I started feeling sick on Saturday morning, actually right after Greg’s farewell party on Friday night, and the various non-doctors that I consulted diagnosed it: “Chinese flu!”.   The set of symptoms are a weird combination:   a splitting headache, muscle soreness (just like the North American version bestows upon you), and enervation.   The pieces missing:   sore throat, congestion.   So, it wasn’t really so bad.   I mean, it made sleeping it off and resting much much easier.   I started recovering quickly except maybe I pushed a little too much on Tuesday and walked down to the massage place to get some soreness rubbed out.   Well, I felt too tired after that.   So, I rested up another full day and was 100% by Thursday.

This Friday, the office took a vacation from the usual routine for our annual offsite. This year, the organizers picked Huizhou, a nice “small” town about an hour and a half drive from Shenzhen. The offsite consisted of team-building activities, some strictly fun stuff, and meetings. Of course, Greg’s farewell party was the centerpiece.

Here’s a shot of the area that we were playing around in. Quite lovely, eh?

One of the activities I was looking forward to was the laser tag game, having played lots of that in college back in C’lumbus. Well, this time was quite disappointing. The folks who were running the game spent about an hour explaining the rules. The even presented inane rules like “Don’t go hitting each other” and “You’re not allowed to cover your sensor.” Jeez, really? Come on! Just reset the counters, and let us go.

The weather was questionable all day long and after thirty minutes to suit up, test the gear about 5 times, we finally set off. And where did we go? The parking lot! Well, a lot good my sniper rifle is going to do. The other group had a decent starting point on high ground and in a lot of woods. Not surprisingly, I didn’t last long. The game ended about 15 minutes later, then it started pouring. Baah!

As soon as we got off the bus, it started raining. We spent the next half an hour or so getting ready to play. Then it started raining about 15 minutes later:

“Don’t stick your finger in the barrel of your opponent’s gun.”

Well, the laser tag was the most lame part of the entire offsite. We had an awesome dinner at our 5-star hotel then went to Greg’s party. Now, the party was the best I’d been to yet and a huge success. However, it was almost disastrous. I was to show my farewell movie to Greg, but, sure enough, there were technical difficulties trying to set it up. First of all, the DVD was burned on to crappy media and wasn’t playing successfully. Not to worry, I brought my own laptop as a backup. So, I gave that to the folks in charge of the movie. A few minutes later, after expecting to see the movie playing on the big screen, I returned to see the hotel workers twisting copper wire together on the audio cable!! What the heck!?!? I nearly blew a gasket. People were already showing up at the party. Even Greg was there. On top of that, still no video. We were shuffling laptops in and out, media was failing, the hotel worker kept twisting the audio cables. I was going to be disappointed and angry if the movie didn’t play. In fact, I would have called the party a failure. Some people were wanting to give in, but I demanded, “There’s no way we’re not leaving here without getting this movie to work”, I said.

No video still, I tried one last thing and brought the video down to the lowest resolution. It worked! One of my colleagues said, “Oh, it’s still not that clear, let me adjust the video driver.” “Are you insane?!?!”, I was thinking. I didn’t let him touch it. And miracle upon miracle, the audio finally kicked in. At the end of the evening, we showed the movie. A tremendous success! Enjoy:

Superstar Greg

Photos of the festivities to follow…

Here are some panoramas the I put together taken from the 13th floor of the Crowne Plaza hotel. The first one is of Happy Valley, the amusement park in Shenzhen. See the tall apartment towers in the distance in the center of the photo? I live just to the left of them:

The next is looking in the opposite direction, towards “Window of the World” (which is visible to the left, see the miniature Eiffel Tower?) In the far distance, you can see Shenzhen Bay, and beyond, the “New Territories”, part of Hong Kong.

