I’m calling this trip Pinball in Asia because I bounced around, north and south, through all the places I had been to before (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong)… plus a NEW one. China. Just look at a map sometime and check out how much that sequence makes you bounce around. Going to Japan hardly counts, actually—it was just the stopover on the way to Taipei. I sat next to a cheerful computer type from Boston (who had already traveled across the US to catch the flight from SFO) who had the fascinating hobby of building machines he needed in order to do other projects. For instance, he was currently building a milling machine with six degrees of freedom (like having a hexagonal plane, plus the vertical direction and tilt). He needed this in order to make some kind of special plate.
The guy two seats over was going to a bicycle conference. It turns out that many bike parts are made in Taiwan, and this was a huge convention for bicycle makers and their suppliers. His flight schedule was amazing because he was from Argentina. He had to fly from Buenos Aires to Washington to San Francisco to Tokyo to Taipei. Makes my trip look downright short!
I also ended up hooking up with two other people who were attending the same display conference in Taipei. When there aren’t many flight options for getting there, this sort of thing is inevitable. We ended up hanging out at the Red Carpet Club in Narita. There, I discovered that my computer has a wireless link. Honestly, I didn’t know. I use a LAN cable at the office and don’t have wireless at home. But when I was sitting in the lounge, I kept getting messages saying, “Another computer with a wireless link is available. Click here to send files to DIAMOND.” I knew I didn’t want to send files to someone else, but it took a little while to figure out that my computer was making moves on the guy next to me (or his computer, really). How forward!
My kingdom for a bed! When I got to Taipei, bedraggled at 10:15 pm, I looked for the hotel car from my hotel. I found it, but they had no record of my arrival. A phone call to the hotel revealed that they expected me to come a day earlier! When I didn’t show up, they cancelled my reservation, and now they were all full. But the hotel car guy was nice enough to call around for another room. The darn bicycle convention had filled up nearly the whole city, however, and I ended up 25 minutes away in a rather expensive place. And even they only had two nights, not the necessary three!
I prevailed upon our Taiwan rep to get me a place for the third night, and he ended up calling in a favor from a friend to get me booked into an ultra-expensive hotel owned by EVA Air. This friend can reserve rooms at half price, which made it almost tolerable.
The room at the EVA Air place turned out to be incredible. It had about 500 square feet of area, gold-lined sinks (I took a picture of these), a PDP TV, a bidet, and some kind of mist feature in the shower. Too bad it's only one night. That mix-up with the original hotel turned out cool for me, although it's costing my company an arm and a leg.
I was amused by the room-service menu, though. They have a whole subsection for shark-fin dishes (now, I like shark fin, but I didn't realize it warranted its own heading). And then there was the marinated jelly fish, braised sea cucumber with pork sinew, double-boiled whelk soup with green papaya (I had to look up whelk—it’s some kind of sea snail), braised lily bulb, noodle soup with steamed beef belly, and sweet glutinous rice balls with old rice wine sauce. Actually, I've had several of these and they're OK, but it was a pretty amazing selection nonetheless (they also had more normal stuff).
Sleepless in Taipei. But I’m getting ahead of myself. On the first day, after a mere 5 hours of sleep, I attended a conference at the hotel I wasn’t staying at. My talk went reasonably well, and it was fun to catch up with my friends from the industry. Not that I’m totally focused on food, but the lunch was incredible. It was a world food bazaar of all my favorite dishes. Sushi, green salad with smoked salmon, Thai satay and shrimp cakes, Italian marinated mushrooms, Chinese steamed fish and ginger, fresh baked bread, tiramisu, German strawberry pie, and petit fours. Yum.
Later I sampled some tea called “blueberry and rose hip” just because it sounded like an interesting combination, and it was fabulous. I have come to realize that packaged teas in America are much too bitter, like coffee. Properly brewed tea is smooth and silky with subtle flavors, not harsh and overpowering.
At the end of the day, I interviewed a job candidate because we both happened to be in Taipei. After 90 minutes of that, I was suddenly too exhausted to bother with dinner. I headed back to my hotel, checked some email, and tried to get a decent night’s sleep. I wasn’t terribly successful, waking up way too hot at 4 am. But I had deliberately turned off the climate control system because it was loud and had interrupted my sleep the night before. I surrendered and got up early.
