Weekend update and food

Weekend
I am going to Xi’an this weekend with two GSB friends, Ian Chiu and Wu Shu, and one of Ian’s friends from HBS. Xi’an is an ancient capital of China in the central part of the country most famous for being the home of the Terracotta Warriors. In characteristic modesty, the Chinese Tourism Bureau says the Terracotta Warriors are the “most significant archaeological excavations of the 20^th century.” No more blog entries likely until Monday (China Time).

Food
I haven’t written much about food recently. But that is not because it has gotten less weird, more that I am somehow getting used to it. Earlier this week I went to a hotpot dinner – like the Chinese version of fondue, but weirder. We had some regular beef and lamb and shrimp, but then there was a bunch of stuff like cow stomach, some other cow parts in a red sauce, some balls of some kind (supposedly “meatballs” but they were oddly hollow), etc. I was only a little bit disturbed and we all basically just plowed in. The stomach was quite good (though did not look like something you should be eating) as were the supposed meatballs. The cow parts in red sauce were not my favorite.

Then, since this is Shanghai, you can also get any western food that you want as well (except Mexican food, which is killing me). So the next night I went to a nouveau Mediterranean restaurant on the roof of the modern art museum in People’s Square. The place had great views, and I had a pretty good salad and veal tenderloin. Then I went to a cool bar in Xiantiandi that had a jazz band in from New York. Could have been anywhere in the world and seemed as far away from cow stomach as possible.

Finally, I have been eating a ton of dumplings. Averaging about 25/day this week of all different types. My favorites are xiao long bao (steamed soup dumplings) and sheng jian (grilled? jumbo dumpling) .There is a hole-in-the-wall place a few blocks for our office that has been called the best dumpling place in the world. It’s tiny, and dirty, and crowded, but really good. And today at lunch there, I ran into a guy who grew up in Norcross and went to the same middle school and high school as me and who is my brother Michael’s friend. Crazy.

Finally, an interesting article from the People’s Daily – What will China be like in 2050? Hopefully I get time to elaborate on some of my thoughts next week.

Video games

China has between 125-140 million internet users today (~10-12% of the population). But Chinese use the internet for very different purposes than most US users. A large majority of Chinese internet usage is for “entertainment” whereas in the US, a majority is devoted to news/information gathering, with entertainment being secondary. Online video games are extremely popular, and over ~50% of internet usage in China is devoted to video games. Chat is probably as popular as email, and that makes up the next ~20% of internet usage.

I had an interesting talk at lunch the other day about the video game industry in China.

A number of companies are working on different ways to take advantage of the huge video game market. One of my friends here is working for a startup that transfers cash payments made at rural internet cafes into online payments in video games (most rural Chinese do not have credit cards and cannot directly pay online).

This New York Times article (free registration required) on Chinese Gold Farmers is really interesting as well. To summarize, an industry has sprung up in rural China where wealthy consumers (a mix of Westerners, Chinese, and other Asians) who play video games pay hard currency to Chinese players to earn extra points, skills, or advance to new levels in online games. These Chinese players work 12 hour days “playing” video games and earning points for paying customers. The customers make cash payments online to intermediaries in exchange for the stronger character or additional points.

Additionally, the current rumor (unsubstantiated but very believable) is that in many rural areas, local government officials are forcing prisoners to play video games in jail. The local officials collect the money and the prisoners spend their days earning points for paying customers in virtual worlds.

Kijiji

Great news! It turns out that Dolae is actually a male cat. So that’s nice.

I haven’t written much about work so I think it is time.

When I arrived in Beijing 3 weeks ago, I was very skeptical about whether I would like working here. China was so overwhelming, and I was not sure how I was going to enjoy – let alone contribute – in 4 weeks at Kijiji. I was also probably more excited about working in India than in China. But I realized this week that this sentiment has reversed. Work here has been much, much better than expected.

First and foremost the people here have been great. Our CEO, Jian Shuo, is really impressive. He is in his very early 30s, worked for Microsoft for about 6 years before becoming Kijiji’s first employee, and basically built the business from scratch. He is also one of the biggest bloggers in China and his English blog is definitely worth reading.

Second, everyone else here has been extremely nice and welcoming, even though I cannot communicate in their language at all and need help doing the most basic things. We are a small office of about 20 people, and everyone is really friendly. I can’t always get across 100% of what I mean to say, and I definitely don’t understand 100% of what is said, but everything is working out well and we are having a lot of fun. People have taken me out to countless different lunches, dinner places, home to their apartments, to Hangzhou. It has been amazing.

Third, I think both the online classifieds business and my project here at Kijiji are both very interesting. I will write about both in more detail in separate posts.

Finally, I haven’t worked for a “real company” since an internship after my freshman year of college over 9 years ago. It has been pretty cool doing actual work, instead of consulting or investing, even if is only a summer hiatus. It’s also been fun working for a start-up – lots of exciting things happen, you can make real changes in the business really quickly, and most importantly I wear flip-flops every day.

Another photo from Hangzhou:

Hangzhou

On Sunday I went with 5 people from Kijiji to Hangzhou, a little town 2 hours by train west from Shanghai. Although I am calling it a town because I had never heard of it, it has about 6.5 million people. So city may be more appropriate.

