Where's my Prada?

Today we went to Dafen, a part of SZ, but they call it “Art Town”, it’s an entire population made up of artists, I bought a handpainted fan for 100 RMB, and an oil painting for my place for 100 RMB.  There was a ton of good stuff there for extremely good prices.  The only issue that I saw is that you couldn’t tell fake from a copy, there were so many pictures and designs, that it was hard to figure out who had the original.  It’s not a painting copy, it’s a copy of someone else’s painting.  There were entire outfits set up purely to copy other’s work.  The good thing, though, is that you can bring in a picture of your family or friends or whatever, and they will reproduce it in paint to whatever specification you like, it takes about a week and is no more than $100 usd.

Every single time I get on the metro, I walk past a sign that says, “Where’s my Prada, Oh My God, Let’s go shopping”, it drives me a little crazy.  I think it’s the fact that everyone here uses the phrase, “Oh My God” so often, they have a vague grasp of what it means, but don’t understand when people take offense, because I think China is somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% atheist.  It’s the posters that really get to me, though I can’t say why.

Taxi’s are sort of cheap here.  They’re cheap if you think in American money, they’re expensive if you think in RMB.  They’re actually a last resort, as you will get cheated about half the time you ride in them, in that they take you the long way, or to the wrong address.  The crazy thing is that nobody knows any street names here.  You can’t give them cross streets, they won’t understand.  They actually operate by building names.  You have to know the name of a building, in Mandarin, for where you want to go, and hopefully, your pronunciation is good and you end up in the right place.  I usually just ask someone to write my apartment name out on a business card and keep it in my wallet.  Most people either walk or take the metro (subway).  You can go most places by metro for something like .7 RMB or so, it never gets over 3 RMB, if you use a pass, if you don’t, it will cost at least 3RMB, and the machine only takes 5RMB notes or coins, which can be a little frustrating.  I love the fact that there’s always a bank machine next to the ticket machine.  The ATM’s only dispense 100 RMB notes, the ticket machines only take 5 RMB notes.  There’s logic in there somewhere I’m sure, but it’s not logic that I will ever understand.  You could possibly buy a car here, but then you’d drive and die, only the Chinese can navigate their way through traffic, or you could get a scooter (motorcycles are illegal in Shenzhen due to the noise and the pollution…probably mostly the noise, although you do see them…as far as I can tell, the cops don’t pull people over for anything, and only take care of accidents), scooters are great because you can ride on the road, the sidewalk, really anywhere you feel like, and not have any problems, just honk and people will move, or you run into them, which I see quite a bit.  I watched a game of chicken a couple of days ago that ended badly, I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time…the driver’s both gave me dirty looks.  Personally, I’ll stick to walking and the metro, and when the metro closes down at 10:30 – 11:45 pm (depending on which station you’re at), I’ll attempt a taxi ride.  If you take a regular taxi, the red car, there’s a 3RMB charge on top of the total that is supposedly for pollution or something.  If you take a blue taxi, which is electric, you don’t have to pay that fee.  If you take any other type of taxi, you’re in an illegal cab, and who knows what the result will be, it’s more than a little likely that he’ll pull over randomly, and dump you somewhere, and you’ll have to hope that it’s a quick walk home.

There is really no privacy in China.  There are people everywhere, wandering around, gawking at you and sometimes each other…usually at you.  If it bothers you, just stare them down, they’ll lose face and look away every time, they’re really not sure what to do if you stare back, so they get embarrassed and spend the rest of their time ignoring you.  It’s a bit irritating if you notice, I prefer not to notice, “ignorance is bliss”, is a phrase to live by.  The interesting thing, I think, is the invention of privacy through neglecting to notice anything, “selective viewing”.  People don’t notice anyone who is in a predicament where they’re losing face.  People don’t notice the little kids crapping or peeing on the sidewalk, I wish someone would notice to at least pick it up and throw it somewhere else.  If there’s liquid on the ground in China, only an idiot assumes that it’s water.  Dogs wander free, there’s no leash laws, and they crap where ever they want to as well, if an owner is around, they may pick it up, but you can’t really count on that.  It’s best to just scan the area ahead and see if there’s any surprises coming up.  There are wandering guys who will clean everything up when they get to it, it’s really only the older neighborhoods that you have to pay attention, for the most part.