The second day was devoted to client visits. Between them, we had lunch at a seafood restaurant. Interestingly, they offered a sashimi plate along with the Chinese selections, so we got that. The maguro was served with the skin on, something I had never seen. We also had mussel soup, spicy fried crabs, asparagus, pork noodles, and some kind of Chinese spinach-like greens that are apparently very healthy. To drink, we tried something called “wheat tea,” that is basically juice extracted from wheat berries (I guess you boil them). It’s sweet, and has a wheaty taste like the milk left in the bowl after you’ve finished the Raisin Bran. It was good, actually!
Then we trekked across town so I could check into the fancy-schmancy hotel I noted above for my third night here. We also tried to run an errand. A friend asked me to get her a sweetener called stevia while I am in Asia. It’s extracted from a South American plant, and is apparently a great sugar substitute, but you can’t get it in the US due to restrictions from companies with competing products and a lot of political clout. It’s quite popular in Japan and Korea, at least, so I figured maybe Taiwan too. We checked a few drug stores, but no one had the right stuff. I’ll keep trying.
In the evening, I wandered around the neighborhood a bit and stopped in a 7-11 for a snack (convenience stores in Asia are great because they all have reasonably decent refrigerated sections with sandwiches, salads, rice cakes, yogurt, etc. And the cash transaction is easy even if you don’t know the language). As always, I found some surprising offerings, such as asparagus juice—a whole big carton of it! I guess it’s the equivalent of V-8.
I finally got a wonderful night’s sleep in this EVA Air hotel (the Evergreen Laurel, in case you want to check it out). I was dozing off watching soccer, so I collapsed into the bed (which was exactly long enough for me—I bet American men hate it) and slept like a log for 9.5 hours. Aaaaaaaaah. In the morning, I had the buffet breakfast wearing my grungy sweats amid the impeccably dressed businessmen doing high-powered deals. Usually there are at least some women at the hotels I stay in, both businesswomen like me and other women there for vacation and/or with their husbands. But I saw none in my time at this hotel. I was a real anomaly, a role I love to play!
By the way, it was Presidential election season in Taiwan. The big day was going to be March 20, just a week away from my visit, so I was constantly assaulted with political ads and loud campaign rallies in the streets. I learned from my Taiwan rep that turnout is more than 80% in Taiwan, something we might take a lesson from in the United States of Apathy.
On the last day, I did a little exploring. First I strolled around town a bit, trying not to get killed by the crazed scooter riders. I stopped in a cute park and saw a cat stalking birds in the bushes as well as various businesspeople having lunch. Some did stretches or tai chi-type exercises, others appeared to meditate, and most just chowed down. I briefly visited a Japanese department store (Mitsukoshi, where I had met a friend at the Tokyo branch once), and found it much the same as they are in Japan.
Before heading to the airport, I stopped at the 7-11 and bought a bottle of genuine coconut juice from Thailand. This was not the coconut milk that you buy in cans in the US. It was quite watery—apparently coconut “milk” is thin and nearly clear—and had bits of pulp floating in it. It was not sweet, but quite refreshing. When I bought it, the cashier made some comment about it (or my purchase of it), but I couldn’t understand. It could have been anything from “This is my favorite, too” to “Gee, most Americans wouldn’t try something so exotic.”
Now that I have stayed in places that are nearly twice as expensive as the normal rate for places I stay ($250 instead of about $150 in Taiwan), I can say this truthfully: quality reaches a plateau at some point. These places—fancy though the bathroom fixtures were—did not have any special, magical quality that the typical business hotels lacked. They were just more expensive. I would guess that a $75-per-night place in Taipei would be pretty awful, but venturing above $150 made no appreciable difference.
Bounce north: Korea. Then I zipped up to Seoul, where it was considerably chillier (about 40 degrees). Cathay Pacific once again delivered a decent meal. The only odd part was a Chinese goodie wrapped in a label that said, “pineapple-yolk.” Huh? It looked like a cubical fig newton, so I guessed that it was a pineapple fig newton, and the “yolk” part was a figurative term for the filling. I was half right. It indeed had sweet pineapple filling like newton filling, but it also had a solid “yolk” that really tasted a bit like an egg yolk. Yow. I skipped that part and just ate the pineapple part.