When Marco Polo found Hangzhou in the 1200s, he called it “Paradise on Earth”. Most Shanghainese think it is the most beautiful city in China. I agree that it is quite nice – there is a huge lake in the middle of the city called Xihu (West Lake). It has all sorts of lotus blooming in it, mountains rising up all around it, a number of big pagodas and little tea houses, and two really long stone bridges that were built in the 300-400s that lead out to a little island in the center of the lake.

We got to Hangzhou around 11:30 and had a nice lunch in an old Chinese house. Then we walked all along the lake, admired the scenery, took photos and generally goofed around. As I have mentioned before, often decisions get made in Chinese and I am only consulted at the last minute. Around 3:00, I get asked if I know how to ride a bike. Hesitantly, I answer yes. And of course, next thing I know we have rented bikes.

As many of you who have ridden bikes with me in Ireland, the beach, or my triathlon, I am a good bike rider when there is nothing around me, but when there are objects nearby – anything from elderly Asian women to pesky water bottles – I tend to hit them. The thought of riding a bike around packed Chinese streets was a bit terrifying.

Also the bikes that we rented were very small – kind of like a regular bicycle, except you couldn’t turn the handlebars hard and peddle at the same time because your knees will hit them. And there was only 1 gear.

We start out riding on these paths near the lake. Not so bad. Then we go around the bend and there are tons of people and bikers and these trams that shuttle people all around. But I discover that I have a little bell. So I keep peddling along, sweating like crazy, and ringing my bell all the time and just hoping people get out of my way. There were a few close squeezes when the path got narrow. And once I ran into a bush (but bounced out and recovered nicely). No major disasters.

Then we get to the end of the path, and take a turn for a major road. Now we add cars and buses to the mix. I am sure I am going to die. We keep going for a bit, I sort of get used to driving near chaotic traffic, and everything seems ok. Except I am very ready to be done biking and it has only been 20 minutes. Finally, we get to a huge tunnel and which of course we decide to go through. There are two lanes of traffic and a “bike lane” on the right side. A tiny little bar divides us in the “bike lane” from the road. And there is not much room between this bar and the tunnel wall. I am struggling to just stay in a moderately straight line and not tip over into traffic and get run over. Then, this beeping comes from behind me and won’t stop. I quickly look over my shoulder and see a moped in the bike lane! I squeeze as close to the wall as I can and hope for the best. Sure enough, he starts to pass me. He zipped by me, and I bounced off the wall but gracefully managed to straighten things out and keep on peddling. The tunnel kept going and going and going – it was probably only 6 or 7 minutes really – but finally I made it out, and eventually back to the lake. I am done with biking.

One final Hangzhou story – since it was supposed to rain, I brought a rain jacket and wore cargo shorts instead of bringing a backpack. I brought my iPod, camera, some clifbars, passport, wallet, cards, etc. I am not sure exactly why, but everyone was amazed by how much stuff I had managed to bring with me. Apparently, there is a Japanese cartoon cat that has magic powers and can pull anything out of her “pockets” whenever she wants. So now, my Chinese nickname is “Dolae” because I resemble this female Japanese cartoon cat. Great.

More photos later, but for now:

Xihu (West Lake)

Team photoOur Triumphant HeroSunset at XihuStud with umbrellaDorae (I hope there is no resemblance)

Three random stories from the weekend

Dogs

We saw someone walking their pet dog in Hangzhou, so it prompted a conversation about dogs: pets or food? A warning – what follows is a terrible story.

Apparently most people here who keep dogs as pets do not eat dogs. But many other people do. Our Product Manager, Victor, had a pet golden retriever. He called it Big Yellow (or I guess the Chinese equivalent of Big Yellow). A few weeks ago, he heard a yelp from his dog in the middle of the night. He woke up and stumbled downstairs to check on Big Yellow. Two beggars/thieves had broken into his house, killed his dog, and were eating it! Really sad.
Everyone at the office felt bad for him, though one of the guys – Dengjia, who particularly likes dog – was (jokingly) angry that somebody else had gotten to Big Yellow first!

Text Messages
On the train to Hangzhou, I got a few text messages in Chinese from a number I did not know. After the second one, I asked somebody to read them. Apparently, when you enter a new city, that city often sends you a welcome text message, saying hello, telling you the current weather, and providing a tourist hotline in case you have any questions. None of the locals found this was even remotely interesting or unusual, but I thought it was amazing.

Umbrellas
It is considered more attractive in China (and maybe Asia more broadly?) to be light-skinned rather than dark skinned. Just as American women spend all sorts of money on tanning beds, tanning lotions, and who knows what else to make their skin look more tan, women here spend a ton of money on skin whitening products. When a woman gets too suntanned, her friends jokingly tell her that she would “be popular in the West”.

The extension of wanting whiter skin is being afraid of the sun. So whenever it is sunny, all the girls walk around with umbrellas. That in itself is not so big of a deal. But in Hangzhou, I saw a girl riding a bike and holding an umbrella to protect from the sun at the same time! As most people know, I cannot ride a bike with just one hand for more than about a second, so I found it particularly stunning. This practice is not very common and I was too slow to get any action shots, but here is a photo of my friend Ellen stopped on her bike talking on her mobile and holding an umbrella.

