of a girl traveling light - much less a girl with only on pair of shoes. I hold the boot upside down and look at it rather sadly. The heel is completely gone. It fell off. "Does anyone have any pins or hammers?" I ask. "Why yes," my bunkmate I think is amused, "I just happen to have a cobbler kit with me." We end up banging the shoe back together on the doorframe, but it comes apart again when I step in some gum on the train platform. Hopeless. I now have one shoe with a heel, one without, and am walking a little lop-sided.
We get to our hotel (which is niiiiice) where they feed us and check us in. We shower and then head to the suit tailoring place where we all split up and happly bargain for yet more suits. I think I've got all the ones I want to make in progress now. So no more shopping till all these are paid for...amazingly, I'm only slightly over budget. Still no shoes though, so after lunch at a Ramen store (its good food here) I traipse off to a modern mall and find myself modern shoes. I tried the Chinese-brand ones, but they couldn't find them in my size (36 is big in China). I ended up buying two pairs - a professional pair of heels and a pair of flats for walking. Hopefully they'll work well enough that Geoffrey won't have to bring any shoes with him from the states. I did find a custom shoe place and was totally tempted, but they take two months to complete.
"I'm just going to have to come back here every year and get my clothes made," my roommate, like all of us, is in shopping heaven. The idea that you can pull out a picture of anything and 50-100$ later, its yours in silk or wool or cotton or linen or leather or...we're addicted. I don't think anyone has gotten excited about the fakes. Compared to getting your own thing tailored for you, fakes are less than fun. Tailor a suit in China and you can afford the real bag back home, I guess.
The view out my window right now (we're on the 27th floor) is sunset through smog. Today was much much clearer than the last two days I spent in Shanghai, but it still seems more polluted and dirty. And when we look down at the sad, worndown houses below and around us, the city has a worn-out feel. And when we bounce in the cab over all the giant pot-holes in the road, it is no wonder they are getting the expo - this city needs money poured into it, badly.
I'm not so sure about a tiger and a mouse raising a dragon.
Friday, March 13, 2009
I am surfing facebook and procrastinating rather than writing. Updating a blog daily is hard. It's not for lack of stories to tell, more that its difficult to take stories sometimes and turn them into something blog approprate. For example, the story referenced in the title, I tried to explain to Geoffrey last night. It was part of a supper table conversation about the Chinese new year. Anyways.
Today we woke up early to take the fast train to Tanjin, the port area near Beijing. It as several Free Trade Zones and Special Economic Zones, so several companies are located there - especially shippign and logistics companies. The area is obviously expanding as there was an amazing amount of construction going on. We saw some models of what it would look like when "done," but as one of the guys pointed out, its never done, they just move on to the next phase of construction. It was also blisteringly cold, mainly because of the wind. I had a wool jacket (thankfully) but felt bad for the people that weren't quite so warm.
After our morning tour of the port and lunch, we visited YCH, a logistics company that sounded like they were doing some pretty cool things. As our speaker said, their advantage is all about trust. For example, the customs office allows them to clear cargo through their website and have cameras installed in their warehouse so they can just inspect cargo remotely. That takes trust. Also, of course, is trust from the clients. After that we visited a CAT factory where they were making generators. It looked like any other factory I've seen around the world except maybe that the workers were a touch shorter. We were particularly delighted by the signs that designated the bottlenecks and were happily refering to them as "Herbie." (reference to a book read in operations class - if we learned nothing else in that class than about bottlenecks, we learned to talk about herbies). The factory was currently sitting idle because they were only running at 1/3 capacity (bad economy) and were waiting on materials before they could start for the day (this was at 4:30 in the afternoon). But no doubt it was a totally modern factory.
We got back on the fast train after supper and 300kmphed our way back to Beijing. It made for a very long day, about a 16 hour day in all. However Saturday is free so I'm going to do the art district and pick up my first round of suits before boarding an overnight train to Shanghai.
A kid in my mother's jewelry box
Thursday, March 12, 2009
My roommate is sitting behind me and I can hear the click of pearls. At supper, girls pulled out strand after strand they had bought today at the pearl market. The guys proudly showed off the fancy boxes full of pearls they had bought for their girls back home. And at these prices, girls back home included mothers and sisters and friends. And that's not getting started on the jade and turquoise and coral. I finished with the pearls fairly quickly having shopped for them before and so started into the other stones. I found one necklace I particularly loved, but was so way out of my price range, there was no way I could haggle her down. When I told her this, she offered to make me another with less strands and lower quality beads, but just the same. For a much much lower price. And then the purchases are all put into the cutest silk bags. It is easy to see why China is shopping heaven. It is also easy to see why not to buy fakes, the guys were buying jackets which were shedding all over their shirts as they were trying them on.
But, oh yea, we visited some businesses today too. The main theme being heat. As in, the rooms were so hot that people were having trouble staying awake. Which was a shame, especially in the morning when we visited a newswire firm. It was totally interested to hear them talk about the troubles they had had explaining to Chinese companies what press releases were and how to use them. In the afternoon we visited a venture capital firm that invested in cleantech. Which was interesting as well. Made me think of lots of possibilities for Geoff and I both to work in China. One thing I've noticed is the way the inside of the firms are decorated. They are all located in tall modern skyscrapers, but the way they decorate the inside of the firms is very different depending on whether its a western company coming to China or a Chinese company. I personally love the look of the Chinese firms. The heavy wood outlines, the dark colors contrasting with reds. It's totally my style. I saw a furniture store today outside of the bus. Let's just say its a good thing shipping stuff home is expensive, otherwise there would be no point in registering as I'd have just taken care of everything here.
This evening was chill as we have an extreemly early morning tomorrow. We had supper at the hotel (a bunch of girls) and talked about pearls and shopping and weddings. Universal young girl topic - weddings. Am fairly happy here, just can't wait till Geoff gets over here and joins me.
Hi. My name is Caroline. I fix computers. Hire me.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
I will avoid jumping right into the Apple rant and instead point out that we spent our morning visiting a law firm which was utterly fascinating and informative, even if our speaker was a bit concise in his answers which made it rather difficult to keep the discussion flowing. But then I wonder really how he could answer some questions because between what he can and cannot say and our group's sometimes rather overwhelming pre-conceptions (and I'm certainly guilty) we might be coming from totally different ends of the legal spectrum. We then spent lunch happily shopping. I think I had the expert barginner with me and we really had fun with that.
After lunch we toured Apple-Asia. Which is just exactly like Apple all over the globe. Shiiiiiiiiiiiny. I like Macs. But to me they're just another type of computer and OS, they're not as super-special as Mac people seem to think they are. And they get viruses. Seriously. Even Apple corporate admits this. But Mac users ... I'll not get on my soapbox. I could not work there, I don't have the proper worshipful attitude of the Mac's awesomeness. Though as a sidenote, if Macs are supposed to be so intuitive, why does it take a genius to fix them?
This will not digress into my anti-mac-cult rant.
After our incredibly long stay at Apple, I went to my first suit fitting. Which was awesome. Why buy knock-off products when you can get unique things nicely tailored just for you? We did, just for the experience, go into the backroom of a shop where all the knock-offs were. But I didn't buy anything, didn't even see anything that tempted me. IT bags are so trendy, I wouldn't know which one was right and don't particularly care for most of them anyways. I think I'll stick to tailoring, getting a whole new wardrobe is addictive enough. I can accessorize back home. Did buy some jade earrings and a few chinese-print silk scarfs. Why buy knock-off designs when the chinese stuff is so neat?
This evening was our alum-networking dinner. Which didn't have very many alums. But did have the author of the book we'd read for class. Ted Plafker, who wrote the wonderful Doing Business in China joined us, spoke briefly and then mingled with the students and few alum answering questions and sharing stories. I decided not to go out tonight, my throat has still not recovered from all the KTV (karoke) and beer that happened last night.
Beijing, the center of the world
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
We're all wearing suits. It's amazing how you can take a bunch of young-adult Americans, put them in dark suits, and suddenly they look professional, like they have a purpose other than just goofing off and drinking a lot. We walked, en masse, to the Urban Planning Exhibition. Where there were three main themes shown again and again with 3D animated movies, beautifully constructed models and tiny cities all over the floors and walls. 1) The Forbidden City was constructed and reconstructed a lot and in the process we made Beijing a big modern city. 2) Beijing is built on two long road axises with the Forbidden City in the middle. 3) The Olympics ROCKED! and so did our architecture for them.
That done, we were turned loose it a little street market where we happily bartered for a wide variety of cheap souvinears. I bought two overpriced bracelets, but it was fun. Should buy more Chinese jewelry, it at least comes from somewhere cool. Then three of us decided we wanted lunch, but couldn't find anywhere to eat that resembled restaurant to us, so finally ducked into a small hole-in-the-wall local place where no one spoke English and we were stared at the whole time. But the food was good and cheap (food is generally really cheap here. I rarely spend 10 dollars on a meal, generally its more like 5) and we then met back up with the group to head to the US Embassy.
The Embassy compound looked like a squat unimpressive fort. Not very pretty. Lots of show of security. Probably lots of real security we couldn't see, too. We visited the Foreign Commerce group who are under the Department of Commerce. Our speaker was interesting - good at answering questions with a very dry sense of humor and probably a fairly good idea of the business climate in China. The climate being, quite simply, if they don't adopt green technology soon, we're going to have a serious problem as there won't even be enough oil for all the world's consumers, much less all the other pollution problems. But the Chinese are not generally interested in paying for technology, though he assured us they are making some attempts at patent protection. Some. But its hard to enforce.
After the embassy, we all camped out at an over-priced Starbucks before visiting Harvest Fund. Here we got into finance things which I struggle to understand. Lots of graphs. I think the lessons were, the financial crash hurt everyone, but we still managed not to get hurt too badly. Charts about how much research they did on companies. Does not make sense to me. Why do that much research if you're not going to invest in a company long term enough for the benefits of a company's good policies to shine through? Seems to me short term investments only benefit from the whims of the market which is generally uneducated about a particular company's value. But what do I know? Nothing, I do not like stock trading. The building was very clean and professional and our speaker was wonderfully nice, spoke almost perfect English and seemed like a very knowledgable guy.
Our day of visiting businesses done, we hurry back to the hotel to change out of suits for our night out then head to the duck restaurant. The famous one, whichever one that is. And oh there was so much good food! And it just kept coming and coming. And then finally, they brought our the duck. One of our guides explained to us in detail how it was cooked - it is not for the queasy about food. But it was soooooooo good. We stuffed ourselves on duck and washed it down with the local beer. Which I still think tastes just like beer and cannot tell the difference between the different types except perhaps size of bottle.
And then we went to KTV (karoke). We had a plush room to ourselves with a pool table, a bunch of couches and a huge flat-screen TV. Instead of doing the one-at-a-time karoke thing, we all grabbed the mikes, jumped up onto the floor and sang 80s songs at the top of our lungs. It was awesome. I sang pretty much the whole night. There were about three or four people who could carry a tune and between us we knew most of the songs and then everyone else just sang along for the fun of it. We drank an absolute ton of beer and generally had a blast. I ended the night singing "Barbie Girl" with a 2nd year China tracker who showed up late and who I shared the microphone with for the last part of the evening. It was a blast and I hated to leave. But my voice was shot between the singing and the smoke and I was tired. Beijing is so much fun!!
No Somking. Do not be overweight in the lift.
Monday, March 9, 2009
...title is exactly like a sign we saw in the elevator of the hotel...
Last night, went on major subway/walking expidition with the Chinese-track students who came to join us. It was great to see them, especially as they had a clue how to get around and how much everything should cost. They took us to a Thai restaurant, though I managed to loose my roommate on the way. The nine of us that didn't get confused in the subway got a private room in the back - apparently lots of the restaurants have these private rooms for large groups. And you just order a bunch of different food and share everything. Most of it was good. Some of the spicy stuff rather burned my mouth. The waiters were making fun of us because to ask for chopsticks, we tried to make chopstick signs with our fingers and so they kept making this movement back at us for the rest of the evening. Learned you cannot buy deoderant in China. Fun evening overall.
After breakfast this morning, we all piled on the bus and drove off to the Great Wall. Our local tour guide tried to talk a bit, but the peanut gallery was having a rather good day. The entire class was sitting in the back of the bus.
So, this great wall thing. It was steep. And skinny. And windy. Our professor had chosen a different portion from the normal one because most tourists can't handle all the stairs. And stairs. Steep stairs. Uneven height stairs. Unevenly worn stairs. And up and up and up you go. But don't look back down. I did. That was a mistake. I suddenly felt like I was going to slide backwards off the mountain. I made it up to two guardhouses and decided I was just going to become the wall troll and get a tax from everyone on the way back down. A nice fellow took some pictures of me. Then I started the process of going down without looking down. Looking down was dizzying. And some of the other people were running up and down. I even saw one guy just standing on the wall. I wasn't much into that. So I slowly crept back down the wall. When I got to the bottom, I discovered I'd picked up a string of elderly American tourists who were happy to have someone to follow.
"I hear you picked up some guys." I'm sitting on the tourbus enjoying my first Diet Coke of the trip. It's true. I came down early and some polish guys struck up a conversation with me and bought me a coke for sitting with them. I learned all about business travel according to young polish guys who were basically using workshops as an excuse to come to China. They were much impressed when I told them about Geoff planning to Skype into classes, they were very interested in Internet communications. I like meeting random people.
We also swung through the Olympic Village. Which was nothing like I was expecting from TV. Great feat of engineering, I guess. But the Bird's Nest looked a lot chunkier than I expected. We took pictures then headed back to the hotel.
I got an email from Anne saying to come to her hospital and her assistant would take me to the tailor, so I managed to find my way across Beijing to meet Mellissa. From there we just hopped into the chauffered car like it was no big deal and chatted al the way to the clothing market. And the whole time I was picking out clothes and pearls. And the whole time we were eating. And the whole way back. She was so wonderfully easy to talk to, I kept forgetting my Chinese manners and am sure I made several mistakes. But she was fun to talk to and incredibly helpful in bargining and picking out fabrics. And then she got me some Chinese food that was sort of a make your own soup and a fried pumpkin and something else. And it all tasted great. Got to see Anne briefly afterwards, planning on more later.
Got back to the hotel just in time to join the group for drinks (need to find something alcoholic other than beer to drink here, not such a big beer drinker) and going out. Again, a group-style private-room thing, but Chinese food this time. Which was still good. And got to talk to more people living in Beijing. I am exhausted.
Art and Music
Sunday, March 8, 2009
I went to find lunch. On the Wangfujing street, which is supposed to be a big shopping place. But my identifiable food choices were stall foods and KFC. And I haven't gotten brave enough for stall foods yet, so KFC it was. I'm sure there were other places to eat - I need to learn the chinese character for restaurant.
Then, since it was literally right across the street from the hotel, I took myself to the National Art Museum. Because I reckon the odds of Geoffrey wanting to go are low and I like doing art at my own pace, anyways. There was an exhibit by some old painter who had gone through 90 years worth of phases of painting from traditional to modern. Next to each painting was a little thought. Sometimes related to the painting, sometimes not. I thought this was much more interesting than "painted by so and so in this year of such and such" and other standard art museum fare.
Right before going, I'd read an email from my future-mother-in-law that said "I saw a documentary on a small ancient town in China. It was one of the very few that has been preserved. The bottom line was that most all the old historical towns have been rebuilt for the future and few have been saved. Is that what you are seeing?" The real answer is, of course, I don't know, I've just stuck to cities. But there was one painting that very much reminded me of the email. It was of a cluster of small houses on the water, very simple, traditional houses, largely colorless (as though the thick smog existed even in this rural village). The caption next to it read something about how he missed the village he grew up in and that one rural village was much the same as the next. But somehow, this was a good thing, because it implied that the old Chinese culture was still there. I took a picture, but it didn't capture the text accurately.
Anyways, after I finished with this guy's life works, I stumbled into the calligraphy exhibit. I think, until I learn to read Chinese, calligraphy as an art form is beyond me. So I decided instead to go to the park, which turned out to be a good choice.
The Jing Shan Park is located directly behind the Forbidden City. Its famous because some emporer hung himself there. And there's a hill, which you can climb to the top of and sit in the Wancheng Ting and look all over the city. And its really a shame that's all its famous for. Because the park reminded me of something out of a Dr. Suess book.
The tooters were tooting, the spinners were spinning, the horn-blowers blowing, the acordianists wheezing, the drummers drumming, the singers singing....and the chinese rapper rapping (ok, actually I think he was telling a story in time, but it sounded like chinese rap). There were people playing instruments I'd never seen before and people singing along. All with microphones. All sounded pretty good. And all right on top of each other. There were dancers and old people doing something that resembled spinning around in slow circles. There were gourd-playing clubs gathered on benches. All kinds of music and dance were represented.
One group was doing a bunch of different cultural dances with kids, so I settled down for a bit and watched that. A guy sang, some girls danced, it was fun. Then they were having a bit of a problem with their speaker and there was a break and a guy in uniform just stood up and started singing some song and everyone joined in. I took lots of pictures.
Everyone else in the group is finally getting here. My roommate just breazed in and out, some of the guys down the hall are online. Group meeting is in about an hour. Time for China class to start and Caroline's random wanderings to end.
As a side note, the Barbie store in Shanghai opened this past weekend. I shall have to check this out when I get back there. Because, why not?
Shanghai to Beijing
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Safely ensconsed in a very nice hotel in Beijing, finally having had a decent shower, I am happy to report I am doing quite well. If you had asked me that, say, yesterday at 5pm, I might have reported that I was freezing cold, sick of sniffling, my bags were getting in the way and I was hungry and dreadfully missing Geoffrey and not completely sure which direction to go. And my feet were tired. That was my own fault for insisting on walking everywhere. I was happy to get on that train and put on the little slippers...
...but I probably should back up a little. After all, I finally found the beautiful part of Shanghai yesterday. Down in the old city is a collection of restaurants and toursist trap shops refered to in my guidebook as Yu Gardens and Bazaar. So I headed that direction. And that seems like a nicer part of town. The buildings were better maintained. The streets had less trash in them. The stray dogs wandering around had little bells on their collars. I don't actually know if all the dogs I'm seeing are strays. In America, a stray is generally a dirty, rangy mutt. All the dogs I was seeing running around in Shanghai were of the fluffy lap-dog variety. There was even one with a sweater on, but no owner in sight.
Yu Gardens was beautiful. I took lots of pictures which I plan to show to Geoff and say "see, make us a Koi pond like this!" I can't exactly taunt him about the size of the Koi though as his live in a much smaller environment and are almost as big. I had fun tripping all over the stone walkways and ignoring the "caution, wet" signs and generally climbing all over the place. And don't worry mother, there will be pictures of me...out there somewhere...as several of the chinese tourists decided I was part of what was interesting. I like the plants, the cute little houses that looked like they were floating on the water, the zigzag bridges. I also had my first run in with a Chinese public bathroom which reminded me of a modern version hole-in-the-ground.
After the gardens, I wandered around some more and then back up to the People's No. 1 Department Store because I reckoned you couldn't go wrong there. And, other than the absolute chaos of shoppers, it really was nice. Lots of very different kinds of things than anything we have at home. Of course, the main thing they had was winter coats. If you wanted something other than a coat, you were pretty much out of luck. It was apparently coat-buying time. I, for example, thought a hat would be nice. No hats. Just coats. Oh well.
I eat lunch at a nice little chinese/american-tourist bistro where I have something that approximates a ham sandwich in appearance and doesn't taste at all like one. I watch a street character play with kids. I enjoy being off my feet for a while. I don't mind all the walking and my feet don't really bother me, but the cement and concrete are killing my back. I walked back to the hostel to check out and get my train ticket and then settled in to read for a little while before I had to catch a taxi to the train station.
A sweet Chinese girl with basic english skills strikes up a conversation with me. She's the sister of the guy who runs the hostel. We chat for a bit and then I have to go get something to help me stay awake as I can tell I'm starting to feel like crashing. Right about 4 I grab a taxi to the train station. He dumps me out rather unceremonously underground somewhere and I get pointed in the general right direction by baggage porters. I am left to tumble along through underground subway-like tunnels liked by bright shops and crowded with people and not an english sign in sight. People are skattering every which direction and I have no idea which group to follow so I decide to make my way to the street. Surely there I can find some help.
I lug my suitcases (thankfully I pack as light as one can for a month's worth of travel) up two flights of stairs and into the dusk. I am standing in the middle of a huge square, surrounded by unfamiliar buildings, facing a ground covered in bits of trash and sound is blasting at me from loudspeakers all around. Thankfully, Shanghai Railway Station is written in small print underneath giant Chinese characters on one of the buildings and above this is a giant screen that makes me glad they at least use arabic numbers becasue I can recognize train Z14, the 19:20 departure time and so I am left to assume that 1 is my gate. But there's still time to kill and I am hungry, so I make my way to a Burger King across the square. I try to order, which fails as she got the chicken part right, but missed the drink. (Somewhere, I am sure, they serve diet coke? or coke light?!) So I take my little box of chicken and move on. At least I got chicken and I've got water in my bag. I should be ok.
The downstairs area features a few tables, but they are all packed and most of the people are headed upstairs. I'm not inclinded to do this with a tray and two bags. So I zero in on the two chaps in the store who look the most likely to speak english and ask if I can join them. I was right, they could speak english, but only as a second language. They were a nice French couple headed on a weekend get away. One worked at the French Consolute doing some sort of research. The other was "writing his memories." I suppose I also need to mention that both fellows looked younger than me. So I suggested China was an excellent place to "write memories" because you could have adventures there. He says yes and nods. The Chinese man sitting at the next table over is laughing, he got what I was suggesting. So after the French couple leaves, I talked to the Chinese guy (from Taiwan) who had been to the states several times, liked Chicago better than LA, associated Spanish speakers with crime and made sure I got to my gate ok and told me to be careful and take care of myself.
The train is nice and clean. The beds are not bad. The service is first class all the way. I share my cabin with one other fellow who speaks no English but is very nice about helping me with my bags. I slept pretty much the whole time - well probably at least 10 hours of it. Which hopefully means I'm fully transitioned onto Chinatime. I like the sleeping on trains idea, wish we had something so nice in the states.
Arrive in Beijing at 6:45am this morning, got a taxi and got to the hotel by 7. Beijing is very different from Shanghai. For one, its much cleaner. Its still distinctly Chinese, but there was no trash all over the place, less smog (Geoff says I should give in and stop calling it fog), generally, overall nicer. I can see why people like China and I can only hope that Shanghai gets this treatment in time for the 2010 Expo. Olympics do great things to modernize cities I think is the moral of the story comparing the two. I'm not saying I didn't see poor looking spots, but even they looked cleaner and better maintained. Beijing is what I was picturing when I drove into Shanghai and I'm pretty glad I'm spending more time here.
The hotel people were amazingly helpful about letting me go up to the room early. The cleaner guy was still going, but up here I could get on the internet, tell everyone I was ok and talk to Geoffrey for a while. Oh, and take a nice, long, warm, much needed shower. Next step? Lunch. Then? I'm thinking art museum.
Museuming in Shanghai
Friday, March 6, 2009
Amazingly, I think I only spend 25$ yesterday on three meals and a taxi. No shopping. Just lots and lots and lots of walking all over the place. Woke up at 3am. Woke up at 4 am. Eventually decided to take a shower around 6am. Had a hard time figuring out how the warm water worked. Talked to Geoff for a while. Had breakfast at the hostel, which was not bad at all except there was an egg-shell in my egg. But good bacon-like-thing and toast and juice-like-substance. Will probably hunt down something a little different today.
Left the hotel and wandered the three blocks to the Shanghai museum. I was one of the first people there, so there was no lines and almost no one in the exhibits. Turns out it was a free day, so I just wandered on in and made my way first to the ceramics exhibit. I reckoned in China, surely, I could find a china pattern I liked. Not quite, but the Chinese don't seem to be limited in their designing. Who says something has to be round when it could be square? Who says something needs four legs when three work just fine? Why does the top of a pot need a handle when we could carve a whole city? A giant drinking dish with fish on the bottom was my favorite thing. Because the fish weren't carved flat, they were actual tiny carvings of fish carved up from the bottom of the vessel. I went through the whole museum. Liked the furniture. Calligraphy didn't do much for me, but there was a Chinese girl standing in front of a particularly swashy form of calligraphy trying to copy it. I liked the guy that seemed to change tradition and not use a variable density look but rather straight lines all the time. Coins were mildly interesting, especially the ones shaped like knifes. Art was cool, you could tell each painter's unique style - there was even a chinese version of modern art. There was also bronze and statues, but I was getting tired and so didn't go through those quite as slowly.
After the museum, I made my way over to the major shopping street in hopes of finding some food. I was exhausted and so finally broke down and went in the Pizza Hut. This caused a great stir and the waitress who spoke a little bit of English had to be summoned from the other side of the restaurant when me trying to point to pepsi and water confused the first girl. Pizza was much less greasy than at home, but basically the same. I then set off down the shopping street with the plan of coming out on the Bund. This plan, while it worked, was probably not the best idea. I could hardly enjoy a stroll down the street because anytime I slowed down from forcefully moving forward, I would be surrounded by men trying to sell me watches? coach? gucci? which was slightly less than fun. So I just kept walking, figured out how to get under the major street and found myself on the Bund, yet another area of Shanghai that is completely under construction. So are most of the pretty buildings I was supposed to see on the PuXi side of the river, covered in scaffolding. I could see the Pudong side of the river, just barely through the haze. It didn't look nearly as shiny as the pictures seemed to indicate it should. I walked up and down the Bund, decided I was tired and begin to find my way back to the hostel. Which was harder than it seemed as I kept having to detour around construction. I managed to find my way back and decided I'd take a quick nap to recoup...
...four hours later, I wake up. Its dark outside. I'm still exhausted and seriously consider skipping supper. But that's not a good idea, really. So I force myself up and out and walk back to the People's Park where I'd read about some cool french bistro. No luck in locating that, just kept walking and walking. Was finally starving, so went into some Undon cafe. All waitresses seem to know "welcome" and "bye bye" but that's about it. This one was a bit better in figuring out what I wanted from pointing. I order a pepsi. She needs to know whether I want it cold or hot, so points to cold and hot coffee. We get it figured out. (Actually I really want coke, but I haven't gotten that lucky yet.) I manage to order something that vaguely resembles sphagetti. When it comes out, it looks even less like anything I'm familiar with, but I eat it anyways and its not too bad. Not so good at the chopsticks yet. But most of the food makes it off the plate and into my mouth, so I'm rather pleased with myself.
I decide I'm far too tired to walk the way back and take a taxi. It costs only a little over a dollar and beats walking around at night. It might be safe, but its still a bit unnerving when you're alone. I came back to the hotel and collapsed again. Today I'm going to try for a garden this morning and then I'm training to Beijing this evening, so you won't hear from me. The hostel is buying my ticket, so I'm not sure what time yet. I'll find that out this morning.
Chicago to Shanghai
Friday, March 6, 2009 (though its still Thursday back home)
I am in Shanghai and its 3:15 am local time. I managed to snag about 9 hours of sleep, though after I write this, I think I'll try and get some more. I think my body is starting to realize its awake in the middle of the night and no one is going to shower it or feed it to wake it up, so it might as well go back and get at least three more hours of sleep. But I'm awake here for a moment and hoping my fiancee will get online by chance and talk to me, so here's my adventure so far.
Mum dropped me off at the airport and ran off having a blast with Gigi (can't wait to see the suit! send pictures!) and I made it through security and to the gate in no time. Airports seem to be getting efficient about security - either that or I've just been traveling at good times. Either way, I settle down at the gate and commence reading. And read. And read. And then, right about the time I should be boarding, the gate lady announces that the plane is 15 minutes late from Miami. So we get off the ground a good 45 minutes behind schedule, which is bad 'cause several of the passengers already know they'll miss their connecting flights. I get seated next to a nice fellow who told me various stories the whole way there. Being a business student appears to be a good conversation starter since just about everyone either has a business, works for a business or is interested in those great businesses that make up the stock market.
Made it to my hotel in Chicago, a good three minute ride from the airport, checked in and almost immediately got a message from Raist telling me he was on his way. I hadn't seen him in about six years, but I still manage to recognize him as the best-dressed guy coming through the doors at the hotel. He started off trying to tell me what the plan for us to do was, but we kept getting side tracked and it took the whole drive to his sister's house (where we parked) to communicate it. We continued to talk basically non-stop for the rest of the afternoon while he showed me the downtown park with the silver bean in the middle of it (which was awesome as far as odd-park-modern-art goes). He then took to a latin restaurant, a martini bar, a cupcake bakery (where you sat in little swings to eat your giant and ubersweet cupcakes) and deposited me back at my hotel three mixed drinks, one glass of wine and a peanut-butter and jelly shot lataer with an admonishment not to oversleep in the morning.
I didn't oversleep - actually woke up and hopped myself in the shower about five minutes early (probably why I missed Geoff's calls :( ) and made it to check in and through security in less than 30 minutes. So I settled in for more reading. Boarded the plane ontime - a great big 777 with video-monitors in the back of each seat and plenty of entertainment options to choose from. I was one row from the very back, window seat and the seat next to me all to myself. Good to streatch out in. Made the plane ride much nicer as I could stretch my legs out straight, lean my head back and read or watch movies. Or, as I honestly did for almost the whole flight, watch the various maps and numbers of our flight progress tick by. We flew only 600 miles south of the North Pole and for hours that was the closest landmark the map had to offer. The flight was about 13 hours long and my sudafed ran out with four hours left and as the plane approached 40000 feet going over the mountains of Siberia I started to feel horrible. I managed to drop off to sleep in the last hour of the flight only to be woken by seatback going up as we made our descent. Totally IFR landing. We dropped out of the clouds with less than 1000ft to go.
Once we landed, we were off the plan in almost no time flat (I guess it helps if the plane is not at all full) and breezed through immigrations, baggage claim, money changing and customs. I was out of the airport in less than 30 minutes. (Geoff, I'll write you an email closer to the time with details, but everything was in English). I proceeded to find the maglev train, which was slightly harder to do, by "maglev" and hand gestures translate in every language and I got on board. The train was not as shinny as I'd expected and only got up to 300 kmph, but it was still a fascinating ride, mainly because it was my first view of China. The thick fog didn't allow much visibility but what I was seeing what not at all what I expected. I don't know how to describe how incredibly poor and broken down and dirty everything looked. There was potential for beauty, but I don't know whether the cloud cover ruined it or whether the fact that many of the building were empty and falling down or rather it really is that way. I will find out. The people, on the other hand, looked exactly as I'd expected and so far have all be incredibly friendly and helpful.
Got off the maglev and into a taxi. The driver was a cute older fellow who had on his little uniform a bit too small. He spoke as much English as I do Chinese and so thankfully my hostel had written directions to their location as well as the address. It took us probably another 30 minutes to get there. I got to see some taller more city-looking buildings, but the fog obliderated any view of skyscrapers. Did see a few nice, modern looking buildings, but the general impression was not so much that Shanghai is under construction but rather that it is being held together by construction. My driver parked down the road from the hostel and made sure I got inside safely (which was good as the sign wasn't very visable). I'm still adjusting to chinese money, so 85 yuan seemed like a lot, although it comes out to roughly 12 - 13 dollars.
The hostel, which having a bit of a small entrance on the side of a building. Was neat and exactly what I'd expected. The girl and guy who greated me spoke great English, got me checked in fast since I think I was about to fall asleep on my feet and up to the third floor I climbed. The room itself is small, but has everything one needs in a room. The bed is hard, but its a bed with a pillow and a huge fluffy comforter and at 20$ a night, how can I complain? Have discovered they're a bit stingy about the toilet paper.
Anyways, I pretty much zonked out and am thinking I'll crawl back in the bed and see if I can snatch another couple hours to get me closer to on cycle here.
Hi. I'm Caroline. Today I am in SC.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Me according to my financee:
My name is Caroline. I grew up in a small town in SC and attended a Montessori school. In selecting a college to attend, I wanted an out of state school at which I felt comfortable. Sweetbriar College met these criteria, and when I visited the beauty of the campus set in the mountains of Virginia captured my heart. During my senior year of college I was accepted to the University of South Carolina School of Law. While in Law School I met a very interesting character, an engineer turned lawyer. We will be married in September 2009 and will remain in SC while I complete the last year of my joint degree in Law and International Business.
I had to write a bio for the China class - they are going to make us a little booklet with information about everyone, in case we don't know each other yet. (I hear its going to be red.) I mean, we only took about 30 credit hours together last semester. But hey, whatever makes people happy. And his version of my bio is better than my more staid and boring version (except the part were I went off about liking long walks down great walls which I thought was rather funny.)
So if you haven't gathered, I'm off to China. Tuesday. I'm packed, of course. And hopefully have all my paperwork and hotel booking straight. Hopefully. It will be an adventure.
We're supposed to keep a journal while we're over there. Actually, we were supposed to start keeping this journal in our intro class last week. But really, how much can I write about that? We read a China etequette book, I thought it was good. Then we read another one. I thought it was also good. I will endeavor not to eat out of the common dish. And I am so thankful that they don't believe in skipping lunch. Neither do I. Get very upset when lunch is skipped.
Then we got to hear about selling train-repair machines in China (which was fascinating) and how the Chinese are investing in SC (hello Haier plant nextdoor). Which is all well and good, but the buildup to this trip is getting crazy - I just want to get over there and see it!
When I tell business people I'm going to China, their ears perk up. I'm told how to hand my business card, asked if I speak Chinese (that'd be no), told to avoid street food, to eat street food, that karoake is fun and scary, to buy a suit while I'm there. To be very observant and journal all that I see and learn. To share my journal with everyone in my family because they need reading material, apparently. So here we go.
My financee has realized I'll be leaving in a few days and has gotten rather clingy. Which is cute, but it makes me realize I'll miss him as well. Thankfully, he'll be over to join me for the last part of the trip. I'm going to China. It's not scary. It's not out there. I'll be fine, really. It's just another neat and different place. Another adventure! ~walks off humming Indiana Jones theme song~
journaltesting
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
sidetracked initial attempt at keeping journal of China class
Rainy day. Could have gone back for a rain jacked, but then I would’ve been ten minutes late. And the China book says being late is bad – so I’d hate to make a bad first impression. Was also glad to read that the Chinese didn’t believe in skipping meals. Neither do I. Have been on tours with people who do believe in skipping lunch and I was in a foul mood by mid-afternoon. Ooo, that picture’s pretty, I want to go there! I’m really liking the Chinese manners books. I wonder if I couldn’t study a lot of different cultures then write a column for a business publication where I was Miss Global Business Manners: “you really must learn to be on time, darling, even if the traffic and smog is bad.”
So far, everyone has assured me that China is perfectly safe everywhere. Except Yao, who said I shouldn’t go into the Western part on my own because they were “aggressive…like Texas.”