Foreign Exchange

The banking system in China is a mystery to be revelled at. According to a book on China banking that I have the big 4 banks (Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial, Agricultural and Construction) have only 1600 customers per branch on average. Most branches that I've seen have somewhere between 5 and 100 staff so if you assume an average of 20 per branch that's 80 customers per employee.

So, you might wonder when you're 53 rd in the queue for a teller and 3 out of 5 windows are closed, what the hell do all of these bank staff do?

Possibly they're out creating ingenious banking products. I did talk to Bank of China about credit cards and they explained that they have two varieties:

1) an RMB based card that can only be used in China for which you had to pay a 20000 RMB deposit, then you could spend money as a normal credit card up to the preset limit which may, if you're very good, be over 20000 RMB
2) an RMB based card that can only be used abroad but not in China. This didn't have a deposit but you could only spend money that you have previously deposited in the account.

Yes, I know option 2 is a debit card, not a credit card, but they kept denying this when I pushed the point.

So, these are of no use then and it's hard to imagine anyone wanting one.

Savers are allegedly still predominantly stuffing money under mattresses rather than into banks, people tend to borrow money from relatives rather than banks (and my own experience is that banks don't want to lend money to you anyway) so, what do all these people do?

I had thought that today would be a good day to go to the bank (lots of people are still off work from the holidays) and indeed the queue was very short. As I'm about to pay for my apartment fit-out I've transferred money from the UK to China and need to convert it to RMB.

Normally you can convert USD 10,000 but today, I was told, only USD 1,000. Why? Because today is 双休日 (the weekend). But it's not the weekend, it's Thursday" just got a blank look. The answer to the next question: "When can I change USD 10,000 was", of course, 星期日(Sunday).

OK, I can handle the fact this is part of the bizarre weekend swapping arrangement (the public holiday is only 3 days long (1st, 2nd and 3rd) but they make it a full 7 by swapping weekend days around the holiday with working days so a lot of people will be off 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th but will work 30th September and 8th October to compensate for the two lost weekdays.

What I can't quite get my head round is the fact that what I was asking for was for a value in GBP in the computer be reduced, and a value in RMB be increased. No cash was harmed in the making of this transaction. So why at the "weekend" would you only be able to convert 1/10th of the amount you could do this coming Sunday?

I think the lack of understanding by the bank staff as to just how irritating the slow queues, form filling, manual processes and arbitrary rules truly are would be addressed if they realised that I can transfer money from the UK to Singapore and convert it from one currency to another from the comfort of my office. I guess when you're accustomed to half of your customers queueing up to deposit or withdraw huge bags of cash you just accept that each transaction could take 20 minutes.

Journalistic Marvel

I'm happy to accept improvements to this translation from anyone with better Chinese than mine...

This is a translation of the article about JP that was it yesterday's "今日早报" newspaper. Most of the 'facts' about JP are made up, I assume most of the facts about how wonderful the airport personnel are are designed to please the person who passed the photo to the journalist.

Bear in mind that Hangzhou as a city is home to 5 local TV stations, 6 regional TV stations and several newspapers that are all desparate for news (I've seen "1818 黄金眼" - the local reality news show follow the story of the lady who purchased some shoes she later deemed unsatisfactory, and got a camera crew to accompany her to the shop to watch her complain about the shoes and receive a refund). Given the potential newsworthiness of this story, I don't understand why they didn't bother finding out any of the facts about JP.

(For a quick JP update: I'm told he's doing much better today).

Air Ambulance from Hangzhou flies straight to Hong Kong

Hangzhou Border Inspection Completed Very Quickly, Young Englishman Badly Injured in Vehicle Accident Successfully Transferred to Hospital

Morning Newspaper reports that yesterday morning around 9 O’Clock a young Englishman, James Patricks, seriously injured in a traffic accident, was transported by ambulance from the Zhejiang #2 Hospital to Xiaoshan International Airport where a specialist Air Ambulance was waiting.

Border Inspection personnel rapidly processed them through the green channel. In a very quick 8 minutes the Air Ambulance had completed all inspection formalities and James successfully boarded the Air Ambulance.

The young Englishman unfortunately had a traffic accident. [note - every paragraph in this section contains an untruth]

James Patricks is 29 this year. In Mid-September, he received an invition from a friend in Hangzhou and took annual leave from work to travel alone to Hangzhou.

On September 26th, James was a passenger in a tour bus as it passed through Wen San Road and unfortunately had a traffic accident. James’ entire body suffered many injuries. His brain and vertebrae were seriously injured and he was taken to Tongde hospital.

After three hours of surgery, James’ life was temporarily no longer in danger.

On the second day, James was moved to the Zhejiang Number 2 Hospital to continue his treatment. There doctors immediately carried out an urgent examination which led to a specific plan of treatment. James was still in a state of unconsciousness but basically remained stable.

The air ambulance arrived in Hangzhou yesterday.

James’ parents on hearing of the accident immediately came to Hangzhou from England. They requested their son be relocated to Hong Kong to continue treatment because of the possibility of language barrier problems.

Zhejiang #2 Hospital Doctors did an examination and found James to be stable and able to withstand a short two hour flight so agreed to the hospital transfer.

The day before yesterday an English insurance company received an emergency application to charter the plan and immediately through a Beijing international assistance organisation contacted Golden Deer Aviation. After much coordination, Golden Deer Aviation dispatched the plane yesterday morning. The Air Ambulance rushed to Hangzhou to carry out its urgent mission.

Hangzhou Border Inspection Completed Very Quickly

On the afternoon of September 29th, the Hangzhou Border Checkpoint received a related urgent notification. According to protocol, a flight that is not a scheduled flight should apply to the Civil Aviation office of aviation for approval at least two days in advance.

Clearly there was not enough time. Because of this situatuin, the Hangzhou Border Inspection Supervisor specially approved this charter flight and requested the airport police urgently use the ‘green channel’.

Yesterday morning at 9:30, an ambulance sped to the Xiaoshan airport airport parking area. Workers carefully lifted James down. Border Inspection officials processed the papers of the entire flight crew extremely quickly. From beginning to end only 8 minutes.

20 minutes later, the special plane took off as scheduled, carrying the blessings of many Chinese personnel, and sped to Hong Kong.

By the time the reported completed this article, James had already successfully arrived in Hong Kong. He is expected to be in Hong Kong for a short time for treatment and will return to England before too long.

According to airline personnel, the plane charter fee is approximately 300,000 RMB (20,000 GBP).

Hardest Post Ever...

It is very easy ranting on about various aspects of one's life but, as I've mentioned before, with a single blog that's read by family, friends, colleagues, people interested in China and people not interested in China, it's hard to work out where the line should be. I've contemplated splitting off into different blogs for different audiences and this is a perfect example of where an entirely anonymous blog where you can just scream into the aether would be lovely.

This last week has been incredibly tough on a wide variety of people who are colleagues, friends and family of JP. The sentiments of both Troubled Diva and Reluctant Nomad on this issue will give you a good idea what I'm talking about.

Our mutual friend, JP, was hit by a bus at 8pm on Tuesday outside my company's offices in Hangzhou. Since then those of us in China with JP have been going through the panic of being with him through tests, doctors conferences and staying with him 24 hours a day in intensive care. In many ways that was probably easier than the suffering of his close friends and family in the UK who will have first heard that JP had been knocked over by a bus and then been in an information vacuum waiting for the start of the next UK day to get more information.

Since then there have been highs and lows. The worry of tests, of potentially having to break bad news to loved ones and family, of being the closest thing to family he has on this side of the planet.

It was a relief for us when JP's partner, J, arrived so that at least he had some family here in China. It's hard to imagine what J was going through both with JP being incapacitated, but also in coming to China and having to deal with us.

Think about it for a second - JP had probably spent 6 months in China over the last 3 years and JP is such a fun, gregarious, friendly kind of chap that he has lots of friends here. Over the course of the first 12 hours this situation we'd organised shifts of people to spend time with JP, translate for the medical team and to communicate with the insurance company in the UK, doctors in Beijing and family back in the UK. For J to have to come into 'our' family, where he doesn't know anyone must be really rough. I can only hope we did our best to welcome him into our family at this time.

No sooner had J arrived that we got word of the doctors that work for the insurance company that they intended to airlift JP to Hong Kong to get a world-class standard of care. Of course, it's the right thing to do but a further worry for us that J was then being moved to a location where we weren't able to support him as we had been doing here. I was much relieved when D volunteered to go to Hong Kong to support him.

The last prognosis I had from a doctor was 'optimistic' so I can only hope and, from afar now, that JP proceeds with a speedy recovery. He hasn't had to have surgery which must be a good thing and I truly believe that he's now in the best place to help him recover.

I'm sure JP will be disappointed for missing the opportunity to share Hangzhou with J when he's feeling more like himself, but hopefully he will be amused by the factually challenged article from the local newspaper which doesn't exactly show him from his best side. At least he'll like the fact they say he's 29 years old...

Good luck with your recovery, JP. We're all thinking of you.

Unbusinesslike Behaviour

It has been suggested that things shouldn't surprise me after 3 years of living in China. It's true that most questions that begin with 'Why?' are probably best answered with 'Why not?' but some of the things people have done to get my business are simply crazy.

At work, we were looking to buy a new fire evacuation system. We've been using company A for some time and invited their rather effite representative to a meeting with our building manager and, despite being asked not to, proceeded to take 7 incoming calls during a 30 minute meeting - so much so that he wasn't paying any attention to anything that was being said.

At the end of the meeting, I insisted that we should find another company and get a second quote (OK, I know that's a good idea anyway but we were under a lot of time pressure), largely because I was so displeased. A few days later when both quotes came in - for the exact same make and model of equipment, company B had actually quoted a price that was 30% cheaper than company A.

So far so normal. We asked company B to come in and prepare contracts for us to sign but they came not with contracts but with news. Company A had got wind of the fact they'd been outbid, probably from the fire evacuation equipment manufacturer. Company A had asked the manufacturer not to supply to company B at all but they weren't comfortable with that so they agreed to increase the price!

I can't imagine what they were thinking but they actually told all this to Company B who told me. I can only imagine that their thinking was 'If we don't supply it at all we'll lose the sale so we'll just put the price up by 20%' but to tell the person you're ripping off out of spite (and by proxy too) seems too illogical for words.

Needless to say, we didn't buy that manufacturer's produce at all and won't be using their equipment, or the services of company A, ever again. I don't know what the Chinese solution would be, but going elsewhere is certainly a valid British reaction.

On to today.

As I mentioned before, we've been looking round kitchen showrooms for some time. One of the companies we quite liked was called Bloom. We actually sat down with them for a good half an hour a couple of months ago to get their idea of what they could do for us. Apart from the fact that we subsequently came across Wellbom kitchens that we preferred, they might have got our business. However, they've become thoroughly irritating since the day we first met them.

They ring YY up every few days and have tried:

• Ringing up and being very nice, offering all sorts of discounts that they can't quite quantify on the phone.
• Saying "We've finished the design you asked for so when are you going to come and order" - odd we thought as we hadn't got the keys so they didn't have the dimensions of the kitchen.
• Saying "We've been talking to your designer" (who they had actually managed to track down by ringing around!) "and he has told us your requirements and that you'd like to use us". Lies, all lies.
  

and so on. It's getting quite irritating so last time YY called them and said we'd decided to use Wellbom. They clearly won't give up at that though so today they've sunk to new lows and called saying "We've got two customers who have just 'returned' their Wellbom kitchens and come to buy new ones from us. You really shouldn't buy a Wellbom kitchen. We can get the customers to talk to you to tell you why"

Aside from the fact it's really quite irritating both cases seem to illustrate the fact that their actions, rather than encouraging you to buy their products are actually encouraging you to never buy anything from them ever again. I don't know if that's a British thing?

Sudden Realisation

On my drive to work earlier this week I had a particularly bad journey where I nearly ran people over on three separate occasions. Not deliberately, you understand, but three occasions where people {stepped off the kerb without looking/cycled out of a side street without stopping/weaved violently from one lane to the other/watched me approaching at 60kph and decided that I was far enough away that I'd just about be able to stop if they got in front of me/got off a bus and walked in straight line from the door across the road/etc./etc.}* so I had to {brake/swerve/brake & swerve}* to avoid killing them.

This notion that the driver of the car is always at least partly to blame for any accident seems to drive people to the verge of suicide. Some people absolutely have faith in this rule (particularly visible as the older people that flap one of their hands at you as they step into speeding traffic in a "Ha! You've got to stop!" kind of way - regardless if the laws of Physics render that an impossibility.

On this particular morning, it occurred to me as one pedestrian whistled past my wing-mirror, that it doesn't even worry me as much as it did. Driving here one has so many near misses that there comes a point when you concede that having an accident and probably killing someone is, more-or-less, inevitable. In fact rather than worrying about near misses as I did when I started driving here, they now simply tend to annoy me.

It was quite sobering on that particular day for one of my colleagues to say that she'd seen an accident - as indeed we all have - the day beforehand but this was a 'body trapped under a car in a large pool of blood' type incident. I guess the fact that I'd reconciled myself that I might kill someone crossing the street meant that I'd only reconciled what I'd be destroying (i.e. some person who is unknown to me) not what I'd be creating (i.e. the bloody aftermath).

They did have a road safety campaign that didn't hold back in terms of the message (if you want to see what sort of pics they published they were like this - don't look if you're at all squeamish) but that doesn't deter people from the hand flapping. Personally, I'd rather be alive and wait until it's safe to cross than dead but certain that I had the upper hand legally.

* - Delete as appropriate

Let Him Have It!

There is a famous case in British Legal History of Derek Bentley where a large part of the case effectively hinged on the phrase "Let him have it!" - a rather confusing phrase in English as it could easily have meant "Give him the gun and surrender" or "Kill him!". The interpretation that it was the latter meaning lead to Derek Bentley being hanged in 1953.

It's not particularly comforting to learn that, despite the dissimilarities, Chinese suffers from just the same sort of ambiguity. Should you ever hear someone say "wǒ yào wěn nǐ " you might want to make a quick judgement call as to their intention...

我要吻你 - I'd like to kiss you
我要刎你 - I'd like to slit your throat

Hmm. Given how few different sounds there are in Chinese, there must be plenty more where that came from.

Applying for a Job

I have, for a while now, been contemplating writing a guide for prospective employees about how to get a job with the company I work for (or any western company for that matter). As others have discussed recently on TalkTalkChina, it's clearly apparent that:

a) A lot of people don't know what western employers are looking for in their employees
b) Those that try to research it on the internet aren't using reliable resources from actual Western employers so even they get it wrong
c) Universities clearly abrogate their responsibilities to help people get a good job and don't bother teaching them these skills.

An example of why this is so important for people to get right...

I interviewed a guy recently for a relatively low level Unix developer role - based on his 9 page CV (or Resume for speakers of American) I had to walk through the positions he had had, largely because there were no dates on his career history and no way of distinguising projects from employers. Whilst he was walking me through his career he revealed he was a Certified Oracle DBA (there was no mention of any Oracle skills), then that he had two years Java development experience (again, no mention).

This guy was lucky to have got close to an interview simply because his CV was atrocious.

Before I launch into this, it should be noted that there are dozens of books available on 'writing the perfect CV' or 'getting that job' - applicants could, if they really cared about their application, obtain a copy of one of these. All I'm doing here is listing some points which, to me, are obvious - but to many of our applicants, they're not.

The absolute fundamentals of CV (resume) and Cover Letter Basics:

• Look at the CV. Does it look good? Is the text all lined up neatly? Is it all in the same font? Headings for individual sections? Is it a sensible length (I would suggest 2 pages if you've got less than 5 years experience and NEVER more than three)? Is it easy to read? Does it have the 'key' information in a place where it's easy to find?
• Check all spelling and grammar. Ask several people (preferably a native speaker) to read your CV and give you feedback. Don't forget to check that you have spelt the name of the company you are applying for correctly! Poor spelling and grammar make me, as an employer, think that you can't be aren't really interested in working for my company because you don't think it's worth the extra effort.
• Don't copy draft CVs from the internet. Most of them are flawed. For example - Google for the phrase Have a good command of both spoken and written English. Past CET-6" - the wording is incorrect yet I've seen dozens and Google has hundreds of CVs with the exact same phrase.
• Does it contain all of the relevant skills for the job you're applying for? You should consider tailoring a CV for every individual job you apply for.
  
• Have you written a cover letter (or email) to send in with the application? Have you paid the same amount of attention on the letter as you have on the CV? If you haven't you should rewrite it.
• Bear in mind that employers often get hundreds of applications for a single position. If your CV is 10 pages long, filled from edge to edge with text in 5 different fonts and I can't understand the first sentence I read, it's not going to get through the initial screen of CVs because lots of the other applicants have made that effort.
• Print your CV off and look at it (I know this was my first point but it's so important I'm going to mention it again). As a manager, I'll often see your CV only on paper. Does it look good. Are you proud of the way it looks? If not, go back and try again.
  

CV Content

Introduction

• Opinions do vary as to what should go into the introduction but think about your audience.
• If you're applying for a job as a Java developer, why would I care about your weight, height, political party affiliation and what message are you trying to send me with your photograph?
• Make sure you provide all your up-to-date contact details, and that the cellphone number you supply is correct!
• Think about your email address. If you use your personal address and it's 'tequila_tony@...' am I going to think 'Software developer' or 'wannabe party animal'?
• Personal summary - You should include a section at the beginning. Don't copy one from the internet (e.g. one that says you're Aggressive - that's just wrong). You need to try and sell yourself to me (and this is where a native speaker will help) . Be relevant to the position you're applying for. Enthusiatic but not annoying. Believable but not uninteresting. Write in the first person.
  

Education

• Keep this section simple:
  What dates did you attend University. What qualification did you get? Only go into much more detail if its relevant (e.g. if you have an IT degree and are applying for an IT job, then you might want to list relevant course modules you did as part of that degree but if you've got a mechanical engineering degree I probably don't care)
• Don't go into too much detail on projects. I don't want to know what you did in great detail. I want to know what you achieved and what skills you gained
• Do you have any relevant industry certifications or awards?

Skills

• This is the most important section (certainly for an IT employer). What I want to know is: What can you do? How well can you do it?
  If the only mention of Unix is somewhere in your three pages of 'projects I have done' later on, I might miss it completely. If you've got 3 years Unix experience, 5 years Java, 12 months C#.Net, tell me!
• Keep it simple - a table is best - Skill - length of time working with this skill - experience level (familiar/knowledgeable/proficient/expert).
• Management skills/project management - put them down here and back them up in the next section.
  

Career History

• Where have you worked? What have you learned? How much experience have you gained? What have you achieved?
• Make sure you include dates so I can follow the timeline.
• Include information that shows you have initiative (project you proposed to your manager), flexibility (volunteered for role in Ulaan Bataar for three months), intelligence (had your proposed solution adopted), enthusiasm (a desire to do more than you've been asked to do)
• DO NOT include details of every aspect of a project, where you just did the work people asked you to do, without any details of what you actually achieved (worked on the XYZ project - a 10 man project to implement Zebra functionality in the Kazoo system) as that doesn't tell me anything. Are you telling me you were in a 10 man team in the hope that I'll think you managed it? If so you're wrong. I'll assume you're trying to make me think that.
  
• I want to know what you did, not what your team did.
  

Lies

Don't waste my time and yours by lying:
1) Language skills - if I'm looking for someone that can speak English, and you really can't speak English, don't waste time getting your friends to write a really good English language CV and tell me you're fluent.
2) Certifications - yes, we do check to make sure you've got them. In the worst example I've seen someone claimed both Microsoft and Cisco certifications and in interview was forced to reveal that he didn't actually have either and hadn't got any skills in either area.

Do you really want to get an interview with my company only to have to reveal that you don't have the skills you say you've got? Thought not...

Other Information

Include any other information you think is relevant and will make me want to hire you. If you like going to KTV and watching TV - think 'what would this potential employer think of that?' (Answer - you would be better off not telling me). If you like mountaineering, scuba diving and are involved with a local charity, tell me because that's interesting.

I'm sure there are plenty of other opinions out there and advice I can add but I guarantee you, if you are a good candidate for the jobs you are applying for an heed the advice above, you'll be more likely to get through to interview than a lot of the other applicants.

Killing with Kindness

As you, dear reader, will know I'm going to be (hoping all goes well) a father for the first time in December.

There are a number of concerns I have about having a child in China (for example the hospitals, the education system and the absence of a safety culture) but even the basics are a bit of a concern.

One of the problems I had hoped had been fixed was the issue of fake baby milk. This issue reared its head in 2004 when 10 brands of fake and counterfeit baby milk powders were found to be on sale - but not found until an estimated 200 babies had died horribly of malnutrition and many others had swollen heads.

Some of the other notable scandals since I've been living in China (note: that's not an admission of guilt...)

• Tofu made from "gypsum, paint and starch, then fried in oil made from kitchen waste and swill"
• Rabies vaccine that was actually just salt water
• Fake alcoholic drinks made with methanol

Now faking products has a fairly long history is nothing new in China, but whatever Louis Vuitton, Philip Morris and Rolex think of their products being copied and sold at low, low prices, it's a lot more understandable than things like these.

One of the biggest worries for me has always been counterfeits rather than fakes. I recall during the baby milk scare that some of the fake milk had been packaged as premium brand milk and was for sale in reputable supermarkets who had been hoodwinked by someone in their supply chain to accepting the counterfeits.

It's astounding that a group of people (and there must be a number of people knowingly involved to produce the 'product' and packaging, and infiltrate the supply chain) could be sufficiently cold-hearted to sell fake baby milk, knowing it had no nutritional value and that babies would inevitably die as a result. It's quite sickening to see the level of brutality and pain that these reprehensible people would be prepared to inflict on others for their own personal gain. So it was quite a relief when the whole thing was cleared up.

Or so I thought.

So, it's almost two years since that scandal and what's the latest scandal?
30% of Infant Milk Formula Does not Meet Quality Standard

So, two companies have been blacklisted but 30% failed to meet quality standards?

I know there are many arguments about breastfeeding being vastly superior than using Formula but for many reasons there will surely be times it is inevitable.

In a country where even foreign giants like Nestle (admittedly with a fairly controversial history itself with regard to Infant Formula) have admitted that "some non-Nestle products had been repackaged using Nestle packaging and labelling" my problem is who or what do I trust? I would very happily by the best brands from the best stores if that meant giving my child a guarantee of high quality nutrition but I'm not sure how I can believe that even these products are of the same quality that I would expect in the UK. Perhaps its time to order a crate from home now...

'Cute' Chinese

I was warned it would happen.

Before I even really started to learn Chinese I was warned by a couple of old hands that most foreign guys sound like women when they speak Chinese.

Really, there's not a lot you can do about it. Most Chinese teachers are seemingly female. Most straight guys will spend more time talking to Chinese girls/girlfriends/wives then they will talking to guys and, for some reason, it is typically not that easy to make male Chinese friends.

It's hard enough speaking Mandarin Chinese at the best of times (the fact that it's tonal, uses characters instead of letters, is full of cultural references that foreigners typically don't understand, has so few distinct sounds and particularly the fact that lots of Chinese people don't speak it very well either) so to cap that off there are a few things that make it much harder.

1. People "listening with their eyes" - particularly true of older people. You'll speak - they'll look at you as if you're an alien but not actually respond. You'll repeat yourself - same response. Eventually, you'll just walk away but probably not before you've got rather annoyed. Occasionally you'll speak Chinese to someone younger and they will respond with "I'm sorry... I don't.... speak English" which is also irritating.

2. People laughing at you. The first few times I speak Chinese in front of someone that I don't know I can speak vaguely passable Chinese (particularly my Chinese colleagues) they laugh. As I speak. The more I speak the more they laugh. Once they've got over the 'the laowai can speak Chinese' phase and move on, it's not too bad but it's really quite offputting.

3. People that have, a couple of times said "你说的好可爱!" - you said that very cutely - this typically happens if I'm trying to be 凶 fierce because I'm annoyed about something. It's not the words per se that sound cute but the intonation and the other noises that you make for emphasis (啊,呀,哎,嗯, 哇) etc. around them.

The best way to learn a language is to imitate a native speaker but, unfortunately, in this respect women don't speak in quite the same way as men so angry foreigners end up sounding like angry women. Which makes people laugh.

哎呀!

Tigers and Sheep Joined Together

You can be a funny lot, my transient readers. A large number you have come via pure happenstance - and strange people some of you must be judging by some of the bizarre terms that you've used in your search engine (and you thought the internet was anonymous). It's fair to say that some of you are clearly rather strange.

• tigers and sheep joined together
• photo of a tiger having paintbrush
  
• what is the suitable gesture
  
• social stigmata
  
• motorway bridges peas
  
• if you have married and have a...you take along with she or he?
  
• gay lanzhou
  
• gym ningbo monthly
  
• meaning of ambling
  
• "distorting mirrors" marks and spencers
  
• m6 nomad jacket
  
• "more magazine" hangzhou
  
• "british people" cliche
  
• cycling by night
• bike horn tiger sound
• "bus behaviour" load flow
• filipino tv dramas
• shuddering on left turn volkswagen bora
• the joys of golf
• linying temple
• elephant ambling
• august burns red lyrics
• guangzhou--starbucks
• "the best environmental think tank in the country?
• "home truths" radio stafford
• sainsburys barilla
• cartoon dalmation standing on a shelf
• temporary dvla driving licences
• grandma's kitchen hangzhou

Actually the most popular search terms all relate to the word "PEAS" which is written on a bridge over the M25 motorway in the UK - it's time the person responsible blogged about it so we'd all get a better understanding (or at least they could admit that they can't spell PEACE, which seems quite likely...)

What Price Face?

One of the aspects of modern life in China is the confusion between modern and traditional thinking. My cleaner, XH, has demonstrated a great example of this.

XH was divorced, after her husband ran off with someone else, leaving her alone with her daughter. After the divorce she left her native Sichuan province (and left her 12 year old daughter with relatives) to come to Hangzhou in a bid for a new life - I'm not entirely sure how, but after arriving in Hangzhou my wife found her and recruited her as our cleaner...

So much, so ordinary. Apart from leaving your daughter behind, which people seem to be more accustomed to here, this story could easily have been the same in the UK.

What isn't the same is what follows.

Last year, XH was very excited about the fact that she'd saved up and bought her very own stealth scooter, but after a few days she stopped coming to our house on her new bike and seemed very down. As it turns out, her ex-husband had been to her apartment and, being very fatherly, had said unless she gave him money and the scooter, he would kill their daughter. Not surprisingly she conceded.

What surprised me was that a couple of months later he appeared at our house to look for XH. XH admitted to YY that she was now living again with her ex-husband.

She admits that she hates him with a passion, won't share a bedroom with him or cook him meals. She's even 'lent' him all of her savings (about 15 months of her current pay) even though she knows she'll never see it again. We've learnt of at least one use for the money as he was kind enough to tell her he'd been to see a prostitute only last week.

Yet, despite the fact the relationship has completely broken down, she won't leave him or kick him out. The reason for this, apparently, is purely to preserve her 'face' with her neighbours as they would, apparently, think she was a 'bad' woman for leaving her husband.

I'm aware of mad situations in the UK where people, for a variety of reasons, stay with people who abuse them, but to be at the point of genuinely violently hating someone and staying with them solely because the neighbours would talk about you behind your back seems very peculiar to me.

There's no love, there's no loyalty, there's only face.

To me it seems that even the face problem could be so easily solved by simply moving somewhere else - given that she's done that before you'd think it would make sense but before it wasn't her 'fault' as he left her but it would be if she now left him but, apparently, I simply don't understand. Which is true.

One Rule for All

It's nice to see that the government in Beijing recognises that there are problems on the roads and that these are, at least in part, caused by the army.

The root cause of this particular problem are the white number plates with red lettering issued to the army, armed police and so on, that are immediately distinguishable to the outside world as 'someone you don't want to mess with'. So much so, that people can break whatever traffic laws they feel like and pretty much expect to get away with it. That's not to say the laws don't apply to them already - they do. What's lacking is the ability to effectively police violators who might be sufficiently powerful and well connected to end a policeman's career there and then.

Not surprisingly there are a number of black saloon cars with blacked out windows and fake army licence plates out on the roads - after all, if the army guys can break traffic laws and face little chance of being stopped, what are the chances of a police officer stopping you to check the validity of those plates.

Whilst it's good to see the 2008 Olympics having a positive effect, the Beijing announcement doesn't look like a particularly serious attempt to clear up abusers - for one thing, they've only targeted the announcement on the Beijing area.

One could suggest a simpler solution - replace all of the white army plates with the standard blue ones then we're all on an equal footing. Then again, there are so many things about traffic laws that have been implemented so that they don't make sense:

- Purpose-built trucks and vans aren't allowed in city centres so all parcel delivery companies, etc. have to use passenger minibuses to deliver packages. Surely less efficient meaning more trucks on the road.
- Until recently (sensibly now repealed) vehicles with an engine capacity below 1300cc were banned from Shanghai's elevated roads as part of a pollution control measure.
- People can turn right on a red light (as per the USA) with the notable difference that in the US a red must be treated the same as a STOP sign - here people just fly round corners - often whilst pedestrians also have a green light
- The rule still stands that if you're in front, you've got the right of way. This means that all drivers blatantly ignore everything that is behind the drivers seat or could be seen in mirrors and leads to some horrific crashes.
- The worst polluters on the roads in city centres - buses - seem to have little if any control on emissions but motorbikes have been banned - again, citing pollution.
- Hangzhou, and other Chinese cities, have recently banned bicycle rickshaws - a pollution free form of transport that has only recently been introduced in modern cities like London

Time for an integrated transport policy rather than a series of seemingly individual and in many cases, knee-jerk policies?

It's a boy!

Apparently they're much more certain this time (it was a result of Ultrasound rather than brief prodding) but wouldn't say 100%...

This time wasn't overseas so got to listen to my unborn son's heartbeat (either that or they were playing a tape recording of a horse galloping). I've also, for the first time felt him kicking this week - YY has felt it for a couple of weeks but he kept stopping as soon as I tried to feel it.

Truly amazing.

Commentating on China

It's bound to be a dodgy thing this commentating on China malarkey.

Clearly I've yet to incur a burst of wrath such as that witnessed last night on talktalkchina but it's obviously not that hard to attract someone's ire.

In many ways, my blog is, effectively self-censored because:
a) My family read it, so it tends not to be as 'raw' as it might be
b) Some of my colleagues read it - so I can't really talk much about the company I work for
c) I don't want to come across, as some people clearly do in their blogs, as anti-China - because I'm not.

But, as I've said before on this blog, it's easy enough for people to make accusations of racism against anyone who makes any reference to the Chinese in any slightly negative context and it's always a worry that you'll end up getting into a slanging match with someone over your opinions.

Injustice and intolerance is everywhere, and in every direction in China. Some examples:

1) There seems to be much in the UK news about things that are bad in China, very little about things that are good thus giving the impression of deliberate "China bashing"
2) To reciprocate, Chinese TV presents the truth rather selectively about the rest of the world
3) Chinese law is, in some cases, quite mad.
4) Many Chinese people genuinely do try to rip foreigners off - I could cite many blog pages but for example, I've walked into shops in Shanghai and demanded the price of something (in English) only for the shopkeeper to turn to my wife and say "If you persuade him it's 80 RMB we'll cut you in on the deal" - 10 times the price.
5) Chinese discriminate against Chinese and in favour of 'foreign guests' on a regular basis
6) Chinese discriminate against foreigners and in favour of Chinese on a regular basis
7) Westerners generally think the Chinese educational system and values, greatly prizing examination marks above actual ability, is flawed and failing the Chinese students.
8) Chinese studying abroad generally think their western counterparts are lazy and stupid for not studying all the time to achieve the highest possible grades
9) There genuinely seems to be an idea that the rest of the world has a bias against Chinese people generally. I'd guess if you look at the US, the issues that won't go away between white, black and Hispanic populations massively dwarfs any issues with the Chinese. Generally I would suggest that this a general arrogance on behalf of the Chinese people who think this because on average, most westerners probably don't have a stand on how they feel about Chinese people one way or the other, regardless of how they feel about China (see below).

And so on.

There are clearly a number of different entities in play:

a) China - for this read 'The Chinese diplomatic machine' - cryptic and serving its own interests. This is the only thing that politicians in the west are ever referring to when they say anything about China. This is synonymous, in the minds of people like Bush, with communism, repression, dumping, lack of human rights, etc., etc. It doesn't represent their impression of Chinese people at all.
b) The China 'establishment' - for most commentators, this doesn't mean the Beijing level government because we don't operate at that level. It's the sort of thing that Sinosceptic was referring to in his blog post yesterday. It's the sort of self-serving 'you can't do anything about it, that's just the way it is' crap that anyone who comes here any operates a business has to deal with.
c) Chinese people - I don't wish to oversimplify here as there are enormous differences here between various groups within China - not surprising when there are 1.3 billion people of over 50 different races. Clearly there's quite a gradient of people from party officials and businesspeople, 'regular' middle-class professional people, traders, merchants, restauranteurs and farmers.

By and large, and there are exceptions, most Westerners I know (mostly here in a professional capacity, rather than avoiding getting a life back home) are here because on balance, they like it – not because they are doing very well out of it. I have a feeling that the similar but different issues will be had for westerners in Japan, Korea, etc. - anywhere where the local culture is significantly dissimilar, where locals vastly outnumber foreigners and foreigners are easily identified.

Westerners are, whatever Chinese people might think, are both discriminated in favour, and against. We are honoured and used. Stared at and ignored. Shoved out of the way and watched in awe.

Most of the other people's blogs that I read seem to fall into the category of finding China (at various times)

Fascinating
Interesting (often in the pseudo-Chinese sense)
Frustrating
Nauseating
Inspirational
Maddening
Dangerous
Exciting

And so forth.

It's easy for people who are that way inclined to pick a hole in the point that my blog, and most of the other people who live in China’s blogs do, from time to time, say negative things about China. That’s because my blog is largely about China because that's where I live. I try to present some sort of balance, I don't try to pretend to be a China expert, it's about me and my life. The same is true of other people's blogs.

With few exceptions, I don't actually know any of these people personally (well, I might do, but it's all pseudonyms to me) but I understand all right. Reading about a guy who is venting some steam because some pointless government regulation is insisting on some random people getting access to his company's design information seems perfectly reasonable because I understand it the pain entirely. There is a whole load of crap running a company here that you wouldn't have to put up with at home and, worse, your headquarters neither knows or cares about - it's the sort of thing they expect you, their “China” person, to sort out.

The fact that anyone, Chinese or not, would comment almost immediately with the tired line of racists everywhere 'If you don't like China, you should go back to where you come from' is missing the point. We don't dislike China, the people. We sometimes dislike China - the establishment - when it's being brutally unreasonable. (To get a better idea of the hypocrisy and what’s inspired this post, the poster of that “go home” comment has (apparently) just advertised for English teachers who must be "Western-looking" – Chinese people don’t want to pay for their kids to be taught by people that look Chinese, apparently – just another example of the multi-layered and conflicting standards here). Whether these problems are the same for Chinese companies or not, whether their bosses can make them go away with a night on the bai jiu in a KTV or not still doesn’t make this one of the Frustrating things about being in China – OK, it has to be dealt with but it’s still stupid and vexing and having a cathartic release of some tension by blogging about it is one of the best things about blogging!

Long live blogging! 万岁 to China and the Chinese people! And if you don’t like someone’s blog don’t read it!

Animal Wrongs

Whilst I come from the UK, I've often disagreed with people there over animal rights issues. OK, since moving to China I'm no longer vegetarian so my perch isn't as lofty as it once was, but I still find fox-hunting to be unnecessary, breeding and shooting slow-moving birds to be unpleasantly unsporting and fishing from a pond or canal to be one of the dullest 'sports' known to mankind. And this in spite of the fact we are "A nation of animal lovers" (TM)

When it comes to China there are obviously greater extremes - many of which are way outside of average British sensibilities.

It's hard, for example, to imagine how in any modern city, that people could respond to a crazy local government announcement that dogs should be culled by going out with their whacking sticks and doing just that. Even worse, that vigilantes would, allegedly, stop people out walking their dogs and beat the dogs to death in front of them. Clearly, if the response of a former colleague of mine to witnessing this sort of behaviour is accurate, the Chinese need to accept that whatever they think is right and wrong, this sort of behaviour creates a negative assessment of the Chinese as a whole and adds to the list of things that makes 'China bashing' easy for people with a political agenda.

Chinese cuisine is always a challenge for the British business person. I've never given into this crazy idea of giving face to people by eating the horrors placed in front of me - I'm still not going to eat a hairy crab, or a turtle. I understand what's going on (unlike a client of one of my family members who complained that the Chinese always 'have a joke at their expense by serving all this horrible stuff') and the problem with food is that it's at it's very worst and most inedible when the Chinese are trying to be really, really nice to you. It's not just the British but that find Chinese banquet cuisine more than a little inedible but Chinese attitutes to food seem to be one of the most unbending on the planet - particularly amongst the older generations (if you haven't read this account of an American guy's Chinese in-laws visiting the states you should, then you'll know what I mean).

There is a not unreasonable argument that attitudes to food, animal welfare, etc. can all be forgiven when you consider that within the lifetimes of many of the older Chinese there have been (whatever the history books say) periods of tremendous famine and hardship but part of becoming a great civilisation is, er, civilisation. Clearly anyone who has seen a period in their life when they've eaten tree bark and grass to survive would be less likely to have any problem eating a dog then someone who's had several meals a day prepared with no risk that those meals will stop coming. But that still doesn't really explain the barbarism with which people would go order a massacre of dogs (many of which had been vaccinated against Rabies - the reason for the cull) or people would go out of their way to track down dogs now and beat them to death or hang them.

Clearly many children are hardened up by watching their parents commit these barbaric acts so continue to think it's reasonable, but it seems likely that a lot of city dwellers don't do these things themselves so their children will become more squeamish over time. I'm told the Hangzhou safari park has stopped feeding live animals to the larger animals over public pressure to stop (presumably from parents of shocked and distressed children) - I can say that just from watching the TV last night, when they were showing tigers in a safari park chasing after a landrover, I was shocked (and YY was nearly sick) when instead of a chunk of meat being thrown out of the back of the truck, a chicken fluttered out to be instantly pounced upon by a tiger.

I can't imagine what the defining moment was in British culture when we generally decided that chicken heads and feet weren't food and I don't think we've every been desperate enough to eat dogs and cats so its hard to work out if these things will ever disappear from Chinese culture.

My own, personal point of view isn't to suggest that it's 'wrong' for people to eat these animals but in many cases the treatment is truly reprehensible. Hopefully people will at least start to imagine that, yes, animals can suffer. Once that leap is made, even if people still continue to eat them, I can only hope they will stop to treat them like inanimate objects. The reports of animals being skinned for their fur and the bodies discarded - still breathing and blinking are truly abhorrent and worthy of the world's scorn.

Before any of this could happen, though, the first leap that needs to be made first is for the Chinese to treat the Chinese with more respect. The culture book I read before I ever set foot in China mentioned that Chinese people are all about guanxi and what matters is whether you are inside or outside of someone's 'circle'. The truth of this, in its implementation, is that many people (again, typically true of the older generations, less so of the younger) genuinely wouldn't be moved if the person crossing the street 5 feet away was run over and killed - except that they would stop to gawk at the carnage. In the UK, I would expect the initial reaction to be screaming, panic, people calling the police and ambulance service. Here, ambulances get abused on the roads by buses and taxis just like any other vehicle does!

Sigh!

It's a Girl!

Well, apparently.

As I may have mentioned, Chinese hospitals aren't supposed to tell you the gender of your child for fear that you may see a girl as unwelcome. This is almost certainly a good thing when most city folk are only allowed to have one child and a girl neither passes on the family name nor ensures someone to look after you into old age. I assume, on the grounds that our children will be British and, technically, unlimited in number that the doctor didn't mind letting slip that she is almost certain it's a girl. Not from ultrasound or anything like that but from external prodding only.

This has now been confirmed by YY dreaming that we had a large, white snake (steady - this isn't a euphemism!) in the house. Apparently a white snake is the key indicator so, it's definitely a girl...

This might sound unlikely, but that's probably if you don't put it in the context of seemingly less plausible superstitions such as Korean Fan Death. It seemed a bit implausible when I first read about it here but even has it's own website at fandeath.net...

Pop Idol

There is a suggestion bubbling about that the company I work for, and a neighbouring firm should have a 'Pop Idol' competition.

Now, we've had a singing competition before, with the results being decided by anonymous voting but this suggestion was to do the whole 'Idol' thing. Now, I've no problem doling out criticism where it's due (possibly my Mother's assertion that we are related to Simon Cowell is true...) but to do Idol properly means being nasty and, in China, I'm not sure that's going to work.

There's an American program called 'Famous for 30 Seconds', not unlike the old 'Gong Show'. People come on and do their party pieces - singing, dancing, juggling, acrobatics, etc. and the odd lame act, animal impersonations, poor comedians. Part of the gig is for the audience to vote these guys off.

There's a Chinese equivalent and it doesn't quite work the same way. Oh, there's the singing, dancing, juggling, acrobatics - all the 'real' acts, but the joke acts - people that can't sing, an old lady that came on stage and danced about like someone's drunken auntie at Christmas - they got the full on audience support. Support for the underdog, appears therefore to be a given.

I was actually prompted to write this after YY was going mad with panic that her favourite star (she likes him because he has a long face) wasn't going to win in some talent show or other on Shanghai TV. I watched the final round - longface sang a passable rendition of one of the dozen or so songs that Chinese bar singers always sing - his competition was in the form of a guy who came on in traditional costume and twirled around waving a flag. Apparently this was marvellous because he's deaf. Fortunately longface won the day (after an impressive build up where both candidates disappeared into the floor, a fountain sprang up to obscure the sage from view, the hosts counted down from 10 to 0 and then, nothing happened. Whilst the unlikely-looking presenters chatted amongst themselves, longface suddenly appeared from the stage. Hopefully the stage manager was swiftly dispatched...).

Unfortunately (!) I missed 'Supergirl' but have seen other singing talent shows in China and it seemed very much that people would come on, wail out some tuneless dirge, and then 3 out of 4 judges would give them the green light to the next round and tell them how beautiful they were, lovely hair, etc. and avoid mentioning that their singing made a noise like a kitten stuck in a garbage disposal.

If that's the way people like it, then the idea of doing a competion like this with one's own employees sounds incredibly dangerous. I can only imagine trying to play the Simon Cowell role and telling someone that "I can't imagine why they ever thought they could sing as they sounded like a wounded seal walking over hot coals" only for the whole audience to be looking at me open mouthed thinking "She was trying her best and he's said these horrible things. What a total git!".

Unlike Simon Cowell, the worst thing that could happen to me is that 50 people resign the next day because of the combined loss-of-face and loss-of-faith in me and the company. That wouldn't happen to Simon Cowell! Although I guess the possibility of being stalked and shot by a disgruntled singer is worse for him.

Think I'll stick to our Softball competition!

昨天晚上

昨天晚上我们家停电了.是很奇怪因为停电以前我们听见了个很大声音的警报.我找到了.我的手电筒然后开了大门.外面没有停电!我们的领主也停电了因为他们都在外面.一个六岁的小男孩子赶快跑到我们门口了, 对我的老婆说"阿姨.噢.你的家也停电了.我们没有空调. 我们快热死了!".笑死我了.那么小的孩儿会这样说是特别中国的!

100th Post

In celebration of my 100th post, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane to the worst Airport experience I've ever had. Unfortunately, it came the day after I got married (to clarify, as the date that you get married, is not at all clear in China, this is when we technically got married and got a marriage certificate).

Thanks to the arcane Hukou system in China, this meant having to fly to Lanzhou where YY's Hukou is based, as you're not allowed to get married anywhere else. Lanzhou is 1900km west of Hangzhou where we live so that meant the hassle and expense of a 2.5 hour flight and, thanks to the flight times, two nights in a hotel just to spend 15 minutes in a government official's smoke filled office to get our marriage certificate.

On the way to Lanzhou, I'd had an example of just how well-thought-through the newly introduced airline e-ticket system is in China.

Old system (paper ticket)

• Queue at check-in desk
• Give them ticket and passport
• Receive boarding pass

New system (e-ticket)

• Queue at check-in desk
• Be told 'Ah, you have an e-Ticket. You need to go there (points at throng of people) to pick up a voucher'.
• Join throng of people, get sick of people barging in front to be served and eventually barge to front yourself
• Get voucher
• Queue at check-in desk
• Give them voucher and passport
• Receive boarding pass

So, I'm not a fan of the Chinese e-ticket system (this is only for internal flights - for international flights, common sense prevails as with e-ticket use elsewhere).

The way back from Lanzhou was much worse though.

We arrived at the airport, fresh from the 60km drive from Lanzhou, with two hours to go before the flight. We queued briefly at the check-in and then handed over the faxed confirmation from the travel agent, which is where it went horribly wrong.

They checked all of the vouchers and there were none for us. They checked the computer and there was no record. Even with the booking references and so forth on the fax, they couldn't find us. A quick call to our company managed to get us in touch with the travel agent who booked the tickets for us and they confirmed the ticket was set up correctly in the computer. Unfortunately, the airline disagreed.

Eventually (40 minutes before take-off) everyone conceded that we'd need to buy new tickets if we were going to get on the flight so off we rushed to the Lanzhou International Airport ticket desk where bad quickly became worse.

The tickets were 1600 RMB (just over 100 GBP). We only had 1000 RMB in RMB on us.

Who would guess that anything claiming to be an International Airport would only accept cash in the local currency and nothing else.

• Chinese Debit Cards? No
• Foreign Credit Cards? No
• US Dollars? No

So we looked for other options?

• ATM in the airport? No
• Foreign Exchange Facilities? No
• Ability to pay at the far end? No
  

Even trying to persuade one of them to take the 100 USD (worth 826 RMB) and coughing up the 600RMB we needed and keeping the 226 RMB for themselves met with a shaking of heads.

One helpful chap did chip in "Well, you'll just have to get the next flight... tomorrow" which was the last straw. Given that we've bought and paid for two tickets, and have the evidence to prove it, and have enough cash in different currencies, and all the bases covered with credit cards, and still don't have seats on the plane, we were not happy at all!

Suddenly the check-in girl appeared and had a solution to the problem. The last people to check-in had agreed to loan us the money. With less than 10 minutes to go we got our tickets, I managed to get a quick telephone call off to arrange our company driver to meet us in Hangzhou with cash to repay them, and we leapt onto the plane.

Once the plane took off I realised that I didn't even have any clue who the people were who'd lent us the cash so YY asked the stewardess who said she'd go and find out. Just to round off the perfect wedding experience, 60 seconds later the tannoy boomed with "Can the people who lent money to buy tickets to the couple sitting in seats 17 A and B please make themselves known". Fortunately the silence and mass turning of heads (and I'm easy to spot on an internal flight as I'm the tallest person by far...) was broken by our saviour coming forward.

In all, it was quite a show of trust and helpfulness (which I'm not convinced anyone in the UK would have done for us). Then again, the problem would never have risen either as I can't believe the UK has any international airports that only take cash!

You might want stop eating before you read this

But in order to fully savour some of the true horrors that are public-use toilets in China you should read this article and subsequent comments from Talk Talk China.

For an appetite whetter, this is my favourite so far:

"Without wishing to put people off their lunch, I feel I must share my own “favourite” public defecation experience. Whilst in Carrefour one afternoon, looking to purchase a baguette or two, I wandered into the bakery section of the store and came across a woman holding a plastic bag, the type you put loose produce into before it’s weighed and purchased, under her son, as he proceeded to shit into it. In the store. Next to the bread. And no-one said anything either."

Random Questions of the Day

• Why do most female stealth-bike riders here have the wing mirrors angled so they can see their face rather then the road behind them?
• Why do stealth-bike riders think it’s both big and clever to appear smug when they overtake cyclists on a hill?
• Why do construction projects hang the phrase ‘安全第一’ (quite literally ‘Safety First’) everywhere when clearly no-on knows what it means?
• Why do they fit ventilation systems in road tunnels and underground car parks but don’t switch them on?
• Why do all buildings have Security Guards when clearly they’re only ornamental?
• Why do shops and restaurants keep all the lights turned off when there are no customers inside, thus creating the impression that they’re closed?
• Why do people not react in any way to you ringing your bicycle bell/hooting/shouting at them when they’re in the middle of the road/bike lane?
• Why, when tackling pollution is getting some serious attention, do the police set up endless road blocks to check bicycles and let stinking trucks pumping thick black smoke go untouched?
• Why do cars drive with their high-beam lights, fog lights and driving lights on when it’s raining? (I’d suggest that it’s to blind people coming the other way but that just seems gratuitous)
• Why, oh why, don’t people USE THEIR EYES before walking, cycling or driving onto a more major road?

I could go on, and indeed, on. I guess the answer to all of these questions is simply going to be ‘Why not?’ as that’s the only answer to so many questions here…

Goddamn' Pedestrians

Get out of the damned way!

One of the things you get used to here is people shouting "Laowai" or "Hello" at you as you're going about your daily business. It's no fun and by and large there are enough foreigners in Hangzhou that people don't get too freaked out by us.

I know it's not just me that gets riled but, today really took my cake/biscuit.

Normally pedestrians know the rules (keep moving at a constant speed ignoring all visual and auditory stimuli and the traffic will move round you) but not today. Not once, but twice whilst cycling to the office, a random pedestrian started to cross the road in front of me - assuming they'd stick to the rules I kept going (a bit like Days of Thunder - you drive towards the car that's crashing in front of you assuming momentum will take it somewhere else) only for them to go all "There's a laowai" on me and stop dead in front of me. Even shouting 'Argh!' as my wheels locked and I slid up the road towards the first old goat didn't get a flinch out of him.

So - anyone in Hangzhou who sees me coming (foreigner, wearing light coloured clothes at night, moving faster than 99% of non-e-Bikes, can't miss me) please remember to Get out of the damned way!

Social Stigmata

Of the many thousands of spam mails I receive each year (and if anyone from my company reading this can help, please can we get spam filtering already!) they rarely make me laugh out loud.

One of today's, selling an as-seen-on-Oprah slimming drug said:

"Did you know obesity kills more and more people every year? We know you hate the extra pounds, the ugly look and the social stigmata attached to fat people. Moreover, you can barely do anything about the terrible eating habits of yours. This all sounds familiar? Then we have something for you!"

Ignoring the bland and unverifiable nonsense in the first sentence, the question I want answering is "Do people go round attaching social stigmata to fat people?" If so, does this only apply to fat Catholics? Possibly there's someone hiding under the counter at an all-you-can-eat buffet near you with a claw hammer and some six-inch-nails just waiting to pounce.

Sadly, a quick Google shows that it's not just Fat people that need beware but also snorers and parents could be affected as "parents fear the horrendously negative social stigmata that comes along with being gay or having a gay son or daughter".

Fat, Catholic snorers with a gay child must be in constant fear of their lives through exsanguination!

Lack of a Suitable Gesture

While Chinese as a language has plenty of scope for pouring scorn on people verbally, visually it is a different story.

Now, China also is no stranger to hand gestures as this Sinosplice article about counting on one hand relates (personally, I've always assumed that this developed not to vercome the language barrier with so many regional dialects but simply because bars and restaurants are so noisy with everyone shouting all the time that people can't hear each other across the table when they're playing the dice game).

Chinese body language can be incredibly unintelligible. One of my early trips to Hangzhou took me to a shop with an interpreter who spent twenty minutes with the shopkeeper yelling at her with his face an inch from hers (close enough for her to need a tissue when the conversation was over...) and it was only when they reached a conclusion and I heard him yell "谢谢.没问题!" (Thank you. No problem") at her did I realise that it was simply his manner, rather than him actually being livid.

So, with a litany of swear words, a familiarity with hang gestures and hard to read body language, why is it that no common Chinese hand gesture exists that conveys the notion that you are somehow displeased with another person or as pete has suggested, that you have no way of conveying to another driver the sense of "I, personally, disapprove of your most recent manouevre".

I lost control briefly whilst driving to work this morning and found the (two-way) road completely blocked with cars coming towards me and my attempt to convey displeasure at the driver coming directly at me left him with a puzzled look on his face which I interpreted as "Two? Why is he saying two?" (hint - I'm British - if I was American he'd undoubtedly have assumed I was saying one). Definitely time for a Chinese standard gesture...

The Customer as an Inconvenience

So, I get my new apartment, that I paid for 2 years ago, in 6 weeks time and have started the process of looking at kitchens, bathrooms, etc., etc. in earnest this weekend.

We got off to a flying start by going to see the apartment - something that I haven't yet been able to do (as it didn't exist when I bought it) and , in the best spirit of customer service, was told 'No'. Apparently I have to wait until the flat is mine before I can see the inside or let designers in. Great.

We went to loads of different shops this weekend and the customer service is, in 95% of shops here, astonishingly bad - but for two opposing reasons.

B&Q is an interesting example - in the UK, whenever you seek a member of staff you'll find that stalking the shelves for an assistant has the overtures of a horror film. You might just catch a fleeting glimpse of an orange apron at the end of an aisle but when you get there you can just hear the paint colour charts rustling gently in an otherwise empty aisle.

B&Q in China has flocks of staff that wheel around the aisles like vultures in search of their next meal. When you're just going there for inspiration rather than to buy something specific, you have to maintain a certain speed or they catch up with you and start to help you with a rapid explanation of the random thing you happened to be looking at the second you got there. Stop altogether and they can start circling round you and at that point, you've obviously had it.

The kitchen shops we went to today varied from the sublime (a couple of disinterested old biddies who told us that the kitchens they had were all old and out-of-date) to the ridiculous (a pair of shop assistants who appeared behind YY like the twins from Matrix Reloaded).

Customer service in China generally sucks very, very badly.

Restaurants typically have enormous numbers of staff (compared to the west) but their main preoccupation is miserably milling around just out of sensible calling distance and deliberately avoiding looking at the customers lest they might try to attract their attention.

Department stores are massively overstaffed but the level of knowledge is low and the level of customer care, lower.

Clearly some businesses are getting it (9 out of 10 for Wellbom kitchens who, apart from struggling to find the prices of some items, gave a very good level of service). Clearly there's effort and training gone into this:

• Neatly presented staff
• Welcomed into the store but not followed round the store and hassled
• Good product range, well presented
  
• Staff knowledgeable about the products (and not just "making stuff up")
• Brochures (i.e. they haven't "Just run out")

It's NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. There are hundreds of books about customer service out there (that could be translated into Chinese if they're not) and yet a tiny percentage of places provide anything like decent service. OK, there are always going to be industries where the low margins force people to hire anyone that has a pulse (mentioning no hamburger dispensing establishments by name) and that's the same the world over but kitchens are a pretty expensive proposition and should get better staff.

You could hope that the likely outcome would be that companies like Wellbom will do very well and the others will struggle to survive but, unfortunately, most Chinese consumers are probably so used to poor customer service that they're already accustomed to it and won't vote with their feet like I will.

Don't Forget the Tears

Have just travelled with P by Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo on, as it happens, the anniversary of Japan surrendering the Second World War, which had already been marked with further controversy about Koizumi and the Yasukuni Shrine. As we went past Mt Fuji, a very brief conversation, mostly about food and the Lonely Planet Guide, in broken English took place with the lady sitting opposite. Not that I wish to knock her English - I learned most of my Japanese from the televisation of James Clavell's Shogun in 1980.

Shortly before she got off we saw her write a note and leave it on her seat. It read:

We are peaceful. It was the time with you and I to see Mt Fuji

But you and I

Don't forget the tears in the world by war

Don't forget the day

Typhoon Season

So, Typhoon Season is well and truly upon us.

Normally I just rely on Tropical Storm Risk to track the many typhoons that seem to be headed our way, although history tells us that any typhoon on a westerly track that is predicted to hit Hangzhou in 3 or more days time will actually veer to the south and hit Taiwan instead before going to Fujian province.

So, a couple of years ago (not having a lot of typhoon experience growing up in the UK) I'd have been concerned that the forecast was for Typhoon Saomai to hit just below Hangzhou and Typhoon (only just) Maria to hit Osaka. Given that I'm going from Hangzhou to Osaka for Summer Sonic on Friday that would have been bad!

As it was many times last year, so it is with Typhoon Saomai which was supposed to hit Ningbo (just south of Hangzhou) but has now veered south and is going to clip Taiwan before hitting Fujian. Worryingly, they were predicting it as a Cat 2/3 yesterday and it's now already a Cat 5.

Looking for a decent photo to post I came across this NASA Earth Observatory website which has a wide variety of beautiful satellite shots of the Earth, with annotations, including this one of the three active typhoon systems in the Pacific:


Looks pretty from above...

As if Dieting wasn't Bad Enough...

Someone in the office has just brought a tin of Quality Street over from the UK.

I've just been eyeing up the orange and strawberry creams, trying to tell myself that, although I would really like to eat one or indeed all (how do you think I got to be so overweight in the first place) of them, that it's not worth it. My justification is this:

1) Whilst I will, on the face of it, enjoy eating them I know probably don't actually like them that much (not as much as, say, Maltesers or for that matter, cheese) so I could be eating something I prefer instead.
2) Eating that many High-GI carbs will send my blood sugar through the roof, given my current diet, meaning that I'll feel rubbish in a couple of hours and eat far too much later.
3) I only really want one because I've eaten so many, and everyone else eats them, that I'm kinda programmed to respond in a 'I want one' way. It's just habit, not need.

I guess even with the logic I'm not really convinced and the only argument that's going to win is "You've been doing so well, don't spoil it now" - I'm down 4 more pounds since the last report so 'only' 22 pounds (10kg) to go.... Hmm, that sounds like a lot. Best get to the gym.

The only saving grace with the chocolates is that an open box of chocolates in the office here will last as long as a bottle of full-cream milk at a Blue Tit convention so it's probably just turned into a pile of wrappers as I type...

Back again

Well here we are again, back in Hangzhou.

It's been a lovely week in Singapore - would have been even nicer without pesky work getting in the way - but now I'm back and am compelled to write on the Dilberry just because I missed one important piece of information out last week on the way home.

I am again in the company of our driver (indeed, Mr. Leaf). It's 11.30pm on Saturday night and the plane has just got back late - presumably still catching up fro Hong Kong airport being out of action with the typhoon (there are photos in all the papers of the 70,000 people who were stuck there after hundreds of flights were cancelled just the day before yesterday so a one hour delay, put into that context, doesn't seem too bad!). There are just the two of us in the car and aside from the clicking of thumbs on keyboard, the only other sound is Mr Leaf sniffing. And sniffing. And sniffing. This is his natural state - I don't believe he has a cold. I make it 28 seconds on average between sniffs which makes even drug crazed coke fiends like JP seem entirely non-sniffy. Yuk.

Slugs

what little boys are made of
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

I thought this was a pretty good photo on Flickr but it reminded me on something...

One of the things YY found fascinating in England this time was that we came across a slug whilst walking in Ashdown Forest. She says she's never seen a slug before and that China doesn't have any.

On return, this has been sufficiently interesting to her to remember to tell other people, who have come from a variety of different parts of China, but they also have "never heard of such a thing in China".

I have to say I assumed slugs were pretty much universal and I'm still not convinced that they're not.

YY comes from Gansu province which in fairly recent geological time was clearly an area of desert. It's mostly sandstone now but you can see that the mountains are all in the patterns of dunes from the air. It's clearly dry, thin, sandy soil so I can well imagine that slugs would have a very hard time penetrating this area but Zhejiang (green, fertile, wet) would seem very easy territory for slugs?

Hey Baby!

Well, I'm sorry it's taken so long (this blog entry that is...). I wanted to make sure that I'd told my family this news before I wrote anything and I held onto that until YY and I were in the UK, wanting to be a surprise. Unfortunately, the rumour mill at my company had done a superb job of ruining my surprise and somehow managing to get to my family before I did so - if you're reading this and decided my personal life was something you thought you ought to tell my family before this - thanks very much. Still, bitterness over. Onto the fun stuff.

YY and I are having a baby (which, in case you don't know, is a first for both of us). YY is currently 5 and a bit months pregnant which, by my calculations puts us online for a mid-late November baby. It will be born in the year of the dog which, I'm told, is a good thing, dogs being sturdy and dependable - hopefully that doesn't mean it will chew the couch and poop on the lawn.

This the most recent pic that I've got on the computer but that's from fairly early on - the others don't show it anything like as clearly. Worryingly it does seem to resemble JP but I imagine most babies do.

Baby FAQ so far:

1) The baby when born will have both a Chinese name and an English name (although the English name will be the one in it's passport).
2) We don't know whether it's a boy or a girl - Chinese hospitals are banned from telling you. Sadly, because most people can only have one child, girls are not highly sought-after so doctors won't tell you for fear or your subsequent actions (that have already lead to a large imbalance in the male and female populations).
3) Pregnancy so far has been without major incident although YY has had large bouts of nausea on and off since the start of the whole thing (the recent flight to the UK was punctuated every 90 mins or so with her disappearing at roadrunner speeds to the loos).
4) Checkup today went well. Heartbeat loud and clear. Very disappointing that I'm in Singapore and missed it!
5) It started kicking this week

Yay!

So much for being back.

So, back in China for a whole 5 days, I've just arrived in Singapore on business.

Flight down was largely uneventful as I managed to restrain the urge to slaughter one of my fellow passengers. Have you noticed how aggressive travelling can make me these days? I definitely think I'm overdoing it...

You clearly don't get a better class of passenger in Business Class - on the first leg of the journey to Hong Kong the guy (my row but fortunately the other side of the plane) spent the first 1.5 hours of the flight continually snorting air in through his nose as if it was blocked. Me: I'd be concerned that everyone else on the plane would be unhappy about me making pig impressions and would disappear to the toilets to sort my nose out but this guy, not a bit of it. Worse, about 10 minutes before we came in to land he started making avery loud gurgling cough which culminiated in him fishing for the air sickness bag, noisily hewing a big lump of phlegm into it and the putting it back in the seat pocket in front of him.

The second flight was much better (quieter at least) and had movies so watched MI-III. I was intrigued to learn, from the plot of the film, that there are secret biological weapons stored in a building in Hengshan Lu in Shanghai. That's where TGI Fridays and the rather nice Mexican Restaurant Zapatas are located. So much for the recent discovery of organo-phosphates in Chinese Spinach, what I want to know is whether they test for Rabbit's Foot in the Margaritas!

Singapore is lovely, as always. It's a nice 29 degrees C so far today (Sunday at home was 38 C (weather.com did say "feels like 43") so this is glorious. Started the day in the open air pool at 6:30am with myna birds and hummingbirds flitting overhead then, disaster struck.

I have a meeting this afternoon with a very senior client. Even though it's very hot in Singapore, this is the kind of meeting where suits would always be required, at least for the first 30 seconds before everyone ditches their jackets but... I have brought my 'small' suit (I have 3 different sizes of suit - Overweight, Obese and pro-wrestler. As I don't wear suits in daily life, I haven't worn this in ages and had assumed it would be OK. Clearly that last few kilos I lost has taken me below the acceptable threshhold. With the trousers on and held and a comfortable degree of tightness there were no less than 6 inches of spare trousers. I kid you not. Even trying jaunty things with a belt to stop a 'funny home videos' moment (the sort where I'm walking down the street and suddenly 'whoops - they're off') isn't going to disguise the fact that I looked like Stan Laurel wearing Oliver Hardy's suit.

Still - at least, it being Singapore, I can go to every British person's last refuge for clothing, Marks and Spencer. The galling thing about this is the I still intend to lose a further 10 kilos which means these clother will then be too big so I'm going to buy a new suit that, in all likelihood, I will wear for a 60 minute meeting this afternoon and the jacket will probably only stay on for the first 60 seconds. I'll remember this if anyone questions my expenses as to whether I really did need that can of Diet Pepsi from the minibar.

Update - who knew Marks and Spencer would be so much more expensive here than in the UK. It's just cost me 300 GBP (550 USD) for a jacket, trousers and a shirt. OK, and some cufflinks because the shirt I liked didn't have buttons. Oh, and a tie because the one I'd brought didn't really suit the shirt but still, 300 GBP for a Marks' suit! I did insist on keeping the jacket on for the duration of the meeting just to get some value-for-money.

Yay!

Ok, so you probably don't care, but I was thrilled this morning to find the bathroom scales telling me that I was 99.9kg (that's 220 lb or 15 stone 10 lb).

Not only don't you care, but you probably think that that sounds quite fat but to put it in context, I was actually 122 kg three months ago and have been working extremely hard, on both diet and exercise regime to rectify this position. To elaborate further, I'm pretty sure I've never been sub 100 kg since I was a student almost 20 years ago.

Still - I'm not finished here - goal is 88kg. I don't remember being 88kg so I might well have been at school last time I weighed that. I'll let you know how I get on!

We're back

Finally we've made it back home after two and a half weeks and, more surprisingly our driver survived the journey from Shanghai to Hangzhou.

It started badly when he rang to say he'd be at our hotel 10 minutes later so we got our stuff together and stood outside the hotel in the very unpleasant humidity and howling wind. 30 minutes later he appears blaming slow traffic.

Eventually we set off but we want to go to Ikea en route. I suggest that, as I know the direct route well, that he go that way (he's not reknowned for his knowledge of Shanghai) but he sets off in the opposite direction and when challenged waves away my repeated suggestion and says the elevated expressways will be quicker. Which they might be apart from the fact he comes off at the wrong exit and is driving around for 15 minutes before he tells us he's lost and stops to ask for help. It turns out we're going the wrong way so he gets back on the main road and causes two other cars to emergency-stop to avoid smashing into our car. 100 metres from Ikea I shout (in Chinese) "There it is, on the left" so he ignores that and says "I'll ask someone where it is" pulls to a halt and dashes out to ask someone. When we get there there's a road down the side and there's a large sign with the work 'Ikea' the letter P in white on a blue background and an arrow pointing down this side road which he tries to ignore three times with me getting angrier with each time.

Eventually we get there, get our stuff (which only took 10 mins) and went back to the stuffy mosquito-filled car park. After tracking down the car we couldn't find the driver who was also not answering his phone. When he answered on the fourth call (having simply ignored previous calls and texts) he seemed surprised that we'd called and slowly trotted back.

About a quarter of the way back, I was getting concerned about the '1960's Feature Film Driving Style' - you know, the one when they used to sit in a mock car with a projector playing a film of the road behind them. The drivers, always trying to make it look like they're driving always used to move the wheel frequently from side-to-side in a completely unconvincing simulation of driving. Unfortunately our driver was doing just that and wafting from lane to lane for no apparent reason. A quick discussion took place in the back (which the driver couldn't see because he has the rear view mirror folded up to the ceiling to avoiding it distracting him) and we concluded he was tired. When asked directly if this was the case, he said it wasn't but he was not OK because he was so hungry. Apparently, knowing he'd got a roundtrip of 6 hours to make, he'd decided to go for a light breakfast.

I did actually have this conversation with YY before the driver arrived - she was suggesting that a good boss would invite the driver to have something to eat with him and rest for a while after the 3 hour journey to Shanghai. I put forward the opposite view that a good driver would have the sense to arrive at least 30 minutes early so that he had time, both as a buffer in case of traffic or as a means of getting a break and something to eat before he headed back. Clearly he hadn't done this.

So, instead, we pulled into the provincial boundary service station where he went to have something to eat and we sat like kippers in the car for half an hour. Eventually we made it home, entirely intact, so it probably was 30 minutes well spent considering the alternatives.

This does bring up an interesting point about many Chinese people and their food dependency. It seems to manifest itself a bit like diabetes in that people are genuinely not OK or capable to function if they haven't eaten regularly. And by regularly, I don't just mean three times a day, I mean within 60 minutes of 11am and 5:30pm for lunch and dinner. I've known people to burst into tears when they've been asked to delay a meal because of a pressing work problem.

The problem is made even worse by the reliance on hot, preferably freshly-cooked food for every meal. Again, the British equivalent driver would, assuming a 6 hour stretch, would probably get a coffee, a sandwich and a Ginsters pasty somewhere en route (or even have the foresight to make sandwiches themselves before they set off) but sandwiches don't typically feature in the Chinese diet so grabbing a bite to keep the hunger pangs away is automatically a long drawn-out affair.

Poorly Named

Whilst in the UK, I have just had occasion to visit the small town of Haywards Heath. Sadly I was without camera when chancing across a sign pointing down a small alley that read

Pieces of Eight Pets

I don't know if the people that named the company actually thought about this but it certainly made me laugh out loud with warped imagination assming that it was the start of some sort of 'Fatal Attraction' treasure hunt.

Observations from a Small Island

Ok, bit of a cliche but I've been back in the UK for a week and a half now and here, in no particular order, are the things that strike me. Apologies for the fact that some of them are almost certainly well documented but, hey, this is my blog so live with it.

1) British People are tremendously fat. OK, not every single one but there are an awful lot of very fat people here. The fact that people in China are typically both thin and small highlights this tremendously. An add-on to that is that clearly many obese people must have distorting mirrors at home or they wouldn't wear the clothes they do with fat bellies protruding from under crop tops and rolls of fat poking out from sleeveless shirt armholes.

2) There are now a huge number of people from Eastern Europe in the UK. Not surprisingly the retail and hospitality industries seem to be snapping them up because they're probably far higher quality employees than the average Brit that applies. They also seem to be a large part of the "not fat" population.

3) British people are really quite unpleasant. We travelled in the first class seats of a train up to London but could hardly see out because someone had scrawled on the glass. Now, you do se graffiti in China but it's normally actually a sort of 'fly advertising' where people scrawl a couple of characters and a phone number - nothing like the mindless scrawling and tagging you get from louts in the UK who just want the place to look terrible.

4) ... And can be quite stupid. There's a motorway bridge over the M25 where someone has painted, in huge letters, PEAS - I assume this is in the same vein as the graffiti I saw from the M6 which read "WORLD PEAS NOW"

5) ...And filthy. YY had previously thought that the UK would be very clean. Walking through the centre of Leeds just after the shops closed yesterday dispelled that myth - small whirlwinds of litter were moving around on the filthy pavements covered in ice cream, ketchup and gum.

6) British food is great. By that, I mean I have eaten Indian, Lebanese, "Mediterranean", Italian, American, etc. The range of flavours on offer is superb. YY does hold that the exact oposite is true, however.

7) British driving is great - so relaxing not to have to try to predict who's going to change lanes on the motorway without indicating and for no reason. Or when the next car is going to drive up the motorway the wrong way. It all conforms to a system. Lovely.

Mad Road Signs

So, another foray on the bike to the Tea Village of Longjing. I knew it was going to be hard work as the map shows the path snaking back and forth upon itself as it winds up the mountain. Can't wait for my new cycle computer to arrive as these things are always more satisfying with statistics.

Set off at at about 5pm to miss the worst of the sun but between the sun and the strong breeze I began to learn what it must be like to be inside a convection oven.

Just as I got to the foot of the main climb, I guessed it was going to be hard work when I saw this:

Still, this is China so the obvious thing to do is to ignore all signs and instructions relating to road traffic law. The climb was pretty hard work but the descent was well worth it (although there was a corresponding "no cycling down the hill" sign at the top).

No idea why the signs were there as it was eminently cyclable, albeit fairly tough.

Still, it's not quite as inexplicable as this sign in the underground car park at the gym.