Straight to bed the first night, then off to meetings in the morning. We visited two components of the same chaebol. At the first, security was tight. I had to register my computer and give them my passport to check in. Later, after my talk, they took my computer and taped it shut. The integrity of the tape was checked on the way out. But then at the second meeting, there was nothing to do, no checks, no tape, etc. I asked my Korean colleague why. He replied breezily, “Oh, the second place is company headquarters, so there is much less security!”
This makes sense when you realize that what they are paranoid about protecting is their manufacturing secrets.
We went to a fascinating restaurant in the COEX Mall. It was called O’Kim’s Brauhaus, and it catered to a young crowd with international food, screens showing music videos and TV, and Western music (including a mix of surf songs while we were there). The fare included Korean, sushi/sashimi, Thai, Italian, German, and American dishes. Of course, all of the above come with kimchee. It also had decent draft beer, and each order of beer came with a small bowl of popcorn, no matter what kind of food you were eating.
We had Thai rice with shrimp and squid, Caesar salad with shrimp and smoked salmon, and a plate of sushi and sashimi with miso soup and seaweed salad, washed down with German helles brau. What a jumble of cultures, but all of it was delicious. And I probably wouldn’t have chosen such a place on my own, based on its outside appearance.
It turned out to be a historic day in Korea. For the first time, the President (Roh) was impeached. It was apparently over a scandal having to do with election funds, but as you might guess, there was plenty of politicking involved. He was stripped of power for six months, during which Prime Minister Goh would act in his stead. After that, they will vote again on whether or not he can retain any power.
On a different note, I got a quick glimpse of a Korean wedding. My company rep stopped by because it was going on at my hotel, and his friend was the father of the groom. We shook a few hands and I got to see the ballroom set up with fancy tables for lunch. The groom's mother wears blue, the bride's mother wears pink, and the bride wears red and white. It was all very beautiful, of course. Higher-end weddings are usually held at hotels. The more "common" weddings are at wedding houses, which are often painted garishly (we saw one with a huge mural of a bride and groom covering the entire two-story front facade).
And I found out a fact I had often wondered about. What do the Koreans call the "Korean War"? They call it 625. That's because the attack came on June 25.
Bounce back south: Hong Kong. The next morning I was off to Hong Kong, where many members of my company would coalesce for a week of HK and China meetings. We were staying at a hotel called the Harbour Plaza, right on the bay. It was magnificent!! On the roof is a swimming pool with one wall made of glass, so it seems like you are swimming right out into the open water. I wanted to swim, but it was a bit chilly that day, especially exposed to the wind on top of the building. I opted for the exercise room, which also had large glass walls, making it look like you were exercising on the prow of a ship.
I also walked a bit around the neighborhood, and quickly left the Western section to find markets where items are unrecognizable. Plenty of them piled up, with people dickering over barrels of odd-shaped roots or dried vegetables. What do you do with these things? I'd like to find out someday. I noticed that "reflexology" is a hot item-- it's about stimulating the right place on the foot to bring out positive energy (a guy at my company tried this once and said it nearly killed his feet).
A jumble of foreign cultures. I had agreed to meet a guy from my company for dinner with some friends of his. It turned out that he and his friends intended to have a night of bar-hopping on the island, which I didn't realize until we had already taken a fabulous ferry trip over there. I don't like all the smoke at bars, and generally don't stay out really late. But I was already there, so I went with it-- to me, it was just another foreign culture to observe. Turns out these friends were aging rocker types (he Canadian, she British), who spent a lot of time following bands around Asia to catch the latest concerts.
I was not aware of this entire subculture before. These people were members of an ex-pat, globalized, rich crowd. They work for Western companies, getting Western salaries, but they live in Asia, often with some of their expenses paid for by their companies. Hence, they can speculate on real estate in developing economies like Thailand and Bali. And why not? A brand-new, fancy, 4-bedroom beachfront home might cost only $150,000, then appreciate to $250,000 within a few years. Those prices are peanuts compared to Hong Kong, Tokyo, or the San Francisco Bay Area. Why not get two extra homes?
Luckily, the guy from my company also didn't really want to stay out late. He had just wanted to see his friends and catch up. So we departed around 11:30, when they were just getting going at some music joint. I was happy to sleep (and let my smoke-laden clothes air out). It was fun to go to a Thai restaurant, though. We went to one near a strip of clubs frequented by the ex-pat crowd. It was the largest collection of white people I saw at once on this whole trip.
HK Island is a feat of civil engineering. The whole thing has been paved over (otherwise there would be flooding in monsoon season), stairs have been added up and down the steep hills, and one section even has an escalator running on it. San Fran also has steep hills, but there the sidewalks are also steep. In HK, the sidewalks are flat but with stairs every few feet. The airport has some kind of an artificial extension into the bay too. Of course, on the darker side, Britain basically wiped out what was there when they came in with the concrete. Not to entirely blame the West, this has also been the strategy of the Chinese government. Bulldoze the hovels, build skyscrapers.
The next day, I came back over to the island to look around more. I went to an intriguing temple with spiral incense-- it was somehow fed into tubes that were bent into spiral forms about 8-16 inches across and suspended from the ceiling. The smoke drifted everywhere, making it quite difficult to breathe. Note that there was no religious affiliation mentioned or flouted (that stuff is really being downplayed now that China is in charge). It was about charity.
I learned that most of the ex-pat crowd has Filipino household help in the form of maids, nannies, gardeners, and drivers. Tons of Filipino maids have picnics on Sunday, their only day off, and they do so all over the streets and sidewalks of some sections of the Island. As you walk among them, it seems that the world is a mass of women, which I noticed because it is very rare to see large public crowds of women (try to think of other examples, compared to seeing large crowds of men every day-- say, on the NYSE floor, at sports stadiums, etc. Mixed crowds are also plenty common).
I did some shopping at art markets. There was an amazing amount of Mao junk, such as old-style alarm clocks with the two ringers on top and his face on the face, watches, radios, etc. I was told that it is getting to be so passe even in China that they send it to HK in the hopes that foreigners will buy it for amusement. There were hundreds of copies of the little red book too. HK is a total jumble of cultures. It's British and Chinese, but also Southeast Asian, Indian, Australian, and Middle Eastern-- a real cosmopolitan port of call. One interesting thing is the use of bamboo scaffolding. It's just lashed together with some kind of rope, and the workers climb around all over it, even many stories high. (Later, in China, I saw bamboo scaffolding going up 40 stories. Yipe).
Had lunch at swanky Indian place with live sitar music. It was really authentic and tasty! Afterward they offered a bowl with 8 or 9 varieties of “digestive tablets." You may have seen the licorice ones at Indian restaurants in the US. There were also some that looked like little cubic crystals, as well as other shapes and colors. Some really tasted like soap to me.
I took the opportunity to do some Chinese laundry! It was way cheap (US$5 for first 7 pounds, down to US$4 if you pay cash in advance). And a good idea after a week on the road.
That evening, I satisfied my desire for chocolate, ice cream, and a Western dessert all at once by trying a liquid-center chocolate flan with vanilla cream sauce and ice cream. Ooooooh. Have I mentioned that the food is good in Hong Kong?
The next day was the big day to try something new: First we had a meeting in HK, then a quick stop for tea (I tried honey-pear; very interesting), then off to cross the border into China!
Small bounce north: Shenzhen. In this age of planes, trains, and automobiles, can you guess how one crosses the border from Hong Kong into China? Answer: on foot. I'm not kidding. You ride the train to the end of the line, and go through customs to get your stamp for leaving HK (now part of China, but not quite interms of customs checks). Then you walk across a bridge over a muddy ditch-- sort of no-man's-land, I guess-- and reach another customs checkpoint for entering China. There, you must fill out an entry card, but the challenge is finding one. There are various tables along the walls with forms strewn around them, but 99% of them are discards where people messed up in filling them out. It's a mad scramble, and of course none of the pens work either. (My guess is that some enterprising HK residents who cross all the time have taken all the pads of fresh forms so they won't have to scramble each time). Anyway, after about 5-10 minutes, my colleague and I found two fresh forms.
After the second customs check, you are in Shenzhen. There is an X-ray machine for baggage with a huge sign that says you have to put your bag through it. But as we did so compliantly, we noticed that no one is actually monitoring it, and most people who have just crossed are not even using it. Odd. Then we dashed through the station and caught a cab to our hotel (the Grand Skylight Hotel). Our suitcases didn't quite fit in the trunk, but no matter-- the cabbie whipped out a giant bungee cord and strapped them in place. Luckily, it held.