Consumer retail

Saturday was the day of researching the consumer retail market in China, aka shopping. I headed out with the general plan that I needed to get a few pairs of underwear and some jeans (not great packing as I left Stanford) and maybe some souvenirs. Amazingly, Saturday was my last full free day in Shanghai to take care of this stuff.

I think in Shanghai you can shop at more price points than anywhere else in the world. I went to a few small discount places, sort of like small Dollar Stores, with similar $1 or less prices. Then I went to a big Amway, just to check it out. Still, I don’t know exactly what it was – I know Amway is really big in the smaller towns in China as they use a direct sales/distribution model. This Amway was a big building with a lot of people standing around doing nothing and a few tables with some beauty products. But it didn’t look like you could buy anything – I’m not really sure what was going on.

Then I went to 3 department stores, basically a low-end department store, a mid-end, and high-end. All pretty similar stuff and price points to their US equivalent stores.

Finally, I went to two malls, one was about an average mall with average US prices, though except for the Timberland store and the Keen store, there was nothing else really interesting, and the place was pretty empty. The second mall though was huge – like 7 stories – and was just like Phipps in Atlanta or any other really nice mall. Tons of US brand stuff, with US$200 jeans at Diesel and a Nike Golf store and a big fancy food court and everything else you would expect to find at a mall that is too expensive for me in the US. But tons of locals were wandering all around, window shopping and buying stuff.

So I wandered through all of these stores and bought absolutely zero, except an M&M blizzard from Dairy Queen. Last week though, the Georgia Tech guys had told me that there was still a market here in Shanghai that was full of pirated goods (like I think was probably everywhere until they recently started cracking down). So I got on the subway from the nice mall, and headed to the pirate market stop. 30 minutes later, without even setting foot outside, I went from one of the nicest places I had ever shopped to a massive underground market.

You could buy any type of clothing or electronics or sporting goods you can imagine - Callaway golf clubs, Prince tennis racquets, Rolex’s everywhere, iPods, video games, DVDs, Chinese souvenirs, and just about every brand of clothing. And all of it was dirt cheap. There were mostly tourists, but some locals shopping too. So this is where I shopped.

Purchases

One Framed thingee to hang on Matt and Jaime’s “Wall of Weird Random Stuff from Chris”

Chopsticks set for 6, engraved with dragons and little things to set them on

One deck of Mao Zedong playing cards

2 ties, nicer than any other ties I own (which does not say much)

2 pairs of boxers

3 pairs of socks

2 pairs of sunglasses (one Oakley and one Rayban)

One costume-worthy belt with a large John Deere belt buckle

One dress shirt

One army green CCCP t-shirt

One set of iPod speakers

One iPod power adapter (US$50 at Best Buy China, $2.50 here)

One pair Dolce & Gabbana jeans (note: Obviously I am not a D&G guy. But I only brought 1 pair of jeans and I wear them to work everyday. These same jeans were on sale in the nice mall for US$220. Now, my nicest pair of jeans cost $20 at a sketchy market in China. And even if they are fake, they probably are still my nicest pair)

Total cost: ~650RMB or about US$85. I think not a bad day of shopping.

Finally, after I bought some stuff from her stand, I started talking to one of the sellers who spoke pretty good English. I asked her where she got her product from – was it fake, were there just a few shipments that “got lost” from the factory, or how did it work? She just said “Business Secret” and smiled.

A few photos: Me and a large ice cream cone on the sidewalk (sadly, the top is cut off, not sure the guy knew why I wanted him to take my picture), the Disney store in the mid-tier mall, and a band promoting the new CK-1 cologne in the high-end mall.

Latin night

First an update – I chose trip D. I think the trade off between manageable travel and cool sights will be the best. And I am hopeful about the weather.

I just finished another great weekend that has given me a lot to write about. But it’s late so I will just write about Friday night now and will follow up with more over the next few days. But I will say that today was my highest risk travel day since escaping from the volcano last summer.

Friday was my friend Armando’s last night in Shanghai so we went to a “Brazilian” Churrascaria. But there was really nothing Brazilian about it. Everyone there was Chinese, and there were definitely no Brazilian chefs. There was a big salad bar, guys walking around with grilled food on swords, and there was a little card on the table that flipped from red to green. But the similarities ended there. Caipirinhas were not available and there was only one type of steak. But there was a lot of Chinese food brought around on the skewers. And at one point, three guys got up on a stage and sang La Bamba.

All that said - the food was pretty good.

After the Brazilian place, we met up with a GSB friend at a really cool jazz bar where it was Latin Night. This Latin Night was really authentic however. There was a full 9 piece salsa band, and at least 6 of the band members were from Colombia. A largely Latin ex-pat crowd danced and sang in Spanish and Portuguese. Really fun, though my salsa ability in the eastern hemisphere is precisely the same as my salsa ability in the western hemisphere.

Three small transportation stories

Online booking
I booked a flight “online” yesterday for a trip to Xi’an for next weekend. I used Ctrip.com, the equivalent of Orbitz or Expedia in the US. For the booking process, everything proceeded fairly normally at first. I sorted through a bunch of options, chose my flights and proceeded to booking. Then the payment choices came up. The choices were: (1) pay with a Chinese credit card, or (2) pay cash. I of course had to choose cash, both because I do not have a Chinese credit card and because I needed to see how that would work. I got to choose a two-hour window during the next day during which a Ctrip representative would come to my office and we would make an exchange. Sure enough, he brought me a paper ticket and I paid him in cash.

Error Messages
One of the best Chinese phrasings I have seen. An error message when searching for a flight:

Shanghai - Diqing None of direct flights in this time.

---

If you can accept the way turn in other airports,The following is the Shanghai that we recommend for you to fly to the Diqing of in turn(onward flight) the flight path.Please choose you feel quite the cheese in turn the city, we will search the service for you

Taxis
I have written before about how difficult it is to take taxis here. It is such a problem that I will write again. First, it is almost impossible to pronounce the address of where you want to go, and taxi drivers never understand what you are saying. So Westerners need to bring a Chinese map and the address written in Chinese of wherever they want to go. But even so, it is still a big question of whether you will actually get where you are going. I have heard a few reasons for that – one being that many taxi drivers don’t read that well, and the other being that since entire areas of town can be seized, torn down, and rebuilt, the landscape changes so fast that taxi drivers can’t keep up. Whatever the case, it is a huge pain to take a taxi anywhere and at all times I keep a Chinese map of my hotel in my pocket and still often don’t get exactly where I want to go.

But, last night I got into a cab after dinner and reached into my pocket. Somehow I did not have my map with me. So we went through a two minute exchange where I tried to say Xujiahui (pronounced something like shoe-jah-hway) and the cab driver stared blankly at me. Finally, he said “Ah! Xujiahui” (to me, exactly the same as I had been saying for two minutes) and off we went. Xujiahui is the metro station about 10 minutes from my hotel and the only landmark I know. We successfully made it to the metro station and then I was able to point and grunt and guide us to the hotel. A huge victory!

Shanghai sightseeing

Mostly photos in this post.

First, this is why the US will never catch up to China in Science and Math. This is just a random bridge (click to enlarge).

Next an update on some good sights I have seen in Shanghai. First, I went to the Shanghai Museum in the People’s Square. While I didn’t expect it to be very interesting, it was actually pretty cool. Tons of jade, porcelain, Chinese paintings, calligraphy, etc. Which you wouldn’t think would be that interesting, but it was. There were intricate jade carvings from as old as 2500BC. Note the baby being stepped on by the emperor giving the gun show below.

After the Shanghai Museum, I went to the Yueyan Gardens. Also very cool. These are antique gardens and buildings from the Ming Dynasty (1300-1600s) and a touristy but cool surrounding market. (Note the Starbucks and Dairy Queen)

Finally I have walked along the Bund a couple nights. This is the riverfront area that divides Puxi and Pudong new area. It’s a really pretty, very interesting mix of Concession era and modern buildings. The Puxi side of the river is mostly old Victorian buildings and the Pudong side is all new skyscrapers. There are some great rooftop bars and restaurants with especially cool views at night.

Lastly, I took the Shanghai Tourism Tunnel with some friends the other night. It is sort of like a trippy Disney World ride, where you take a little train under the river from Puxi to Pudong. But in an effort to be cool and modern, there are all sorts of psychedelic lights, weird sounds, and inflatable clowns (like you would find on the roof of a car dealer). Despite how it looks in the picture below, we were probably going about 5 MPH. One of the weirdest places I have been in China. Nice views from the other side though.

Trip planning – Choose my own adventure!

I am trying to choose among 4 possible trips for the one week I have free in China between jobs. I definitely want to go someplace that is rural and less Western than the big coastal cities. But China is so big and still so unknown to me that I am having a hard time deciding. There is also probably some tradeoff between remoteness of the area and my ability to get around with only 7 words of Mandarin.

Here are the four choices, in no particular order.

Trip A: Tibet

Rough Itinerary: Take the newly opened train (highest train in the world) 50 hours direct from Shanghai to Lhasa. Spend 4 days in and around Lhasa exploring Tibet. See monasteries, yaks, and hike in the mountains.

Pros: Two days on the train means less chance of getting lost. Will get to see a lot of China out the window or could maybe make a stop for a day along the way, not clear. Tibet seems cool and unique, good culture and scenery. Lhasa seems easy to navigate.

Cons: Hard to get a travel visa for Tibet, may be some logistics challenges. Two days trapped on a train may not mean that fun. I’m going to northern India (right across the border from Tibet) later this summer so Lhasa may not be that different.

Trip B: Central China, Gansu province

Rough Itinerary: Three days in Xiahe, a small town in Gansu province. Two days in Jiayuguan, the edge of the desert at the western outpost of the Great Wall.

Pros: Major highlight of Xiahe is Labrang Monastary, largest Buddhist monastery outside Tibet. Good hikes around town, beautiful scenery, very remote location. Town seems very cool. Seeing desert / “end of the world” in Jiayuguan would be cool. Probably the most “off-the-beaten-path” of any trip choices. Probably the best weather of any choice.

Cons: Toughest travel of any option - Xiahe is 6 hour bus ride from the nearest airport. Jiayuguan is easier to get to but not extremely convenient either.