Today was a great day. I had the usual “American Breakfast” at my favorite nearby restaurant, then did some emails for work (OK, that’s not the great part), and then headed out to meet up with my team members for our morale event. We had a stellar week having released our first product as a team and also made a new hire. To add to the quality of the day, Daryl was on a serendipitous visit from Redmond. He had helped us test the product and therefore was naturally planning on coming along to celebrate with us. However, he was taking a factory tour this morning and had to take a taxi to the Sichuan restaurant in the Futian district to meet us.

(l-r) The Software Team enjoying the tasty lunch, Daryl digging into the spicy snails

After that, we headed down to the theater to catch a “Jia La Bi Hai Dao”, literally “Caribbean Sea Thief”, or “Pirates of the Caribbean III”. Well, I certainly enjoyed watching the movie, which was thankfully in English with Chinese subtitles, although I spent a lot of time trying to recognize various Chinese characters on the subtitles. No point in movie commentary here. It suffices to say that I enjoyed it but I was a little confused and dizzy after we came out. It was fun watching Chow Yun Fat (his name in Cantonese) make his appearance and hear the audience get really excited. I’m sure pieces of the movie were cut out too, not sure why. Will have to investigate that when it comes out on DVD (well, I mean the English DVD…the Russian version is already here).

(above) Sea Thieves

After that, we piled into the van and headed back where we’d separate. Daryl and I departed first, opting to get out at Hua Qiang Bei. I wanted to show him around and figured this would be a fun place. Sure enough, it was quite a good time. We got out in the middle of a hoard of people and made our way to one of the colossal electronic shops. On the way there, Daryl got Shanghied by a man selling software.

(l-r) The crowded streets of Hua Qiang Bei, Daryl and the salesman, Vista for 80 cents!

We wandered the numerous corridors of one of the electronic market labirynths. I recalled wanting to look for an English to Chinese program that I saw at my office. Of course, it didn’t take me long to find it. It was about 15 bucks and came in a nice plastic-wrapped box. I’m guessing it was legal? Well, no matter, it’s the most legal looking piece of software I’ve seen yet. Daryl and I went in search of pirated Microsoft hardware. After finding lots of legit stuff, we stumbled upon some stashes. One mouse we found had “MicroAlert” with the exact same Microsoft insignia and a hilarious “Micrart” keyboard and mouse combo that Daryl bought for about 5 bucks to show the folks back home.

(l-r) MicroAlert and Micrart

After some more wandering and finding some really neat electronics (will have to make a return trip for gifts), we went looking for a place to get a drink.   On the way, we spotted another market off the street, not an electronics one though, just typical goods – clothes, shoes, watches, etc.   We landed deal after deal.   Daryl with a few nice running shirts and myself with some new shoestrings and insteps for my shoes (finally), and also an awesome pair of Timberland knock-off sandals.   By the price, they’re knock-offs, but they feel comfortable and sturdy.   It seemed like we just kept finding good buys.   My fake Raybans bit the dust the day before so I picked up a pair of cheap Oakleys here.   The salesman was clever enough to notice my frazzled watch band and said if I bought some glasses from him, he’d give me a new watch band.   40 RMB got me the Oakleys and the band, not to shabby.   After more wandering, it was suddenly 7pm so we decided to head out for food. At first, we had a hankering for some elite Pizza Hut, and I could have sworn there was one in Hua Qiang Bei, but I couldn’t find it. So, we settled on my favorite Hunan restaurant. We ate well. We were unable to finish the food, probably because of the four large bottles of beer. See?

We stayed leisurely talking and drinking before we made our way to the subway station. We caught a subway a train to Huai Qiao Chen where there were a couple of foot massage places that I knew of, though had never been. We popped out of the stop and made the short walk to the pedestrian walkway lined with restaurants on one side and massage joints and salons on the other. A colleague, Paul, told me that this one place should charge about 30 RMB (under 4 bucks) for an hour foot massage. We walked in and asked and I was suprised we got that exact price. Was expecting them to at least double it. It turned out these folks were quite honest – in fact, they told Daryl that a large beer cost 5 RMB. But, when they came back with the beer, they also handed him change – it was only 4. They could have easily kept the money. So, after all the haggling and trickery that one gets used to in China, it’s nice to be reminded from time-to-time that most folks are indeed honest. I’ll definitely be coming back to this spot, not only because of their honest and prices, but also because this was the best foot massage I’ve had yet.

After the foot massage, they asked if we wanted the full body massage (this is all in Chinese, by the way) and so we asked the price. “San shi wu”, they replied..35 RMB. Sign us up! So, we went to a small room with twin tables where we enjoyed an hour long fantastic massage. They wanted us to stay for two hours, but it was getting late. We did leave them a tip (they said the word “tish” a couple of times, as I write this I’m guessing this is “tip” mispronounced). Stumbling out with legs of jelly around midnight, we called the taxi and headed back. I dropped Daryl off at “Wei Ni Si”, the short name for the Crowne Plaza hotel, and I continued on to my place. What a day. Livin’ the dream!

(l-r) Giving the Victory sign during the massage (notice the girls hiding their faces), Daryl endorses “Kingway” beer (brewed in Shenzhen)

By the way, Daryl is an expert traveler. He lived in Indonesia, Vietnam, and other spots in Southeast Asia for about 3-4 years in the mid-90’s as an oil man. So, he fits in well here, is an excellent bargainer, and is a lot of fun to hang out with. Daryl, I hope you can come back very soon!

Well, I should say Daryl is a very good bargainer. The salesman in this photo is excellent. She would not take less than 35 for this piece of clothing. Daryl walked back twice, once with 31, once with 33. Finally, he decided to part with the quarter and paid the 35. Hire her for a sales job!

(above) The shirt looked pretty good on him too!

Whenever someone from the office leaves to go back to the US, there’s a big celebration (see PT’s party for an example). Various employees get together and plan a series of musical performances, skits, games, and so on. There’s an MC, a guest of honor (of course), lots of food and drink, and there’s a movie. The people working on this take their personal time to prepare the events, something that would never happen in the US. Well, I’ve been nominated to write, film, edit, and direct Greg’s (center of photo) going away movie. Making videos is a lot of fun and this one will be good (look for it in about a week to ten days). One of the plans for this movie was to do a recording of a popular song by a Taiwanese trio called “S.H.E.”, the acronym formed by the first letter of each of the band member’s English names. Anyway, the song is called “Superstar” and a colleague wrote some lyrics particular to Greg. So, we went to a music studio to record the song (basically a karaoke session where you get a CD and a VCD for about $2.60). Three female colleagues sang the lyrics:

(above, 1st photo) Sally, Ivy, and Jennifer belt out “Superstar”

I brought the video camera along with the plan to insert some of the singing footage interspersed with scenes from Greg’s career in China. Pretty cool, eh? By the way, that will be the third and final part of the movie. As usual, the girls were enthusiastic and unabashed about singing, although only one was any good. But, without much musical training, it was easy to lose time, come in at the wrong time or whatever, so we ended up having to do many takes. The technician running the session wanted to make it really quick, but we managed to talk him into staying for like 3 or 4 extra takes, about an hour total.

(As an aside, I’ve started editing this part of the movie. I ripped the CD and discovered that the volume of the tracks are way too low. You get what you pay for, I guess. I just hope we can go back and get a better copy.)

Afterwards, Xiao Liu and I went out to eat some Hunan food, my favorite. As best I tried, he wouldn’t let me pay for the meal. At least I got him to concede to letting me take him out next time. Here’s a couple of shots from the restaurant. The first photo shows Xiao Liu holding up the plucked out fish eye. We didn’t eat it. It felt like a little marble.

