Mei and I were coming out of the metro walking towards where
I would soon be renting, and we came across another mixed couple, a giant
American (6’5”, about 260-280 lbs), and a Chinese girl, and I said hi. We started talking and I learned that Bob
works for Fox-Con, which is a HUGE company here. They employ 350,000 people in Shenzhen in the
tech sector. We have actually been
spending the past 3 or 4 days together hanging out, the girls get along well,
and Bob is far more laid back than most that I’ve met here, he’s in his 60’s,
but is as fascinated by the culture as I am.
He works here for a couple of months, then goes back to Texas, and waits
for the call back to Shenzhen.
I had an interesting talk with him yesterday, he asked how
long I had been here, and I said that I had been here for about 3 weeks. He asked me if I had gone to “decompress”
yet. I’ve learned that most Americans
here go to Hong Kong every 3 weeks to a month to just get out of China and
relax for a bit. The sheer amount of
people, the constant noise, the strange environment, the amount of people, the
food, the amount of people, get to you after a while. I’m just about there, and will probably be
heading to HK to relax in a week or so.
Interestingly enough, HK also gets movies before they
release anywhere else. I have a friend
who went to see Die Hard on February 8th, I am thinking that I may
go see that next week as well. I have to
look into where to go to see it. Most
people want to go to Victoria Park, and revel in the pure quiet, and complete
lack of noise. I suspect that after new
years, when construction begins, I’m going to need to do the same. They’re building a new building next to my
apartment, it was going to be 60 stories, but, they’ve now decided that they
want the tallest building in China, so, they are digging the foundation down
further. The design is something else,
it actually looks like a giant phallic symbol, I think that the architect
should be shot. Everyone who looks at it
sees exactly the same thing. I do love
the fact that here every building is different.
There’s a new design for everything.
Buildings are also built in 2 months, which is impressive. This is a combination of 2 things. First of all, the workday is 6 am to 12 am
(which means you have 6 hours to get a good nights sleep if you’re next door),
and second, the Chinese don’t finish off the floors. They only finish off the floors that are
sold. This enables the buyer to have
their apartment or office built to their specifications, and also significantly
lowers the expense of building.
While I was eating the other day (chicken foot soup – I hate
chicken feet, they have no meet, just skin and fat, and I don’t enjoy it at
all), Mei asked me why I only ate with one hand, I said that it was polite in
Canada. She said that the Chinese always
eat with 2 hands, and that they always wonder what that other hand is doing,
that perhaps you’re being sneaky, or you don’t like what you’re eating. So, you have one hand with a spoon, one with
chopsticks, and you can shovel things onto the spoon to eat with that as
well. It’s somewhat of an adjustment for
me.
I have written a ton about culture, which some have been
amazed that I have accumulated over the past 3 weeks. It’s not all first hand experience, but from
others that I have met here. It is quite
easy to see how these things apply, though, once you know about them, and you
can check the information given. The trick
is learning who to listen to and who to ignore completely. There are some real losers here, but there
are also some real winners and real entrepreneurs. The ability to read which person is which is
very important, but there are some losers who also have their uses, when trying
to figure out how to best use your facilitation expense.
Bob’s fiancee’s sister is in town with her 3 little kids and
husband. They have two girls who are 4
and 6, and a boy who is 5. They’re all
very cute, very well behaved (unusually so), and this is their first visit to a
real city in China. The whole family is
very enamored of the metro line. Mei is
helping to herd the kids around, and they’ve latched onto the two of us. Mei wanted to get the kids a gift from her
and I as they leave tomorrow, but with all of the shops closed, it is a little
difficult. We took them to Walmart, and
the first thing that they wanted were pencil cases. Apparently, their’s is broken, hard to open,
and they need the pencil case. I said
that that wasn’t much fun, and that they can get the pencil case as long as
they all pick out a toy as well. We
spent a couple hours in Walmart finding the perfect toys. The two girl’s got some big stuffed animals,
and the little boy got a little dart gun.
It was fun seeing how excited that they got. We had to stop the days activities to drop by
the apartment and drop everything off.
Mei is now mopping the apartment while we take a
break….there is absolutely nothing better than dating a Chinese woman, unless
you don’t like somewhat clingy women, if that’s the case, you’re not going to
like it here. The positives vastly
outweigh the negatives, so, learn to love the crazy. I’m also getting a lesson in culture that
most don’t seem to get. Mei is from the
Hunan province, which is north of Beijing and is where Chairman Mao is
from. The northern Chinese pretty much
worship Mao, about half the southerners hate him with a passion, history books
can’t seem to decide one way or the other, so, it’s best to just smile and nod
when his name is brought up, mention that you were educated in North America
and thus don’t know the perspective…stay out of the politics, as they are even
more volatile here than they are in the USA or Canada.
I tried a different version of chickenfoot today, barbecued,
it was truly awful. Bob loves it though,
I think he must be cracked. It’s still
beyond me, he says that he loves sucking the flavor off, I hate picking out the
bones, and the texture drives me insane.
Looks like this is something that I’m not going to be able to pull off,
it’s considered to be lucky to eat, I’m prepared to deal with bad luck if I can
avoid eating any more.
At 3 pm we decided
that it was time for an easy walk around a lake. I’m starting to learn that with these women,
there is no such thing as easy, or walking, there are stairs, and stairs, and
more stairs. Bob counted 250 stairs,
during the first portion, I would estimate there there were at least a
thousand. We climbed up stair after
stair before finding a Buddhist monastery, with another couple thousand people
who took the easy way, I guess they didn’t want to climb to two mountain peaks
first, I really wish I had been with them.
At the monastery we got our prayer sticks, lit them from candles set
aside for lighting the sticks, then stood in front of the statue of Buddha with
the sticks pressed against our foreheads.
We thought about the good goals that we had for the year, and
concentrated on those, whispering them while looking to Buddha for inspiration.
Goals like health, happiness, success,
etc. we bowed to Buddha, then placed
them in a cauldron full of sand, so that they stayed lit, and the smoke was
everywhere. If your lungs can survive
the experience, I’d highly recommend it.
We hiked up another couple hundred steps going to the various different
poses of Buddha, past the teachings of Buddha, and contemplated the lessons
that he gave (I couldn’t comprehend the characters, so, I just wandered around
and took in the sights. Mei went to
every opening and murmured her goals with her prayer sticks still in hand, I
felt disrespectful wandering around with them, so I placed them in the cauldron
provided when we first entered. The
smoke all the way through was intense, as was the headache that I gained from
the experience. We then walked down to
the lake, and then up to a Buddhist garden with 240 different types of cactus
that they grew there, it looked like Arizona.
Finally, we decided that it was time to call it a day, and
made the 3 mile journey back to the busses.
We got in line with everyone else, and managed to catch the second bus
out of there, miracle of all miracles.
On our way home, we stopped at FuQing Long Restaurant, which turned out
to be very, very good. That done, we
said goodbye to the children, who are going home tomorrow, promised to visit
them in their tiny village sometime this year, and finally got home.
I’ve spent the past 5 days hiking in the mountains
here…hiking meaning that I’ve climbed stairs beyond number, and I think I’m about
done in for the day…possibly the week.
Tomorrow I’m going to be signing the lease agreement, attempting to set
up utilities (who knows), then we’re doing a valentines dinner at a Korean
restaurant. All that I can seem to think
is, “Please, please, please….let there be no stairs tomorrow, I need a day of
rest!!”
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