Author: Expat Richie

Today I do not have anything specific related to China to post about as I’m in the USA visiting family for the holidays. Instead I just want to enumerate a bunch of changes and things that came about for me in 2017. Hope you enjoy and feel free to add comments on changes in your life in 2017!

In no particular order:

• The job hunt ended and my career with Microsoft resumed
• Played in the Gay World Series of softball with my team from San Francisco, coming in between 10th & 17th place (out of more than 50 teams)
• Visited two new counties (Ecuador, China) and six new cities (Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan in China; Quito and Puerto Ayora in Ecuador)
• Ate some pretty crazy foods for the first time (frog, snail, jellyfish, lotus root, durian, and countless things I could not identify)
• Rode on a high-speed train traveling over 300kph
• Started learning a new language (Mandarin)
• Had lots of fun at Disneyland Shanghai
• Became involved in a couple weekly poker games — and never have gotten a hand better than Jacks full of Fives
• Watched my first Hokies Bowl game in person, which they sadly lost. (They’ve lost the last three games I’ve seen in person; 2018 better change that streak!)
• Had to figure out new wines to drink as California reds are expensive in China

I hope 2018 is the best year for everyone yet and that it’s filled with much joy.

Chinese New Year is coming up in mid-February and it turns out that I have the entire week off. You know what that means: Vacation trip! This post is going to highlight a few different ways I try and book travel. These tips can be used by anyone, not just those living in China — so enjoy!

Flights

As I almost always fly United, I get to enjoy the benefits of elite status which include things like choosing seats in the extra legroom section at time of booking when flying coach class, extra checked bags, and upgrade opportunities all for free. In fact, after flying over 1,000,000 on United, I get to keep those benefits for free. (Or at least until they change the definition of “United MileagePlus Gold” status to something less than what it currently is.) Typically my flight search starts with the airline’s website as they typically do have the best prices.

If I don’t see flights with good connection times, routings, prices, or even types of airplanes I want to avoid (777-300, for example, if I’m sitting in coach as it’s a really tight squeeze to fit in that seat as United has 10 seats in each row compared to other airlines that have only 9) I will look on other sites:

• Expedia.com, Kayak.com, and Ortbiz.com are good choices that most people know about
• Priceline.com is good if you’re looking to set your own price and see if any airline takes the bait — but be warned, you get what you pay for here
• Google Flights. What the what?! You didn’t know that you can search for flights on Google and have an option to buy them? Keep reading below.

Google Flights

Click on the link and give this example a try; you’ll see how to use Google Flights to search for and book flights, and usually you’ll find the lowest or close to the lowest price. This example we’ll use Google Flights to book a flight on United Airlines so you know that you’ll be booking an “016” ticket and be able to get credit to your MileagePlus account.

Enter in the destinations you want to go to or even click on the “Explore Destinations” link to see where you can head to and for how much via a map view. (Pretty neat!) Add the dates; you’ll see the list on the screen update with options. The prices displayed in this list are round trip, not one way (unless you selected the one way option).

Once you find a flight you want for your outbound leg, click on it and you’ll be able to choose your return leg. When both legs are chosen a few different purchasing options are presented, including the potential to book directly on an airline site such as United.com. If you use the link to the airline’s site, be sure to log-in so your account will be properly credited with the flights!

Where I’m Going

I was able to use Google Flights to find a trip for Chinese New Year 2018 to San Francisco for $600 less than what booking directly on United.com was providing as search results. My routing is not direct as I have a connection in Osaka, Japan, (KIX airport), but that’s OK by me as I get to spend some time in Japan (I love that country) and get to fly part of my trip on an airline partner of United’s I’ve never been on before — ANA.

One thing that I do not like about taking the high speed rail is waiting in line at the train station to get the ticket. As a non-Chinese national, I am not able to use the ticket kiosk to validate my ID and print the ticket. (Think of this step similar to using an automatic kiosk at an airport in the USA.) The only reason I can think of for why this is the case is the kiosks are not equipped with passport readers. Having to get to the train station early to get your ticket is a bit of a crapshoot: The line can be a quick five minute wait or 30-45 minutes long. This gets quite annoying as you wind up rushing to your train platform so not to miss the ride or you have a lot of down time in a not-so-comfortable environment.

Fortunately I asked around and heard there is a ticket office near my neighborhood. No one could remember the name of the ticket office or the address other than “It’s near Euromart“. You know what that means: Time for an adventure!

This adventure was pretty smooth, but I did walk right past the ticket office without realizing it. The ticket office, or 火车票代售处 (huǒchē piào dài shòu chù) in Chinese (pīnyīn), turns out to be located below Lisa’s Bar (nope, haven’t been there yet) and it’s pretty small with only one ticket window.

Just like at the actual railway station, you will need your approved ID (passport) and ticket purchase order number if bought online. (I use CTrip for booking my train tickets, they have an English website and phone app.) The only difference is picking up the tickets here will cost you an extra 5元 (per ticket issued) which, in my mind, is totally worth it not to stand in line at the station!