Shenzhen had so much rain in the past couple of weeks that it was nearly impossible to get out and get some exercise. I had enjoyed the stroll up Nanshan a few weekends before and wanted to go again. The weather kept me at bay though. Well, this Sunday the weather broke briefly and I decided to try a different area, a park in the Futian district with a small mountain, I mean a hill, called Lian Huashan. Having rained earlier that morning, it was incredibly humid. But, what the heck. The park, as is most parks, is very well maintained with an army of people roaming the grounds, picking up junk, tilling the ground for planting, or guarding the li zhi trees so people don’t take the fruit. Speaking of which, there are were so many of these trees covered in li zhi fruit; there must have been millions. Anyway li zhi is incorrectly, but conveniently, pronounced “lee chee” by the western folks and resembles a large white grape that’s encased in a thick, easy to peel skin that resembles wood. The fruit is very juicy and tasty and has a large, hard pit that’s easy to avoid. So, it’s a very popular fruit in China.

Some pictures from this park:

On the “summit” were lots of people, a statue of Deng Xiao Ping, and a nice panorama:

Below there was a lake that’s teaming with fish. Along the southern bank of the lake was a large collection of folks, getting together for relaxation, music, and chatter. It reminded me of a much smaller version of the park outside the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Lots of folks were feeding the fish and these big brutes would swim over on top of each other to fight for the morsels of food:

And of course, there were several entertaining signs. Here’s the best one:

“Keep off the grass!”

Lately Shenzhen has been inundated with torrential rains. It seems like almost everyday it rains very hard for at least fifteen or twenty minutes. In addition to that, there’s at least a few hours of moderate rainfall sprinkled here and there. I’m not sure if it’s typical or not (I can never get consistent answers on anything out here. Some people definitively say “Yes, every May and June we have this weather. Then it gets hot in July.” Others say, “This weather is not common; it never rains this much.” Both diametrically opposed statements are delivered with the same amount of certainty. So, who really knows?) Anyway, I don’t mind the rain ’cause it’s keeping the temperature reasonably cool, albeit a cool sauna.

However, I doubt that this is common weather because Hai Shang Shi Jie (Sea World) is underwater now. What a shame; my favorite Indian restaurant is now under ten feet of water. Here, check out the pictures:

See the picture with the ship above? This ship sits on land. This whole area used to be part of the bay, but the Chinese have moved in loads and loads of dirt and eventually the ship ended up being on land. And recently, this area, Seaworld, has been transformed into a high end gathering area that is popular with expatriates. This is by far the most cosmopolitan part of the city, featuring several international restaurants. By the way, the good news is that a new Indian restaurant has opened up somewhere in Dong Men.

I’ve been very busy at work and with Chinese lessons this week. At work, we’re putting together a farewell video for my Polish friend Greg. I was somehow nominated to write the script. Then, I ended up being responsible for the filming, the directing, getting the props, the editing. So, almost every day after work this week, we had a shoot of some kind. So, I moved my lessons to early afternoon. This was a nice break ’cause I got to go back home and have a lunch there after my Chinese lesson. While I was eating outside, another cloudburst came. I snapped this photo with my cell phone of a rowing team practicing in the rain. There’s some sort of boating competition coming to this area soon.

Oh yeah, and I’ll throw in this silly picture of a cappuccino at my favorite foreign restaurant – the pattern on top is supposed to be a storm in honor of the bad weather we’ve been having:

A strong challenger to my favorite cuisine, Indian, isn’t Chinese as a whole, but I think the food from the Hunan province might be. That specific variety is delicious, characterized by very spicy and hot dishes. It’s by no means as sophisticated as the Indian spices, but delicious just the same. Xiao Gi invited me out to another dinner with a friend of his. This outing was much more tame than the last one. We only had two large bottles of beer between the three of us and were not required to “gan bei” (“bottoms up”) the entire glass during each toast. Here’s a cell phone shot of the dishes:

