Some differences in culture make sense to me; others do not. Here’s one. I see this all the time. Pedestrians, bikes, and whatever other form of defenseless vehicle insisting on using the street rather than sidewalks. I’ve seen some people that appear to just stand out in the middle of the road for the heck of it. What? Check out this picture: I took this from the back of the taxi. Here’s what to notice:

• There’s a big ole SUV in the righthand land going pretty fast
• There’s a bike with two people on it in front of both the taxi and the SUV (also, having this sort of passenger on your bike is quite common. The passenger never straddles the bike for some reason…easy exit, I reckon)
• My taxi is in the lefthand lane and this is a two-way road.
• There’s plenty of room on the sidewalk on the right side!

I went with my friend, Zhao SiSi, to one of the prominent landmarks in Shenzhen, the tallest building in town, the Shun Hing Square Tower, and the fourth highest in China (the 8th in the world according to the website referenced). I’d seen this skyscraper during my first weekend here while visiting “Mix City”:

They charge 60 Yuan to go to the top – about $7.75. Of course, there’s an observation area, but it’s all behind glass – boo! There are also a few funny “attractions”. One reminded me of these ancient silly shows at amusement parks where they project faces onto whites busts so it appears they’re speaking and various pieces of the set animate. This was some sort of story of pirates in Hong Kong harbor. Not really sure.

There was another little exhibit with animated monkeys, fish, and crabs that talked about the environmental damage…this was curious (more in a future post).

We spent most of the time looking out the window trying to find landmarks we knew. Because it was at night, and because the Chinese love their neon lights, it was quite a visual treat. The cherry on the sundae was a green laser on the very top of the building that swung across the fringes of the city. I’d never seen such a big laser…very cool. I wonder if this is the spotlight that I see every night from my apartment. I had to laugh recalling the stories in the US of airline pilots complaining about people with little pen lasers pointing them up at planes (maybe this was actually an article from The Onion) and here in China was this huge green laser firing and arching across the sky. I snapped a cupla pictures (check out the laser beam):

Here’s a picture of only the second cat I’ve seen. Mao = cat. Mao mi = kitty. I saw him on the way to get some breakfast. He looked a little ragged so I figured it was best if I didn’t try to pet him (‘specially before I ate). So, I just sat down and listened to him meow…loudly. He flopped down like he wanted to be pet, but when I got up, he skittered off into the plants.

I went to my first Toastmasters meeting in Shenzhen. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up joining for my duration here. I had my driver take me there, though next time I’ll take the subway ’cause that way he won’t have to wait for me. Anyway, I called someone in the club and had her talk to my driver to make sure I had the right place. Pretty soon a guy with a bunch of roses approached me. “No, no roses”, I was thinking as I was shaking my head. “No, I’m not selling roses! Are you looking for Toastmasters??” “Shi!” and we jogged to the back of the building where the meeting was about 2 minutes away from starting. I signed in. In front of me was an Englishman (the only other “man of the west”) that I spoke to briefly. I then took a seat.

I was surprised at how similar the meeting was to the Kirkland Eclectics – lots of enthusiasm, support, and laughter. They had no word of the week, but did add an um counter. I supposed it was wise in this case to have an um counter when the majority of these people didn’t speak English as a first language. They also had a section called “Development Section”. I’m not really sure what the point was, but it was a good idea. A young fella named Vincent came up to the front with a violin and gave a long inspirational speech on his love of the violin and music. He also played three pieces, one of them being the Meditation from “Thais” by Massenet. He did a great job and I wanted to speak to him afterwards, but didn’t get the chance. Maybe next time.

Another interesting thing was the quantity of young people. For once, I was one of the older attendees. There were many people who were still in college. There is immense competition among young people, especially about to graduate, to get every edge they can so that they can land a decent job, which still pays peanuts compared to the salaries in the US. I wish more young folks in the US would join clubs like Toastmasters, most are out hitting the bars. That’s fine, I guess; there’s plenty of that here, but there is more of a hunger here, way more, than in the US. That’s a nice segue for a plug of The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and an article I just saw (haven’t read it yet) in Business Week titled, “They’re Smart. They’re Hungry. And They Want Your Customers. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.” The cover shows a shot of the globe that’s focused on China and Southeast Asia.

