Terry's Adventures in China - Issue 2

August 31, 2006


Ni Hao ju Zhongguo (hello from China),

I hope you are all doing well. It was great to hear from all of you after my last email.
Well, I've been in China for exactly one month. The past two weeks haven't been too exciting - mostly work and settling in, but it has been very interesting.

Many of you asked if I had moved into the apartment yet. Frustratingly, no! The other guy's stuff is still in it. Our company, PAC is supposed to be moving it out but haven't managed to do it yet. Hopefully soon! Living in the hotel is kind of getting old. I think I'm getting used to the hard bed, but I'm looking forward to the soft one in the apartment. But, the hotel's a good perspective on how the chinese think and work. They have their procedures and they WILL NOT deviate from them. They come into the room at least 3-4 times a day to clean and make the bed and turn down the sheets, etc... They count everything and leave you little notes if a towel or washcloth is missing. If you hand them the breakfast ticket for the wrong day they charge you. To save energy, there is a little box next to the door that you have to put your key in. This activates a totally annoying little electrical control box next to the bed which turns on almost all the lights and the power to the TV, but not the TV which you have to go turn on manually, then you can use the remote control to change channels. When you take the key out to leave the room, it all turns off and when you come back in, you have to put the key back in and go turn it all back on again.

You see some really crazy things in the streets here. With over a million people in this city and most of them not able to buy a car, there are bicycles and motor scooters everywhere. They can fit a family of 6 on a motor scooter - gotta get a picture of that. Driving to work and back is like a thrill ride. There are constantly people walking or driving out in front of you and buses don't care about anybody smaller than them. They just push you out into on-coming traffic. You just have to get used to the horn blowing. Today we saw a guy sitting in the middle of a 4-lane street - whether he was begging or staging a protest or just crazy is anybody's guess.

This city isn't beautiful - not fancy or new - actually everything looks old, even when it is new, but every morning the whole city is swept clean. Hundreds of people, armed with brooms made from sticks, sweep the sidewalks, streets, highways, grass and even dirt roads. This is no lie!!! We've seen people sweeping a highway (interstate, motorway, whatever you want to call it), and every day on the way to work, they are sweeping the 4-lane road we take to work. We've seen them sweeping the leaves off the grass and even sweeping the dirt roads. And, when some big wig is coming for a tour of the plant, about 100 mops come out and they clean the floors of the plant. They mop the floor in the office about 10 times a day.

Last week I had a business trip to Shanghai. Work is work, but in the evenings, we went to some really nice restaraunts and did some shopping and walking around. I almost didn't get to go because as foreigner in China, you cannot get on a plane without a passport. Mine was in Shanghai already getting my work Visa processed. We thought about the train which was supposed to take about 19 hours. I thought it might be nice - get a sleeper and see a lot of China as it passed me by. But then we found out the the "express train" to Shanghai took 31 hours. That's crazy! Finally we found somebody who was coming on the flight before mine. He landed at 10am, handed me my passport, I ran into the check-in and easily made it to the plane. Whew!

I started trying to practice my chinese. I picked up a really good book in Shanghai and made some flashcards, but if I don't practice it every day, I forget what I have learned. I have been jogging quite a bit along the river and people are actually starting to recognize me now. They really think it is interesting to see a white person jogging and stare a lot. I have decided to smile at them and wave when they do this. Some of them stop staring and look away, others actually smile and wave back. This makes me feel like I am being accepted, not just a local toursit attraction.

Well, I am going to try to send you some pictures. If they don't come through, I will try to find another way. I haven't set up a website with my pictures yet. If you have one to recommend, let me know.

The first and second pictures are of beautiful Shanghai.
The third is of me sitting on the tiger my first weekend here.
The forth is Joel and I in the plastic balls at the lake - the second weekend.
The fifth is taken from our apartment which is on the top floor of a building like the ones on the right.
The sixth is a sign they put on the toilets in the hotel reminding people not to stand on the toilet seats and squat. There are quite a few squat toilets in restaraunts, public places and especially bars. Funny that they need to tell people this in a 4-star hotel.

Until next time,
Take care of yourselves,
Your friend,
Terry