The driving in China is crazy. People just barely obey the rules. There are no left turn arrows, so when the light changes, it's a race to see whether the left-turners or straight-goers make it across the intersection first. Once one wins, the others play chicken to try to break in. There is a phenomenon called the "flying wedge" where one guy decides to turn left despite the stream of oncoming traffic. Then a bunch of other cars will "float" behind him in a shape that always places him between them and the oncoming cars. In addition to cars, there are mopeds, bikes, and pedestrians, who obey the laws in decreasing amounts. They seem to be everywhere, scurrying into each space left between the cars and buses. I didn't see anyone get killed, but my heart was in my mouth a few times.
Horns are used as conversation. Cars, trucks, and buses all honk at each other like smalltalk in some dialect I didn't know. If it's dark, you can flash your lights at other cars too. In some places, there are "no horn" signs, but I heard people honking there too.
The first thing we saw coming out of the train station was a giant billboard with a smiling Mao in front of rolling green fields. A fitting intro, perhaps. Other sights included the Arch de Triomphe Revolving Restaurant, and an advertisement billboard that said, "90% of American millionaires trust [Brand X]."
It was my first time to meet our company's China team. We all had dinner together-- my first fabulous China meal of many. It included whole fish, sauteed greens, mushroom soup, noodles, and spiced taro root. One of my Chinese colleagues wanted to know how Americans can survive without cell phones (which go off constantly in China), and my boss said with a straight face, “smoke signals.” It might as well be true because the Chinese really can’t understand a non-cell lifestyle (and in fact, increasing numbers of people worldwide can’t, but I can).
At the hotel, I was impressed to learn that there was a free high-speed Internet connection in each room. I quickly found out why when it proved to be a highly dicey connection! Giving up on email, I flipped around the TV stations. Chinese TV is an odd experience, although that may be fueled by my not understanding a darn thing they're saying. Still, much of it seemed to be soap operas, weird old warrior movies, and commercials.
Breakfast at the hotel's Star Western Restaurant wasn’t Western. The closest things I could find were toast (no butter or jam available), painfully hard fried eggs, and watermelon. There was plenty of Chinese stuff, as well as “Jap sushi” (I kid you not-- that was the label). My boss had gone to a bar the previous evening with notices about an upcoming event commemorating the Japanese Nanjing invasion—no Japanese people would be allowed there that night. Yikes.
We spent all day at a Chinese TV company. I was mainly window dressing because it's not my area. There were lots of cell phone interruptions, people dashing in and out, and it wasn't clear how much English they understood. Still, they seemed pleased with our visit. Two Chinese women positively ran up to talk to me (and my female colleague). They were very interested in how we came to be analysts, and whether we were married or had children. Interestingly, my colleague and I have widely varying backgrounds, and she is married-with-child, so they saw a nice cross-section just among the two of us.
Note: There are a decent number of women in scientific, engineering, and management positions here-- for example, a female VP was also at the meeting. From experience, I hardly ever saw that in Japan, Korea, or Taiwan. China (perhaps like Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union) seems to have made some efforts in this area.
They took us for lunch -- more good Chinese food, including a tasty mixture of tofu and greens with really great spices. Also really nice shrimp that were white even though cooked and some interesting gluey rice that looked like scalloped potatoes. I know my descriptions don't sound appetizing. You'll have to take my word for it or wait until you experience it yourself. This food is wonderful, with well-balanced spices, both light and filling.
After our meeting, we went shopping at a wild department store called Women’s World. What a zoo, in a fun way. It had trinkets and less expensive items downstairs, and classier department-store stuff upstairs. I bought a wallet for $12. We had dinner at a veggie tofu place (my colleague is vegetarian, so they were careful all week to get us at least some dishes with no meat). The food was interesting; some of the tofu was spiced to actually taste like meat. The vegetable dumplings were particularly good. Vegetarianism is not really a concept in China, but like everything else, they take a shot at it. Maybe it’s still a foreign idea that you would voluntarily reduce what food you would eat (only people with enough food and enough selection could possibly make such a choice).
The next day we were off to visit two more TV companies. The first was totally wooden (no questions after our presentations), but did treat cell phones respectfully. Somehow it was in their corporate culture to have it on vibrate and go answer it in the hall. We had lunch at our hotel—this time in the Chinese restaurant, not the Star Western Restaurant. It included pastry with some kind of fruit filling (not sweet-- it was almost a savory fruit. I didn't understand the name, but it might be durian. Our hosts said it was very smelly when raw), asparagus, tofu, dumplings, etc. And I tasted my favorite dish from the whole trip: chong fen. This is really chewy dough--sort of gluey and wet-- wrapped around mushrooms and other veggies, topped with warm savory sauce. (Yet another description that makes a dish sound awful, but this was good stuff).
In Chinese restaurants, they are often confused about giving Westerners a knife and fork. Some ask, and some just do it, but no one really believes you can use chopsticks. Contrast Japan, where they almost never offer. You could consider this not looking out for foreigners, but I don’t think so. I think the Japanese are sophisticated enough to know that most Westerners who come to Asia can use chopsticks. The Chinese don’t know this yet. At first I would try to refuse the utensils (feeling mildly insulted), but eventually I just accepted them without saying thanks or even acknowledging them, and set them aside. It’s a more subtle way of saying, “I didn’t need that.”
The second TV company that day was a real experience! We drove an hour out to the factory with totally wild traffic. There were lots of trucks because the cargo crossing into HK was nearby. We thought it would just be a friendly, get-to-know-each-other meeting because we hadn't met this company before.
Instead, when we arrived, they rushed us up four flights of stairs where three smiling women in miniskirts awaited to escort us into an auditorium-- yes, an auditorium-- filled with 200 employees. Our entrance was accompanied by majestic music, including the Olympic theme. My boss later described it as half revival meeting, half pep rally. The company president gave a welcome speech that referred to 5,000 years of Chinese history and greatness, etc, and then all rose for the singing of the Chinese national anthem. Our poor China staff guy had to translate everything from our talks-- I thought he would pass out after 2 hours. This company asked lots of good questions, which was really refreshing after the earlier one. We felt like accidental heroes, or actors in a play we didn't know we were acting in. Sort of surreal, and one for the memory banks. Then, just as quickly, they whisked us out and we were off to Shenzhen airport. (Our guy assured us that most Chinese company meetings are not like this).
We had a quick dinner there, more good Chinese food (crunchy baked fish with corn, omelet with meat, fluffy bread with custard-like dipping sauce, tofu, fried mushrooms). We had to undergo major searches at security (China is the only place I’ve been that was more draconian than the US, but barely). Signs indicated that no guns, knives, explosives, poison, or uranium would be allowed (have they had trouble with this?). They flagged my water bottle and made me pour some water into a cup. As soon as it sloshed out, they seemed satisfied, but gave it a brief sniff also. Were they looking for something of the wrong viscosity? What?
Big bounce north: Shanghai. To get from Shenzhen to Shanghai, we flew China Southern Air, which I hadn't heard of but is apparently quite big (it even does international flights). However, some aspects of the journey reminded me of the China Air flight I took about a year ago—a little haphazard. We were delayed taking off, and at first they said the plane was broken, but then they said it wasn't and loaded us on (um.... OK). It turned out to be OK. I talked a little bit to the Chinese guy next to me, who asked where I was from. I am never quite sure how to answer that-- I usually figure that "America" is too broad, but "San Jose" is too specific, so I say "California." It turned out that he wasn't quite sure if CA was in US, or which coast it was on, but we eventually homed in on it. I got the impression that because California is in the western US, he equated it with the bumpkin, backward stereotype of western China. (And I guess some New Yorkers think so too!).
We arrived late at night—yow, cold! No jet way for us, either. They made us walk down stairs straight out of the plane, so the wind hits you like an Arctic storm. We took a van to our hotel. Although the ride was very bouncy and cold, I slept.
The Intercontinental Hotel turned out to be quite nice. It has transparent elevators running up and down where you can see them, a tasteful inner courtyard, and a 24-hour gym. When I arrived, there was a little Dairy Milk chocolate on my pillow, with a note saying it had been placed there by Leo. On the second night it was placed there by Joy. Breakfast was welcome with actual cereal, yogurt, bread, and fruit. A nice change from the Star (non-)Western Restaurant. (As I've noted many times, breakfast is the meal where I really want something familiar. I've tried Asian breakfasts, and my stomach rebels at seaweed, fish, miso, and noodles at 7 am. The rest of the day, I am totally adventurous about food).
Shanghai was the site of Electronica China, as well as SemiCon China that week, and my company was hosting a one-day event during the conference. Like the American counterpart, the main conference was huge and overwhelming, but we managed to draw off a reasonable attendance for our smaller, more specialized sessions. There is a lot of interest in China for our work, I am slowly realizing. We are doing more business in China than I thought. Just like everyone else.
We hired a translator to help those of us who don't speak Chinese, although apparently we only paid him for English-to-Chinese, so several of the talks from Chinese companies were beyond my comprehension. But this translator was awesome! He didn't struggle with technical terms, he was totally professional, and he even asked the English-speaker followup questions from time to time to make sure he was giving an accurate rendition. It wasn't real-time, which slowed our presentations down (we had to pause every couple of sentences to allow translation). I have worked with translators before, but I don't really have enough practice yet. It changes the dynamics of giving a talk because you are interacting not just with the large, anonymous group of the audience, but also with a specific individual, the translator. It is really hard for me to activate these two different modes of social interaction simultaneously. The last time I used a translator, I was speaking to a conference room full of perhaps 15 people, so it was easier then. I was surprised at the challenge of giving my presentation at this event.
We had a lunch buffet set up for the seminar attendees. It was one of those classic cases where the Western food was sort of mysterious to the hosts, so they tossed it into the buffet kind of randomly. Most dishes were Chinese, but there were also some donuts and slices of cake. These were included at the beginning of the buffet line, along with the dinner rolls and salad. I tried a slice of cake, and found that what looked like a maraschino cherry on top was actually a cherry tomato!
On the way back to the hotel, the exit to the convention center was totally blocked with a line of cabs, while the other exits had cones across them for some unknown reason. Our van driver simply moved some cones to get out of the convention center parking lot without getting stuck in the cab line, another example of creatively sidestepping barriers. After a quick noodle dinner, my boss headed off to a press conference, but I begged off.
Final bounce: across the Pacific. At last, after nearly two weeks on the road, it was time to go home. But not before one final dose of Chinese bureaucracy. We arrived at the Shanghai Airport about 3 hours before our flight, earlier than we wanted to, but that was because of the schedule for the shuttle bus from the hotel. But we couldn't check in right away-- first we had to go over to a long line and have our temperature checked so we could fill out a SARS health card. This was clearly some public attempt to comply with WHO standards, because the people doing the tests didn't have their hearts in it. The guy supposedly watching the monitor for the red indication of high fever was actually dozing off. We got our stamp of approval, trekked 200 yards back to the the counter, and checked in. On the health card, there was a section called "Reason For Leaving China." My boss commented wryly, "There's no box for 'sanity'."
Next we found out there is a departure fee. All airports have this, actually (it pays for the fees the airlines are charged for using the airport), but usually it's just included in your ticket. But no, we had to pay RMB in cash for it. The last place I had to do this was Korea about 3 years ago, and they have since changed to a non-cash system. Maybe Shanghai will change too.
Then there was the first bag screening. It seemed sort of cursory. Then we got in a long line to have our passport, departure card, and boarding pass checked. Several people were being held up because their documents seemed not to be in order. I actually felt some mild nervousness-- what if they detain me? But I was able to pass through. Then came the real bag screening (I have no idea what the first one was for). I was checked with the metal wand, and everything was quite thorough, but I made it through that too.
All this checking was quite exhausting. We looked at our watches and found that it was now only a little more than an hour before boarding! If we had arrived at the usual 2 hours before the flight, boarding would already have commenced. Good thing the hotel van was going early.
I wanted to get rid of my RMB (yuan) because they are useless outside China. They can't be sold to foreign markets, although they can be used to buy foreign currency from inside China. However, the airport bank had a big sign saying that it wouldn't exchange any yuan without the receipt from the bank that had given them to you! I couldn't find the receipt from the bank in Shenzhen where I had exchanged my HK dollars for RMB. So the rule is: spend it (I'm sure that was the idea). I spent some -- the Shanghai airport has a decent selection of art items and other nice gifts -- and I gave some of the leftover to my boss to exchange. He had spent enough from his supply that he had significantly less than the amount on the receipt. Surely they would reject your attempt to exchange if you somehow had more than the amount you were supposed to. I was really pleased with my purchases, by the way-- I picked up two very nice scroll paintings, one of bamboo leaves for me, and one of cranes and the setting sun for some close friends.
Then we got on the plane. I sat next to an American guy who told me he had witnessed some censorship. He was watching CNN, which had coverage of the Taiwan election (to be held the next day), and suddenly the screen went blank when one of the candidates was shown speaking at a rally. Apparently the Chinese people are not allowed to hear the Taiwanese politicians' actual words. This makes sense when you want to tell them what the words were, rather than letting them hear for themselves. Truly incredible. I wish I had witnessed that. I did do some Internet searches on democracy, but all the pages came up just fine. My plane colleague told me this is because in the business hotels, the Internet comes in from Singapore. So let me get this straight.... if I am a Chinese dissident, I can never see CNN without censorship, but I could always choose to check into a hotel and use the Singapore Internet. No, even that must be too naive. I bet there is no privacy on the hotel's Internet. I bet they would know if a Chinese person came in and did a bunch of surfing on democracy. You have to be much smarter than that to be a dissident in China.
How long will it last, China? How long can you attempt to move toward (limited) economic openness, but maintain political repression? It's an impossible balance; it will topple, somehow.
Partially integrated thoughts. I'm still thinking about my experience, but I can say that overall, China is fascinating. It is a place with so many people, you can hardly imagine it. It is a place of repressive government that hinders all aspects of life for normal people, and so elaborate mechanisms have been devised to keep things going. People may look obedient (and they are) and highly uniform (and they are), but in fact they are really creative about making things work as well as tolerant of a much greater level of randomness than we would accept.
One consequence of having so many people and needing creativity to get things to work is that Chinese people are incredibly tuned into their networks. What really matters is “who you know,” and not in the sort of Rolodex way that people say that in the West. If you know someone, you can be helped at any level from personal to professional. For instance, one morning a different group from my company was trapped because it was raining in Shanghai—when that happens, the whole city becomes gridlocked, you can’t get a cab, and it takes 2 hours to go 5 miles—no exaggeration! They had to get to the convention center so our CEO could give a speech. Suddenly one of our Chinese staff recognized an old friend who was escorting other Western people, and managed to wangle a few seats on his minibus heading to the convention center. If our guy hadn’t seen his friend, they might have been totally stuck. (On another occasion, our Chinese staff managed to bribe a cab driver to take our party ahead of schedule, but that’s a riskier prospect because others can outbid you if they see you trying).
I have no idea how you get people to want to obey laws. Traffic is a zoo in China—it’s highly chaotic. Just getting that to work seems like an impossible task, much less cleaning up the government and corporations (which are much more corrupt than US corporations in many ways). More police and stricter rules are obviously not going to work on the roads, which makes you think a LOT about how we use those measures in our own society. Truly, I am stumped as to why Americans pretty much obey the rules of the road and all the other rules too.
I can see the negative cycle that dictatorships get into, where the head guy wants to clean up the country and so he imposes all kinds of draconian measures to organize the chaos (from the top it really must just look like chaos, and with a big ego it’s easy not to trust those little people). These measures are bound to totally backfire. How the hell do you get voluntary obedience even started? I suppose it requires some measure of trust in the government. Does it require democracy? Must people merely trust their leaders, or must they participate in government, or is there some other factor? I honestly don’t know. Iraq must be a real nightmare, where I’m sure some of the same issues have come up. (And as an aside: Realizing the difficulty of the task ain’t rocket science. Why didn’t we know this ahead of time in Iraq? Maybe if we had a President who had actually traveled outside the US and seen a few third-world countries, he’d have a clue). I would say China is a "second-world" country, by the way.
That's all I've got this time. And I'm starting to notice, also, that writing up these trips, while enjoyable and I hope beneficial to others, is also something of a distraction to me. On the one hand, I have enjoyed going back and reading my words in this piece, but how much was a fabrication rather than allowing myself to directly experience it? A couple times I noted while experiencing something that I was thinking something like, "Oh, I'll have to be sure to include this in my travelogue." Already I was applying some filters.
I can't be sure right now, but it may be that next time I travel internationally, I will not write it up. Just to see how that alters my real-time experience, my post-experience mental integration, and my recollections.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2004