(l-r) Toastmaster of the evening (don’t recall her name), Hameed (TableTopics Master), Greg (Guest from Hong Kong)

Here’s another example of people and their cell phones. People adore cell phones here. I need to do a full report on this, but here’s one example. Here’s a shot of the Grammarian (the guy who approached me holding the roses) playing with his cell phone. Now, he should be paying attention to the speech going on, but instead he’s taking pictures and talking with the Table Topics Master, an Indian man living in Hong Kong. I suppose I can’t really criticize him, he delivered a good, if not extremely long-winded (Timer?) report. He even pointed out some good feedback to me: “Americans use ‘very’ a lot!” Arrr! Sorry, Jim!

Cell phone distractions:

The General Evaluator (she likes to cry while watching Titanic):

The meeting went on way too long. 15 minutes overdue and the Toastmaster was still talking. For all her enthusiasm and excellent speaking skills (quite the typical Toastmaster), she did not know how to be concise and not grope for things to say. I started feeling bad about Xiao Liu waiting for me outside, so I excused myself and left. I was planning on taking better pictures at the end of the meeting, but obviously never got the chance. I’ll come back tho’.

The elevators in China are always crowded during the rush hours: punchin’ in, break time (lunch), and quittin’ time. It’s common for as many to pile in as possible only to hear the warning siren go off indicating there are too many people (the “overweight!” light starts flashing too). In those cases, what usually happens is a few in the front get out and then get back on hoping to trick the alarm into not going off again. It’s common for people to be packed in like those little vienna sausages…you’re always touching a few people on all sides. Some more Americans visited the office the other day and were remarking at how uncomfortable this feels. It doesn’t bother me, I reckon; I just recognize this, think it’s normal, and forget about it. What’s more uncomfortable is trying to say something in Chinese and seeing someone tilt there head slightly at you and say the equivalent of “What?” D’oh!

Here’s an elevator shot. This one didn’t set off the alarm. I’ve seen it quite a bit more crowded:

For the first time ever, I found myself alone. Instead of calling someone to go do something, I thought it might be worthwhile just to explore on my own. So, I started walking around the area around the Wal-Mart. I found a movie theater and took a picture of 007…apparently this movie is very popular here. Many locals have asked me about it.

I wandered around some more, saw lots and lots of decorations for the Chinese New Year. This is the equivalent of Christmas in the US. There were tons of “jin zhu”s (gold pigs) everywhere, except most of them were not “jin”.

Around the entrance to “Happy Valley”, the amusement park, I snapped these next two shots. I thought the name of this store was kinda funny: “Happy Store”. OK?

The next shot is of a common man in a typical pose for Chinese folks, at least what I can gather as common or lower class folks (maybe the uneducated ones). This squat pose is quite common, but you’ll never see someone in a suit sitting this way. It’s just curious, I think. I can’t do this ’cause of my knees, not that I would anyway. Oh that reminds me, once I saw some toddlers walking around with pants with a big gap right in the fanny. I’m guessing these were designed like that so you could squat and “go to the bathroom”, so to speak, without even having to unzip. I’m pretty sure I’m right ’cause I noticed the parents shooing them off the sidewalk. I didn’t bother sticking around.

I decided then to hop the subway and head down to various places and wander around. I got off at a couple of stops…each one looked completely different – strange huge buildings all around me. I went into stores, wandered over bridges, through tunnels, small shops, and so on. I got brave once and asked where the bathroom was. I must have done a good job because she pointed downstairs. I went down and found it. A significant language victory!

I wandered more, paying close attention to the skyline in case I got lost. I had someone grab me and ask me about buying DVDs. I said, “Sure” and they brought me around to a little area where they asked me to sit. I declined to sit in one of the teeny stools and they seemed to think I was wierd for saying that. Oh well, after many confusing conversations, I managed to ask them if they had the first season of “Lost”. They sent a runner looking for it. “One minute!” the guy said in broken English. I waited like ten and started to get impatient. They wouldn’t even entertain an offer until the fetcher of the DVD returned. When they got back, I offered 20 which was the exact same price I got for *four* seasons of 24. They laughed at me. “Well, heck with you guys, I’m not in the mood to bargain anyway. Take it or leave it.”, I thought. So, I got up and walked off. The girl ran after me grabbing by the arm. “Hey! Hey! What you offer!” “Er shi!!” (20 Yuan), I replied defiantly. She turned and left.

Here are some pictures around the city (check out the gold tower with the New Years lanterns in the foreground):

I made my way back to the area around the Wal-Mart. My feet were hurting so I thought I’d look for a foot massage place. After, a while, I found one and summoning a little courage (the language barrier thing), decided to walk up. Well, I was immediately swarmed upon by a hoarde of girls, maybe 10 or so and they started chattering at me. I just kinda of smiled and then said, “Ni hao.” They all started laughing. Hmm, why was that so funny? Probably because they were asking me something and all I did was say, “Uh, hello?” Well, more chattering ensued so I said, “Wo ting bu dong” (“I don’t understand.”) More laughter. The head masseus (I reckon) started chirping at me and all I could do was try to hear something I recognized…nothing. Dang, I didn’t learn the word for “massage”! Then I recognized “Chi dian ban!” “Seven thirty!” 7:30? Did they mean they didn’t open until 7:30? Why were they all hanging around the entrance then? Oh well, by this time it was 6:30 and I didn’t feel like hanging around for an hour. Besides, I was hungry, so I repeated “chi dian ban”, nodded, smiled, and headed home. I didn’t bother returning. That will be for another day and another adventure.

Sorry for the long delay. It’s very easy to get behind and it didn’t help that the new upgraded blog software is terrible. I may have to go back to the old version because there are so many bugs. What a pain (I really working to avoid a diatribe on software right now).

Anyway, near the grocery store over the weekend was a large diorama showing the OCT (Overseas Chinese Town) where I live. Dang, I can’t remember the name in Chinese now. Ah well, maybe next time. It shows a nice birdseye view of where I live. So, you can get a geographical sense of where I live and what things are nearby…like the morning exercisers, for example.

Some of you won’t care much about this; some of you will care very much. You know who you are.

Here’s the shot. Click on the image for text labels:

Here’s the story of my first Chinese New Year party. Actually, this was the “End of the Year” party for the Microsoft Office. The director wanted me to prepare an inspirational speech and tell them more about me because, as he indicated, many of them haven’t been exposed to someone with a wide range of interests like music, climbing, and so forth. Well, I’m kind of confused by that request now (I’ll try to straighten out my confusion on Monday) because it wasn’t a “work” environment. The alcohol flowed freely, people danced, yelled, played games, ate, laughed. It was one of the best office parties that I’d been to ever, certainly the best of all the Microsoft ones (I recall a couple of good GeoGraphix ones).

I rode with Greg, my austere Polish friend that I play tennis with, and his wife and young daughter. Their driver first took us to the wrong restaurant. Apparently it had the same name. Notice the name of the hotel that was next to it:

The real restaurant was another huge complex – many rooms full of people that we walked through until we arrived at ours. Along the way, we passed tanks of crabs, fish, lobster, these huge weird mutant lobster things, shell fish, giant alien snails coming out of these shells. Greg said these were quite tasty but seeing them scurrying around or sitting still as a rope of rough gelatin pouring out of a shell made me think otherwise.

Well, the food was excellent; I recognized most of it. Actually, I didn’t eat that much because everyone (including me) kept wandering around. I drank red wine most of the time, but some folks had me try “Chinese wine” which is this clear hideous moonshine liqour. But, folks were drinking it in shot glasses in the “Gan bei” style – bottoms up.