Here’s a funny story in the Chinese newspaper, which I rarely get to read ’cause I’m so busy. These sorts of stories are typical of some of the odd culture that you experience in China if you have close contact with the locals. It shows how superstitious how some Chinese can be, especially when it comes to words. Some words are bad luck because there are other words that sound similar. I remember someone telling me something like, “Oh, that’s a very bad luck word, if you say that in that context to someone, because that word resembles ‘coffin’. So, maybe you are telling them that may die soon.” Yeah, weird stuff like that. Then there are the weird obsession stories, also like this one demonstrates. There is another story I recall that folks in my office (all normal folks) about a young lady who was obsessed with some Hong Kong star. She was so fixated on this one guy that she somehow persuaded her parents to sell their home to raise the money so she’d get the opportunity to meet the guy. I can’t recall how the story ended, but I was just shocked that the story indicated that the family went along with it. Maybe there were some good luck words that lined up one day that said this girl needed to meet this star. I have no idea. But, here’s the humorous story I read the other day:

Man’s obsession with stocks leads to divorce

An investor in Nanjing, Jingsu, was so obsessed with the market that his behavior became strange and unreasonable.

The man surnamed Wang invested about 200,000 yan ($25,641) in the market and since then all he could talk about at home was stocks. He has gradually developed an obsession with the numbers 6 and 8, which mean “smoothness” and “making a fortune” in Chinese. He only took taxis with plate numbers that included 6 and 8.

Wang was overjoyed when his son scored a 48 on a test because he believed the score was a sign.

Unable to endure Wang’s behavior, his wife applied for divorce several days ago.

To add insult to injury, the Shanghai market just had a big 8% correction last week! Poor ole Mr. Wang!

I’d long wanted to have some clothes tailored and I had long put it off. Finally, I decided to have it done. Hong Kong is a very popular place for tailored clothes, but after telling my wish to my Hong Kong friend, Jonathan, he suggested, in his usual fast-paced manner, “Oh, don’t go to Hong Kong; that is for tourists. Go to Luohu. It’s much cheaper and almost as good.” I decided I’d at least check it out and then maybe have some stuff ordered in Hong Kong too and then compare (our trusted tour guide from a couple of weeks ago had suggested a reputable tailor in Hong Kong). I found a recommendation of a tailor in Luohu, who spoke English, and I headed out Saturday (May 26th).

I am not a fan of the Luohu Commercial Center. It’s too aggressive, the bargaining gets old, and the endless “Hello! Hello! Cheap DVD for you!” and groping from the store owners gets old fast. So, I dove in and headed straight to the top floor, ignoring the salesmen and runners (the kids who run after you or who take orders and run off to get it for you). Here’s what the inside looks like:

Along the periphery of this central area, on each of the five floors, is a maze of small shops selling all sorts of junk and fake goods. The interesting thing is that this place is not popular with the locals, but with the foreigners and the Honkies (Hong Kong folks). After all, the train station is right there.

It took me a while to locate Judy’s, the tailor, shop on the 5th floor. There are many tailors on the top so it took some maze-wandering to hunt down number 5067. I finally found it (there was barely room for 3 people inside), but Judy wasn’t there. I asked the seamstress hunched over the sewing machine where Judy was and she replied something unintelligible in Chinese. So, I went outside where someone else asked me what I was looking for. I said, “Judy”, and they pointed me to a large room full of fabric. There were many people in here and it took a few minutes to hunt Judy down, who was busy picking out fabric supplies.

Here’s the shop (Xiao Gi is standing in the doorway; Judy can be seen inside):

We went back to the shop where I picked out fabrics and got measured. Another young American, from New York and visiting his father, was there getting measured for a suit. After they were done, I ordered 4 long-sleeved shirts and headed out. I had to come back a week later to pick them up. When I returned to get them, I ordered two additional short-sleeved shirts and picked them up a couple of days later along with Xiao Gi (today). All together, the bill was about $85.

Trying on the goods. That’s Judy next to me and the seamstress busy at work in the lower left: