Zaijian Means See You Again

Prior to leaving China, I was asked by my company to create a blog entry for their website. The following is the blog entry that I created:

The typical phrase to use here in China to say goodbye to someone is “zaijian,” which literally translates into “see you again.” My 3 year assignment in Shanghai, China is coming to an end in April, and needless to say, I will be saying “zaijian” a whole lot over my last couple days and weeks. It has been an amazing 3 years here in China, both personally and professionally, and there are going to be a lot of things that I will miss when my time over here comes to an end.

To put things into perspective, when I arrived in Shanghai just over 3 years ago, I worked in GT’s small correspondent firm, Pan Cheng Zhang, as the only non-Hong Kong expat in the office. In an office of about 70 people, I kind of stood out and many of my colleagues didn’t know what to think of the new tubby white guy in their office that sat by the microwave. Day after day I had the luxury of having my colleagues cook their lunches in the microwave right next to me, so I got to get a whiff of the various different Chinese style lunches being cooked, sometimes they smelled amazing, other times…is pungent a safe adjective to use?

After a year and a half of sitting next to the microwave and becoming a second hand expert on “what Chinese leftovers cook well in a microwave,” we merged with another local firm in Shanghai, Jiahua, and moved into a brand new office in a prominent building in the middle of the city…and happily my seat was no where near the microwave. By this time there were 3 other US secondees in the Shanghai office so I wasn’t the only “qiguai meiguoren” - strange American. Since then our office has grown, we gained a couple of other foreigners and we are in the midst of another merger with the new GTI China member firm, Zhonghua.

When asked “what is the number one thing that I am going to miss”, the people we have encountered takes the top of the list. From my gracious colleagues in the Shanghai and other China offices, to our friends, to just other random people that kept popping up in my life, these 3 years have been a great experience to meet new and different people. I am especially going to miss the everyday crowds piling into the bus and subway for my commute, I’ll miss my flower guy who sticks around at a corner near my house to sell me flowers to give to my wife ($4USD for a bouquet of flowers is something I will definitely miss) and the construction guys that aren’t wearing any shoes while they are jack hammering the road, the random people who run to take pictures of our two kids as we walk around…as if we are important, the people who comment that my English is better than the governor of California’s English (which is good since he is Austrian), the guys who carry open canisters of gasoline with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, the tailor who makes tailor made suits for a small portion of what you would pay in the US, everyone who shouts “Hello” at us in English while we are meandering around town, the guys riding around with 10 feet of trash piled high on a two wheel trailer attached to their bike, the people who ride around on their motor scooters in the morning with a freshly killed pig strewn over the back of their bike, and of course all the people who were so accommodating to us when the only way we could communicate with each other was with sign language because of the language barrier.

My family and I have established a bunch of great relationships here in Shanghai that we will never forget, and we have been mesmerized by the outpouring of appreciation that has been shown to us as we have begun our transition back to the US. Ultimately, my hope is that when I say “zaijian” it is not out of the common courtesy of saying goodbye, rather it is for its true meaning of, “see you again.”

ill'n for some Grill'n

Sorry about the delay in posting, but we have been in the process of moving from China back to the US and there are a bunch of things involved with moving halfway across the world. There are a couple of stories that I want to catch you all up on before getting current so some of this might seem outdated, but I still think it is interesting.

One of the things we had been working on before leaving China was a party to say good-bye to some of our friends here in Shanghai. We decided it would be fun to use the grills in our apartment complex while the weather is nice here in Shanghai (at least we are hoping the weather is nice on Saturday). The only problem is that in a complex that has thousands of residents, they only have one grilling area, which translates into there being heavy demand for the grill. As a result, I decided to go and sit outside the management office for 1 hour before it opened to ensure that I would be the first person there to reserve the grill (you can only reserve the grill 1 week in advance, so I had to go the Saturday before we were having the party to wait). As I was sitting there waiting, a guard came by and opened the door to the management office, but did not turn on the lights, it was before opening hours so I assumed it was not open. After about another 20 minutes another resident comes by and opens up the door to go in. As she opened the door, I jumped up and went in with her and approached the desk (I walked a little faster to get in front of her). This lady also wanted to reserve the grill for the same time as me and tried to explain that she was the first one to open the door…too bad I was there an hour before she was.

To make a long story short, I tried to be nice to her and was thinking about sharing the grilling area (fits probably about 50 people, we have about 60 people coming), but she started to get disgruntled with me, so I explained to the worker, in my broken Chinese, I was the first person, so I get first priority on reserving the grill. The worker didn’t want to start a fight, but after I said that he recognized that, indeed, I was the first person, so I go the grill.

Basically it took more effort to reserve the grill then it would to buy Superbowl Tickets...now if the weather can cooperate it should be great time.

Guest Of Honor

Prior to leaving China, I had been feeling really appreciated by my Company, before I left they really made it known that they appreciated what I had done in China. On one of my last nights before leaving, I had the last of the 3 going away shin-digs, the last one being the night that the managers and partners of the firm took me out. While I have been a spectacle at the other annual dinners, mostly because I have typically been the only white person at the parties, I was basically the guest of honor at this dinner. Never having left a Company in China, I didn’t know that as the guest of honor at a going away dinner, everyone, individually, comes around to toast you. This means they individually get to perform a toast once during the night, the person being honored gets toasted by every single person. The idea of being toasted can range from a sip of alcohol to drinking down a shot for each toast. Being the foreigner, I guess the expectation is that I can really keep a lot of alcohol down, so mostly everyone was coming by expecting me to drink it down...and we were not drinking wine spritzers. I had to slow the toasts down a bunch of times so that I wouldn’t lose my faculties (to note, I held everything together the whole night despite all the toasts), but ultimately it was a very fun night.

The Worst Guide Dog Ever

I had a meeting with a client in another part of the downtown area of the city. The taxi dropped me off across the street from the client's building, so as I waited for the light to turn green for me to cross, I saw a blind man with a dog coming towards me. I stepped forward out of his way and stood next to the street light pole. Well I heard the blind man start to speak to the dog a little bit more and then an old lady stepped in front of me and looked at me then at the dog with a concerned stare. Taking note of that stare, I turned around to note that the dog was basically peeing on me. I believe the dog was trying to pee on the pole, but in fact, the dog must have been as blind as the owner because the dog was trying to pee on me. If this was a seeing person, I probably would have been mad at the person, but being that the guy was blind, I didn't take offense to his dog peeing on me. Luckily the dog not only missed the pole but mostly missed peeing on me, which makes me conclude that it is probably not the best dog to be guiding a blind guy around.

Finger lickn'...wait a minute

On my long ride out from the Guangzhou Airport to the client location in a smaller city named Kaiping, I enjoy looking out the window of the van to take in all the sites of the countryside all during the ride in between Guangzhou and Kaiping. Once we arrived in Kaiping I noticed that there was a place that very closely resembled KFC, but upon further investigation I noticed that the name was MFC. Not sure what the M in MFC stands for (although rumor on the internet states that it stands for McDonalds???), but the store's outside along with all its signs really closely resembled KFC and it appeared that its product offering also closely resembled that of KFC. So I'm snot sure what that means for a future lawsuit, but maybe the next time I am coming into town, I can convince the driver to stop so that I can get a taste of the good ole' general's MFC.

I think I may be a part of a cartel....

Last year there were some milk scandals over here in China and many people stopped drinking the milk here locally for a good amount of time. Prior to this scandal, Renee and I had been looking for the best milk available for our kids as we always thought the local milk had a weird taste. After talking with friends, we found a brand of milk named NGF that I believe is produced out of Ningbo. It is the same milk that is used by Starbucks and that Starbucks continued to use throughout the whole scandal last year. This is what solidified it for me that this was the only local milk that I wanted to buy for my kids, if Starbucks is willing to serve it to millions of customers, then my two kids should be okay.

Anyway, there are only two ways to buy the milk, either buy it in the foreign grocery store or from someone (like a coffee shop owner) who already purchases the milk. The price in the grocery store is twice that of what the actual retail price to shop owners is, so luckily we had a connection with a shop owner and were able to order the milk via this owner. So it started with getting milk for my kids and then people started trying the milk at our house and hearing about our arrangement, so they asked us to get them milk and now I think we are getting it for 4 or 5 different families. In fact we take orders for the milk from friends and call it in to our point person and then once we get the milk we call our friends, they come by, we exchange money and they take their milk. I think the basic makeup of this arrangement mirrors that of a formal cartel, if not at least an informal drug dealer on the street corner. I feel like I should get extra inventory of the milk and start selling it for a profit to try to make my business legit, but I haven't taken it that far yet. I also might be under this impression because I have been watching a lot of The Wire lately…this is most likely why I feel like I need to hire some young'ens and hoppers.

Morning Exercises

So I still have to update you all for my trip to the Bahamas and my trip to Xian. Don't worry its coming, but I had to get this video up as I think it is important for all the world to see. I have told many people of the wonders of China, but unfortunately many people do not believe some of the stories I tell. So I was lucky enough to be able to take this video in Xian with my camera (yes it is a Matt G Original Production), it is some morning Tai Chi exercises that may seem a little unusual to those of you in the US (although I have been told that his technic is flawless...whatever that's supposed to mean).

Dawn of a New Day

As a part of my assignment here, my US Company has asked me and the other US people in China to begin to put in blog entries together about our experiences in China. As such, here is one of the entries that I put together:

People would say that I am a morning person, mostly because my alarm tends to sound sometime between 4:30 and 5 in the morning and I can jump out of bed without needing to hit the snooze and leave the house wide eyed without the aid of any caffeine.

It is at this hour that, in my opinion, Shanghai is at its best. My apartment is close to Shanghai's famous Century Park so many mornings I like to get up and go for a bike ride around the park. It is at this time that I get to experience a side of Shanghai that many people don't get to see…mostly because they aren't up until after 6:30 in the morning.

As I start my ride, the air is cool and thick in early November. I pass by the taxis lined up outside my apartment complex with a group of taxi drivers all out smoking and talking with each other hoping that their first customer of the morning will give them a good fare (maybe to one of the two airports here in town). As I get going I pass by the morning street sweepers, people in orange coats sweeping the sidewalks and streets with their brooms made of bamboo shoots and tree branches. A friend of mine once compared Shanghai to Disneyland because the trash and leaves that are on the ground one day are mysteriously gone the next…I guess this friend is never up as early as I am to see the army of orange coated people sweeping away the previous day's mess.

As I approach Century Park there is a group of ladies on the side of the road near a construction site cooking up some various different breakfast foods for all the workers as they will be coming to work within the hour. The pungent smells of their cooking radiates through the morning air. As I start my ride around Century Park there are groups of elderly Chinese coming together to start their morning Tai Chi, a very traditional internal martial art that is practiced for health reasons. As I go over bridges there are old men standing at the bridges yelling out at the top of the lungs, I am not sure exactly what this does, but I guess it brings some sort of balance to that person. I also pass by elderly people who are walking backwards and clapping their hands, it almost seems like they do this because they feel like maybe they can turn back the hands of time…and in the calm of the morning it really does feel like one could.

As I round the last turn I am met by a man on a motorbike with two freshly killed pigs strewn over the back of his bike delivering the pigs to the local market to be butchered and sold later this day. As I finish up my ride, the city seems to be finally waking up with various laborers heading off to work on their bikes and the sun cresting over the horizon. It's exciting to know that in these mornings I get to experience so much of China…before most people have even opened their eyes to start the day.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

My family and I have been in China for just over 2 ½ years and as of yesterday I had taken basically every form of reasonable transportation offered by China, car, subway, short ferry (across a river), long ferry (from Hong Kong to China), bus, bicycle, motorcycle, airplane and magnetic levitation train. The only things left on my transportation agenda was the ever so famous rickshaw and then the not as famous regular train.

Well today, I was able to knock one of those things out. Today I took a train from Shanghai to the Changzhou; the trip took a little over 1 hour. The ride was good and smooth, we took one of the new D trains that is a little higher speed (and slightly more expensive) then the regular trains, I think our top speed was around 175 km/h or about 115 miles per hour. For just under 8 US dollars, I got to sit in first class, which was nice…for a train. Anyway, now that my Chinese train virginity has been taken away from me, I hope that my family and I can begin to explore the areas around Shanghai via train as it is by far a much cheaper alternative to having to hire a driver for a day. By the way, Changzhou is not a place to really put on your itineraries if you ever come to China, it really has nothing going on with the exception of one large pagoda in the middle of town and a temple on a hill, but you can see those things almost anywhere.

There are two of them?????

So do you remember this post??? Well there appears to be a second subway humping offender. It just so happens that I was on my way home after work yesterday when the subway started clearing out. It just so happened that in my general vicinity was a middle aged local man along with a couple of college/school aged girls. All the sudden the train started moving, the man closed his eyes (to really soak in the subway atmosphere) and began to sway his hips back and forth. This second offender appeared to be desiring to have relations with someone, so he decided to take it out on my good friend, the air. Yes, the man started to hump the imaginary air. Having already experienced this, I remained unphased, but the people around him began to clear out pretty fast. I mean, is the air really that good looking???

One World, One Opinion

Just in case you didn't know, the Olympic slogan is "One World, One Dream," so now you know the play on words in my title.

With just over a day before the Olympics begin here in China, I'm sure that all you readers out there (wherever you are) are being inundated with articles about Beijing, the Olympics, pollution, human rights issues well basically all the different publications are all saying the same thing. Actually, the most interesting thing about it, is most of these media outlets have sent a couple of journalists out to China and after only spending a couple of days in China, they seem to know everything about the whole country. Now don't get me wrong, is Beijing polluted? Yes. Does China have some human rights issues? Yes. But for all you people out there who have never been to China and are just getting your opinions of things over here based someone's article after spending 48 hours in a country of over 1 billion people and which is, area wise, significantly larger then the US, I would ask you to take a step back and think about who is authoring that article. I mean, my opinion of what China is like has changed significantly over the course of the 2 years that I have been here and the bottom line is that even what I think is only based on my limited experiences and the things that I have seen.

If I told you there was someone from Europe who visited America for the first time, specifically New York City for 2 days and then started writing an article about what America is like and what Americans are like, I think you would agree that there is no way that he/she can write a half decent article about what things are like in the US or what the people are like in the US based on their 48 hours of experience.

Again, I am not denying that there are things wrong with this country and how things work, that is obvious by all the articles that are coming out and saying the same things. But it is probably in your best interest to take some of the highly opinionated articles with a grain of salt because most of these journalists are not really experts. Actually, just keep to the sports reporting and I'm sure you'll be okay.

Thems Be Fighn' Words

Basically, in the first two years of being here in China, I rarely saw fights break out (actually I can't remember ever seeing on). Then, all of the sudden, over the past couple of months I have been seeing fights breaking out in various different places. I have already mentioned in a previous post the fight that broke out on the subway.

The next fight that I witnessed was at a bank when I was trying to pay Renee's taxes. This was between one of the guards at the bank and a customer. It got to the point that the customer flicked the hat off the guard and then punches began to fly. It was actually pretty interesting because all the people in the place seemed to keep minding their own business even though these two guys were going at it. Finally another guard and the guy's wife were able to break things up, but not before choice words were exchanged.

The next fight I was witness to was in between some real estate agents that were trying to get customers. This was actually the most interesting fight of them all. To give some quick background, landlords can list with multiple agents and they can list their properties at different prices, so actually it is even more of a competition between agents here to get the places rented or sold because you don't just list with one agent. Moving on, it appeared that one group of agents standing on one corner of the street took offense to another agent passing by them and the 3 agents at the corner began beating on the 1 agent passing by. Seeing that he was outnumbered, the 1 agent ran off into his office. I started to ride off thinking that it was over when all of the sudden the one agent emerged with 5 or 6 other agents from his office. This is when the brawl began. Now that the 3 agents were outnumbered, the 5 or 6 began doing some WWE moves on these 3 guys including one of the agents picking up their portable white board and slamming it over the other guy's back (classic) while two other guys stomped on one guys back and face. Renee and I had bought some groceries so we had to get home to get them in the fridge, but the fight was breaking up as we were leaving.

I am not writing this to say that China is becoming more violent, it could have just been that I was in the right place at the right time, but more then anything I am just noting how weird it is that in 3 months I have seen 3 fights, whereas the previous 24 months I saw 0.

Soulfood in Shanghai

I really really hope this post doesn't come up for anyone who is truly looking for soulfood in Shanghai, because if you are, then I'm sorry, I can't help.

Even though more and more American style foods are becoming available in the grocery stores here, the items are fairly expensive since they are imported from the States (not to mention the 17% customs tax added to it). As a result, Renee has been trying to make things from scratch. These things include homemade corn tortillas, homemade biscuits, homemade cornbread (no, this is not a picture that i took), homemade chicken pot pie, etc. In fact, while our domestic helper, Fen, cooks Chinese for us most of the week, she has begun to pick up some recipes from Renee and try to refine some of her cooking to include western items that we like. Hence, when I look back on this week's array of foods that I sat down to eat at home, I noticed that we had quite the American spread. Our meals included such Southern comfort favorites such as fried chicken, ribs (Chinese style), and biscuits and gravy. Throw in a spattering of homemade Gung Bao Chicken (in the US it is referred to as Kung Pao Chicken) along with rice, noodles, and some vegetables and I guess we are not really suffering for good food over here.

So if you happen to have found this posting by a google search, just come on by and you might have a chance of having some good soulfood, you might even have luck and come when we are serving Chicken Fried Cat...it's da bomb.

He's a loafer

I'm ignoring the fact that I have not been posting to my blog over this past month. There is really no excuse for that. So for the 1 or 2 readers who would still consider reading my blog, I thank you for sticking through.

On my way home today from work, while I was standing in the subway, a guy came on and began eating a loaf of bread. When I say eating a loaf, I want you to reference the picture below (the internet is crazy, the lady in the picture below is basically eating a loaf of bread that is the same size, shape and probably brand as the guy on the subway today, I know that the picture is terrible, but look at the size of the loaf!!!). The bread is not sliced, so you are basically just pounding a loaf of white bread...mmmm...tasty. The best part was that as this guy was going to town on his loaf of bread, the person next to him was practically coughing out one of his lungs...which didn't phase the bread loaf guy, he was tearing into the bread like it was a turkey leg from Disney World. I wonder if you go into some kind of bread coma after you eat a whole loaf?

Loudest Moment of Silence Ever

On Monday at 2:28pm, 1 week after the large earthquake in the Sichuan province, China had a national 3 minutes of silence to commemorate the 3 minutes that the earthquake shook the region. In typical Chinese fashion, all the people were asked to be silent and remember those lost or still buried, but the encouraged all trains, cars, boats, and other vehicles to sound their horns and they sounded all the emergency sirens throughout the cities. So the moment of silence ended up being really really loud. Now I am not an expert in Chinese culture, but I do know that point of having the noise is to help the dead in their journey in the after life or something in this realm, so while it may not make sense to have all the noise during the moment of silence, it does make sense when you put it in the context of Chinese culture.

My earthquake experience

Today a very large earthquake hit the central part of China. Reports of the magnitude are anywhere from 7.5 to 7.8 on the initial quake. While it is still early, reports are that it caused quite a lot of damage throughout different parts of China, as such, I don't want to make any light hearted comments as it appears to have been pretty big.

At around 2:30pm Monday afternoon, I was in my office in Shanghai on the 45th floor of our building reading a document. All of the sudden I felt a little naucious, reaching for my water I noticed it was swishing back and forth in the bottle. Thinking that I was just dizzy or light headed I didn't think anything of it. About 5 minutes later a couple of colleagues of mine came over and asked me if I felt something, I just told them that I felt dizzy and didn't think much of it. One of the colleagues from California said she thought it felt like the building was swaying back and forth and said it felt similar to an earthquake. Upon further investigation (looking at http://www.usgs.gov/), we found out that an approximate 7.8 earthquake hit about 500 miles away from us at around 2:30. Let me just clarify that I truly felt dizzy, I really saw my water swishing, this isn't something that I made up after people began to talk about it. It was my first, ever, experience with an earthquake and it felt weird. Not being on the ground, I can't say that I felt a shaking experience, but being on the 45th floor, the tremors (some saying in Shanghai they were as high as 5.7) definitely made me feel like I had vertigo or motion sickness...and I was just sitting at my desk reading.

So I can say now that I was in an earthquake (even if I wasn't right where it hit), but it was definitely an experience. Also, I watched Cloverfield tonight, which probably isn't the best choice of movie after swaying back and forth in a building and being that our apartment is on the 20th floor, but oh well, I can't say that I think any big monsters will attack Shanghai anytime soon. This is probably also why this blog entry seems more like a short testimony of sorts (darn Hollywood getting in my head).

If you think there is nothing wrong with this picture then….

You are probably a racist. This is a famous brand of toothpaste here in China (and in Asia as I soon found out) with an English name of Darlie. The last time I saw an old timey depiction of a black man in a top hat was in those movies from the 30's and 40's where black people entertained white people in tuxedos and top hats and were basically portrayed as being these side shows for the wealthy white people of America. I mean, even with the big smile, how does an African in a tuxedo and a top hat encourage the Chinese to buy this brand of toothpaste….and what kind of racist toothpaste name is Darlie?

On my way home

The other day I was on my way home and there were two things that happened that was not usual with my normal commute. First, when I was stuffed into the subway, a fight broke out. This was the first fight that I have seen here in China that has come to fisticuffs. The guys went at it for a couple of swings before they got tangled up in the hundreds of people that were stuffed into the subway (it was during rush hour so they didn't have much room to swing at each other). They were escorted off of subway at the next stop prior to anything big breaking out.

So I thought that seeing my first fight on a subway would be weird enough when all of the sudden as I was about 1 block away from my house, I saw this girl doing some "interesting" dance moves. I thought she was just showing off, but she kept doing different dance moves. My next thought was that she was listening to some kicking music that got her dance grooves going. Turns out that she was not listening to any music, rather, it must have been the cool music in her head that was making her bust a move…and when I say bust a move, I mean I don't think she knew how little rhythm she had.

Oh well, just another day in China.

China: Where the news isn't alwasy right

I was reading in our local Shanghai newspaper this morning that things have apparently calmed down in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and that things are starting to get better after the riots that occurred last Friday. In fact they are reporting that only 13 people have died as a result of the riots last Friday. That's very interesting because when I go to western websites it appears that the Chinese Media forgot to mention that there have been a string of violent and non-violent protests throughout the world on Chinese Embassies since the Friday riots. It also appears that they forgot to mention that the death toll has been reported as actually being closer to 20 people or as many as 80 people (as reported by some Tibetan news source). Finally, the western news along with the US consulate is reporting that violence is still an issue in that region and the region should be avoided.

Hmmm… so who am I to believe, well I think I would lean towards western media on this one. While news from that region is not easy to get even for the western media, things tend to get stretched to the point of not being true in the Chinese Media. Just something I thought seems to be relevant now that might be of interest to you readers. Now back to filling out brackets.

I can't believe they stole my....

Last week I went down to my bike to get it ready for a family bike ride. When I got downstairs to check on it I found that something was missing. While many of you will think that my bike was stolen, in fact, my bike was safely still in place. To my surprise the thing that was missing was my bike lock. That's right, the perpetrator decided to leave my bike and instead take the significantly less value bike lock. First, the bike was definitely locked up because we only have one key for the lock, and when the lock locks up, the key comes out. So with key in hand, I had to just stare at my bike thinking how would someone have taken the bike lock without the key, and then my thought went towards why someone would break my lock off and not take my bike? The only thing that I could think of is that it is truly much easier to steal my bike lock out of our apartment compound then it is a bike since the guards stop all people on bikes before they leave to make sure everything is okay. Oh well, they can take all my locks as long as they keep my bike.