In China

[Kingfish]

I have recently returned from the land of fish and plant.

First off, everything I knew about China was wrong and replaced within the first two days of residency.

The people here are very nice, most are shy, they are bright, and the ones I encountered on a daily basis want to advance their English. They all appreciate the attempt to speak their language as a first choice like a flower draws to sunshine.

In the city of Suzhou, not far from Shanghai where I stayed there were very few policemen observed because they are not required. The streets are clean, free of litter & graffiti, and I was never troubled other than crossing the intersections which was in itself a challenge for survival. On that note, I’ve been told Italy is worse though I can scarcely imagine.

Yes, there is air pollution of an extreme beyond my childhood memories of Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s. There is industrial and commercial expansion ongoing at a world-breaking pace, and I could not begin enumerate the count of cranes within my short visibility: They are rapidly building a modern interconnected infrastructure like there is no tomorrow.


This parking lot is about two city blocks long and filled with electric mopeds.

• I saw one bicycle for every 100 electric mopeds.
• I saw one ICE moped for every 100 electrics.
• I saw one motorcycle on the road in the whole month there possibly because they are heavily taxed and disallowed on expressways.

The public news channel - CCTV recently announced that the Leadership is moving to shutter 65% of all coal-fired production of electricity and heavy industry in the next 5 years, replacing it with nuclear generation.

There is an active program to plant trees at break-neck speed.


Appears to be a public charging station...

For the most part, I could walk for miles through the city center and not encounter another Anglo/European, although many citizens know basic English well enough to be kindred, and I did my best to learn their language as rapidly as possible.

I’d like to share with you a few photos and stories as time allows before I’m away again. Work keeps me busy, and when you’re a world away… well, there just isn’t much down time – not that I’m complaining.


Shopping at "Tesco", a local urban superstore. This quad is selling electric mobility ranging from 1899 to 3300 RMB (about $300-550 USD).

I'll add more in a bit.
干杯 KF

[shenzhen_ex]

Kingfish,

Did you get a chance to visit the Gardens or Canals in the Suzhou's "old city" area?

I was there back in 2005. I was not on Business so I mainly remember the canals and some interesting local dishes. I stayed in a canal side hotel for a few nights. It was actually more like a room for rent in a building similar to the ones with red lanterns in the picture below.

[Lock]

Lovely KF... Haven't been to C myself, but when I once was a manager with staff (before I escaped "employment" and became self-employed), being the sneaky sort, the only hires I made were young ladies that were brought up by their C parents... Personable, quiet, hard-working... MY boss told me once I was "good at hiring", but I guess he hadn't figured out my secret... The two ladies cried on my shoulder the day I left that place (v. sorry their boss was leaving)... Would LOVE to see China some time... Being a city boy myself, I would have no probs in their cities, but would still like to see watts left of their countryside...

Also v. interesting to hear about their "ebike culture" (community?). Not sure, but I suspect us westerners only see the "cheap stuff". And am at least pretty sure they have repair facilities "covered"... Like, on EVery street corner...
L

[Kingfish]

>> shenzhen_ex
Yes, I took lots of canal pics because each bridge was a unique crossing; here’s a few…


Started with this little funky canal crossing on the way back from Suzhou Museum.


At the other end of the spectrum is the Jinghang Canal - also called "The Grand Canal", the world's longest artificial river!


This pretty piece had a garden on top of the bridge.

My first “day off” I asked the doormen to send me someplace interesting, so they hailed a cab that was driven by a well-dress woman that in any other setting could have been mistaken for an office manager. She took me into the heart of the old town – bumper to bumper traffic et al, to the far northeast corner to the Suzhou City Museum. It was very busy there and to tell you the truth, I thought it was a bit light on the treatment and small. Next door was more interesting: The Humble Administrator’s Garden. I stumbled into the area and found it to fit the namesake very well indeed.


Just one small corner in The Humble Administrator’s Garden.

From there I decided to walk back to the Shangri-La Hotel, tallest building in Suzhou and fairly easy to spot (if the smog is not too bad). That took me about 2 hours – and I walk very fast! Though as I said, got some great shots of the city and overcame my fear of public (Stranger in a Strange Land).

Taxis were very costly (although by our standards – they were a bargain) and I ended up switching to the subway which was way less expensive. Cost me 4 RMB ($0.67 USD) to go to 7 miles into SIP for an evening of beer and food at Meister Braü, a German Brewery on the edge of Jinji (“Chicken”) Lake. It was so popular we went 3 Friday’s in a row!


A Meter-long sampler of fine German beer in Meister Braü.



>> Lock
I have to confess that I am completely smitten by Chinese girls. It starts with Hello: “Ni Hao” (你好) is Chinese for Hello, and there are two forms that I hear, the first being like two distinct syllables, and the second form of pronunciation slurs them together softly as “Neow” like a little quiet kitty “meow” – and it really sounds very sweet out of the mouths of absolutely adorably cute Chinese girls. <bite knuckle>


Here's the old rascal himself. Next time I'm bringing the cowboy hat and we'll see how many I can round up then

I only wish I was 20 years younger.

On my last full day I didn’t have to work so a couple of my new Chinese pals played hooky and took me to the Suzhou Taihu Wetland Park for half-day which is a story unto itself. That evening I hooked with another pal and we ate a fabulous dinner at Song Helou which is over 250 years old, the oldest restaurant in Suzhou (review here). Best pot stickers on the planet – I kid you not! One night mid-week a group of us walked over to “Japanese Street” for dinner: It’s a short narrow street lined with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean restaurants. We hit this one – sorry, don’t have the name though I can point it out easy enough – and the four of us at 150 RMB each (about $25 USD) was all you can eat Japanese Sushi and beer, and we ate like kings! So much food, and it just kept coming… Then they said “wait till you have desert” Oh gawd and I mean in a good way! Hands down that was the most bang for the buck! I should have brought the camera out that night; really a fantastic experience.


"Japanese Street" is that little road with a cluster of small buildings in the lower-right center.
Following the main drag away from the hotel, take a right and it's the 2nd door on the left
-> look for Saké bottles lining the entry way We ate upstairs in a private room.

On ebikes, it's the same stuff we see. I looked at it closely and the hub motors are marked 48V. And you are correct about the repair shops everywhere; it's just that they are so unsightly that I didn't take pictures. Most of the older shops are built on the first floor, with living space above.

Did I mention that I miss the place? KF

[wheelbender6]

Sounds like a fantastic trip. I visited Hong Kong in the 80's when my ship anchored for a few days. Alas, I've never been to mainland China.

[beast775]

Great read kingfish,makes me want to go.still waiting for you to publish a book, you got mad skills.

[sk8norcal]

checked out some vids off utube,
not much different than other videos i found of china,

from this video,
i notice plates on majority of ebike/escooters

btw, their national standard is 40 kg/88 lbs max weight and 20 km/12.4 mph max speed
which seems like no one follows...

[liveforphysics]

First off, everything I knew about China was wrong and replaced within the first two days of residency.

Same exact thing happened to me my friend.

I was expecting what US propaganda and National Geographic articles had lead me to believe. Then you arrive and just toss everything you had pre-conceived China being like out the window, and just start enjoying life in a beautiful and radically more capitalist and peaceful loving friendly culture than the US. So many smiling faces everywhere you go.

[Kingfish]

^ +1 Thx Luke

The Job
I went into this arrangement with a positive mental attitude and Boy Scout sense of expectations for adventure. To be clear, when I learned about the job back in May or June, they said to me that there will be some travel involve, probably more than 25% - and “do you have a problem with that?” Without blinking I said “Where do I sign?”

One other item that helped seed the path before me occurred completely by chance: Just weeks before I had updated the profile in Outlook using a photo of me wearing a bright straw cowboy. The truth is - the full picture is of me dispensing beer from a keg in the stream with a big wide smiling grin – although for the profile I had cropped it down to a just headshot. Right; so in order to identify me at Pudong Int’l Airport – the travel agent used that same photo … which also became my ID photo at the job site.

Turns out the Chinese people love cowboy movies like we are into “Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon”, Kung Fu and Jackie Chan! They expect Americans to be colorful (although rudeness, like anywhere else is inappropriate). Here I yam wearing a ballcap with my ID badge and the Chinese I interact with fully expected me to be “cowboy”: It was an easy ice-breaker that allowed me to humanize our relationship and quickly become an effective team.

They’re expecting me to wear the cowboy hat when I return. Weather may dictate which one I take, although I did bring the Seattle Sombrero by Outdoor Research – but never had a chance to wear it due to the topic heat. The search is on.


Morning sunrise of my first day. This is a wide panorama -> so stretch it!

More about my Hotel
I stayed at the Suzhou Shangri-La, a 5-Star hotel only 7 years old as I understand, so everything is still quite new. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE … except for the plumber… was top-notch, courteous, professional, and friendly. The plumber is never going to make my Christmas card list: I have two complaints to register whilst in China – the first was I did not cotton to the cafeteria-style food at the job site which IMO was worse than the Elementary School drivel we were forced to eat. Calamari-Day was an exception, but the rest of the time it was almost gross with phatty mystery meat choppings full of bones. One day was so bad that I couldn’t tell if I was eating snake or spine; just never did figure out the type of critter – except it was previously extinct though resurrected for our culinary enjoyment.

The other item was my pesky bathroom shower which initially was ice cold, though within seconds became wicked hot. If you cranked it down to cold then you bought about 10 seconds of relief before going magma-hot. Alas, I tried to switch to the tub but its’ temperature range was locked in between Rocky Mountain frigid and Sub-Artic cold. The hotel tried thrice to fix the problem which only made it worse each time. I resorted to Navy Boot-Camp training; 2-minute showers with a mop-bucket of cold water: Done.

Air pollution is pretty bad, and I thought after a few days that was the cause of the ache in my chest, like the remains of a cold. This condition cleared out within a day of return to rainy Seattle. The worst of the pollution was experienced on the exit ride to the airport via Shanghai: It’s still early morning on a Saturday, visibility is about 7 miles for the majority of the 2-hour ride. Then we went through a section of downtown (or one of the downtowns) of Shanghai and I noticed the skyscrapers were empty and the visibility reduced to just a couple of miles. Then the headache began, combined with itchy burning eyes. After about 10 minutes we exited out of that part of the city – clearly heading towards the airport and the burning eye problem ceased, although I had mild migraine symptoms that lasted for days afterwards and couldn’t take enough Ibuprofen to knock it back.


Absolutely beautiful at night! Panorama ->

In Politics
The Hotel staff brought me two papers nearly every day: Shanghai Daily, and China Today – both in English. On the shuttle to work we had Internet TV morning and night that displayed CCTV News in Chinese presented in long monolog-style reporting, although the video clips were in the native language. Generally the stories broken down into this order: What President Xi Jinping did today, optionally what the Premier Li Keqiang did, China & Japan rivalry over a tiny dot of land in the sea, some internal matters that could include serial murders, bombers, money-launders –> serious crimes against the state, finally way down the list we get to Syria and the United States.

Honestly by this time I’m a bit worn out from watching monolog and recycled video over and over in the same story that I just tune it out. Seems the United States is not well-liked by Upper Management, thus I came to calling CCTV -> “The Small Ruling Elites’ Peoples Propaganda Channel” for the policies and tendencies of Government appeared out of step with The People on the Street. But that’s just my take. I prefer not to say more least I have my Internet privileges revoked and become arrested for expressing contrary opinion. You can be certain the email I sent home to family refrained to obvious gruntled observations.

But that didn’t stop me from fomenting provocative independent thought with my new Chinese pals! I showed them pictures of home, played music for them (particularly the parody “Carrot Juice is Murder” which seemed only to confuse them), and especially Youtube (I’ll probably get fired for saying that). Imagine if they had access to Netflix! Though more importantly – we talked about my ebike and their electric mopeds.

I also spent a good deal of time learning how to draw Chinese characters – of which I took to like a duck to water! So by the 4th week – I was beginning to “read” signage and recognize words/expressions. Having an interpreter (especially one that could keep up to my normal talking speed) was hugely beneficial and we learned as a whole together sharing (including colorful metaphors which were a lot of fun). The way to draw the characters is symbolic, there is a definitive stroke order, and the process tells a little story at the same time. Being artistic, a cartoonist and illustrator as the first real talent before I became an engineer, I got this in one. The Interpreter filled in the gaps. Soon our study sessions were crowded by my Team trying to learn English whilst they discussed the best character representation for my questioning. I have to tell you – Learning Chinese should be a separate thread! It is so much fun to work with happy people that also want to learn from you and through you with your perceptions, warts and all.


Yikes!

Small introduction to drawing Chinese
Language can tell us so much about a society. In this case, the Chinese language is directly traceable back 3500 some years. Words/Expressions are often constructed from basic symbols. They will contain ligatures that indicate the type of word/meaning + a pronunciation key. Examples:
Fire (火) looks like a man running with two torches, Water (水), Stream (流) has a common left-side ligature indicating it is associated with water, Insect (虫), Fish (鱼), Tree or Wood (木), Forest (森 or 森林 includes a lot more wood for larger size), Plant (植) is woody, Rice (米) is also woody, Man (男) is a combination of “Field” (田) + “Strength/Power” (力), Woman (女), People (人), Sky (天), Sun (日), Moon (月), Up (上), Down (下)

Here are a couple of fun combinations

• Bee (蜂). Notice the “Insect” ligature on the left; nearly all insect names will have this.
• Tomorrow (明天). Literally translates as “Sun Moon Sky” or “Sun Moon Heaven”.
• Elevator (电梯). This one cracks me up: The first symbol is “Electric”, and the 2nd is “Ladder”, however it too is a compound word that can be broken into “Wooden Little Brother”. Does this imply we used the backs of our little brothers to climb higher? Had a lot of fun with that one cos I’d often tell them I need to take the “Electric Wooden Little Brother” to get to a meeting.
• Hornet (马蜂). The first symbol is literally “Horse”, so the composition is “Horse Bee” meaning “a large bee”.
• China (中国). The first part I’m not entirely sure, although I can tell you that the 2nd part is explained like this: It’s the King (王) on his Throne inside his Castle (the box shaped “mouth” 口) with a piece of Jade (玉) at his feet.
• Chinese People (中国人). Can you figure it out?

I just found it to be a really neat culture, full of mystery and surprise, and I enjoyed my stay there exploring a new realm with friends.
在友谊, KF

[Rassy]

KF, great pictures, views, and insights from and about China. Thanks for sharing.

[Hillhater]

There is a big Tourist industry now for Aussies to China.
A couple of popular media guys went on one (an advertising freebee !) and in the lead up made much of their impending tour of the "Third world" as they perceived it.
However, on their return, they were very quick to comment that they were wrong, and now realize that China had progressed far ahead of most western communities, infact they had visited the future world, and by comparison, we are living in the "Third world" here, !

[melodious]

When I was learning how Western music theory worked, I found an interesting factoid about folks that have the "perfect pitch" aka absolute pitch ability. Chinese have a higher rate of people & musicians that have this ability. Reason being is their language is based on pitch and inflections of the worded language.

[The fingers]

When I was learning how Western music theory worked, I found an interesting factoid about folks that have the "perfect pitch" aka absolute pitch ability. Chinese have a higher rate of people & musicians that have this ability. Reason being is their language is based on pitch and inflections of the worded language.

As a musician, I find this fascinating.

[swbluto]

However, on their return, they were very quick to comment that they were wrong, and now realize that China had progressed far ahead of most western communities, infact they had visited the future world, and by comparison, we are living in the "Third world" here, !

Lol, that definitely seems just about right! They see the future and are embracing technology, while the 'first world' is desperately clinging onto the ways of old.

[melodious]

As a musician with no perfect pitch ability, I find it funny to ask those that do have it what the note of the florescent light bulbs, refrigerator, and general appliances were making.

I also would bombard them with Indian raga music as it has micro steps that aren't in the western music vocabulary. So if your not familiar with the music genre it could be somewhat... "annoying" Kinda like how Chalo works.

[Lock]

There is a big Tourist industry now for Aussies to China.

Sooo mate... Folks in China now have to learn some visitors may like to hoist a schooner with a sheila beside the billabong?

Cor blimey!

Hehe...

L

[Lebowski]

Thanks for posting about the chinese characters, very interesting

[oldhaq]

I'm currently in transit in Hong Kong airport en route to Brisbane via Singapore, after a stay in Wuhan to visit friends from from previous stays there when I was "teaching" english in a university, Jiangzhou for a 4 day long wedding, and Shanghai to fill in yesterday and today cos I hadn't been there yet and I particularly wanted to ride their Maglev.

Sad to leave the place yet again, more so the people, especially beautiful ladies - they are my cup of tea.

I saw 1 ebike in all of China, in Shanghai, and it was a classic looking old style black bike with a small bafang type front hub in about a 28" rim, similar to an old style racer lugged frame.
When I was last there all scooters were ice, but now 99% are electric with 9C, magic pie or I think BMC types, except in Fujian where most are still ice.
I'll put up some pics and vid when I get back.

zaijian

[TheBeastie]

There is a big Tourist industry now for Aussies to China.
A couple of popular media guys went on one (an advertising freebee !) and in the lead up made much of their impending tour of the "Third world" as they perceived it.
However, on their return, they were very quick to comment that they were wrong, and now realize that China had progressed far ahead of most western communities, infact they had visited the future world, and by comparison, we are living in the "Third world" here, !

Yeah I was thinking the other day how AU has a terrible affordable housing crisis and our governments dont do much about it and see on the news that in China the government builds like 500,000 new apartments a year minimum or something and they look nice and are deliberately got rules to make them as affordable as possible. Do the opposite of our country rules and make it difficult for overseas buyers to gobble them up unlike us..

In Australia its a standard rule that new property developers can sell %50 of any new building estate, something that new home builders always use to the max since selling as fast as possible is maximum profits.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/prope ... 1aihd.html

I look and wonder sure you can be a 'spec head' about what is an ideal government system is with democracy etc, but what about looking at just results! China is kicking our butts.

Actually I am a bit surprised to see they have a lot of ebikes which is what I original thought until I saw another thread where it had all this news from China where ebikes are being banned all over.

[swbluto]

China is kicking our butts.

Definitely, I always wondered what a society would look like when driven by results/science instead of often suboptimal convention and ideology. Looks like China is answering that question!

[Harold in CR]

Very interesting thread. Thanks for posting it, and, thanks to those that have actually been in China, for an insiders report.

[The fingers]

As a musician with no perfect pitch ability, I find it funny to ask those that do have it what the note of the florescent light bulbs, refrigerator, and general appliances were making.

As a side note, the telephone dial tone is an F.

[Lock]

As a musician with no perfect pitch ability, I find it funny to ask those that do have it what the note of the florescent light bulbs, refrigerator, and general appliances were making.

As a side note, the telephone dial tone is an F.

Ermmm... That's a "flat"? Or at least, the phone ringing tends to "fall flat" whenEVer it rings, sorta guaranteed to be while you are doing something else...

L

[Kingfish]

Looking east down the main drag back towards my Hotel from the entrance to the Suzhou Amusement Land.

More thoughts…

• In terms of labor force that one can throw at a problem, yes – China dominates. A profound example was watching the construction of light rail progress on a day-by-day basis: Around the first day this dirt in front of the eventual path was scrub & grass. Next day is was cleared… then trenched, boxed out, dug out, dug out some more, inspected, then workers began erecting what looked like a dense bamboo scaffolding 2-3 stories tall.
• Sidebar: I found it quite amusing (in a good way) that they will use scaffolding made of either bamboo or of steel, though when it is steel – it looks remarkably (to this foreigner) like bamboo, and instead of lashings, they have fitment pieces. Sorry – didn’t take pictures, though next time.
• OK, so in Week One we’ve gone from natural to pit & scaffolding. Week Two adds basement rebar and concrete footing buried two meters below ground. Week Three – it’s more scaffolding, and pylon rebar, 2nd footing to ground level is poured. Week Four, the pylon is completed and their moving to place the overhead bridging rail. Had I know – I would have taken daily picts; just blew me away how fast they go here.

My Interpreter told me China consumes 70% of all the worlds’ concrete. In Suzhou, they have one functioning light rail, and I saw a video in the station on my last week there promoting the total of 8 rail lines to connect all the distant cantons. High Speed rail into Shanghai is partly in place, yet there is no end-to-end solution without having to change subways 5 or 6 times, and that’s a problem.



Points of Interest on this trip
The Old Historic part of Town is in yellow and lined by a large moat. At the time I was there you could not take the full boat tour do to upgrades/construction – although I’ve heard this is very interesting.

• 1: Taihu Lake Wetland Park
  2: Mudu District
  3: Shangri-La Hotel relative to the Light Rail with stations directly West & North
  4: Song Helou Restaurant in the old district. Subway is close by.
  5: Suzhou Museum. I walked back to the Hotel from there and it was epic!
  6: Meister Braü in the SIP

To go from the Shang to Mudu or the Old District was 3 RMB, and to Arts & Cultural Center (Beer!) cost 4. The subway is the way to go. Each station is different, so read the station map to know which numbered exit to take. There are many new areas to play; the ex-pats congregate in the SIP, and I’ve been told it’s very westernized – which could be a mixed blessing. I wasn’t there in daylight, and my evening shots are crap without a tripod; next time.


Compact - though easy to navigate if you know the way. Not at all like London

'
About the same size as the Sound Transit Light Rail. Did you notice the signage is in both Mandarin and English?

More later, KF

[Sancho's Horse]

For the ultimate in cultural experiences, try the bus or the train right before or after spring festival.