Shenzhen is made up of a bunch of little villages.  30-40 years ago, Deng XiaoPeng (I should check the spelling on that, but I’m too lazy right now), decided to take all of the small fishing or whatever villages, and made them into one big city.  The result is that you get giant buildings, apartments everywhere, but, turn a corner and you’re in a very, very old Chinese neighborhood, that could be thousands or hundreds of years old.  There’s no telling where they will be, just where they were originally.  I live in the Gangxia neighborhood, there’s a Chinese neighborhood across the street that I can’t wait to get lost in and explore, you can buy everything that you could possibly think of or imagine (yes, that includes nightmares at times), and I find it beyond fascinating.

When I first got here, I wondered why I saw luggage shops everywhere.  Well, now I know, it’s because while most places will deliver, figuring out how to get them to deliver is not easy.  Most people don’t have cars due to extremely costly license plates, so, they have to carry whatever goods they purchase, or their groceries onto the metro, or take a 5 mile walk home or whatever.  A rolling suitcase is a far better option.  I think I saw a place near my shopping market that will store your luggage while you shop, so that when you go to pay, you just transfer it all into your suitcase.  You’ll still have to carry it down a flight or two of stairs, but it’s a thousand times better than trying to carry a couple of cases of water home.

I have a device on my wall that I think is to open the door downstairs to let people in, it might be a phone, it could also be a self-destruct device.  I’ve asked 3 other English speaking people in the apartment complex how it works, they all requested that I let them know if I ever figure it out.  The washing machine has 20 buttons on it, which do nothing, that I can see, only cold water is hooked up anyway, and it washes everything the same no matter what you do, so, it’s safer just to hit one button and not risk losing the washing machine by hitting the wrong combination of buttons.  I have 2 english speaking stations out of 70 on my TV.  One is british – most of the time, and the other is the Chinese news in English.  They’re both fairly entertaining at times, and deadly dull for the most part.  I find it interesting that every disaster has a maximum of 9 people who die.  That’s censorship for you, for the real numbers, you have to get a VPN and look up the real story somewhere, sometimes it’s on chinasmack, or ministryoftofu.com.  I realized after one such hunt that the actual number doesn’t actually matter.

The number four is bad luck in China, it is very close in pronunciation to the word for death.  The number 7 is also bad luck, it’s incredibly close to the phrase that translates as “stupid c***”.  The number 8 is good, and people actually pay more for a phone number with 8’s in it.  My phone number has a ton of 8’s, but is balanced by a 7, nobody can seem to figure out if I have a good phone number or a bad phone number, they just look puzzled.  When giving gifts of money, it has to be done in 1’s or 5’s, nobody can seem to tell me why.  If you’re doing coupons up for Chinese customers, I’d recommend $10, $50, $100, etc.

6 is also a good number, in some ways.  It’s the right number to go back to work on.  If you take a vacation, it’s considered lucky to go back to work 6 days, or a multiple of 6 days from when you left.  So, 6 days off, 12 days off, whatever.  There’s a proverb, but it didn’t make any sense to me, perhaps when I get a better grasp of Chinese, I’ll be able to decipher it better. 

Discounts in China are very different.  If you see something is 20% discount, it’s actually an 80% discount, you pay 20% of the price, instead of 20% off the price.  So, you always want to see a lower discount number than a higher one.  Those in business with Chinese people should probably be aware of that fact in their dealings, so that they can bypass the inevitable confusion.

China is about subtlety.  From the way that they have re-invented their own privacy, to how they interact.  If you’re a drinker, and you go out with Chinese that you are in business with, don’t use the bathroom before they do, they longer you hold it in, the more respect that is gained, they will admire your strength.  If you pay attention to the numbers that are important to them, they may not notice, it may even take a while for them to notice, but they will feel more comfortable with you.  If you eat like they do, with 2 hands instead of 1, they will appreciate your enthusiasm and lose some of their suspicion of you.  I’ve been reading a book about how the Chinese take advantage of western businessmen, but I think that the author may have missed his main point, in that he didn’t take into account how he learned to do business in China, and how his status is high because he follows the culture.

Pay attention to every possible meaning that what you’re saying may have.  They don’t pay as much attention to the surface, more to the meaning behind your words.  If you don’t have a meaning behind your words, chances are you’re communicating something that you don’t want to, and you may want to make sure you clarify things with them.  I recommend asking questions, I spend all of my time doing that with everyone I talk to.

I’m going to hang out with some expats tomorrow, we all need a break from Chinese for a bit, and none of us can go to Hong Kong until next week sometime.