Latest from Shenzhen, And Something to Think About

Ah Shenzhen, a city so truly bizarre and unlike anything else you could possibly imagine, that it even completely dwarfs other outliers. I was reading an article in NatGeo the other day about Astana, the newish capital of Kazakhstan. In short, Astana was basically built out of the steppe in the early 1990's, and has since increased its population from a little under 300,000 to nearly 1 million in about 20 years.

An impressive feat, certainly, and one which NatGeo brought a lot of attention to, saying this was a sign of the booming Kazakh economy, helped significantly by oil and other natural resources. However, when put in the context of Shenzhen...this growth is thoroughly unimpressive. Shenzhen went from 300,000 people 30 years ago to 14 million today. I'm sure I've said that in this blog a few times already in previous posts, so for those 3 frequent readers of every blog (that being my parents and grandmother), my apologies for being repetitive! But seriously, consider that. And incredibly, Shenzhen continues to grow. All over the city, there are buildings being built taller and taller, the whole thing has a massive bubble-like feel to it, but for the time being...we'll see. It's interesting to note some of the architectural layouts of the city as a whole--enormously wide sidewalks, insane 16-lane highways going through the center of the city, and just a remarkably well-planned (albeit with something of a "slapped together at the last minute due to population multiplying by 30 in as many years" feel to it) place.

That said, one problem I have been facing as of late is the lack of things to do in Shenzhen. Yes, there are a lot of people. And yes, a lot of those people are young people, and there's a cool youthful culture. But the fact is, this is a city built for one reason--work. You come to Shenzhen after university, work for a few years, make some money, and then, by and large, many of these people return home. This leads to a number of issues, most notably:

1) No one is actually from Shenzhen. Consequently, few people really feel motivation/need to clean up after themselves, not litter, etc. This leads to something of a dirtyish city (though much of this is taken care of by people who's only job is to clean up trash in the streets. There are thousands of them)

2) No real "center" of the city. Now this really shouldn't be a huge issue, but I suppose I just find it rather odd to live in a city that is so vast and sprawling that it lacks a proper center where everything sort of revolves around. Here, there are 2 major districts, Futian and Luohu, that contain the majority of Western companies, hotels, skyscrapers, etc., but there is absolutely no "Center of Town"

3) The night life here, while pretty good, is poor for a city of this size, probably because everyone works quite a bit, and those who have the money to go out are often quite a bit older. Those could both be completely incorrect, they're just my perceptions. Anyway.

One thing that Shenzhen does NOT lack, however, is the most ridiculous city hall ever constructed by mankind. Fortunately, my office is located right across the street. As you can see

in the picture at left, that is truly the most staggering city hall ever. And the building on the far left with white lights going up it and continuing onto the top part is, of course, my office here in China :-)

So anyway, the last week has been interesting. Things have been more or less finalized for my trip to the US at the end of this month, seems I'll be leaving for Atlanta on 28 February and returning to China around March 6th. Should be pretty good, given that, in addition to of course having all expenses paid for, I will earn about 20,000 frequent flier miles, and a few hundred in "personal spending money" to go with it. So not a bad deal! Will also be able to see one of my best friends from High School/University, Bryan, who has recently moved to Atlanta, so overall should be a good trip.

Apart from that, have spent a decent little bit of time in Hong Kong over the last week, and have also been able to explore Shenzhen a little bit more, which has yielded some interesting mixed results in terms of things to do around this crazy pseudo-Chinese city. There was a very interesting controversy recently that pitted Mainland Chinese against Hong Kongers in a test of childish insults. Here's how it went down:

1) Mainland Chinese family was in the Hong Kong subway system, a small Mainland Chinese child was eating something on the train. A Hong Konger, in a fit of Canto-rage, decided to start yelling at these Mainlanders about not being able to eat. Now, let me be clear here, I don't speak Chinese. Or Cantonese. But from what I was told by the Mainland Chinese news outlet (and actually, some much less propaganda-related sources), the Mainland Chinese family apologized, said they would not do it again, and tried to defuse the situation. The Hong Konger persisted with his rage, pushed the emergency call button, summoned subway security, etc. Turned into a huge deal.

2) A prominent professor at Peking (Beijing) University (the "Harvard of China") comes out and says, among other things, that Hong Kongers speaking Cantonese is offensive to China, that Hong Kongers are dogs, pigs, and probably meaney-faces. Additionally, he talks about how the Hong Kongers are so timid and submissive to the British (I believe the wording he used was "poopy-head") and then so brash and brave with the Mainland Chinese. In addition to uttering a handful of childlike insults, the professor proceeded to wet himself before asking for a bottle of milk before naptime.

3) Hong Kong citizens, in a reaction that had about as massive of consequences as 1/4 inch of snow in Chicago in January, rented out a full-page ad in a newspaper calling the Mainland Chinese "locusts". This served absolutely no purpose, apart from probably just allowing Hu Jintao to soil his morning newspaper with spat-out coffee after seeing it and being so taken aback. Or not.

So how to react to this? What to make of it? Well, to try to treat this objectively--I've spent about 9 months of my life living in Hong Kong/Shenzhen. Yes, LOTS of Mainlanders come to Hong Kong all the time. And yes, some of them are rude, obnoxious, blatantly richer than you, me, and Tom Friedman's Aunt Bev. But for the love of god, these Mainlanders contribute SO FREAKING MUCH to the Hong Kong economy with their purchases of $2,000US Gucci handbags, $10,000 Rolexes, and $250,000 sports cars. I look at it as such--Hong Kong would not exist without Mainland China. Period. Mainland China would exist very easily (though admittedly probably not as prosperously) without Hong Kong. I understand that Hong Kongers are fed up with Mainlanders flooding their city every weekend, and that this incident was simply that frustration boiling over, but come on now people. Let's just take a deep breath and put everything in perspective: whether you're Mainland, Hong Konger, Macauese, or Taiwanese, you're all still far, far more Chinese than I am. And that's all that counts.

Have found a fairly interesting Law School program that involves 3 months at National University of Singapore (#4 uni in Asia) then 9 months at a law school in Shanghai. Cost--~$9,500US (50,000 Chinese Yuan). Very interesting, as it specializes in International Business Law. Do I plan on going into law? Probably not. But is "probably not" just a confident enough answer to justify at least considering a law degree for <$10,000 and <1 year of my time? Yeah, I'd say so.

Other than that, not much in terms of updates. More to come as things develop over here in the Orient, cheers for reading to this point.

And on a final note, a quote to think about by Richard Dawkins:

“Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren’t you?
How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place .... Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”

Now that, friends, is a deep quote from a very, very atheist man.

Rough Week, Eh?

So imagine this situation--

You're sitting in a cafe with a wonderful breeze coming off the South China Sea, getting a 30% discount on all food/drinks because they think you're a student here, typing on a brand new laptop that works fantastically, and not needing to worry about cumbersome glasses being worn. Sounds wonderful, no?

Well that's about where I am right no. But rather than having it be a grand time, it's a pretty questionable situation. The brand new laptop is being used because my old laptop (5 years old, mind you) decided to pick an inconvenient time to die on me, so I had to spend ~$1,000US on a new one. The lack of glasses comes from the fact that the other day, while swimming in the South China Sea off the beach of Tai Long Wan, my glasses fell off and were lost forever to the sea. For those who don't know me well, I am blind without my glasses. Absolutely blind. As in, right now, my laptop is about 1 foot from my face, and this page is magnified to 144%, and I still find it very, very blurry. Fortunately, I know Hong Kong better than I know Normal, Illinois (the town in which I went to University), so getting around hasn't been that hard, but my God is it devastating just not being able to see anything. Apparently, given my experiences in Asia last time with the whole injury situation, it turns out that Asia might actually hate me. Yet to be seen, I think, but that's certainly what appears to be the case. So anyway, let's recap the last week...

Left off around Halloween. Since then, there's been a good bit of applying for jobs in Hong Kong and China. I emailed the CFO of BMW Beijing at the request of the lovely Miss Madlien Schenker, who was kind enough to get me the contact information of this powerful and, incidentally, US-ian (again, hate the phrase "American") individual, who informed me that he'd be happy to pass my CV onto their hiring people, who will see if they have a position open for me. Not exactly a job offer, but I felt pretty good about going straight to the top (given that I'm looking for a job in Finance, the CFO is pretty much the top guy to talk to, I guess), and so we'll see how that goes. Interestingly, while Mercedes is tearing up Hong Kong with unbelievable growth and huge popularity among the wealthy elites, BMW is doing much, much better than them in the Mainland, so it would be a good company to work for, and Madlien has told me that she doesn't use Mandarin at all in the workplace, so my lack of Mandarin skills would not be a huge handicap. Additionally, I really like Beijing, having spent about 2 weeks there in August, so it would be a pretty great job I think, should I be fortunate enough to get my foot in the door.

I crossed the border into Shenzhen last week on Friday for an interview with Wagner Spraytech, a German company with an office in Shenzhen and factories in Ningbo and Dongguan. It was a rather interesting interview, as Wagner doesn't currently have any positions available in Shenzhen--rather it was something of a favor done by their Chinese representatives on behalf of their VP of Human Resources in the United States, who is a co-worker of a very close friend of my Dad's (is THAT all?!) Anyway, it was still definitely a worthwhile excursion, their Chinese Ops Manager was a very interesting guy, and was able to give me some useful pieces of advice on how to find a job in China, what sort of jobs I should be looking for, what sort of salary to expect, etc. So overall a pretty good day.

Douglon's Dad came to Hong Kong this past weekend, and I finally got to meet the legendary Mr. Tse himself. He took us out to a couple of meals, both of which were positively magnificent (interestingly enough, despite being a fairly unassumingly small Chinese man, Mr. Tse was able to out-eat both Douglon and I at the breakfast buffet we went to at the Shangri-La... certainly not unimpressive!) He also had some interesting insights about business in China, and was able to provide some good words of wisdom from the standpoint of a very successful Chinese businessman.

A brief and random sidenote--as mentioned, I'm currently in a cafe at HKU sitting at a small table. There are no longer any tables available, so a rather unassuming Chinese student came up and asked if she could sit at the other seat at this table. I don't think that this sort of thing would occur in the United States, rather I feel like if there are no tables available, then you simply leave the place after ordering your drink. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, now that that random tangent is done with, I have a lunch scheduled today with Loic, one of my Uncle Fred's associates here in Hong Kong. I'm hoping he will also have some insights as to how to find a job in Hong Kong/China, so we'll see how that goes. Tomorrow should be a rather deciding day, I have an interview in the morning with an English-language school in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, and a phone interview in the evening with Allstate Insurance for a position back home as a Financial Analyst. Had you asked me prior to my departure to China if I'd've taken that job were it offered, I'd've likely said "no" rather emphatically. However, given the devastation that has occurred to my bank account, and consequently my confidence, since arriving here, it is now a possibility. We'll have to see how the interview goes. It certainly does sound like a really awesome job, anyway.

Looks like I'll be making another trip across the border to Shenzhen in the next few days to meet with an English language school, as well as with a company that I met with in Birmingham, Alabama, in late July. Could be promising, I suppose.

And now for sort of a random thought of the day regarding false advertising--I was recently looking into possibly buying an Amazon Kindle. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw that it had a battery life of...2 MONTHS?!? My God, that's just amazing! However, immediately after that, I noticed there was an asterisk next to this claim. The asterisk corresponded to fine print which said "Based on 30 minutes use per day". Well what the hell is that? That's like saying "Oh, this iPod will NEVER RUN OUT OF BATTERY AT ALL, as long as you don't use it ever!" I really can't understand the benefit of doing that. Frankly, people should react in a few ways-

1) They're really unintelligent, and just don't notice the fine print. They get their Kindle, and due to their unintelligence, they probably never use it. They never realize the battery doesn't actually last 2 months. Or maybe they do, in which case they're rather upset because the battery obviously doesn't last 2 months, it lasts like 30 hours.

2) They notice the fine print, and don't really think anything of it. They think "well that's fair enough, I guess"

3) Or they're like me, and notice the fine print, get pissed off at their insulting your intelligence, and simply say "well if I was going to buy a Kindle, now there's no way I'm going to, out of pure spite".

I just don't see how saying "OH 2 MONTH BATTERY LIFE GUYS!!! (contingent on using it for 2% of your day, every day)" can be any better at making sales than just saying "yeah, the battery lasts 30 hours". It's certainly not false, or even deceptive advertising, but it's just dumb, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm just too picky about things like this, who knows. Moral of the story is... READ THE FINE PRINT!!!

Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. I'll be posting sometime tomorrow or Wednesday with updates on the 2 interviews tomorrow, so until then, remember, only use your Kindle 30 minutes per day if you want the battery to last 2 MONTHS!!!!

Hong Freaking Kong

Hello all, sorry about the several days without posting anything, it was a rather taxing few days in LA and it's been a whirlwind getting settled back into the city I call my 2nd home, Hong Kong.

So LA was excellent, got to hang out with my old friend Mike from High School for a few days, and he showed me around the city. One observation--people drive ALL THE TIME in LA. That is, to get anywhere involves like a 30+ minute drive, and you're always going on the highways that surround the city. Needless to say, given my absolute hatred of driving cars, I don't think I could handle that on a consistent basis, but for those who can, more power to them. Definitely a very interesting city, with a lot of different neighborhoods full of people of countless ethnicities (apparently not a word. The plural of ethnicity was my intent. Whatever that is). Anyway, loads of Mexicans, Armenians, Asians from all over the place in Asia, etc., so really cool stuff. Some of the highlights of the trip included visiting Koreatown, UCLA's campus, and the Hollywood area, which involved a lot of surreal homeless people dressed as everything from Darth Vader to homeless people. Interestingly, when 2 guys passed us dressed as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, I immediately said to Mike "what legends those guys are!" His response--"yeah, there's a good chance they're homeless"

What a place, California. Another huge highlight of the trip to LA was seeing my wonderful friend from Hong Kong, Miss Catherine Bumble. She brought Mike and I to a German/Belgian brewhouse where we had some sausages and large liters of beer, then to a club with some electronic music. The night got to be fairly blurry fairly early on, but still had some great times with an old friend.

The morning after we hung out with Bumble was my flight to Hong Kong via Beijing. Incidentally, during this flight I became a United Airlines Premier Silver flier, indicating that I've flown over 25,000 miles with United this year, which was kind of cool. Upon arrival in Hong Kong, as planned, my good friend Douglon was waiting for me at the airport. With his driver.

From the airport I was whisked to Douglon's flat, which is located about a 5 minute walk from the University of Hong Kong. This brings back all sorts of nostalgia. My first few days in Hong Kong have been good. Met up with some friends from Shenzhen on Friday night, and sure enough, when we were out at LKF, at the first corner we stopped at I ran into some of the legends from my floor at Lee Hysan Hall while I was on exchange. Was great to catch up with them. First night out involved me staying completely sober while everyone I knew from Shenzhen got completely hammered drunk, which was a pretty hilarious thing to watch. I took them to the Flying Pan (a really awesome breakfast restaurant open 24 hrs in Central Hong Kong) about 4:00am for breakfast, and from there headed back to the flat.

Saturday night in Lan Kwai Fong was staggering. As it was Halloween weekend, there were literally like 15,000 people there (Note: I have NO IDEA how to estimate how many people were there. Could have only been like 5,000. Could have been 25,000. It was a lot. Here's a video with awkward music that some guy made) It was a pretty unbelievable night, and one which also ended very late, which ended up being quite a struggle due to my jet lag and having slept 2 hours the night before. But still grand.

Last night Douglon threw a party for his birthday, which involved a BBQ at Deepwater Bay, near the Southwest part of Hong Kong Island. It was a great time, with about 10-12 people coming out at various times of the evening. Today I applied for my China visa, so with any luck I'll be heading into Shenzhen by early next week for a couple of job interviews.

Anyway! That's about a summary of what I've been up to. My apologies for not being insightful or universal with any of this, but I intend on throwing some posts up here in the coming days that offer more thought-provoking stuff rather than just saying "yeah here's what's been happening. Enjoy". So hopefully that'll be good. Not sure if I want to commit to a blog-post-per-day, but expect them pretty regularly. Thanks for reading up to this point, and for bearing with the inconsistencies of my blog posting!

Getting Back to Where You Once Belonged

So for those who keep up with this blog with decent regularity, you'll recall that my current plan is to head to Denver with my dad for a trade show in mid-October, then on to Vegas and from there on to LA, with the intention to fly to Asia from there. For those who don't keep up with this blog, that's my plan, you're now caught up.

Notice the plan was to fly back to "Asia", that is, there wasn't really a specific place I was certainly flying in to. Odds are I'd end up in Shenzhen at some point soon after my leaving the US, but I was dabbling with flying into Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, etc. And who was I kidding? Last night I booked the airfare, and as was going to be the case all along, I'll be going back to the place where my whole Asia odyssey really took off, the greatest city in the world.

So now that we've all watched that really awkward Chinese girl play piano whilst singing... schedule is as follows:

Chicago--->Denver October 12

Denver---->Las Vegas October 18

Las Vegas-->Los Angeles October 23

Los Angeles->Hong Kong October 27

Hong Kong-->Shenzhen shortly thereafter

Other assorted things:

Huge thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes yesterday! It was overwhelming to see the outpouring of birthday wishes from everyone, I really appreciate it. Also big thanks to the Baseball Gods for making my 23rd birthday the best day of regular-season baseball ever. Thanks to the mailman for delivering a new National Geographic on my birthday. Overall it was a fantastic day, so again thanks to everyone who made it so!

Had a solid 6 days in Philadelphia working a trade show this past week, it involved a number of very large meals, a lot of building/tearing apart of booths, and basically networking/practicing sales skills. Definitely a cool experience, and apparently I did such a respectable job that I've been asked to come down to Indianapolis to work another one next weekend, so a good way to make some extra cash before heading off to the Orient.

Interesting China fact of the day: I read online (i.e. questionable source) that the collective population of China consumes 50,000 cigarettes PER SECOND. Is THAT all?! I did the math and that equates to 4.3 billion cigarettes per day, or about 3 for every man, woman, and child in China. That number does seem a bit unrealistically high, but at the same time, anyone that's been to China knows that everyone there smokes, so it is possible. Either way, something to think about!

Ended up biting the bullet and taking the cheapest option to get back to Asia, my old nemesis Air China. I could have paid ~$75 extra to fly Air Canada, but that would have also involved a 7:00am flight out of LAX as well as staying like 1 day less in LA, so not worth doing. Consequently I'll begrudgingly be sitting on an Air China flight being the only white person (which will be awesome) and having the Asian guy in front of me immediately throw his seat back into my lap and leave it like that for the next 12 hours as we fly from LAX to Beijing. If nothing else, I get to spend a few hours in Beijing airport, which is a really cool place.

Well that's about it for now, main bit of news being the confirmed return flight to Asia. Big thanks again for all the birthday wishes yesterday, was really cool to hear from everyone. More news to come as it develops.