Trip C: Eastern China, Anhui province

Rough Itinerary: Day in Hefei, city trying to become new Silicon Valley of China. Three days of “Village hopping” in small towns in south of province. Two days at Huang Shan, one of most famous and beautiful mountains in China.

Pros: Mountain is supposed to be very pretty. Can stay in little hostels at the summit and hike around. Villages look cool. Could try to meet with the science and technology minister in Hefei which might be interesting. Travel is in fairly compact area, would not need a flight or two many long trips.

Cons: While no long trips, would require fairly frequent arranging of travel (which carries significant language risk). Some rules about where Westerners cannot spend the night which seem confusing. Most touristy of the trips, not positive I would get to see “real” China (or maybe I would?).

Trip D: Yunnan province

Rough Itinerary: Fly to Kunming and spend a day or two there. Do Tiger Leaping Gorge hike and /or see Shangri-La.

Pros: Many people have recommended the beautiful scenery and remote villages, Kunming is supposed a cool 2.5M person city. Mountains and hiking opportunities seem good. Travelers frequently come here and it would be relatively easy to get around.

Cons: I think the weather risk is the biggest here. I heard it rains most of July which makes travel difficult.

What do you think I should do? Please post comments or email me.

Ganbei!

Last night was one of the most fun nights I have had in China.

Like many activities in Shanghai, the night began out of nowhere. I am not sure if this is a Kijiji trait or a China trait, but there seems to be no advance warning when something is about to happen. Maybe conversation takes place in Chinese around me and I just don’t get told until the last second, but I am always being asked to do something – go to lunch, dinner, whatever, and then it is instantly time to go. This was no different - I was getting tired and ready to pack up my stuff around 6:45 and head home for a laidback night. Yiyi walked over and asked if I wanted to join some people for a party to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. Of course I said sure. And she said, ok let’s go. Less than 10 seconds later I am in the elevator out the door.

First stop on the way to the party was the grocery store. This was the first Chinese Supercenter I have been to. It had a Chinese name (but Tesco owns a portion of it) and was very similar to a Super Walmart in the US – huge, lots of groceries and lots of other stuff. There were some small differences of course, like most chicken and meat was not packaged, it just sat uncooked on ice. People would pick up chicken breasts, look at them, throw them back on the ice chest, and eventually stuff a plastic bag full of them. We picked up a bunch of gross looking food, and I smuggled some Chips Ahoy into our shopping cart.

Then we went to a co-workers apartment (relatively similar to a post-apartment complex) for the party. The “party” was a small group of 7, and almost immediately upon arriving I was sent to work in the kitchen. I tried to explain that I have only cooked spaghetti and microwaved Trader Joes in the past 3 years, but that did not work. So less than 30 minutes removed from my desk, I am making bacon, mushroom and tomato omelettes (they turned out good tasting but unattractive - omelette flipping with chopsticks is hard) in a Chinese kitchen.

Then we had a generally great night talking casually about all sorts of stuff ranging from movies and tv to political issues in China – Big Brother, the Great Firewall, One Family One Child policy, abortion, gay rights, etc. Really fascinating, though a little depressing [note: editing this out, I will elaborate more once I am out of China, just to be safe].

After talking until around 11:00 (the beer really helped people be more comfortable trying to speak english), I introduced the Zeros and Ones game that I learned in Australia which was a total hit. Finally, the beer ran out and we decided to move on to Chinese whiskey which tasted as bad as you would think. We were drinking out of paper cups and the whiskey was so strong that we had to use two cups since it would eat through the bottom of the paper. And I also learned the Chinese word for Cheers – Ganbei! – though it is different from toasting in the US because when someone says Ganbei you have to finish your drink. Lots of fun, but I am glad we did not have a larger bottle.

Five Fun Facts about China

• The MagLev train from the Shanghai airport to downtown is the new fastest train in the world, with top speeds of 267MPH (though when I took it on arriving here, we topped out at only 186MPH). The trip into town takes 7 minutes and 20 seconds.
  

• According to CCP reports, there are more 75,000 “incidents of rural unrest” per year in China (that is >200/day).
  

• 31% of the world’s ketchup is produced in Xinjiang province (northwest corner of China).
  

• Wuxi, a city of ~4.3 million people, has been without running water for several weeks now. Poisonous blue-green algae caused by water pollution bloomed in the city’s water source, the 3^rd largest freshwater lake in China. Temperatures have been in the 80s and 90s but city residents have no ability to wash or shower. CCTV news tagline “China learns from algae crisis”.
  

• There are 49 cities in China with a bigger population than Houston, Texas.
  

Also, my hotel has a gun club on the first floor (sign on the left side of the picture below).

First weekend in Shanghai

Friday night’s two activities could not have been more different.

First, I went to dinner with a group of 8 people from work. We went to a little hole-in-the-wall local restaurant on the third floor of a sort of dumpy building a block or so from work called “Yummy Place”. It was not. All meals are family style that I have eaten here where one person (not me) orders for everyone. This dinner worked the same. First dish that was brought out was a pile of chicken feet. Not even fried or breaded, just plain (baked?) chicken feet served with tiny hot peppers. You could see the webbing, toes, everything. I am not normally phased by foods of different cultures but this was one of the least appetizing things I have ever seen on a table. Rest of the dinner was unspectacular. Total cost for the 8 of us was about US$12.

After dinner, I met up with my friend Roy from New York and who is now working in ASCP’s Shanghai office. He had some friends who just graduated from Wharton in town visiting. We went out to a super trendy lounge in Shanghai called Volar, with a world-class crowd in a world-class space (Philippe Starck) and world-class prices. We had table service with US$150 bottles of vodka and green tea/whiskey. About 1/3 the price of a similar place in Vegas, Miami, New York, but with the exception of the 98% Asian crowd, you couldn’t tell a difference. But, our bar tab was almost 40x the price of my entire group’s dinner.

How sustainable is China’s economic growth like this? I am mentally composing a much longer separate post about this, but the disparity here between rich and poor is incredible. And China is supposedly socialist.

After the unsatisfying dinner Friday, I opted for an American-style brunch Saturday morning at Kraze Burger, an excellent upscale burger chain that of course is Korean-owned. Then I headed to the People’s Square and to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. I had heard a lot about the museum and had high expectations.

The ground floor was very impressive - a huge model of Shanghai’s riverfront probably 60 feet long and 10 feet wide, shadowed under Shanghai’s slogan “Better City Better Life”. I wandered around a bit, quite impressed, and took some photos. Then I noticed there was an upstairs. I took the escalator up to the 2^nd floor which had some mildly interesting pictures of Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. I almost left the museum then but decided to take the escalator up one more floor to see what was there. As I stepped off the escalator, my mouth opened and I literally said “Holy Sh-t” outloud. The entire floor was covered with a model of 2010 Shanghai down to the tiniest level of detail. It must have been 100 feet by 100 feet at least. (Photos below) There was all sorts of other crazy exhibits also – like a 360 degree video tour through 2010 Shanghai, and a room describing the eco-town of 200,000 people the government is building on a now deserted island just up the river from Shanghai. A final highlight was the big exhibit on containerized shipping (photos and shipping note below!).

After the museum I went to the new Xiantiandi district. It’s a “stylish business, entertainment, and cultural complex” that looks pulled right out of Epcot Center. But it is also somehow the new trendy place in town. I had a straiccatella gelato and coffee outside at a nice café. Then I wandered a bit more and found one of the weirdest places I’ve ever been, a German Brauhaus complete with pretzels, home-brewed German lagers, Chinese girls in blue plaid dresses and two Chinese singers on a little stage belting out Bavarian hits. Picture below does not do it justice.

Finally, taking the subway home, I was shocked to see a white guy wearing a Georgia Tech t-shirt! I talked to him, and he was actually with a group of 5 current Tech students who are all CompE’s. Apparently there is an exchange program with Jian Tong University (the premier technical university in Shanghai) which my office sits adjacent to. There are 47 of them studying here this summer. In an interesting nod to undergrad norms these days, we exchanged not phone numbers or emails but facebook IDs so we can meet up later.

Shanghai plan (above), View of museum from People's Square (below)

German Brauhaus (above), Me commanding a COSCO ship (below)

For the containerized shipping fans out there (and really, who isn’t?), an interesting aspect of China’s growth has been its impact on the port of Hong Kong. For years, Hong Kong was the world’s busiest port. As mainland China has grown and as Hong Kong has prospered, it has become more economical to ship directly from the mainland. Despite China’s crazy growth, container volumes at Hong Kong were DOWN ~3% YoY in Q1 2007. Singapore took over as the world’s busiest port in 2006 and is likely to hold the lead in 2007. But Shanghai has moved into second place and is forecast to take the lead in 2008. Over 90% of world trade is shipped by sea.

Three battles

Battle 1 - Hangars

I am matched in a small war with the hotel staff here at the friendly Home Inn. A quick introduction, Home Inn is a new chain of hotels that is striving to become the Comfort Inn of China. This specific location is actually nice enough, but I am not sure how often they have visitors staying here for a month.

Since I left home for 3 months, I brought more than an average amount of clothes. The Home Inn provides its guests with 6 hangars. Now I know that many of you think I do not have 6 articles of clothing worth hanging up, but I can assure you that I do.

The first day I was here, I went downstairs and asked for 8 more clothes hangars. After a minute or two, they nodded in understanding and I thought hangars would be sent up. Nothing happened. Evening Two, I ask again for more 8 clothes hangars. I don’t know if they don’t want to give me that many, or they truly didn’t understand, but again nothing happened. Evening Three, I come home, get a knock on the door, and receive one hangar. Morning Four I ask for clothes hangars again. Somewhat confused nods from the front desk. I resolve to get the word clothes hangars written in Chinese for me, but later forget. Evening Four, I come home, get a knock on the door, and get one hangar again. Evening Five, temporary ceasefire.

I am not sure how this battle of wits will end up, but I think I am no worse than a 2 to 1 underdog.

Battle 2 - Pollution

I have learned how China plans to deal with the pollution during the Olympics. Our general counsel mentioned that he had heard about this plan from a few government officials in Beijing and Yahoo News seems to support it also.

The Chinese Air Force apparently has cloud seeding capability. They launch missiles that emit silver iodide which explode in the air and cause clouds to form and then rain to fall. The Air Force plans to use these missiles to encircle the city with clouds and rain in the days before the Olympics to temporarily help clean up the pollution by making it rain.

Apparently they also did this when some Olympic Committee officials came to assess the pollution problem before choosing Beijing to host the Games.

Battle 3 – Citizen behavior

The sign below from a park in Beijing shows some of the restrictions that the central government is trying to impose on individual freedoms. Line 7 is my favorite.

(I think if you click the picture you can make it bigger)

Comments

Yes! I can now view both people's comments and my blog from China. Please comment. There are no stupid comments.

Re: Owen's comment on copyright infringement - intellectual property rules do not apply in China.

Shanghai - first thoughts

“Shanghai is America”

Or so says the really good book China Road that I read during the first few days of my trip here. It’s quite a good story of an American who worked in Shanghai for NPR for a number of years and then took the 3,000 mile trip across Route 312, the Highway 66 of China. While I am not sure that I totally agree with his assessment, I have at least one story supporting him.

When I arrived in Shanghai, I needed to get a charger for my iPod. Somehow I didn’t bring one with me and my iPod died by the time I got here. So the first night I am in Shanghai I set off, completely unsure how to go about finding a charger. A few minutes from my hotel, I found what looked like a sort of department store. I wandered inside, and began to mime the motion for “I need to buy a charger for my iPod”. For those of you who have gotten “iPod charger” in Charades, you know it is not the easiest thing to communicate without words. And of course I had left my iPod at the hotel, which did not help.

After a minute or so of watching me make headphone motions, dancing around like I was listening to music, and pointing to a power outlet, the girl at the department store giggles at me, and motions for me to follow. I trudge after her uncertainly as she leads me around the corner and out the side door of the store. Then, she points down the street, looks at me and smiles and says “try Best Buy”. Which, of course, is right down the street.

“Shanghai is not America”

Says me. So far I only have about 300 examples why this is not true. But that said, I really like it here. I will post more impressions about Shanghai later, but so far the city seems very unique and has a great feel to it. Preliminary city rating is 10 out of 14, and this comes after walking to work in the rain this morning, which is not fun anywhere in the world.

Blogging news

Today was a big day for me and the blog.

First, I finally figured out how to change my blogger from Chinese to English. Now I have at least a little clue what I am doing here.

Secondly, since I have been in China, I have been able to post to my blog and to see that my posts were successful, but I have not been able to actually view my blog. Apparently, the Great Firewall of China is against me. Today I found a proxy server that will let me see my blog! But so far I can't figure out how to see comments people post to my blog. This was a long way of saying, I don't know what people are writing but don't take offense if you post something meriting a response and it takes me a while to get back to you. It's probably because I haven't figured out how to see what you wrote.

Finally, I want to define a little more clearly how I am thinking about this blog and this summer.

Even though I will get to travel a good bit this summer, I think my adventures will be fairly business-focused, and as such, the blog may be even more boring than you might expect from me. Last summer - La Gran Aventura - was definitely just about having fun and exploring personal interests, like learning Spanish and drinking Pisco Sours. This summer, I have two jobs and a definite focus on better understanding business in India and China. For example, I took a detour on Saturday to visit a mall and a Wal-mart Supercenter (well, an attempted detour actually as I got lost and gave up on the Wal-mart, but you get the point). Business dorks may find these posts more interesting but others may not. Just setting expectations.

Finally, three pictures. The first two are of the Great Wall - one showing me extremely hot, and the other of the first-class cable car system. The last one has some advice for us all.

Food: Initial Reactions

List of foods eaten in first 24 hours in Beijing:
Dog crepe, Shark fin soup, Peking duck, lots of dumplings, mystery curry, Starbucks coffee and muffin, two Granola bars

Quick story about the dog crepe:
My first night in Beijing I took a taxi to a “Snack Street” where supposedly locals go to eat lamb kebabs and similar food. It turns out that the taxi actually took me to a touristy night market, not the one I tried to go to. But anyways, at one of the stands there was a sign that had in English “mutton” next to this crepe/pancake thing. Even though a lot of the stuff being served were cockroaches, scorpions, and other insects, mutton seemed very reasonable since I was looking for lamb kebabs. I ate about half of my crepe thing and threw it away because it was not very good. Then I see a sign at a different stall that says in English “Mutton (dog leg)”. Not very good news. Sure enough, I go back to the stand I ate at and below the word mutton it says dog leg. Awesome.

Update from Monday:
The developers took me out to dinner last night. We went to a restaurant that served food from northeast China. None of it was that great, but we did order both pig ears and spicy goat. The goat was quite good, tasted disturbingly like tacos. The pig ears looked too much like pig ears to be good.

Even considering the restaurant last night, Shanghai is much more Western than Beijing. There are two 24 hour McDonald’s on my walk home from work. There is also a Dairy Queen, a Starbucks, and a few KFC’s (very popular in China – over 1000 locations). But I have only caved in and gotten western food for breakfasts (not counting ice cream) because Chinese breakfasts are gross.

Impressions of Beijing

Beijing is not my favorite place. I would rate it a 2 out of 14 on the pH scale. Tons and tons of traffic. Dirty, hot, overcrowded, extremely polluted, very little culture or feel to it (which is odd, since historically the city has been so important to China). But there is so much destruction and reconstruction going on now that the city doesn’t feel like much of anything.

Some highlights were a very fat man riding me around on the back of his bicycle through a bunch of hutongs (small traditional, alleys). Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven were all OK. Some of the less touristy parks and padogas were cooler. But all in all, nothing awesome to report (except the Great Wall).

The pollution in Beijing is unbelievably terrible. It is permanently gray outside. You climb to the top of something to see a view and you can barely see the buildings a few hundred yards away. The sun shines a creepy orange color. I was coughing and sneezing the entire time I was there. I also had my first asthma attack since I was like 12 years old and had to sit down on a bench and try to catch my breath after walking around outside for only about 6 hours. They say that spending a day in Beijing is the equivalent of smoking 70 cigarettes. I am not sure what they will do when the Olympics are here. Somebody said that they may ban people from driving during that time, though that seems crazy (but maybe not so crazy for China).

Also, taxi drivers are ridiculously bad. First, I started off by taking the name of the place that I was going written in Chinese. Taxi drivers either would not or could not take me where I wanted to go - even to major attractions. Then I started bringing both a Chinese map and the Chinese name of where I wanted to go. Still, we would circle around, ask questions, and take forever to get where I was going. And I was not much better on my own. My hotel the last night was in a little dilapidated alley (too small for cars, people sold melons out of carts pulled by donkeys and fried up fresh dumplings outside my hotel, which was kind of cool). Since it was a small street though, nobody knew the name of it and I could almost never find it. I got dropped off by taxis twice very close to it, walked the wrong way, and ended up spending over an hour both times trying to find my hotel again. Very frustrating, especially in summer heat. I was definitely the sweaty American in Beijing.

On a good note though, since there has been so much deforestation to the west of Beijing, in the spring there are these massive sandstorms that come from the new deserts and blow sand all over the city. I am pleased to report that while it was in the high 90s when I was there, the skies were sand-free.

Will try to post some pictures when I can.

Great Wall

It is pretty exciting to be only 3 days into the summer and to have already had a day that you know you will never forget.

This morning I got up at 5:45, picked up a to-go bag of dumplings to go along with my 3 clifbars, and headed out to the Great Wall. I chose to avoid the most common tourist route and instead took the Happy Fun Times Extreme Adventure Great Wall Tour, starring myself as the sweaty, out-of-breath American.

Four hours later, I made it by foot, subway, and very old bus to a fairly remote section of the wall called Simatai. There were probably only 100 tourists in this area of the wall, which is pretty good for a summer Saturday. The sections of the wall closest to Beijing are supposedly overrun this time of year.

A few fun facts I learned (or think I understood) about the wall:
- Mostly built in the Ming Dynasty around the 1300s - my section was built in the 1370s.
- The wall is over 1,200 miles long but is not one continuous piece, there are numerous sections which are not connected everywhere
- In the end, the wall didn't work. The Mongols eventually went around it under Genghis Khan (I think the military history of walls has proved extremely ineffective, all the way to today)

Hiking along the wall was much harder than I anticipated. First, there was a 30 minute cable-car ride (the most poorly constructed cable car I can imagine) from the parking lot to mid-mountain. Then about 20 minutes of hiking straight uiphill. Then, the wall itself. IT was really amazing - ran right on top of a stunning mountain ridge line. I hiked 12 watchtowers long. I don't know exactly how far that is, but I know it was very hot and tiring. But really, really cool. Lots of steep, uneven steps up and down and beautiful views all around the countryside. Same as Machu Picchu, but different.

From the Airplane...

If you are going to move to china, I recommend leaving more than 30 minutes to pack.

This may be an obvious point to some, but somehow I didn't think of it. But after a whirlwind morning of going through all my clothes (except most of my business casual wear which is conveniently in Atlanta) and moving out of my place in less than an hour, I got all of my stuff out of Schwab and myself and my bag and backpack onto Air China flight 986. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to that baseball game last night and should have done at least a little packing instead. But that wouldn't have been nearly as fun.

It has really been a crazy last 8 days. Last Tuesday night, I had a call with my new boss at Kijiji (www.kijiji.com.cn or view our UK affiliate at www.gumtree.com) and accepted his job offer to move to Shanghai. Two days ago, I got my official offer to join Softbank's Venture Fund in India. Today I am on a plane to China. While I had been in preliminary talks with them both for a few weeks, getting the timing and details to work out were far from certain.

A final point worth noting, my official offer for my job in India arrived via text message Tuesday afternoon. I replied and accepted.

As I wrote in my last message, I'm hoping to use this blog to stay in touch during my three month Asian adventure this summer. We'll see how it goes. Tentative plans are as follows:

Beijing/Great Wall - 3.5 days
Shanghai - 4 weeks of work in shanghai
Rural China - 1 week of travel somewhere
Northern India - 2 weeks of travel
Bangalore - 4-5 weeks of work in Bangalore

Any suggestions of if anyone will be in the same place (or wants to visit!), let me know!

First post from Beijing to hopefully follow soon.