Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. One of the Most Brutal Vacations of my Life

I'm not much for organized travel. Rather, the ideal trip for me involves flying into developing country X (preferably sans return airfare), with a guidebook, a backpack, and a sense of "well, we don't really have any reason to be here, so let's make the best of it and see how things go". I've had a lot of incredible trips fitting this mold, and hope to continue taking trips like this for many years.

Like Shooting Fish in a....Pond?

This past weekend we had a "company sponsored holiday", which involved a 4-day trip to Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai. Now for those who have actually traveled in their lifetimes, you'll notice that this is a 3-city trip in 4 days. That is to say, there is a 0% chance that we were actually going to "see" any of these cities, it was just going to be "get on the bus, get off the bus" for 4 days. I sort of expected this, as it's a very Chinese style of travel, and tried to mentally prep myself for the rather ho-hum nature of this type of trip. But my god could I have never prepared myself for what went down that weekend in the Yangtze River Delta.

We left the office at about 5:30am on Thursday. After flying from Shenzhen to Hangzhou, we were immediately hurled into a bus with a tour guide. A really. obnoxious. tour guide. He had a microphone with like a hip-speaker thing, and was yelling into it the entire trip. In very obnoxious Chinese. So that was pretty awesome. Our first stop on the trip was a pretty decent restaurant in Hangzhou, as we arrived about lunchtime. It was immediately obvious that I was going to be something of a "guest of honor" during this trip--I always sat at the head table, immediately next to the sister of the 2 brothers that own this company (the brothers were not on the holiday, and their sister is what I would refer to as the "Company Mom", just a really nice 40ish year old Chinese woman who speaks about as much English as I do Arabic....so she's pitch-perfect). Anyway, so we had a decent lunch. After lunch we went to the pretty amazing West Lake of Hangzhou, and took a very crowded touristy boat around the West Lake. Still decent. We walked around that area for most of the afternoon, before going to a sort of shopping street, then this bizarre Song Dynasty-themed Chinese amusement park/folk village/mental institution/song and dance theater. Yeah, it was all of the above. Weird first day overall, but nothing compared to the devastation of Day 2.

Temple somewhere near Hangzhou

Day 2. A brutal day for sure. We got on the bus in Hangzhou, and our first stop was a "silk museum". By silk museum, I mean a place where they tell you how silk is made, then spend an hour trying to convince you to buy some silk. And of course I'm in the market for silk scarves, bedsheets, and lingerie, if not this may have been a pointless excursion. That said, there was some entertainment when, on their map of the old Silk Road, they had labeled Kuala Lumpur as a city in Northern Sri Lanka (I assume they meant to say Colombo...) Anyway, so after this whole silk business, we went to an equally asinine place that was a "Chrysanthemum Tea Museum". Same thing, "here's our tea, here's how it's made, now buy some". Should also be noted that this was all in Chinese. And of course I"m in the market for chrysanthemum related products, otherwise this may have been a pointless excursion. From here, we went to a place selling various trinkets. And of course I'm in the market for that too, otherwise...well you get the point. Anyway, all these places were ~1 hour apart by bus (ferally hot bus as well), so by the time we'd been harassed to the point of wanting to stab the tour guide, the day was done and we were just arriving in Suzhou.

A brief aside--I asked Lisa why the hell we had wasted 1 of our 4 days doing an unbelievable amount of shopping/completely idiotic activities. She informed me that this is how the tour guide makes money--he gets commission from the shops if we buy things. Frankly, I would be just as happy giving the guy like $10 (or even less, we could realistically each give him like $5, and the $200 he makes would be about 2 weeks' wage in China), and just have that extra day to not be assaulted by merchants peddling their crap. But apparently this is not how China works. Also quite interesting, none of my Chinese coworkers seemed fazed or aggravated about this absurd series of shopping misadventures.

The lads, Jacky (#3 guy in the company) and Michael (Old friend of the owner's, company chef)

Day 3 was interesting, we went to a very beautiful old village called Zhouzhuang, which was definitely one of the coolest places I've ever seen. Appropriately named the "Venice of the East", it is world famous for its canal system, and I was pretty surprised and intrigued to find that many people were still living here despite it being a tourist-infested village.

Zhouzhuang, the Venice of the East

Another brief aside--days 3 and 4 of this trip (Saturday and Sunday) were absolutely mental from the standpoint of the INSANE NUMBER OF TOURISTS AT THESE SITES. And they were all Chinese. I had no idea that domestic tourism in China was such an enormous industry, but I can assure you that having 10 tour guides with 10 hip-speakers screaming at their tour groups inside a relatively cramped temple is not the greatest way to enjoy the historical relevance and general awesomeness of these places. But anyway, such is life when the country you're living in has 1.3+ billion people.

So after our tours around Suzhou, we finally arrived in the center of the center, the economic heart of the People's Republic of China, one of my favorite cities in this world (as of now, currently #3 on my list behind Hong Kong and Seoul), Shanghai. Upon arrival, I left the tour group to go meet up with my old friend Douglon, who I had lived with for about a month in Hong Kong upon my return to Asia in October-November 2011. He's currently living in Shanghai and managing his Dad's building, the House of Roosevelt. I met up with him at the House, which was a surreal experience. Put bluntly, it is one of the nicest buildings on the nicest and most famous street in China's most cosmopolitan and expensive city. The building has a restaurant on the 8th floor, where we went for dinner.