Here’s the software team:

After dinner, the staff cleared away an area for games, talks, and singing. We had a new girl join the group this day and she was the first person to get up. She actually sang a capella in front of everyone and thought nothing of it. The week before, people kept coming up to me at work saying how they’d heard how I was a musician and were looking forward to me playing at the party. I was always surprised to hear this and they looked even more surprised that I would not be playing. Now I know why they were so surprised. It’s customary for folks to get up in front of a crowd and sing or play or talk. They don’t think twice about it. I find this funny because in the office, they are much more reluctant to talk. In fact, I would say they are very shy. But, in this sort of setting, they were cracking jokes, caterwauling off key to loud applause, and dancing. See, that’s why I was so surprised about this speech. I must have really misunderstood what the director was wanting. Ah well. I was announced in Chinese by someone saying “OK, who knows what this song is?” as they played “Living in the Now” by FT. That was my cue to get up and talk. Well, I wasn’t about to give a motivational speech in this environment so I instead just winged something about how impressed I was with the Chinese enthusiasm for learning English and now…merrymaking! Well, it was half-baked and the mic kept going out…oh well. Oh yes, and I got requests to say “Happy New Year”, “Bottoms up!”, etc. in Chinese. Next time I suppose I’ll have to play and maybe even sing.

Here’s a movie of various scenes from the evening. See fo’ yo’self.

Comments: By the way, comments are still broken, but I’ve narrowed down the error and have support questions out to various places. I upgraded my blog to version 2.1 of WordPress which broke several other things…you get what you pay for I reckon). Hopefully, the comments will be straightened out soon.

I took this short video of my team in China out to lunch.   Brien is here with us too.   This place is known for it’s dumplings and we had a few plates of those in addition to the center piece which was a small stove with a small cauldron on top with bread sitting in a soupy mushroom mix.   Very tasty!   Download and watch:   The Boiled Bread Movie

(l-r) Judy, Marshall, Michael, Me, Brien

The night before, Brien and I went on a mission to find the Indian restaurant in Shenzhen.   It’s actually located in Shekou which is where you catch the ferry to Hong Kong.   It’s about a 20 minute drive from work, a little longer for us in traffic, but it was worth it.   I had been craving Indian food for a while.   The restaurant is located in a place called “Sea World”.   I don’t think there’s an aquarium nearby, but the area was popping with people.   There are all sorts of restaurants and bars nearby.   The centerpiece is a cruise ship that was once on water but now everything around it has been filled in with land and developed.   The Chinese are slowly moving the shoreline out as they expand and develop the area.

Sea World:

Xiao Liu is my driver and currently one of my best sources for learning Chinese.   He speaks less English than I do Chinese, which is noteworthy, so our conversations are basic.   But, he is excited to learn new English phrases.   Here’s how our conversations work.   I come out of my apartment early in the morning, while the Tai Chi and swordsmen are practicing, and see Xiao Liu standing by the car with a big smile on his face.   I say “Zha jiang hao” to him and he replies “Good morning”.   Then we set off for the office, which is maybe 10-12 minutes away.   I try my latest phrases on him to see if he understands.   Many times he doesn’t so I have to either try to remember the exact tonal pronunciations or I consult a piece of paper that I always carry with me with the saying written down in PinYin (sort of phonetic English equivalent).

For example, one day he said to me, “Han do ren!”   I understood “ren” which is “person” but I wasn’t sure what the rest meant.   So, I went into work and asked some folks what “Han do ren” meant.   “Oh oh!!   ‘Many people’!!!”   OK, so now, I’ve learned the word for “many”.   So, the next morning when I see a swarm of people on bikes, I tried to get a little fancy by saying, “Han do ren qu gong si” or (roughly) “Many people are going to the office”.   So, Xiao Liu, as he is wont to do, erupts in laughter at my new sentence and tells me “Bery Goood!   Bery Goood!”   So, almost every morning, when we see the bikers, Xiao Liu almost always says that.   Funny.
Hen do ren (actually snapped after a big crowd on bikes just passed by):

Here’s a similar story, one of my managers came down from Redmond.   He doesn’t really speak any Chinese so I was worried when Xiao Liu dropped him off at the hotel, because Brien was supposed to tell him what time to pick him up.   Well, it just so worked out that I had taught Xiao Liu how to say “8 o’clock” which was the exact time that Brien had asked to be picked up.

I went to Wal-Mart after work one day to pick up some new earphones for my iPod.   Xiao Liu drove me there.   I tried to tell him to wait for me, but he wanted to come in.   I understood what he was saying and said, “Yes!”.   I was glad to have the company.   Xiao Liu insisted on carrying my backpack for me.

Xiao Liu and car: