The 18 Months of China: A Retrospective

So, looking back at the last 3 years of my life, I've realized it can be pretty well divided into 2 approximately 18 month halves:

1) The ~18 months from December 26, 2009-->May 7th, 2011. We will call this the most important 18 months of my life, educationally speaking

2) The ~18 months from May 7, 2011-->November 29, 2012. We will call this the China months

The story of part 1 is well-documented in this blog, but to review: December 26, 2009, I got onto an airplane with one of my best friends to venture out to Asia. 36 hours later I was in Tokyo, and the ensuing 5 months I learned about life. I was on exchange in Hong Kong, traveled all over Asia, met the most amazing people in this world, learned how to prioritize, and learned how to enjoy myself while also getting important things done. From there I went to an internship in the Netherlands, where I learned to do office work with office work people from all over the world. I learned about passion in seeing the Dutch root their football team to a 2nd place finish at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. I learned to cope with culture shock, something I hadn't experienced in Hong Kong. I learned to keep in touch with said amazing people I met in Hong Kong, even though they may have been a country, continent, or half a world away.

After this, I went to Colombia to meet one of the most special people I knew in Hong Kong, where I learned how to make the most of a relatively short reunion with close friends. From Colombia, I went home to the most intense academic year of my life, which included a semester with 26 credit hours of courses (15 is the norm). I took my learning to prioritize in Hong Kong and put it into practice during this time, in that of all my time at Illinois State, that 26 hour semester included not only the best social life, but also the best grades. This was a crucial 18 months that ended the day I graduated, May 7, 2011.

Part 2 started the very next day, when I got back onto an airplane and flew back to the most beautiful city on this planet, Hong Kong. I was in Hong Kong and China for a month for a consulting project. Here, I learned to be a leader. To apply pressure to people when pressure was needed, to use the power play. I learned to utilize people's strengths, minimize their weaknesses, and get the most from them. From there, I returned home for a few weeks before returning to Beijing, where I learned to cope with truly remarkable adversity. And it was back to the US....but not for long, as I returned to Shenzhen in November 2011. During the past year here in China, I've learned to keep my mouth shut, listen more than speak, but also to not back down to adversity. I've learned some Chinese. I've learned what it's like to be the only white guy in an office of 60 Chinese people. I've learned a lot.

And now this is all coming to an end, as I head back to Chicago in a week and a half to start a new cycle.

3 years ago, I would have had no idea what the ensuing 18 months would have contained. Nor would I have known on my graduation day what those ensuing 18 months would have contained. Just as now, I really have no idea what these coming 18 months (or for that matter, 18 weeks) will contain. But I would like to take this opportunity to summarize these past 18 months in a few stories, memorable events, and general themes that I've encountered.

Undoubtedly, the most important thing I have learned during these 18 months centered around the world's 2nd largest economy is anyone reading this blog: you are NOT poor. Or unlucky. The man has not screwed you over. Your life now is probably quite good. Even if you're reading this from your dungeon of a basement in Detroit, Michigan, odds are your life is infinitely better than the majority of people on this earth.

To clarify--by developing country standards, China is a juggernaut. They have superhighways, amazing airports, skyscrapers the likes of which you cannot imagine, and a relatively good social welfare program that provides reasonably OK education and healthcare to 95% of its 1.3 billion people. Compared to places like India, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Indonesia, poor people in China are remarkably well-off. And yet, compared to you and me, they are still what we would call decrepitly poor. I've learned here to appreciate, to an ungodly extent, the fact that I was born in the largest economy in the world, speaking a language that opens more doors for you throughout the world than anything else you have on your resume. I've learned to be grateful for what I have.

I've learned here that being on the outside looking in is really not so bad. To clarify--as I mentioned a moment ago, Hong Kong is the greatest city in the world. Living in Shenzhen, being only 1 hour from such a city, was initially a curse. Something of a "so close but so far" idea. I would go into Hong Kong on a weekend and return to Shenzhen, always dejected in trading the gleaming skyscrapers and their reflection off of Victoria Harbor, the palpable pulse of places like Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok, the views from the peak, the classy liveliness of SoHo, for the relative grayness of Shenzhen. It was heart-wrenching.

However, after a few months, I noticed something interesting. I grew quite fond of having everything in Shenzhen cost less than half of its equivalent in Hong Kong. I learned to love the fact that I could go into just about any bar or club, no matter how classy, wearing shorts and sandals, and not have to worry about feeling underdressed. I learned to appreciate my surroundings. And consequently, I've not made a leisure trip to Hong Kong in months, but for going to meet friends who happen to be passing through the fragrant harbor for a weekend trip. Indeed, perhaps being on the outside looking in is not so bad.

Most importantly, however, I learned to follow one's dreams and trust one's intuition. After I returned home from Beijing after encountering the aforementioned adversity, I knew I'd be heading back to China. I knew I'd be heading back sans job, sans many job prospects, and sans any plans beyond "meeting up with Douglon at HK Int'l Airport and sleeping on his couch for some undefined amount of time". I had no way of justifying it, nor any way of knowing whether it would work out, I did it because it seemed to be the right thing to do. I have absolutely no idea where I would be right now had I decided to stay in Chicagoland and work, but odds are I would not be nearly as content with my current situation had I made that choice. And consequently, I feel like the idea of following one's dreams, doing what seems to be the correct choice, and going with your gut are some of the most underrated and underutilized things in this life. Be unconventional. Or don't, I can't say I really care either way, I'll just continue doing it.

Some other assorted thoughts, particularly interesting moments, and takeaways from the China Months:

The idea that Chinese people don't like the United States is one that I heard a fair bit before coming here. This idea is moronic. The Chinese name for the US, 美国, literally means "beautiful country". Had I really wanted to during this year, I could have gone out every weekend and not paid for a single drink, because by virtue of being western, you will be given free drinks in many clubs in Shenzhen. The average Chinese person really does seem to like the United States, although in regard to our government the sentiment is not quite so easy to generalize. That said, as a US citizen in China, I can honestly say that by showing respect and interest in the Chinese culture, you will almost certainly be well-received by most anyone. It's amazing.

On that note--Chinese people are some of the most hospitable and genuinely nice people in the world. Yes, in any major city in China you will witness children urinating in the street. Yes, you will see people hocking disgusting loogies everywhere. And yes, an overwhelming number of people smoke an overwhelming number of cigarettes. But despite many of their unpleasant tendencies in this regard, Chinese people are amazingly friendly. I've had many a home-cooked meal by coworkers and friends, and really cannot say I'd expect the average person in the US to be nearly as friendly or open to strangers from other countries. It is an amazing phenomenon, and one that I will not easily forget.

China is unequal as hell, but people don't seem to care as much as they would in the US. Don't get me wrong, the income inequality in China is becoming a more hot-button political issue, particularly with the recent change of power here within the Communist Party. But think of this situation for a moment: in Shenzhen, you see at least 1 Rolls Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, etc., pretty much every day. The country has over 1 million millionaires (certainly even more when you account for grey income). And yet, there are over 100 million people in this country earning <$1 per day. Mind you, anyone in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, etc., who is seeing all these flashy cars is not on <$1 per day, but there are still some cripplingly poor people here. For example, one of the company bosses in my office building pulls up to the place every day in a brand new, gleaming, beige Rolls Royce. Easily a $500,000+US car. And just across from the office is a row of dormitories for workers that are constructing yet another gleaming office building just across the street. These workers are likely on ~$400US per month. This income inequality is as blatant, if not moreso, than anything you'd see in the west. And yet, by and large, the people here seem fairly OK with it. It's an amazing phenomenon. I feel like if this were the case in the US, there would be Occupy Wall Street in every city. Interesting stuff, anyway.

Chinese political scandals make our political scandals look pathetic by comparison. Perhaps this is an unfair generalization, but during my time here, China was rocked by one of the most remarkable and star-studded political scandals in the history of the Communist Party. In short, Chongqing (huge city in SW China) Party Boss Bo Xilai was brought down in a corruption scandal. Bo was a remarkably popular but polarizing charismatic party leader who had previously been considered a real rising star in the Communist Party.

This would be a fairly major event, akin to the mayor of a major US city being brought down in a scandal. Big news.

But this scandal went even deeper than that. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was arrested and found guilty of murdering a British man with whom she was allegedly having an affair, and who was allegedly helping to launder money out of China for the Bo/Gu family. The scandal took another bizarre turn not long ago, when it was revealed that the British man, Neil Heywood, was also allegedly involved with the British spy organization MI5. Among other accusations, Bo was also accused of paying $1 million to famous Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi (Westerners will know her from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as the main female villain in Rush Hour 2) for sex about 10 times. That is to say, $1 million per time. Ridiculous. Definitely makes the old Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair seem rather tame by comparison.

Obviously, these are only a few short examples of what living in China for 1 year will teach you. I can honestly say this has been one of the more interesting years of my life, and one that I am sad to see end, but as I learned very well after exchange in Hong Kong...all good things must eventually do just that; come to an end.

Anyway, this blog post has gone off on something of a tangent relating to the bizarre and interesting world of Chinese political scandals and income inequality, so I'll just go ahead and stop writing. In summation, I view the coming weeks as the end of yet another 18 month or so cycle in my life. I have no idea what the next 18 months will bring, including whether it will even bring about a logical chapter end 18 months from now as has been the case for the last 3 years, but we shall see.

More news to come as it develops. Most likely upon return to the US, I will post a decently long blog full of some of the more interesting pictures from these 18 months....with Chinese internet speeds being maddeningly slow, I will not be doing this now. Meantime, probably will write 1-2 more posts from Shenzhen, as I'm sure years from now I'll like to get some insight as to my thought process during this rather immense transition.

Photo of the Day--February 26, 2012

I've certainly mentioned Dongmen before in this blog, and have basically just talked about how it's the most crowded, manic district in Shenzhen, a shoppers paradise that mixes McDonald's, pagodas, clubbing music, homeless people, and street food into one of the most explosive and amazing atmospheres you're likely to encounter on this planet. It is one of the oldest parts of town (so it's like 40 years old), with the subway station nearby, Laojie, meaning "Old Street". I first visited Dongmen in May of 2011 on a day trip to Shenzhen from Hong Kong, and immediately I was completely in love with the place. It's like a massive, outdoor, Chinese version of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar.

So anyway. I used to spend a good 2 nights per week wandering Dongmen. Lately I haven't been doing so as much, for whatever reason, and consequently there was this odd void in my life that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Last night, I went back to Dongmen. And my god is my life now complete. I instantly got nostalgic for all the things I'd missed about Dongmen, but not even thought about. Among others--

1) Every single shop in Dongmen has clubbing music on. Really. Loud. Clubbing music. Huge bass/subwoofers. And many shops have at least one employee standing on sort of a pulpit thing just bouncing up and down to the music. The most uncommon, illogical, and indeed probably ineffective method possible to get people into your store to come buy things. But so funny to see.

2) The lights. Particularly last night, as there was a light bit of rainfall, so you had some lights reflecting off the pavement. But yes, I would say the only place in the world I've ever seen with more neon lights per square foot than Dongmen is probably Shinjuku, Tokyo. Which, to be fair, outstrips Dongmen by a wide margin.

3) The food. I do not have sophisticated tastes. I am perfectly fine eating <$1 per meal street food. And for this, Dongmen is paradise. Anything you could possibly want. Dalian squid? Check. Lamb kebabs on skewers? Oh yes. Spicy noodle soup? Indeed. Absolutely glorious. I went to go see my noodle soup guy for the first time in a month, and he not only recognized/was pleased to see me, but commented on my slightly improved Chinese over the last month. The noodles there are brilliant, a dish called "Suen La Fen", which costs 6 yuan (<$1) and comes in a little paper bowl. Most western people don't care for it, because it's spicy as hell and tastes quite a bit like salt, but my god do I enjoy this magnificent, simple dish. And immediately after taking my first sip, I texted John saying "I am never going a month without spicy noodle soup ever again". Such a delicacy.

4) The mix of western and Chinese. That is, there is a 3-story KFC in Dongmen, built in a building meant to look like a pagoda. Now, given that this is Shenzhen, nothing is really "old", but it is still really really cool to see an old-style Chinese building housing the Colonel's finest fried chicken.

So anyway, last night I spent a good 2 hours wandering Dongmen until John woke up from his afternoon nap after that night out in Dongguan. It was unquestionably the most peaceful 2 hours I've had in a month, despite the fact that I was in the noisiest, smelliest, most crowded part of town. Absolutely much-needed way of just having a good thinking session. John ended up arriving a bit later on in the night, and we decided to walk from Dongmen to Children's Palace--about 10-11km across the city. That was interesting. We encountered this massive "Shenzhen Flower Market", which was basically a town within Shenzhen that had, among other things, lots of flower shops, a lot of creative-style businesses (i.e. graphic design, architecture, etc), and seafood restaurants. Very strange, but interesting.

On another note--due to my still being quite out of it yesterday when writing the blog post about Dongguan, I completely forgot that I did, indeed, have a worthwhile photo from there! So consider this yesterday's photo:

What is this photo, you ask? This is two construction workers using blowtorches, with face-protection masks made of, you guessed it, cardboard. Like you do. Welcome to China.

And today's photo:

This is Dongmen. I thought it was pretty cool to see all the red orbs hanging between the palm trees (yes, there are loads of palm trees here!) Notice the very wide sidewalks. Shenzhen, being a very well-planned city, tends to have some of the widest sidewalks you'll ever see. No joke, you could drive a 4-door sedan down one of these things. Kind of nice.

Anyway, that's about all for today. A bonus photo, a walk around Dongmen, then the old 10k across town. Tomorrow I'm off to the US, so unless I have time to write another post this afternoon then have it post automatically tomorrow, there will be no post, as I'm leaving my apartment at 7:15am to get to the office to have the driver take us to the airport. More to come later, from the opposite side of the world.

Photo of the Day--February 23, 2012

Guangdong Province has been known as the "workshop of the world" for the last few decades, and for good reason. This behemoth of a province, with its 104 million inhabitants, was responsible for over 1/3 of China's exports up until a few years ago, when the cities around Shanghai began to grow in importance due to the Chinese government's efforts to make Shanghai the "Crown Jewel of the New China", and also due to rising labor costs in Guangdong. So basically, what I'm trying to say, is that odds are many things that you've bought in your life originated right here in Guangdong Province, in one of its innumerable factories.

And yet, unless your name is Griffin Curcio or Dalton Grambo, if you're reading this blog you probably haven't been to one of these factories, seen photos of one, or heard much about them. My company's factory is probably on the smaller end of the scale of Chinese factories--we employ between 500 and 700 factory workers, depending on time of year, and we occupy 3 pretty damned huge factory buildings in an industrial park outside of Shenzhen, in an area called Guangming New Area.

So what is life like in these factories, you ask? Well, it's interesting, that's for sure. I've really only noticed one glaring safety issue, that being the fact that in the hazardous painting room,there are a lot of signs showing people with big sort of like haz-mat masks on. I don't speak good Chinese, but I have to assume those signs indicate that not wearing a mask in these rooms could lead to death. That, and the fact that upon walking into the room, you're hit instantly with the smell of paint, and with an infinite number of infinitely small particles floating through the hazy air. So obviously, a place where masks are pretty necessary. ~25% of the people in there don't wear them. Oh god....

The factory workers are, for the most part, housed in dormitories on the factory property. These dorms are not luxurious. There are about 8 people to a dorm, and the conditions are a little bit cramped. Though overall, it's definitely not anywhere near as iffy as I was expecting. The factory is running 24 hours per day, 6 days per week--there are several shifts so there are always people in the factory working, though during daytime hours the number of workers is considerably higher than in the evening. The workers are also entitled to ridiculously cheap meals. The lunch served at the factory costs the line workers 1 yuan, and the administrative workers 4 yuan. 1 yuan=~$0.16, 4 yuan=~$0.66. So a 16 cent lunch if you're a line worker. The meals I've had at the factory are actually not that bad--certainly not gourmet, but decently palatable. Usually they consist of like 5 different dishes, usually 2 vegetable, 1 tofu, 1 pork, and 1 rice. I've noticed something fairly interesting--the workers all bring their own metal bowls. It's kind of cool, just seeing everyone after lunch washing out their metal bowl and putting it in this large metal bowl holding cabinet thing in the factory mess hall. And with that, the photo of the day:

And there you have it. Another pretty crappy photo. However, should be noted that I was at the office again quite late yesterday, and afterwards went out to a bar to meet a couple of businesspeople working in SZ, so really didn't have a whole lot of time to take a decent photo. HOWEVER, I do think that this photo does at least have some level of character. As I'm quite sure most of you have guessed, this is the cabinet for people's steel bowls. I think that in theory, it should be closed for a decent amount of time per day, and the thing probably "bathes" those bowls in UV light or something to disinfect them, but the fact is, in theory, fire extinguisher is spelled as such, but the sign immediately next to that cabinet spells it as "Extinouhier". Pretty sure that's not French, it's just wrong.

As far as factory wages are concerned, I don't know exactly what the wages are, but I'm pretty sure that for the more skilled positions, monthly salary is somewhere in the 3,000RMB per month range (about $500US). For very unskilled positions, I think it's more like <2,400RMB per month ($400). Again, estimates. The better-paid administrative people actually make pretty good money, I have no idea how much, but I know that when I went to the US with mad-dog James (a legendary 40-something Chinese man who I'm pretty sure has a handful of 20-something girlfriends), he bought an unlocked iPhone 4S...a $700US investment. He's sort of like the head of R&D, so it's very possible that he's on close to what I'm on, if not a bit more. It should be noted, he speaks absolutely 0 words of English. Which is why it was even more hilarious in the US when Jacky (my immediate boss, who speaks very good English) and I would be speaking with a customer and just be like... "Where did James go?" "Well, he can't get very far, he can't even say hello". This would inevitably lead to us finding him just wandering around some random parking lot or something in amazement, just having a great time wandering around. Legend.

Anyway, so I understand this blog post has been pretty fragmented, I've been writing it over the course of several hours during the morning between assorted work tasks (incidentally, I interviewed 2 people today for jobs within the company...how the hell I have the authority or qualifications to do that, I have no idea). So for that, I apologize, but again, it's not as though anyone's forcing you to read it, I'm just spamming the hell out of Facebook! So that's about all for today, see you all tomorrow :-D

Photo of the Day--February 16, 2012

We went out last night. Oh did we go out last night.

So--

I was told earlier this week that on Wednesday night, the company owners, brothers Richard and Steven, would be taking the Sales/Marketing team out for dinner. Fair enough, and a very nice gesture. I was told yesterday (Wednesday here in China) morning that the dinner would be followed by 3 of the most terrifying letters in the history of acronyms.... KTV. That is, Chinese-style karaoke. That is, karaoke which involves horrendous amounts of baijiu (Chinese rice wine that's usually ~50% by volume), whiskey, and Chinese songs. Thankfully, it was a Wednesday, so things wouldn't get THAT out of hand....

Or so I assumed. 10 minutes into the dinner, Flora, one of the fairly higher-ups in the Sales/MKT department, announced that she couldn't drink because she was pregnant. And with that announcement came the first round of baijiu. Then Steven, one of the owners, realized that he really likes baijiu. And consequently more rounds of baijiu were done. By this time, we'd all had around 5-6 shots of this 50% by volume concoction. It should be noted that Steven, a 40-something year old (I guess 47-48 year old, as he is also Year of the Dragon), was by far the most legendary baijiu drinker I have ever seen. It was like a child at dinner wanting ice cream...every five minutes I would just hear "Baijiu! Baijiu! Baijiu!", and a round would be poured. And he would always just down it like an absolute champion.

A brief aside about baijiu--it is the most feral beverage known to man. That is to say, it tastes as though you're drinking tequila mixed with vodka mixed with gin mixed with urine mixed with radiation--it is horrendous. The best quote I ever heard about baijiu came from the book Mr. China by Tim Clissold. He says something to the effect of "every time I go out with Chinese businessmen and have too much baijiu, my wife tells me I smell like an oil-soaked rag the next morning". Yeah, it's that appetizing. So anyway!

After a dinner that included a lot of baijiu, beer, Chinese food, and Chinese people smoking indoors, we headed down the street to KTV. Where it got very messy. The two company owners immediately ordered an array of food, as well as several towers of whiskey and green tea (a wonderful combination when preparing for a hangover, the antioxidants in the green tea work wonders, really!) And the dice came out.

A popular Chinese dice game, particularly at KTV--basically, everyone gets a cup and 5 dice. You put the cup over the dice (as the picture shows) and shake the cup to roll the dice. You then say some number of some number, i.e. there are five 6's. This number indicates the number of 6's you think that everyone has, combined. 1's are wild. Whatever number you say, the person after you must either increase the first or the second number (i.e. if I say there are five 4's, next person must either say five 5's, five 6's, or six+ of anything). Anyway, if someone thinks you're bluffing, they call you out. If they're right, you drink. If you're right, they drink. It will always, 100% of the time, without fail, end in tears. And so it did.

So after about 2 hours of drinking and karaoke (I did indeed end up singing a few songs, though to be entirely honest I have absolutely no recollection of what any of them were), we called it a night. And just to emphasize that no, I was not a lonesome raging alcoholic, on the walk out of the KTV bar, someone mentioned that they didn't know where Jacky, my boss, the company's #3 guy behind only the brothers Jin, the head of the entire Sales/Marketing department was. We ended up going into a side room to find him passed out on the couch, with a puddle of vomit at his feet. Like the absolute legend that he is. A brief aside--he ended up rolling into work at 8:59am this morning, as he is well within his rights to do. But I digress--Jacky was passed out, so I literally carried this Chinese man out of the bar and into a cab.

So anyway, that's the photo of the day, and the story behind it. Lessons learned--drink green tea with your baijiu and whiskey. Make sure to set an alarm before going out (which I did, and was consequently early for work this morning despite still being somewhat drunk...though excusable given that everyone at the dinner/KTV needed to have a drink with the token laowai. And given that the last major event of last night was carrying my boss from the fetal position into a taxi, I feel like it's fair enough.

Work has been picking up a lot lately (this being in spite of the fact that I'm currently writing this at work). But yes, US show season is coming up, so we've been doing a ton of work on catalogs, marketing, and general sales planning, it just so happens that I had an extra 20 minutes this morning to throw this gem out into cyberspace.

That's about all for now, more poor-quality photos to come.

A Photo Per Day

So awhile back, I tried to write 1 blog post per day for an entire month. I was really satisfied with some of the posts I churned out, but after about 2 weeks my travel/work got to be too much, and I was unable to complete the month. Bummer, though cheers to a 2-week stretch that brought articles on Bangladesh, Islam in Europe, Somalian Cab Drivers, and idiotic haircutters, among many other various nuggets of wisdom dispersed throughout the psychological rantings of someone who clearly has (or had, anyway) too much time on their hands.

Anyway, so that failed. Bummer, though to be fair I did move to Hong Kong about 3 weeks in, and spent 14 hour days working in Denver, gambling in Vegas, and catching up with friends in LA immediately before those 3 weeks...so yeah, was a bit busy.

Why am I recounting this hilarious and disgraceful story of my personal failure, you ask? Well, I have a confession to make. I caved. I swore I wouldn't. I was adamant that it was terrible value for the money. But I finally bought an iPhone. Now before people start predicting for the world to end on December 21, 2012, due to my purchasing an iPhone, let's here the whole story--my phone was starting to get glitchy. My iPod was starting to get glitchy. iPhone 3GS's were only $2,888HK (~$350US) fully unlocked at the Apple store in Hong Kong. So I figured what the hey. Also got a pretty awesome radioactive green iPhone cover for 15 yuan in Dongmen (15 yuan=$2.20 or so).

So what does this have to do with my quest to write one blog post per day? Well turns out the iPhone has a decent-ish camera on it. I've been making use of it so far, and have decided to try to take one photo per day and upload it. Now you're probably saying "well lots of people do that", and you're probably right. But you know why lots of people do that? Because it's a fairly entertaining way of chronicling one's life through a series of photos that will be nice to look back on one day. So before you criticize me for not being original, I encourage you to go to hell for even thinking of such a thing.

So am I a good photographer? Not really. Am I as good a photographer as I am a writer? God no. However, I'm competent enough, and see enough bizarre interesting stuff on a daily basis in China to where I think this is fairly justified, or just me being both arrogant and self-absorbed. Either way.

Anyway, so that's how that's going to go. I'll probably post the photo both on the blog and in the Facebook album appropriately titled "Life", and will probably include a decent little blurb about the photo, maybe an interesting fact or two, on here every day.

So without further ado, today's photo:

This is a photo of Shenzhen City Hall (深圳市民中心), taken from the overpass of what I'm fairly certain is Shennan Blvd...though maybe not. But anyway, taken about 10:30pm, fairly interesting to note how incredibly bright red/orange the sky is due to the innumerable amount of neon lights in the area. As crappy as the photo quality is, please keep in mind it was taken using like a 2.0 megapixel camera.

Brief fact: Shenzhen City Hall is supposed to look like a phoenix's wings rising from the ground. Well, when your city has grown from 0 to 14 million in less than half of an average human lifetime, I guess you can use whatever kind of analogies you want.

Anyway, so that's that, one photo per day. Also should be noted that I'm pretty sure the iPhone was the greatest $350 I ever spent...such a great piece of electronics. For those who read this blog, big thanks, hopefully more to come in the next few days.

Somewhere Between "C'est la vie" and "La vita è bella": 30 Days of Blogging, Day 7

So today I'm leaving Chicago for a trip out west including 6 days in Denver, 5 days Vegas, and 4 days in LA. From there, it's on across the Pacific to Hong Kong, and ultimately Shenzhen. At this point, there's a good deal of ambiguity in how long I'll be gone, I've more or less told my family that I'll be going to China and staying until I either run of out money (I currently have enough funds to pretty easily get me to like Feb '12) or find a proper job, in which case I'd be there for quite awhile, as the proper job would potentially lead to a career. Certainly an odd feeling leaving the city I've lived in on-and-off for 23 years and not having any idea when I'll return. Consequently, I've decided to devote this post to the things I'll miss most about life in Chicago, or even life in the United States (it should be noted that I'm excluding obvious things like family/friends. I'll miss you all, clearly. That's now established).

Baseball

Few things are nearly as entertaining as baseball's playoffs. I've enjoyed them immensely over the past few weeks, and am very pleased that I'll be in the States until the World Series is nearly over. That said, I'll really miss my Chicago Cubs (presumably) losing next season, given that they've not won a title since 1908. I suppose MLB.com should provide some good gamecasts, and it'll be easy enough to follow them, but it won't be the same (it certainly wasn't when I was trying to follow baseball during the 2010 season abroad).

Indian Bistro

I'm very well-aware that the quality of Indian food in Chungking Mansions Hong Kong is better than anything I'll find here in the US, but I'll definitely miss going to the local Indian place and chatting with the owners about cricket, int'l politics, or whatever else we felt like talking about. Also didn't mind always having cricket on one TV, and Bollywood on the other. Really going to miss this place.

Metra Train Ride to Chicago

So I live like 30-35 minutes outside of Chicago by car, but I really hate driving, and really enjoy public transportation, so I take the Metra commuter train to Chicago, which takes about an hour. I've made this trip like 6-7 times since I've been home in August, and it's just remarkably good thinking time just sitting on the train watching the suburbs fly by as you're humming along towards the city.

Sears (Willis) Tower

My wonderful friend Rachael (who is, by the way, a professional tour guide now) told me the other day that the Sears Tower was designed to mimic a package of cigarettes which, when tipped over, would lead to a handful of cigarettes sticking out of the top at various heights. Suppose I could see it. Anyway, Sears Tower is not only the tallest building in Chicago (tallest in the world until 1998 when the Petronas Towers in KL took over), but my favorite on the fantastic Chicago skyline.

Having a Cheeky Fews (10) Bevvies at Lamps

Local bar. About enough said.

Anyway. These (among many, many others) are the little things that I'll be missing about life here in the US of A. That said, it's now time for arguably the greatest adventure of my young life. I've taken a line from the masterful JVN, and will have this post automatically post on this blog as my flight is (scheduled to be) taking off. See you on the other side.

Time to go west to return to the East.

A Pretty Interesting Realization: 30 Days of Blogging, Day 5

Interesting situation I found myself in today: I was driving to meet up with a friend at an Indian restaurant nearby my house, when it sort of occurred to me--I'm leaving for China on Wednesday (and yes, I realize that I won't actually be getting to China until 28 October, as I'm taking a bit of a west coast trip prior, but I'm leaving home Wednesday). Furthermore, I'm going to Shenzhen without a job, and with about enough money to last like 2-3 months. It was sort of a shocking realization, along the lines of "what the heck did I get myself in to?" thing.

This is not to say I was having second thoughts about going. I'm quite sure that China is where I want to be for the long-term, not to mention where there will be economic opportunities in greater abundance during my lifetime. It simply dawned on me that this would probably be a bit more complicated of a move than I'd previously thought. However, very shortly after realizing this, I got a pretty surprising phone call, from a +86 number. For those who aren't familiar, +86 is the country code for China. That is, at noon on a Monday in Chicago, Illinois, I was getting a call from someone in China, where it was 1:00am on Tuesday morning. Needless to say I was intrigued, and answered the phone so enthusiastically that I'd imagine the guy on the other line was more startled than a rural Chinese person seeing a 6'1" white guy. Or something like that.

Anyway. So this phone call turned out to be in regard to a position I applied for in Shenzhen about 2 weeks ago. The position came to my attention through a messageboard for the teaching program I was doing, and it was a job for a teaching position that involved "coaching" students who were going to be going to university in the United States. The Chinese guy on the other line and I spoke for a fair bit of time, and I've sent off a few letters of recommendation, writing samples, etc. If nothing else, a promising (and conveniently timed!) development in my job search.

After having had this phone conversation, I was completely reassured that it would indeed be quite manageable to find a decent job in Shenzhen upon arrival. Which is just a bit more evidence that following one's dreams, or at the least, doing something that you really want to do even though many people are telling you otherwise, is probably easier than the vast majority of people would have you believe. So for those of you who want to do something outrageous or seemingly impossible, my suggestion is to do it now! Otherwise, you may never be able to do so. And really, what's the worst that could happen?

Further job development--I've now got another interview set up with a German company upon arrival in Shenzhen. It was pretty encouraging when they instructed me to meet at the Shangri-La near Luo Hu, which is just one of the nicest properties in Shenzhen to my knowledge. It would be a real job (i.e. something that could be a career), so that'll be fun.

Apart from that, just trying to pack as lightly as possible as I get ready to head off to the great American West on a journey to return to the Far East. And this 30 posts in 30 days thing is already getting difficult, it's tough to be insightful in a universal way every day, but we'll see how it goes!

More news to come as I feel like posting it.

Chinatown, Chicago. Another Instance of Right Place, Right Time: 30 Days of Blogging, Day 4

I have a convenient tendency to be in the right place at the right time for really interesting cultural phenomena. Examples of this in years past have included living in the Netherlands during the 2010 World Cup, when the Dutch national team made their first final since 1978, allowing me to be with 250,000 or so Dutch fans during the final in Museumplein. A truly amazing cultural experience. I also happened to be in Montreal during arguably the most monumental elections in Canada's history (Bloc Quebecois got completely shattered, and the NDP staged a staggering rise in seats, and the Conservatives got a majority for the first time ever), which was a fascinating thing to witness. I was also fortunate enough to have been in London during May 2009, when the 30-year Sri Lankan civil war came to a contentious end, leading to Tamil protesters filling the streets around Parliament. I've had a fair number of other such situations, and came across a similar (albeit relatively less important/noteworthy) one yesterday.

So yesterday my friend Rachael, who was also on exchange in Hong Kong, and who also lives in the suburbs of Chicago decided to take a trip down memory lane and head to Chinatown, Chicago. After taking the train to the city, we arrived in Chinatown to find police blocks set up and a huge stage constructed in the middle of the intersection of Cermak and Wentworth. Now at this point, let's establish a few things--both Rachael and I did a 5-month exchange to Hong Kong. While Hong Kong is not the same thing as China at all, one would think that we're still both pretty well-versed in Chinese history, as we'd both spent a fair bit of time there. Additionally, we've both traveled a decent amount through Mainland China, which, again, might imply that we're aware of major historical developments in their history.

Apparently not. Upon further examination of the police blockades, large stage, etc, we found that this was a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, something that neither of us had heard of. As it turned out, this was arguably the single most important event in Chinese history. Is THAT all?! In short, the Xinhai Revolution ended 2,000 years of Imperial rule in China and laid the foundation for the People's Republic of China. Needless to say, our ignorance was pretty disgraceful. But anyway! The 100th anniversary celebration of this immensely important event in Chinese history proved to be a fantastic backdrop for our trip to Chinatown. In addition to having a big parade with floats representing all sorts of random organizations (Chicago-Guangzhou Association, Association of Engineers and Professors, etc.), there were a number of high school marching bands from various schools in the Chicagoland area. It was particularly interesting to note the ethnic diversity of the people attending the parade--while ~90% of the crowd was Chinese, there were a sizeable number of African-Americans, and a handful of other gweilos as well. It should also be noted that there was a good deal of music blasting, and unsurprisingly it was all western techno/club/pop music. Given that we were surrounded by Chinese, I would have been shocked had it been anything less.

Prior to watching the parade, we also stopped in a phenomenal Chinese bakery. We both got an egg tart, and while Rachael opted for a pineapple bun, I went with a coconut one. And of course, it was washed down with juice-box style tea. A wonderful reminder of the greatest city in the world, Hong Kong. Shortly after that, we ended up meeting the Consul General of the PRC to Chicago, which was pretty awesome.

Overall, definitely a very solid day. Again, it was wonderful timing to have shown up in Chinatown during a parade celebrating one of the most important days in Chinese history. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese put on a great show, and it proved to be a pretty great cultural experience/flashback to good times in Asia. Fortunately, I'll be back there in just a few weeks, otherwise the nostalgia may have just killed me. Seriously.

Anyway, so that was a day in Chinatown that happened to happily coincide with a fairly significant cultural event. It's now Sunday, and on Wednesday I'll be leaving for Denver, then onto Vegas, LA, Hong Kong, and ultimately, Shenzhen.

Anyone around Chicagoland that wants to get together before I leave, feel free to text/message me in the next couple of days.

A Sample Cover Letter, and Some Other Updates

It's a long blog post, but maybe it's worth reading. If nothing else, there's some humor in it.

First of all, why aren't you watching this right now?! (and if you happen to have epilepsy, the good reason to this question would be, "it might literally give me a seizure", so if that's the case, you probably shouldn't watch it)

So all I've been hearing for the past few years is how devastating the job market is. "Oh man, it sucks that I'll be graduating soon, I've heard finding jobs nowadays is impossible", or alternatively "I think I'll just stay in college an extra year or 2, maybe get a master's, just to avoid going out into this job market". Well for those of us who don't have an unlimited sum of money from which to draw US$20,000 or so per year for educational expenses, the crappy job market is a harsh reality.

That said, upon graduation I felt pretty good about my resume--I've had international internships in the Netherlands and China, studied abroad in Hong Kong, did a business project in Thailand over Christmas, managed a US$300,000 portfolio as a senior at university, and speak 3 languages pretty well, with my Chinese also coming along pretty decently. The fact that I'm also willing to relocate anywhere in the world, and have traveled through 3rd world countries before, thus making it less likely that I'll experience massive culture shock, was also a plus, I thought.

All that considered, I have applied for 93 jobs since returning from China. And heard back from a whopping.... ZERO. Yes, 0. I've emailed old business connections in Hong Kong and the Netherlands asking them for help, and received some assistance but nothing promising yet. Have a fair number of the jobs I've applied for been out of my league in terms of experience, languages, or other aspects? Yes. Have a large, large number been well within my league? Yeah, probably. Moreso than anything, it's frustrating as opposed to tedious, disheartening, etc. That is, what the HELL am I doing wrong? I have no idea, so I decided for my 93rd job application, I would do something a bit different. I don't want to name the company, because that's probably just not a good idea, but in short, it's for a very good job in Hong Kong that I am, realistically, pretty well-qualified for. The only problem is that the company is one of the most respected in the world, and they simply don't hire people unless you went to an Ivy League school or some very, very highly ranked state school. So I went for the Hail Mary:

Dear Representative of XXXXX-XXXXX,

This is the 93^rd job I have applied for since I began applying roughly 3 weeks ago. Ninety-third. I have yet to receive positive word from any job applications, and have thus decided to try a new approach to applying. Consequently, this will probably be one of the more unique cover letters you have read.

Odds are you will not seriously consider this application due to my having graduated from a state school without a reputation for outstanding academics. You may also scoff at the fact that I do not have any connections within XXXXX-XXXXXX which would allow me to get to the top of the pile of applicants for this position. These preconceptions are no fault of yours, that’s simply the way the business world seems to work. That would be an unadvisable course of action in my case.

I went to Illinois State University because I didn’t give a damn about grades in high school, and my parents could not afford the tuition for the smaller private schools I was accepted into. It’s safe to say I made the most of my opportunities at Illinois State—my GPA was over 3.50, my major GPA over 3.70, I won two awards including the Outstanding Junior in International Business, appeared on the College of Business Dean’s List, completed a study abroad in Hong Kong, and participated in international internships in the Netherlands and China. I also managed a stock and ETF portfolio of over HK$2,500,000 as part of a senior seminar course.

As a human resources representative, the next aspect of my resume that you’re likely to sneer at is my perceived lack of work experience. This is correct. I have only worked a combined 6 months when not considering my restaurant job from high school. However, it is important to consider what I accomplished at these jobs. During my internship in summer 2010, I analyzed just under HK$1 billion of contracts for a satellite company and created, without assistance, a long-term sales plan with the goal being to increase the company’s share-of-wallet with key customers by 25%. Additionally, during an internship in summer 2011, I traveled to Hong Kong and Shanghai to conduct a market-entry analysis for a company looking to expand into Mainland China. This analysis included detailed research on real-estate and labor markets in Shanghai and Dalian, as well as a considerable deal of information on legal and regulatory considerations when expanding into China. I also have experience with supply-chain logistics, having traveled as a consultant to Bangkok to help arrange the creation of a supply chain for a startup company in December-January 2010-2011.

Overall, I understand that my pedigree is probably not typical of a XXXXX-XXXXX hire. My university is not top-tier and my work experience at this point is minimal. However, I encourage you to at the very least consider this application with some degree of seriousness. I assure you that, given the opportunity, I will exceed all expectations put upon me by my superiors. If you do indeed decide to seriously look at this application, I expect to hear from you soon. If I seem under qualified for this job in particular, I would be willing to consider other jobs within the company if they are a better fit for me.

So that's the old Blaine Curcio Hail Mary on a cover letter. I will keep you all informed as to whether I hear back. I'm not holding my breath. In other news, I may have lucked into a cheaper way to get back to Asia. In short, my Dad has a trade show in Denver, Colorado (for those not familiar with the geography of the US, that's further west than Chicago by a wide margin) in mid-October. They need some extra help in terms of just laborers, so my dad says I can fly out there on his company and get paid to work 5 days there. Not bad. From there, I can fly to Las Vegas for what's essentially free. I would be able to stay with Dan, my very good friend from HS/University that I went to Japan and Thailand with, in his beautiful, ~400sq. meter house in Vegas for a few days. Not bad. From there, Dan could drive me to LA, where I would be able to have a few days of great times with the lovely Ms. Catherine Bumble and her legendary future husband Maximus Stompf, both absolute superstars of Hong Kong. From there, I would be able to fly to Hong Kong for ~US$150 cheaper than from Chicago. So I think that's what I'll do. This plan does have some drawbacks, the main one being that I'm returning to China a bit later than I'd previously hoped (was hoping to get there by like 2nd week of October, this would be 4th week of October), but the combination of being paid handsomely to work in Denver, being able to see some friends out west, and being able to save money on the airfare, makes it worthwhile. So it looks like this young man may be heading west to go back to the Far East. Is that all?

On a related note, I also came up with the debatably insane idea of bicycling from Shenzhen into the inner part of China yesterday, which I may end up doing at some point soon after my arrival if the opportunity arises. Given that the main reason for my return to China is to learn Mandarin, this would probably be a decent idea, as I'd certainly encounter a lot less English as I got up into places like Yangshuo, and maybe even as far north as Hunan province, Sichuan province, etc. Anyway, all preliminary. And again, quite possibly (or even probably) insane. I have no idea if there's even a way to bicycle through that part of China.

Other than that, things just continue to saunter along here in Chicagoland. I'll be heading to Philadelphia with the padre for a trade show next week to make a bit of extra cash and hopefully network a bit. I'll be seeing a friend who works for True Value Hardware and spends ~120 days per year in China, so hopefully I can pick his brain a bit on how to find a job in Asia. I've recently discovered a job posting with the company I worked for last summer--position would involve me being rather underqualified in terms of work experience and language skills (it's located in Singapore, and they request at least one Asian language), however the general gist of the job is pretty freaking similar to what I did competently last summer, only now I have another year of university, a few consulting projects, and more confidence on my side, so maybe, just maybe I'll luck out and get an interview with that. Have already emailed my supervisor from last summer asking his thoughts on my prospects of getting the job, so we'll see how that goes. Well this blog post is getting obscenely long. If for whatever reason you've decided to read up to this point, I hope it's been entertaining! And if not, feel free to let me know about it through hate mail. Really, though. Until next time, stay hungry, stay foolish.

Recovering From the Most Devastating Injury Ever, and Some Assorted Other Musings

First of all--why aren't you watching this now?

Please be warned--further graphic medical explanations. Enjoy without krispy kreme's, as Ben Don learned the hard way

So I've now been home like a week. With a few urologist appointments, a surgeon appointment, 4 prescriptions, 1 ultrasound, and more hours of sleep than I had in 5 months in Hong Kong (probably not too much of an exaggeration) under my belt, I can safely say that I AM BORED! In short, it seems to be an unfortunate catch-22 that I desperately want (daresay need) to get back to Asia, and thus need to raise money, but any temp job requires a decent bit of physical labor, which I'm really not in any shape to do at this point. I'm also massively reluctant to find any sort of careery (new word) job at this point, due to the horrible proposition of settling into the suburbs of Chicago. So anyway--an update on what's been going on.

About 4 days ago out of absolutely nowhere I got a pretty shocking case of the chills. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced--up to that point I'd been feeling better and better every day, and earlier that evening I'd been feeling fine, and then at about 9:30 I just got goosebumps all over before basically passing out. 3 hours later I woke up and started vomiting pretty profusely, which continued throughout the night. What a wonderful edition to the medical issues I'd previously been having. I woke up the following morning and nearly fell over due to the dizziness/lack of balance I was experiencing. This horrendous illness continued for a few days before mysteriously vanishing yesterday/this morning. My theory (which was backed up by my doctor) was that I'd simply taken too much of my pain medication (definitely possible, given the amount of pain that shattered testicles involves). Anyway, got a different pain medication, and now I feel pretty fine in terms of the fluishness.

The urologist told me yesterday that things seem to be moving along pretty well. Arguably the most unsettling good news I've ever heard came when he told me "the left testicle appears to be completely in tact". Well "it appears to be", that's wonderfully inconclusive. He recommended that I continue to do what I've been doing (apart from OD-ing on hydrocodone... disgraceful), and we have another examination in 2 weeks. Again, not the most optimistic report, but could be worse.

Upon arriving with Asia, I met up with one of my best friends from Hong Kong, John Scutt, who was doing the same teaching program I was doing. I was absolutely shocked (and frankly envious) when he showed up with his medium-sized suitcase and nonchalantly told me that "my entire life is in this suitcase". Assuming he was just using a figure of speech, I asked him if literally everything he owned was in that suitcase. "Yeah". I was awestruck, and sort of realized how much absolutely useless crap I have back home. Mind you, a lot of my useless crap (mainly my absurd collection of souvenirs from here, there, and everywhere--photo to come tomorrow morning) is very important to me, but a lot of it isn't. Consequently, to solve my problem of having too much crap, while also solving my problem of needing money to get back to Asia, I'm selling loads of my crap on eBay. Here's the link! http://www.ebay.com/sch/ferrari928/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562 And a note on the eBay account name--made the account when I was 15, and since then I have indeed driven a Ferrari several times, so I'm ok with it! Anyway, so I've been keeping myself busy going through my house finding things I can sell. I've thus far sold ~$625 worth of stuff, so not bad! Hopefully by this time next month I'll have a couple thousand dollars plus birthday money to start living in Asia. Incidentally, my wallet currently contains 1,435RMB and $9US, so I guess I've already got a little bit of a start, but nothing grand. Either way, as Douglas MacArthur once said upon leaving (I believe) the Philippines, "I shall return". Despite having had to leave Asia under morbid circumstances, I'm quite convinced (even more so after my week back home) that Asia is where I will be for the long-term.

Speaking of long-term Asian prospects, the job apps are coming along pretty well. I've applied for ~25 jobs in total in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen, mostly for recent graduate roles in international consulting firms, with some finance jobs thrown in for good measure. If they all fail to come to fruition, expect me crashing on a couch near you in HK/SZ within a month or so. If nothing else, I'd have to assume that given the reasonably customized resumes I've been submitting, and the nearly completely customized cover letters, should be enough to not have these companies laugh at my applications. And as we all know, once it gets to the interview stage, I'm either getting the job with immense enthusiasm from the hiring manager, or I'm getting a restraining order put upon me from the company. Not much point in having a mediocre interview. Go big or go home I guess (though my god do I hate that phrase). So we'll see how all that goes.

On a random note, this entire medical issue and having to essentially return home in what I view as shame (though others would probably view as a necessary treatment of a medical emergency) seems to have provided a much-needed crushing blow to my hubristic (which spellcheck says is not a word) tendencies. That is to say, prior to this whole incident, I was far more arrogant about my traveling, intellect, guile, and just life in general, than I probably should have been. So in a strange way, this whole debacle has managed to knock me down a peg. Don't get me wrong, I will still likely waltz through life with an ego larger than it should be, but this somewhat puts things in perspective. Realistically, it also has something to do with the mental hurdle of turning 23--I guess it's more about coming to terms with one's own mortality, something I had never really considered before this whole shinding, and something I very much realize now. So in short, I really do feel the need at this point to apologize to anyone that I've really, truly hurt or offended by being a completely self absorbed and arrogant bastard. In particular a positively lovely Korean princepessa. You know who Yoo are (though you're probably not reading this. Fair call).

In other news, I've recently discovered that I have the ability to see how many people view my blog, from what countries they've viewing it, etc. Which has led me to a few really cool discoveries (basically, blogspot opened up a Pandora's Box when they allowed me to discover this. I love numbers and geography, and when they provide me with color-coded maps of my viewership, it's just asking for trouble):

1) My blog recently surpassed 1,500 views all time. So a big, big, big thanks to all my readers! Obviously, 1,500 views is nothing remarkable, but I'll take it. Really big thank you!

2) My blog is pretty popular in Slovenia. That's the country with the 9th most blog hits, despite being the world's 145th most populous country. So hvala to Slovenians everywhere for being mad-dogs and reading this blog!

3) There appears to be a pretty frequent reader from Russia using yandex.ru to get to this blog. I'd be really really interested in hearing from this Russian (if you do indeed exist, and it's not just me misinterpreting the data), so if you'd be so kind as to drop me an email at blainecurcio@yahoo.com, I'd be really interested to hear how you found the blog, what you enjoy about it, what you hate about it, etc. (that goes for everyone who reads this blog, really, do feel free, but the random Russian in particular!)

4) My blog about the testicle injury became the 3rd most viewed post after about 2 days. Go figure :-D

Some other assorted musings:

Manchester United play Arsenal tomorrow. Chances of Arsenal winning that match are probably about 10%, so let's see United go out there and run them over

My www.battrick.org team is coming along nicely. I've managed to import a few excellent players, and I'm pretty pleased with the progress

As the baseball season comes to a close, my Chicago Cubs are once again going to miss the playoffs. For my friends abroad that aren't familiar with the Cubs futility, their last championship was...get ready for this...

1908

Yes, 103 years ago was the Cubs' last championship. They haven't even made the championship since 1945.

I'll likely be taking a day-trip this week to visit my brother at Northern Illinois University, he's currently living in a frat house there (phi something or other), and given my immense boredom at home, lack of a job, lack of a drivers' license (wallet being lost in Beijing saw to that), and lack of car insurance (given that I was planning on leaving for >1 year, my parents took me off the insurance), why not just drive an hour out to NIU and back?! So that should be a good change of scenery. Apart from that, things are just continuing to move right along here. It's been a mortifyingly boring week, but I've only spent like $4, so at least I'm saving some coin for Asia. More rants to come as I feel like telling them.

And thanks again for 1,500 views! Pretty cool stuff.

An Injury So Unfortunate, It Merited Flying Home From China

Please BE WARNED: The following blog contains graphic depictions of a horrible bodily injury that I recently suffered in Beijing.

I've been fortunate in my travels across the world over the last few years. With the exception of one stolen bike in the Netherlands (which, in retrospect, was partially my fault in that I only had a wheel-lock and not a chain-lock), I've been able to avoid much thievery, injury, and general misfortune while traversing two oceans and four continents.

This all changed during my first 2 weeks in Beijing. As my last post outlined, my first night in Beijing ended with my wallet being gone, which was pretty inconvenient, but still manageable. The events of Thursday, August 18th, however, are something I will never be able to fully wrap my mind around.

It all started with a game of cricket. Some of the British kids from the program and a handful of Peking University students decided to play a bit of pickup cricket, which was a nice throwback to my days at HKU with their cricket club. After a little bit of playing, I was standing fairly nearby the batsman (as is common) when he hit the cricket ball directly into my groin. At about 90 miles per hour. Needless to say, I was on the ground writhing for the better part of 30 minutes, simply not knowing what to do. By this time it was evening, and there was no way I was going to try to find my way to a Chinese hospital. Shortly after the incident, my balls began swelling incredibly quickly--by morning they were literally grapefruit-sized. Anyway, now that we all have a wonderful mental image of grapefruit-sized balls... the next day I decided to go to Mandarin class in the morning and teach that afternoon, fulfilling my duties first, then go to the hospital after teaching. I ended up taking a cab with Victor, one of our program's Mandarin professors and a fully bilingual Chinese man, to a wealthy expatriate hospital in central Beijing. Upon walking into the hospital, I was pretty relieved to see that every other patient was either white or Middle-Eastern, which lured me into the false sense of security that this hospital would include English-speaking doctors and good facilities. Upon walking into the first doctor's office, I was asked to remove my pants. His two-word response to what he saw was incredibly discouraging... "Big problem!" He then left the room immediately. After that lovely bit of encouragement, Victor explained to me that the situation probably was not quite so bad--he reasoned that the doctor's English was quite poor, so while he may have had a more thorough and less pessimistic observation to make, he couldn't do so in English, so he simply said the simplest phrase he could think of while also somewhat describing the problem. Just as well there wasn't a fully fluent translator in the room, otherwise that argument would make no sense. Anyway, so I ended up getting an ultrasound at this Chinese hospital (bit awkward certainly) and the verdict was that there was no permanent damage (thank God), but that if the swelling doesn't go down in 2 weeks or so, I'll need to get an operation. He also told me to make sure to ice it. A brief side note: there is NO ice in China. They DO NOT BELIEVE IN ICE. It is, quite literally, the worst country in the world to find ice. Consequently, I was using popsicles to ice it for several days.

So the hospital visit was borderline encouraging in that there was no permanent damage, but a bit iffy, given that they'd basically implied I wouldn't be healed for a couple of weeks. Given that I was living in the amazingly interesting megacity that is Beijing, the prospect of being utterly incapacitated and resigned to my hotel room almost 24 hours per day was just devastating. After 3-4 days of basically hanging out in the room and leaving only for class and meals, the swelling wasn't really improving much, and there was starting to be a devastating pain when I stood up to walk anywhere. At this point, I had a chat with Scutt about what he would do in this situation, and he basically told me he'd without question go home and get the situation taken care of, then try to come back to China as soon as possible. After Skyping with the parents and going over the situation, we decided that it would be best if I came home. Yes, that's correct, Blaine Curcio, the kid who has to be on the brink of death in order to go from his house back home to the doctor's office--a 10 minute drive--decided to come home from Beijing, in order to get a medical problem taken care of. Should give one an idea of how bad the situation was, I guess.

On the morning of Wednesday August 17th, I went to Beijing's Capital Airport, hoping to catch a flight using a "Friends and Family" ticket from a good friend of my dad's. The beauty of this program is that the ticket is dirt cheap...the drawback is that I am not guaranteed a seat on the plane until about 1 hour before the flight, and if the plane is full that day, I'm not getting on it--better luck tomorrow. So at around 4:00pm, I went to the ticket counter asking about whether I can get on the plane or not. The ticket agent had a rather concerned look on her face, and was telling me "well there's still a chance you'll get on the plane... one moment". As I stood there, I realized that going home was certainly the correct choice, given that the pain in my groin caused by standing was enough to make me come close to collapsing. After several minutes that were agonizing both due to the pain and the uncertainty of whether I would be spending this night in Beijing Airport or getting on this plane in an hour, the ticket agent told me that there was one ticket left, and I got it. If I was nearly collapsing due to pain the minute before, I nearly collapsed from relief at this point. I basically ran through security.

Three minutes after the flight, the very Asian (read: inconsiderate) man in front of me threw his seat back with such vigor that I nearly ended up with a shattered kneecap. And such was the case for the next 12 and a half hours of my life. Also--the entertainment on United was complete crap as always. United is the only airline I've been on that still doesn't give everyone their own TV screen on trans-Pacific flights--even Air Canada did it!

So I got home. In the line for passport control, I nearly collapsed again from pain. Not good. The next day I saw a renowned surgeon who is also the brother of a close family friend. His reaction after asking me to remove my pants was simply

"This is better than it was before?!"

"Yeah. The swelling used to be about 3 times that size."

Not encouraging. Anyway, after seeing this surgeon and a urologist, the verdict was such: I suffered a minor hernia and what the urologist called "massive testicular trauma". Fortunately, there was no permanent damage, so I will one day be able to grace the world with offspring, but for the time being I'm basically in a bit of an iffy situation. It looks like I'll be able to return to China sometime in late September/early October. I've been informed by the teaching program that I can possibly get my visa reissued, but it's a bit questionable. If that doesn't work out, I've been applying like mad for jobs in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore, Shanghai, and Beijing. Worst case scenario, I can just go back to Shenzhen and tutor English for 250 yuan per hour. At any rate, it seems the most important thing I can do for myself now (and by now I mean in the next year or so) is learn Mandarin Chinese. Every trip I've taken to China has just further confirmed my feelings that China is going to be the world's economic powerhouse, and soon. Therefore, Mandarin is a MUST! And of course, the best place to learn Mandarin is... not Chicago. So it looks like it's the Orient for me for the foreseeable future, at least as soon as my testicles heal.

So what can we learn from this whole situation? Like I said before, prior to this, my luck had been pretty good when traveling abroad. I'd been pretty careless about safety in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Colombia, etc., so I guess eventually it would have to catch up to me. It's also going to be a hilarious story to look back on once everything is healed and I'm not walking around with a horrendous pain in my groin. And perhaps, just maybe, this will all work out for the best if I don't get my teaching job back, but do get some great job with a consulting firm or something of that nature in Hong Kong. In which case I'd have to devote the rest of my life to popularizing cricket in the US, so that other young men like myself can have their manhood all but destroyed only to have it be beneficial to them in the long run. Or not. But seriously, this whole situation reminds me (just as did the bike theft from July 2010 in NL) of the story of the zen master:

“So there’s a small village somewhere, and in this small village a farmer’s horse runs away, and all the villagers say “oh how terrible, the horse ran away”. And the Zen Master said, “we’ll see”. Two days later, the horse returns, bringing with it three more wild horses. Everyone says “Ah, how wonderful, now the farmer has 4 horses to tend to his crops!” and the Zen Master says, “we’ll see”. A short while later, the farmer’s son is riding one of the untamed horses, and he falls and mangles his leg. All the townspeople say “oh how horrible, his leg is broken”. “We’ll see”, said the Zen Master. A couple of weeks later, a war breaks out. All the young men are required to go fight in the war, except for the boy with the mangled leg. All the townspeople say “oh how wonderful”, and of course, the Zen Master replies… “we’ll see”.

Big thanks to anyone who's read this far, hope you got a laugh out of my immense misery, more to come as updates flow in!

Also please note: anyone reading this that's in the Chicagoland area--if you are around at all during the next month and want to hang out, let me know! Most of my good friends from home are either back at school for a 5th year, doing grad school, or have moved elsewhere, so if you want to see THE Blaine Curcio before I leave for China again, shoot me an email (blainecurcio@yahoo.com)

Arrival in China

So it's currently my 4th day here in Beijing. I've finished teaching a bit earlier than expected, and for the first time during these 4 days, I actually have a bit of time to take a seat and type something up for this blog in my wonderful, air-conditioned hotel room. It should be noted that the A/C is the most essential thing here--outside is 90 degrees, humid, and did I mention MASSIVELY polluted. The air quality here makes Hong Kong look like the Andes Mountains, really just disgraceful stuff. We've also been doing an insane amount of walking, which has resulted in requiring to drink literally a couple gallons of water/tea/Pocari Sweat to stay hydrated.

Anyway, so let's start from the beginning. Flew out of Chicago a few days ago for Beijing, connecting in Toronto. Flight to Toronto went smoothly, and after a 2 hour layover involving the obligatory Tim Horton's coffee and donuts, I hopped on the 13 hour flight to BJ. I was quite shocked when the person I was sitting next to on the plane turned to me and asked "Are you by chance going to teach in Shenzhen this year?" So right away, I'd made my first friend. After the 13 hour flight, I met a few others in the Beijing airport who were doing this program, and, as directed, we just sort of hung out in the arrivals hall for a couple of hours (just as well we'd not just flown halfway around the world) for the coordinator to arrive. About 1.5 hours after my arrival, I heard a deep London accent from behind me say "hey Blaine, how's it going?" Sure enough, it was John Scutt, a good friend of mine from when I was at HKU, and one who would be doing this yearlong program with me. After catching up for a few minutes, we decided it would be rude not to have a good night out after having not seen one another for a year, and as Scutt had spent ~2 weeks in Beijing previously, he knew a good place to go. Late evening rolled around and we showed up at our hotel, prepared to sleep for an hour and a half before orientation. Remarkably, we made it to orientation on time, and were pretty on it in terms of participation.

Starting on our 2nd day, we were teaching. I'm teaching a group of about 25 Chinese kids with incredibly varying levels of English, and have two other teachers that I'm teaching with for the first few weeks. Most of the students in the class are the children of Peking University faculty, and are therefore well-off, well-educated, and well-behaved, something which we've been assured will almost certainly not be the case in Shenzhen. We're teaching in classrooms of Peking University, and taking Mandarin Chinese courses here as well. Given that PKU is the most prestigious universities in China, it should look pretty good on a resume. Also--PKU is basically a city within itself. I have no idea how big the campus is, but I'd imagine the walk from one end to the other would take close to an hour. There are tons of shops, houses, and an underground mall within the university's walls, and basically all the buildings look the same, which makes finding one's way around pretty difficult. Our hotel is just across the street from PKU, and is located within a Chinese Sports Complex. From here, the center of Beijing is about 30 minutes away by subway, and the subway station is about a 20 minute walk from here. Needless to say, most of the people on this program have not made the 1 hour trip into the center of town, mainly because it seems most of the people on the program are pretty content just hanging around the hotel.

The schedule here has been pretty packed, with Mandarin lessons every morning from 8:30-10:20, then TEFL courses from 10:30-11:30, lunch until 1:00, then teaching in the afternoon followed by planning for the following day. All things considered, we'll usually start working around 8:30 and be finished by 6:30pm or so. This schedule will be 7 days/week while in Beijing, though once we get to Shenzhen it seems that the consensus is that we'll be working ~15 hours per week. Thus far Mandarin has come pretty easy, with a lot of everyday phrases being used. Today I was able to ask a shopkeeper how much for a bottle of water, understood his response, and even threw in a thank-you. Practically fluent!

Yesterday we were shown the different districts of SZ on a map, and given a brief overview of each of them. It looks like the district I'll be trying to stay in is Luohu, which is closest to Hong Kong, and probably the best combination of low prices and proximity to worthwhile things.

Anyway, that's about all that's gone on the first few days. I understand that this blog post is 1) rather short, and 2) very choppy, but these few days have been somewhat uneventful. More updates to come as the Beijing adventure continues.

A Perfect Example of the Wonders of Globalization, and an Interesting Excerpt

So I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about fake ID's. Any college student in the US surely knows someone who has one, and loads of kids have their own. When I was in High School, the going rate was usually $100-$125, maybe $150 if it's either a very high-quality ID or if you're being ripped off. Even nowadays, my brother told me $75-100 is pretty decent. However, when I posed the question to a friend of mine of "how much would you expect to pay for a fake ID?", her response caught me so off-guard that I had to do a double-take.

"Oh, well I wouldn't pay any more than like $40"

"$40?! I've heard $100 pretty standard"

"Yeah, but people get them in China for like $30"

At this point, it should be noted that the person making this claim has traveled only (to my knowledge) through the US and Peru. She has never been to China, or Asia for that matter. Additionally, fake IDs are not something that you'd expect to see the going rate for online--you're certainly not going to go to Amazon and check how much fake IDs cost worldwide. However, through the magic of globalization, and more specifically the proliferation of knowledge and information across national borders with astounding ease and efficiency, people are able to know these things without ever having been to these places. Certainly, the most obvious result of this is that middlemen get killed--you can no longer have a guy going to China, buying 100 fake IDs at $25 apiece, and selling them in the US for $100. However, it also leads to more educated consumers, and at the end of the day, greater value for them.

But anyway, rather than going on a tangent about how globalization is changing the marketplace, I will simply leave it at this: how remarkable is it that someone who hasn't ever been to Asia, doesn't really know many people who have been there, and who isn't by any means an expert on the market for fake IDs, without hesitation knew that you could get a fake for far, far cheaper in China than one would expect. It's an amazing world we live in, that is unquestionable, and it's only getting more so.

The second part of this post is a quote from the book "China Inc." by Ted Fishman. As anyone who read my last post knows, I am moving to Shenzhen shortly, and Fishman had some interesting insights about it in his book:

"Shanghai, for all its wonders, may not be China's most amazing urban transformation. Those honors almost certainly go to Shenzhen, the city near Hong Kong that until 1980 was a fishing town of seventy thousand people surrounded by rice fields...Everything changed in 1980 when Deng Xiaoping selected the city as one of the country's first experimental centers for market capitalism and dubbed Shenzhen China's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). In a godlike stroke--or better yet, the keystrokes of a computer gamer playing SimCity--China's paramount leader gave rise to a city that in short order would be bigger than Paris, Montreal, or Los Angeles."

Incidentally, Fishman also makes the rather interesting comparison of "There is no perfect historical analogue to Shenzhen's growth. Chicago may be the closest. The midwestern city took fifty years to record its millionth resident. Shenzhen took less than a decade, and after only a quarter century Shenzhen was a city of 7 million people".

To paraphrase (i.e. change the word India to China) another quote, this time from Slumdog Millionaire, "China is at the center of the world. And I am at the center, of the center"

New Theme, New Look, New Storyline, etc

So it's been almost a year since I've made a post in this blog. To anyone that kept up with my blogging during my last time abroad, I thank you again, and encourage you to check in from time to time. For those who weren't following my blog last time, but are reading this now, welcome to the blog! Feel free to have a look at some of the older posts if you're so inclined, expect the same basic type of writing for this time around, but hopefully with more (sometimes relevant) LINKS!

Anyway, From the time of my last post until now, I've finished my last year of university, traveled to Thailand (twice), Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, and Canada (twice), have done a couple of international consulting projects, learned how to be good at finance, and probably most importantly, made the monumental life decision to move to Shenzhen, China in August to teach English for a year. Yes, you've read that correctly, Blaine Curcio is moving to mainland China. A sentence many (in particular a one Ms. Madlien Schenker, most likely) would have thought they'd never hear. I'll be moving there three weeks from yesterday, certainly one could call this period of time the home stretch before my departure. Given the fact that mainland China is notorious for their internet censorship (mainly that of Facebook and Google), my abilities to keep correspondence with people will be extremely diminished during my year there. Due to that, and my constant need to tell readers (either real or imagined) what I'm doing, I will be re-vamping this blog and attempting to keep up with it as frequently as possible. So let's talk about what to expect here over the coming year:

The program I am doing is quite an interesting one. In addition to paying for my apartment, the program will also pay for my airfare, some Mandarin lessons, and a salary of 6,500RMB (~$1,000) per month. This is an extremely livable salary for China. The program starts off with a 3-week TEFL training course at Peking University in Beijing, China. This will begin on August 5th, 2011. I've not been to Beijing, and I'm looking forward to it, if for no other reason than the fact that I have yet to see the Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc. From there, we take a train to Shenzhen, which will be about 25 or so hours. At that point, my career as an English teacher in Shenzhen will begin.

Anyway, here's a brief rundown of Shenzhen, the city in which I am teaching. Shenzhen was China's first "Special Economic Zone" (SEZ), which became the case in the 1970's. As an SEZ, it became very easy for foreigners to invest in Shenzhen, and since the 70's, the city has seen staggering growth, going from a few hundred thousand people about 40 years ago to over 10 million today. Shenzhen was chosen to be an SEZ due to its proximity to Hong Kong, the former British colony and rampantly free-market yang to China's (at least at the time) communist, closed-market yin. Being immediately over the border from Hong Kong, Shenzhen was an ideal place to produce goods to be shipped from Hong Kong's port to cities worldwide. Today, Shenzhen and the surrounding cities in Guangdong province are considered the "workshop of the world"--there's a decent chance that anything you see with "Made in China" on it was at least in part produced in Guangdong province. Anyway, modern-day Shenzhen is a massive and cosmopolitan city, with the world's 9th tallest skyscraper, a new and efficient metro system, and one of the higher per-capita GDP's in China. Shenzhen also has the 2nd largest stock exchange in China, and is becoming one of its most important financial centers. So at the end of the day, it's pretty clear that Shenzhen is at the center of one of the most important regions in China, and is certainly a good place to start a foray into the business world of Asia.

One of my main goals during my year in China will be to learn as much Mandarin Chinese as possible. Shenzhen is a wonderful place to learn Mandarin, given the fact that it's quite close to Hong Kong (just over the border into China), is a relatively western Chinese city, and yet, rather than most of the cities in the region (i.e. Guangzhou, Hong Kong), Shenzhen's population speaks mainly Mandarin, due to their enormous number of migrant workers. For those reading this that aren't familiar with Southern China--the rest of the region speaks Cantonese, a far more complicated language than Mandarin (while Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has 9. 9 tones. That is, you can say the same word 9 different ways, and it means 9 different things. Combined with the fact that Cantonese has 60 million speakers compared to Mandarin's 1 billion, it's no wonder people prefer to learn the latter.) Anyway, Shenzhen is a great place to learn Mandarin, and fortunately, as part of my teaching contract, I will be given Mandarin lessons for the duration of the year. So assuming I put in a solid amount of effort into learning the language, I should have no excuses for not learning at least conversational Mandarin Chinese over the course of a year.

Another goal during my time in the Orient is to see a few more countries while I can. Topping my list at the moment are Mongolia, Pakistan, and Myanmar (Burma), though if I get the time India would also be excellent. Last time around, HKU provided us plenty of vacation time with which we could go wherever we pleased within Asia. This time, the Shenzhen Dept. of Education will be giving us at least one week of paid vacation in October, as well as 4-5 weeks during Chinese New Year (January-February). Additionally, they will be paying us ~$700US (a small fortune in rural China) as a severance package in June, allowing us to travel a bit through China after our teaching is finished.

It should also be noted that a good friend of mine from my exchange in Hong Kong, Mr. John Scutt, will be accompanying me on this teaching program in Shenzhen. As a fellow Sinophile, Scutt has spent a great deal of time in Asia, and has been known to spend more time than advisable at Khao San Road. Consequently, if anyone reading this blog will be in Thailand during the coming year, shoot me an email, we'll have to catch up (over 10-12 Chang Beers).

So anyway, in conclusion (for now), here is the triumphant return of the blog. For those who have read this far, a big thanks, looking forward to keeping anyone who cares to know informed of my whereabouts between now and mid-2012. Expect 1-2 more blog posts before I leave, then intermittent ones as we move along through a year in China.