At this point 2 things should be noted--

1) I had already eaten dinner at this point.
2) Douglon is a world renowned eater, and more importantly, a world renowned host. So I knew what I was getting into to some extent, but was sure to tell Douglon upon my arrival

"Now Douglon, I've already had dinner. So can we just do some appetizers or something else light?"
"Of course, no problem at all"

As it was Douglon, I should have known better. The next thing I knew, a waiter asked me how I would like my steak cooked. Sweet jesus. Before dinner, I ended up getting a text from Martin, the old friend that I'd met up with in Hong Kong a couple of weeks prior. He was in Shanghai, and came to meet us at the House of Roosevelt (he's also a good friend of Douglon's, so it was a nice reunion). We were also joined by another friend of Douglon's, a Peruvian girl who had grown up in Sweden. The four of us enjoyed a magnificent meal atop one of the nicest buildings in the city, with a beautiful view of Pudong/Lujiazui and The Bund. Or at least, the 3 of them enjoyed the meal, as well as the sight of me trying to force down more food after having already eaten dinner.

Wuxinting Tea House, Shanghai

Overall a fantastic evening. The following day, I went with some coworkers to a really interesting temple near the Wuxinting Tea House and Yuyuan Gardens. I'd been to the exact place almost exactly a year before, which was kind of cool. Following this, I ended up meeting up with another couple of old friends of mine, Madlien and Martin, who are currently living/working in Shanghai. We went to the French Concession, a beautiful, leafy, up-scale area of Shanghai, and had a few afternoon drinks. I then received a call from Douglon inviting us for an afternoon lunch/few drinks at the House of Roosevelt. It should be noted that they have the largest wine cellar in China there, and that Douglon, being a ridiculously good host, would not take a cent for the food or wine. Consequently, we had a fair bit of food and wine. The food was infinitely better than the night before, as this time I was not already horrendously full, and we had a couple of bottles of white wine/champagne. I was to meet with my coworkers at Pudong International Airport around 4pm. The House is around 1hr from the airport by taxi, and consequently when 3:45pm rolled around, we decided I'd best hightail it to Pudong. And so I did, but not before falling asleep in the back of the cab (too many glasses of champagne it would seem), only to be woken by a call from Jacky asking where I was (though to be fair, they didn't care that I was a bit late, as the weather was crap and our flight ended up being delayed a bit anyway).

So that was the trip to Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. As I noted in the beginning of this blog post, I tend to prefer trips that are completely unplanned. After returning from this atrociously constricting trip, I decided it was time to book something stupid, so yesterday I booked 1-way airfare from Hong Kong to Dhaka for the day after my birthday, as we have 1 week's holiday for Chinese National Day that week (I was really, really, really hoping to do Tibet, but unfortunately the Chinese government has closed Tibet to foreigners for the foreseeable future....welcome to China!). For those who don't know where Dhaka is, you clearly haven't been reading my blog often enough, as I wrote a fairly decent piece on Bangladesh last year. Anyway, so will be heading there for some amount of time in late September. Interestingly, that's the tail end of the rainy season, so should involve some flooding and perhaps malaria. And I cannot freaking wait.

That's about all from here, interesting and manic trip to the Yangtze River Delta, and making plans for an even more interesting trip to Bangladesh. Some photos from the trip below (apologies that they're a little grainy, my camera broke the other day...5 years old so that'll happen, so I used my iPad camera on the trip, which is not bad, but not sensational. Also, if my grandfather is reading this, a huge thanks for the iPad a few months back, it's been remarkably useful so far, and had I not had it during these last few days, I would have had no pictures of the amazing places I just went to. Also happy belated birthday to my grandfather, and belated father's day to both he and my Dad)

Weird Song Dynasty Themed Theme Park

Near Hangzhou

Love the Chinglish

Yeah it was this crowded in the temple...

A Crazy, Crazy 2 Months

Oh boy. It's been one of those 2 month periods when I blogged absolutely nothing. Generally times like these indicate either having an enormous amount of work, or alternatively living a lifestyle characterized by intense highs and lows. In the first instance, I simply don't have time to write. In the second instance, I don't really feel like writing during the peaks, as I feel like I'll come off like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic,  and don't feel like writing during the troughs for fear of coming off like Leonardo DiCaprio in the prison scene of Catch Me If You Can (couldn't find the clip...unlucky!)

This particular 2 month stretch had a little bit of both, incidentally. So my last blog post came from my Qingming Festival trip to Kuala Lumpur. Since then, I've gone to the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, Las Vegas, nearly took a job in Hong Kong, nearly left my job about 4 separate times, and ended up staying at my job due to a ridiculous set of circumstances.

So the Canton Fair. It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Basically, imagine literally every single manufactured item you've ever bought from China. Anything you own that says "Made in China" on it. Think about the incredible variety of these items. And think that (more or less) every single one of those manufacturers was at this trade show. Around 50,000 booths. Selling EVERYTHING. Everything from hairdryers to lightbulbs to action figures to pottery to busses, construction equipment, and everything in between. They even had Tuk-Tuks! I'm pretty sure I even saw some kids for sale. That was a lie, and probably not very funny. But oh well. Also noteworthy about the Canton Fair was the McDonald's in the Guangzhou Convention Center. How noteworthy can a McD's be, you ask?

Well picture this--24 counters. And no menus, per se. Just meals A, B, C, and D. Big Mac, Fried Chicken Sandwich, Grilled Chicken Sandwich, Fillet of Fish, with fries. And no drink orders. Just pre-poured, relatively warm, melty-ice Coke. And imagine it being about the size of a 16-car garage. With lines going out the door all the time. We had about 15 people in front of us in line when we walked in. And within about 4 minutes, we were served. Also of note, the meal was 45RMB, or about $7. This might not sound THAT crazy, until you realize that ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF CHINA, a meal at McDonald's costs 15RMB, or about $2.50. Price gouging for the win. I would have taken pictures, but when I took out my phone to do so, an employee more or less tackled me saying "NO PICTURES ALLOWED!!!" Is that all? You'd think it would make for good free publicity....

The Canton Fair also amazed me with its diversity. We had people from, among many others, the following countries come to our booth requesting information for product importing: Pakistan, Lebanon, South Africa, Kenya, Bolivia, Venezuela, Mauritius, Kosovo, and one very outgoing and awkward man from the "Armenia-China Friendship Council". It made the United Nations look like the Tokyo Metro at rush hour. After 8 days in Guangzhou that included my first ever experience with real Chinese Hot Pot (pictured below), we returned to Shenzhen. After a few weeks of working in Shenzhen, it was time to head to Vegas for the National Hardware Show.

So Vegas. We went to Vegas during late April/early May for a trade show. Fortunately, one of my best friends from childhood/high school/college, Dan Gannon, lives in Vegas (this to the surprise of my colleagues, as up to this point I've had a friend in literally every single city we've travelled to for work with the exception of Guangzhou). Anyway, so we went to Vegas for a trade show. In short, it involved a ton of working, and hanging out with Dan a fair bit. I got to meet Dan's best friend in Vegas, former World Poker Tour Champion Joe Bartholdi, who I can honestly say is one of the most genuinely hilarious and genial people I've ever met. Definitely the kind of person you'd like to hang around as much as possible, just a really nice kid (I say kid despite his being 32...shocking). He also happened to write a hilarious song called "Fat Chicks" that he performed in a bar. If I ever get a dying wish, it will be for him to upload it to YouTube. One of the funniest things I've ever heard. Vegas involved a fair bit of gambling (on the trip I was up about $150US, which was excellent), and a fair amount of shopping. Funny side note--one of my bosses wanted me to come with him to the Louis Vuitton Store in Las Vegas. I'd never actually been into a LV store.

"Are you going to get your wife a gift from here?", I asked, with some surprise. It should be noted that this guy definitely makes pretty damned good money by China standards, but as most LV handbags/products don't go for less than like $1,000, it still seemed excessive.

"No, I need to get the gift for a friend of my wife's sister."
"Well that's interesting. Your wife's sister's friend must be very rich"
"No, they're not. They are having me buy it for a local government official as a bribe to get their child into the best school in their province"

Welcome. To. China. In the 21st century. Bribes no longer are limited to just cash. Louis Vuitton merchandise is now considered perfectly legal tender for the perfectly illegal act of bribing Chinese officials.

The per capita GDP in China is around $5,400US. The bag cost $1,300.

Wow.

I returned from Vegas about a month ago today, and what a month that's been. I had an interview for a pretty interesting job opportunity in Hong Kong, and nearly left my job here to pursue other opportunities until my boss made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Around 20 May, time had come for my "6 month salary reevaluation", or some such thing. I went into my bosses office and reminded him of this, and he bode me to take a seat. Overall, it was a pretty excellent conversation--we spoke first about the fact that adjusting to life in Mainland China had been a bit more difficult than I'd expected, how there had been several times that I'd nearly left work here to return to the US, and the like. At one point I asked if I could start to go home at Christmas.

"Of course, I'm happy to pay for you to fly back to Chicago at Christmas for about a week or so."

Well that makes things a bit easier.

We then got to the point where we were going to talk about my future here. Regarding salary--he made a solid raise offer. I asked for an asinine amount more than that. Basically, I asked for what I'd be making in the US. Only I'm working in a country where, as I mentioned a moment ago, the per capita GDP is $5,400. Not $47,000, as in the US.

He was a bit taken aback by this request, and asked if he could think about it for a few days and get back to me. I said that was just fine. We continued to chat for another 5 minutes or so, at which point he asked me

"Well, if I give you this amount of money, what are your future plans? What do you want to do?"

"I suppose I'd stay here and work for you guys in China for a couple more years, then go work for you guys in the US for a couple years, then around age 28-29 go get a masters then a PhD then go into academia"

Something about that answer must have really pleased this very heroic and very wealthy Chinese man, because his next sentence was

"Well, I've thought about your raise request. And really, the money means nothing to me. And since you've started working here, I don't know why, but I've always liked you. Even when you've acted unorthodox, I've always thought it was interesting. I've always thought that you've been a very good addition to the office. So I'm OK with it."

Win.

The next day he decided to give me some more work responsibilities. I am now completely in charge of our company's expansion into the Australian market. I am going to be heading to Australia about twice per year (this coming year looks to be October and February), and will be setting up our entire operation there. This, in addition to the 3 times per year to the US and once to Germany means I'll be racking up a sadistic amount of frequent flier miles (probably around 100,000 per year), and will be able to take occasional much-needed breaks for living in the PRC. Overall, could not have gone better.

So that's about where I'm at now. A long post, surely, but it's been an eventful 2 months. A week from tomorrow, we leave for a 5-day company holiday to Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, a trip where I'll get the chance to see a couple of friends in Shanghai, which will be nice.

Also random recent note--was able to spend this past Saturday night in Hong Kong with none other than Martin "Luther" Zech, an old friend from HKU who just finished a dual masters degree program with Sciences Po (Paris) and Fudan University (Shanghai), and Ben Don, another friend from HK/my trip last summer to Thailand/Cambodia. Martin brought 2 of his cousins to HK, and we showed them a night on the town, involving Wan Chai, trying to break into the Wan Chai Haunted House, and 3am dim sum (photo at right of Sir Ben Hibbert's favorite dish, whatever it is). Overall, an excellent trip town memory lane with a couple of old friends.

On the travel horizon, apart from next week's company trip, I'm hoping to sneak away to either Tibet or Bangladesh sometime in the next 3 months or so, before heading to Cologne, Germany, in September, then Sydney/Melbourne in October. Should be good.

Below are some more random photos from the last couple of months, including a gentle reminder from the phenomenal translators at the Canton Fair, a horribly iPhoto-edited shot of Shun Hing Square at night, and some other shots of Shenzhen. Cheers if you've read this stupidly long update, will try to be more consistent!

You'd better enjoy it in 2 hours.

Shun Hing Square. Must say, the building is starting to grow on me.

Shenzhen Metro. Don't even think about bringing on balloons. Don't even think about it.

Shenzhen City Hall after a rain. My office is the middle skyscraper on the left

Really interesting actually, there was a book in the Shenzhen Central Book Mall titled something to the effect of "The History of the World In 100 Objects", the book had been put together by the British Museum (without question the greatest museum in the world, and with a whopping $0 entry fee, also certainly at least tied for least expensive!) using 100 objects in their archives to show the history of the world. #100 was a solar-powered lap and charger manufactured in noplace other than....Shenzhen! 

Area around Masjid Jemak RapidKL Station, Kuala Lumpur, from 2 months ago. I enjoyed it.

An Ode to the Muddy Estuary

So I'm currently in Malaysia. We had 3 days off at work for the Tomb Sweeping Festival (Monday-Wednesday of this week), and I figured I'd take off Thursday/Friday and just have a whole week off. Didn't go over remarkably well at the office, but eh, what can you do. I decided to go visit my friend Sabutai in KL again, as I was able to use my United Miles and fly there for essentially free (business class on Singapore Airlines, no less!) And as unnecessary as this trip may have been, I feel like to some extent I needed a vacation, as the Chinese custom regarding days off is that, because we had off Monday-Wednesday, we had to work the old 7-day work week prior. That is, we worked from Monday-Friday, then Saturday and Sunday. This 7-day work week totaled about 75 hours. So yeah, I figured a vacation was in order. Kuala Lumpur, or as it's universally known throughout Asia, KL, is a city I've now been to three times. Each time that I've visited this teeming metropolis known as "Muddy Estuary" in Malay, one thing has always been very apparent--this is, without question, one of the most diverse cities on earth.

Now to qualify this statement--I lived in Hong Kong for 5 months of my life, and I thought that it was a remarkably diverse city. You'd go to someplace like Tsim Sha Tsui and see people from everywhere. Indians, Pakistanis, Ghanians, Middle Easterners, Ivorians, and loads of backpackers from all over the western world. I've always told people that Chungking Mansions, a building block in TST, Hong Kong, is a sociologist's dream, that is, there are people from dozens (maybe 100+) countries in that building at any given time. It's staggering. However, when you compare Hong Kong as a whole to a place like Kuala Lumpur, it's not even close. Hong Kong, as diverse as it may be, is still about 90+% Chinese. Yeah, the ~10% that aren't Chinese come from everywhere, but make absolutely no mistake about it--Hong Kong is a Chinese city (yes, it has a very western feel to it, but really, the city's demographics are strongly, strongly Chinese).

Kuala Lumpur, on the other hand, is not. In short, KL is about 40% ethnic Malay, 40% ethnic Chinese, 10% Indian, and then 10% EVERYTHING (thus far I've met Burmese, Chinese, Mauritian, Malay, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Singaporean, and probably several others that I don't even know). And even those two 40% groups have, it seems, a pretty decent amount of intermarrying--you'll see loads of Chinese people with hints of Malay to them, Malays with bits of Chinese, etc. And it's not just the people you see, it's the food, the signage, the architecture, everything is basically thrown into this giant melting pot that is one of Southeast Asia's most truly unique cities. This ethnic hodge-podge is most evident in areas of town like Central. I found myself there today walking from Little India to Chinatown. There was absolutely no indication that these two parts of town were separated, basically I just noticed that the percentage of signs in Hindi/Bengali/etc. was decreasing, while the percentage of signs in Chinese was increasing, and eventually I found that the street stalls filled with chicken tikka, samosas, and mango lassi were replaced by street stalls serving duck, egg tarts, and bubble tea. Really remarkable.

Now for a brief bit of history on Kuala Lumpur. In a move fairly similar to my current hometown of Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur did not exist 150 years ago, and today the whole metro area is about ~7.5 million. Very fast-growing city, for sure. Situated in the Klang Valley in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, it is home to, among other things, former tallest buildings in the world the Petronas Twin Towers, the KL Tower, a vibrant Chinatown, and a host of other fairly interesting things. Actually, that's really not true about the host of other interesting things--as nice as KL is, it lacks a lot to actually do (similar to Shenzhen, as it were). However, it does (again, similarly to Shenzhen) have a reputation as a shopper's paradise. Hell, the activity of shopping in KL has its very own Wikipedia page. KL also happens to have one of the most insane airports I've ever been to.

Another fairly interesting thing I found out about Malaysia since I've been here this time around--apparently their legal system stipulates that if you are a Muslim and you commit a crime, you are punished for that crime based on Sharia (Islamic) Law. For those who are non-Muslim, if you commit a crime, you are charged with Common Law, with their Common Law legal system being heavily influenced by their former colonizers, the British. Furthermore, despite the fact that the state religion is officially Islam, you are guaranteed absolute religious freedom. I read a really, really interesting National Geographic article about 2 years ago, written about the more moderate brand of Islam being practiced currently in Indonesia. Having been to both Indonesia and Malaysia, and having had a decent bit of exposure to the mindset of both places, it definitely seems like Malaysia's Islamic fervor is quite a bit less than that of Indonesia. But anyway, interesting stuff.

I had a fairly bizarre experience today--I was in Suria KLCC, a huge shopping complex in central KL, and needed to use the bathroom. There was a 2 ringgitt (about $0.66) "VIP bathroom" that was nearest to me, so I figured, eh, and paid the 2 ringgitt to use it. Remarkable. As I went to wash my hands, the bathroom attendant took my hands, put them under the soap dispenser, pushed the soap dispense button, put my hands under the tap, as I was washing my hands he got some towels, dried my hands, removed my glasses (this was getting slightly awkward), cleaned them for me, and while doing so, gave me a damp cloth to press against my face. He also started chatting with me in pretty near-perfect English, "so how are you boss? enjoying your time here in KL?", etc. Oh, and to top it all off, he sprayed me with some cologne as I was about to walk out! I felt like the 3 ringgitt ($1) tip I gave him was immensely insufficient, but he seemed appreciative enough about it. Anyway!

Other stories from Kuala Lumpur--my friend Sabutai from exchange in Hong Kong is currently living here, so I'm staying at his flat near International Medical University, where he is going to med school. As it turns out, KL has a disproportionately large population of Mauritians--those from the island of Mauritius, a small country of ~1.3 million off the coast of east Africa. Consequently, many of Sabutai's friends from university are Mauritians, and I must say, their language, Mauritian Creole (similarish to French) is one of the more remarkably cool-sounding languages I've ever heard. Not entirely sure why, but just very pleasing to the ear.

As it turns out, the high-speed train from KL Int'l Airport into the city has free wifi throughout the entire train. This is a technology that I know does not exist in Hong Kong on their Airport Express train, does not exist in Shanghai on their Maglev, does not exist in SZ on the metro from the airport, and yet here, in good old Kuala Lumpur, we have free wifi on the train from the airport. Remarkable.

Similar to what I experienced 2 years ago in Singapore, the rain here goes from zero--torrential downpour in about 3 seconds. That is, I was walking around today, felt a few drops of rain on my head, and by the time I'd felt a few more, the sky had opened up and it was as though I'd stepped into a shower. Staggering amounts of water, and apparently this is not yet monsoon season....

Last night we went to an Arabic restaurant. For a meal, 2 lemon teas, and my share of the shisha (a Middle-Eastern water pipe with flavored tobacco), it cost about $5US. What a country.

So that's about it for the time being from KL. Below is a really cliché photo that I took yesterday of the KL Towers, consider that the photo of the day (even though I took about a month off from the whole photo of the day thing...let's just assume I was far too busy). For those who have read to this point, if you have any further questions about KL, let me know, having been here 3 times, I'm practically a local now (though not really...)

Back in South China on Saturday evening, Guangzhou for the Canton Fair in like a week, then Vegas in about 3 weeks. More updates to come (hopefully more consistently) as they develop, cheers for reading this far.

Photo of the Day--February 28, 2012

So I'm now in the US on business. I arrived in Atlanta this afternoon after a 13-hour flight from Hong Kong to Chicago, a 4-hour layover involving lunch with my mom and grandmother, and then a 2-hour flight from Chicago to Atlanta. It was a pretty weird trip.

The day began at 8:00am China time on February 27th. I arrived at the office as planned at 8:00, which I thought was cutting it pretty close, as our flight from Hong Kong was at 11:00am, and it's like a 1.5 hour drive from the office to HK Int'l Airport. But Jacky and the other 2 guys I was traveling with seemed completely confident, so I figured it wasn't my place to say anything. Upon arrival, Jacky said we would be bringing with us $30,000. Now I assumed he meant 30,000 Hong Kong dollars, which is about $4,000US, a sum I thought was far more than we would need for 4 people's meals for 8 days in the US (hotel was paid for by company credit card, meals were paid for with company money, then we provided receipts). However, I was absolutely floored to see Jacky pull out 300 $100US bills from a bag. $30,000USD. The 2nd largest sum of money I have ever held in my life. Why in the hell were we bringing $30,000US cash to the US, I had no idea. We were unsure as to whether the limit for transporting US$ into the US was $10,000 (i.e. you must have <$10,000) or up to $10,000 (i.e. you can have $10,000), so we decided to play it safe--I got $9,999, Jacky got $9,999, James got $9,999, and Howard got $3. Apparently nobody trusts Howard.

So that was that, we had divided up enough cash to buy a decent car. Now to get to the airport. Of course, no one was actually ready to leave at 8:00am--rather, we ended up getting out of there around 8:20am. Again, this is a 1.5 hour drive, and our flight was at 11. So we got to HKIA at about 9:45, and thanks to my being United Premier, got to go to the front of the checkin line. We'd completed checkin by 10, everything was going well, we went to security. At which point they told us we couldn't carry on this sign sort of thing that we were bringing as an advertisement for the trade show we're going to here in ATL. And we had to go get it packaged up and checked. Now we were really in a crunch for time. By the time all that was done with, it was about 10:25. We ran through security, ran through the airport, and got to the gate about 5 minutes before they were closing the doors. Had it not been for my United Premier, Shinerich would have had 4 people miss a flight from Hong Kong to Chicago. I think that alone calls for a substantial raise!

So the flight was pretty awesome. The in-flight entertainment for like 1/4 of the plane wasn't working, so consequently everyone got United Airlines vouchers for either A) $75 off one domestic US flight, B) 10% off any flight, anywhere in the world, or C) 3,000 miles free. Now for me, $75 one domestic flight doesn't really do any good. 3,000 bonus miles is not worth very much. So I went with the 10% off any flight anywhere. Not bad, hopefully I get to use it before it expires in a year.

So at O'Hare I was greeted by my Mom and Grandmother, who had come out for lunch during my layover. They generously brought the iPad that my grandpa had given me, as apparently he had an extra one lying around, so I now have a free iPad2...not too shabby! Lunch was good, headed back to the airport and hopped a flight to Atlanta. Upon arrival in Atlanta, we went to a pizza place near our hotel. On the walk over to the pizza place, the huge problem in Atlanta of homeless people became very apparent. At one point, a homeless guy just would not stop pestering us, so I basically said "you know what, good sir, I have $0US on me. HOWEVER, if you want, I will give you this 5 Chinese Yuan note. 5 Chinese Yuan (~$0.85)." And he took it. No sooner did this occur than a cop pulled up and asked us if this guy was asking us for money, to which I sort of sheepishly replied "yeah..." The cop started walking towards the homeless guy menacingly. I asked if the Chinese guys and I were free to go, to which he replied "y'all don't want to press charges?!"...."No....."

"Ah well yeah, then you're free to go"

Is that all?

Anyway, so eventually we got to the pizza place. It was absolutely hilarious seeing the awe of the three small Chinese men traveling with me when there was a large black man with dreadlocks making pizzas behind a counter. And consequently, here is the photo of the day:

However, I acknowledge that this is kind of a crappy photo, so here's another 2 from the airplane as an added bonus!

This is a photo of the Canadian Rockies from about 36,000 feet.

And finally, with all due respect to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, and every other Asian megacity I've ever seen, it must be said that no image quite quickens the pulse like flying over Chicago coming off the lake and looking out at the skyline, as seen in a pretty poor quality photo below:

After our dinner at the pizza place, we went back to the hotel, only to run into 2 of the legends from the US branch of the company, Brian and Brandon, who were at the hotel bar. After a couple of drinks (I decided to take it very easy, as I'm horrendously jet-lagged and really don't understand the point in going hard on a Monday night with a bunch of guys when you need to work at 8:00am the next morning), Jacky and Brian decided they wanted to play pool. So we walked through the dodgiest part of town about 2miles in order to get to the nearest pool hall. Which was essentially this horribly grimy combination of a jazz club/pool hall/crack den/Dongguan. Really weird place. And the walk was just unbelievable. The fact that people tell me to make sure to be safe in China is pretty laughable--Atlanta seems to be infinitely more likely to get you stabbed, robbed, or killed than anywhere I've been in China--even freaking Dongguan! So the next time someone tells you to be safe when visiting a developing country, tell them to look at where you're coming from! If you can survive a major US city, you can survive anywhere!

So anyway, that's about it from the flight over to Atlanta. Earned another 10,000 or so frequent flier miles, carried $9,999 into the United States, saved my company several thousand dollars by being United Premier and allowing us to not miss our flight, and had lunch with my mom and grandmother in Chicago during a 3.5 hour layover. All in a day's work, really. Will be meeting up with one of my best friends from HS/university, Bryan, who now lives in Atlanta, tomorrow afternoon.

More to come from the other side of the world

Photo of the Day--February 27, 2012

OK, so I had some time this afternoon to crank out another post which will be automatically posted tomorrow morning at the time of my flight taking off from Hong Kong to Chicago. This post is actually quite appropriate, given my planned activities tomorrow of flying across the Pacific Ocean.

See, I have 4 hours in Chicago before I head to Atlanta. I would love to see my Mom and Grammy in the airport for a couple of hours before flying out, and this should, in theory, be very doable. However, I'm not 100% sure of the process for flying into the US then having a domestic connection--I'm about 95% sure I need to go through customs, pick up my checked bags, recheck them, and all that. Which, of course, is a practice that I have not encountered anywhere else. Because the US is really cool, efficient, and not paranoid at all about terrorism like that. Anyway, so I was trying to look online at the exact process that I will be going through at O'Hare on Monday. I consequently came across the O'Hare Airport Wikitravel article. This article was incredibly harsh. The author had clearly been abused as a child, because the amount of spite dripping from his/her every word was just shocking. Among the most grievous-"This is no Changi (Singapore--my parenthesis, not theirs), no Kansai; in other words, it's nobody's favorite airport." Just to make things very clear--I would bet every penny I have that I have flown to many, many more airports than the person that wrote this post. And I assure you, O'Hare is indeed my favorite airport, you clod.

Now let's just establish this right now: I am not biased towards the United States. I am about as far from you can get from one of those idiots from the US who goes abroad preaching the gospel of George Bush, or Barack Obama, or Ronald Reagan, or the greatness of the new quadruple cheeseburger supreme with extra helpings of death from McDonald's, or the glory of Wal-Mart coming into China with their shuttle busses and destroying the microeconomies of fringe cities just so the Walton family can earn another few million dollars per hour.

But I do love O'Hare Airport more than any other airport on this planet. And while a small part of that probably is bias due to me just loving my hometown of Chicago, a large part of it is just that O'Hare is the freaking nuts (side note: I use the phrase "the nuts" pretty often in conversation with 2 of my best friends from HS/uni, Dan and Steve. It is a phrase indicating the best possible hand in poker, but we use it so much in the context of something being "good" that it's lost all meaning. I'm going to start using it in my blog. So from here on out, anything that's "the nuts" means very good). So anyway! O'Hare is the freaking nuts. Where else in the world can you find a massive underground tunnel taking you underneath the runway, complete with neon lights and moving walkways? Where else in the world can you find such a perfect compliment of really sleek, space-age architecture juxtaposed onto the very midwestern feel of Illinois? Where else can you find an airport which appeared in such iconic films as "Home Alone"?? What other airport code makes as little sense as O'Hare=ORD? (Though the origin of this does in fact make perfect sense--O'Hare was initially called Orchard Field, hence ORD. But nowadays no one knows this, except the 5 readers of this blog).

Furthermore, all I ever hear about from people badmouthing O'Hare are how every flight is delayed. Well, I have flown into/out of this airport literally dozens of times, and I'm pretty sure I've had like 2 delays. And yes, I understand that if the stats on on-time vs. delayed departures indicate a lot of flights are delayed, then there are indeed a lot of delayed flights, but I'm just saying, this is not a problem I have encountered ever, really.

Anyway, I'm beginning to realize that this blog post is pretty pointless, I'm basically just ranting aimlessly about how O'Hare doesn't suck, so I guess I'll just end it here. Photo of the day is not one of my own, but one I found on said Wikitravel site of O'Hare airport. Does THIS:

look like the crappiest airport in the world? Didn't think so! More to come from Atlanta (via the greatest airport in the world)

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 25, 2012

Dongguan. Inarguably the most bizarre, messy, and completely indescribable city I have ever seen. Having only spent about 18 hours there, I can't decide if I want to quit my job and move to some dodgy apartment block in Dongguan...or never go back. This is how it went down--

So we took the train from Shenzhen to Dongguan Station. The first place we went in Dongguan was the McDonald's in the train station. As I mentioned yesterday, I'd heard a lot about rampant prostitution in Dongguan. We walked into the McDonald's, grabbed a table, and within literally 2 minutes, a ~15 year old girl at the next table just asked us "Can we have talk?" Now in this situation, I would usually just be like, "meh, what's the harm in a chat?" and just see what the heck she wanted to talk about. But before a word could be uttered by me, John said, with a mouth full of Big Mac, "I am eating." And that was the end of that. Time in Dongguan: 6 minutes. Prostitutes encountered: 1. Anyway, so we were at Dongguan station. Our hotel was in Dongguan. We assumed, therefore, that the station we arrived at would be at the very least, in the same city as our hotel, by virtue of it being in Dongguan. Bad assumption. Upon walking outside and showing cabs our address, the going rate was 150 yuan, or about $23US. This is an obscene amount of money to pay for a cab in China. Like, a 2-hour cab fare. So we said screw that, and asked around a bit in terrible Chinese where our hotel was. We found a kid who spoke good English, who informed us that our hotel was a 1.5 hour car ride from here, and that we were in Dongguan, not Dongguan City. What. The. Hell. It should also be noted that this was the only time, ever, that I have felt truly unsettled/borderline unsafe in China. This place was dodge. Like, worse than any part of Southeast Asia I've been to that isn't called Manila or Jakarta. So sketchy.

So we got into a cab. And drove for 1.5 hours. From Dongguan Station. To Dongguan. Anyway, so we finally arrived at the hotel, to find a beautiful, as-advertised 5-star place. Really good stuff. The room was definitely not like a 5-star western hotel, but the building, location, and everything else was really nice, and the room was certainly not bad at all. And apparently, there was a random Indian man named Simplicio Egipto, who spoke fluent English and fluent Chinese, working the front desk. As you do.

After putting everything safely away into the room (certainly not going to be walking around Dongguan with passports, western bank cards, etc.), we ended up heading out into the city. For awhile we wandered, had a few beers, and tried to soak in the place. Which, as it were, is still being built. As in, the sidewalks are basically like walking through a minefield, or alternatively something like I would imagine the moon's surface is like--just large craters and mounds of dirt and piles of concrete slabs (which, of course, there are on the moon) that will, eventually, become a sidewalk. Good thing I wasn't wearing sandals. That would have been inconvenient! It turns out, also, that Dongguan, despite being a city of 10 million people, has no metro system. So basically we were forced to take cabs anywhere, which, really, was pretty fine, given that cab meters started at 6 yuan (~$1) and went up remarkably slowly. It was like <$4 to get anywhere.

We ended up at this street which is very appropriately named "Bar Street". I don't even know how to really properly sum up this crazy, crazy place. Basically, it was a mix of lots of Russian prostitutes, Chinese men looking for Russian prostitutes, lots of Chinese women (many of them prostitutes) and 2 white guys named John and Blaine, wondering why the hell they were in Dongguan. We met this really random group of Chinese people, one of whom was involved in the hardware industry with Sherwin Williams paint, so we chatted a bit about that over a good deal of Jack Daniel's. As the night continued, things got quite messy, and after taking a cab back to our hotel together, I somehow lost John. What? Yeah, we got to the hotel and all of a sudden John was gone. So I gave him a call. And he had no idea what part of town he was in. But it wasn't near our hotel (also, should be noted, our hotel was like 40 stories...so you could see it from quite far away).

Eventually I just went to bed, assuming John would return from wherever he was at some point throughout the night. This was as good an assumption as the one about Dongguan Station being in Dongguan. I awoke the next morning to find that John was not, in fact, in the hotel room. His bed remained completely made, so he hadn't been back at any point. I was, at the very least, quite sure he hadn't gotten involved with anything too seedy, as he's not a scumbag, and he has a wonderful girlfriend, but even so...bit iffy to find that your friend was apparently homeless last night in Dongguan.

I gave him a call to find that he was in "Southeast Asia". That is to say, he was in an 88 yuan ($15) per night hostel in a very, very shady part of town. Nowhere near the hotel. Well isn't that just peachy. So I went downstairs, found mad-dog Simplicio Egipto, and had him explain to John's cab driver where the hotel was. In his fluent Chinese. We never did find out where he had been exactly, why he had been there in the first place, or why there was an Indian man named Simplicio working at a hotel in Dongguan, China.

Our plan going into the trip was to do some sightseeing during the day, but we sort of came to the realization--there are no real sights to see in Dongguan, and furthermore, the city is so vast and so lacking of any public transport that, realistically, the few things worth seeing would be really inconvenient to get to. So we went to KFC. After enjoying some of the colonel's finest at one of the stranger KFC's I've ever been in, we started walking in some direction. John, struggling from last night, decided to hock a pretty substantial loogie onto the sidewalk. Now it should be noted, this is completely acceptable, common, and just standard in China. Chinese people do this ALL THE TIME. But, because this was Dongguan, and we had just had the most bizarre night of our lives, an enormous black woman walking by said "Ewww!"

Imagine that--you're in a pretty freaking Chinese part of China. You do something that's really Chinese/acceptable. And a...big? black? woman, who just happens to be in Dongguan, just says "Ewww!" It's possible that people reading this who haven't been to China won't really appreciate how unbelievable that is, but for anyone who has been, just one of the strangest things imaginable.

At this point we simply decided "well, we've seen part of Dongguan. Should we just cab it back to Shenzhen?" And in a move so cheeky that we had to pat ourselves on the back, we went straight up to a cab driver and just said "Women keyi qu Shenzhen ma?"--"Are we able to go to Shenzhen?" I gave him my business card, which has my office address in Chinese, and to our amazement, after a lot of Chinese that neither of us understood, he indicated that yes, he could take us to Shenzhen. For 120 yuan ($19). Now for those who recall, the cab ride from Dongguan Station to Dongguan City was 140 yuan. This is like double the distance. So we knew that we were going nowhere near Shenzhen. But it was also 11:30am on a Saturday in Dongguan, and we really didn't have any other pressing engagements, so into the car we got.

After about 15-20 minutes, it became pretty obvious that we were, in fact, going North. Shenzhen is South. Oh god...

We ended up in Shilong. Shilong is a random city a bit further North from Dongguan. He dropped us off at Shilong main train station, where, thankfully, we were able to get a train to Shenzhen. The strangeness did not stop there, however. Shortly after buying our tickets, John and I went to grab a drink/snack for the train ride. As we were walking back into the train station, John realized he had lost his train ticket. We started searching through his things, when all of a sudden out of nowhere, some small Chinese man walked up to John and handed him his ticket. Needless to say, this man was an absolute legend.

So anyway, that's the story of Dongguan. Having spent a whopping 18 hours there, I still can't quite understand how:

A) A city of 10 million has no metro

B) A city of 10 million has no airport

C) A city of 10 million can have the nearest major train station be like 45 minutes away

D) Why did we go to Dongguan?

Again, I thought it was a really interesting and bizarre place, but for anyone who read this blog with a critical eye, you will (correctly) point out--we went to Dongguan for some Jack Daniel's and KFC. And in John's case, an impromptu trip to Southeast Asia. Overall a really hilarious and worthwhile trip, and John put it quite well when he said "I need a night out like that every once in awhile to remind me why I love living in China so much".

And how right he is. Regarding the photo--nothing worth photographing in Dongguan can be captured with a photograph. That is, there is nothing to really see there, it's more the completely different/backward/insane nature of everything there. So unfortunately, today there is no photo! (Appropriate post title, of course). However, I am certainly a better writer than photographer, so it's not as though it's any great loss.

So that's Dongguan. Remember, if you ever go there, don't go to Dongguan train station. It's really freaking far from Dongguan.