Boiling water. It’s one of the easiest things to do in a kitchen. Up until this point I’ve mostly boiled water for tea or coffee using an electric kettle as they are quick, energy efficient, and automatically turn off when the water hits 100C for a few moments.

With a few eggs in my fridge that were begging to be boiled, I decided to make some hard boiled eggs this morning. Or at least I tried.

That’s my electric stove top with some eggs (one cracked) sitting in hot water. Sadly, the hot water is from the electric kettle and not from being boiled on the stove top! Trust me, I tried — for two hours — to no avail. Each time I turned the stove top on, selected which burner I wanted to use, and selected a temperature, the stove top would turn off within half a minute. Frustrating!

I looked online to see if I could find a user manual as the one in my apartment was in Chinese and failed to find an English one for my model. YouTube was of no use and my tummy was getting hungry for some eggs!

Finally I decided to try my old fashioned tea kettle and see if I could get that to heat up. Bingo! That worked. So now the mystery deepens for why my pots wouldn’t work with the cooktop. Apparently some fancy technology is to blame as this type of induction heat mechanism it uses is not compatible with my cookware. (WTF?!) There’s some sort of sensor that will shut off the heating element if there’s no pot on it that it can sense.

So yeah, I didn’t really get to boil eggs on my stove and instead used hot water from the electric kettle. Guess I’ll be needing to buy some new cookware! Anyone up for a trip that might lead to some new entries in the Auchan Chronicles?

For a while now I’ve been trying to figure out why the buses in Suzhou are a bit … late … arriving at the bus stops when attempting to ride one. There are no published arrival/departure schedules — apart from general route info — but there are these neat looking electronic screens that tell you which busses are currently headed to the station and how far away it is from the station.

Silly me naturally though the numbers on the right were how many minutes each bus was away from that station. But no! A colleague finally told me that it’s the number of stops away to give “relative distance” and not time. Ugggh. That makes sense now why it seems like a bus that is “4” away takes 8 – 16 minutes to arrive.

It’s a little hard to see in the picture above, but there are paper “schedules” for the routes the busses take. Below you’ll find a zoomed-in picture.

From what I can determine to be true at this point, and who knows if it is true information as I did get the “stops away from” wrong …

• The big number on the left, 120, is the bus route.
• To the right of the bus route number, the bus operating hours are listed.
  • This one starts running at 6am and the last run is at 10pm.
  • Note! This does not mean the bus will be at this stop at 6am & 10pm, but instead a bus will appear at this station at some point between those hours and potentially just after the latest one. Confusing!
• The last two lines below the bus route hours are in pink writing, indicating the type of payments accepted (I think). Not all busses accept debit cards, but this one seems to as the Quick Union Pay logo is shown. (It’s best to get a transit card or have some coins on you.)
• The QR Code is something I’ve not nor seen anyone scan. I’m venturing to guess it’s just general bus information and not all that helpful.
• The vertical Chinese characters to the right of the QR Code lists each of the named bus stops.
• The pink named bus stop is your current location.
  • In this example, that would be 圆融天幕/yuan rong tian mu.
• The blue half-arrow along the bottom points in the direction the bus is traveling so you can determine which are the next stops.

It appears that the busses will display how many stops away (站距/zhàn jù, or literally “station distance”) they are but the subways, oh the subways, they display how many minutes away the next train is. So yeah, that’s the source of my confusion!

Ever make such a mistake when traveling abroad? How about missing the last train or bus of the night and needing to make your way home by other means? Leave a comment and start the discussion in this judgment free zone. (Haha, yeah right … judgment free!)

…Light Saving Time, that is!

Editorial note: Previously I was so confused with the time change that I shifted meetings for work with my colleagues in the USA an hour earlier when they should be an hour later. Oh the joy of sleeping in! This blog post is now being updated to reflect the correct time changes. Or at least what I think is correct! Those changes will be reflected in italics, just like this text.

When the USA messes with most of the rest of the world by following that out-of-date practice of changing the recognized time, it becomes major annoyance. Not only does it make it difficult to know when you should be calling people to speak on the phone or know exactly when your flight might land, it causes havoc for business meetings!

Starting this week my normal 7am meetings for work shift to a 6am start. And that random 5am meeting that pops up every now and then? Yeah, that begins at 4am. Needless to say I might be sleeping through a few of those and/or completely working from home on those days! a lovely 8am start! That’s right! Until some time in the spring of 2018 I’ll get to sleep in most mornings. It will be marvelous!

The time change for DST does not happen here in China. And time keeping in China is pretty simple as there’s only one time zone. For the entire country. A country that’s about as wide as the USA! Think about that for a moment: a country that’s about 2300 miles (3700km) wide and spans four traditional time zones only has one. 5am in Shanghai is 5am in Beijing and Chengdu! The lack of time zones helps for business by keeping everyone on the same clock, but man, imagine the sun not rising until maybe 8am in the winter time if you’re way out in Western China!

Personally I wish the various states in the USA would end this farm-rooted practice and just stop switching the time. (Time keeping is a states rights issue, not a federal one, so each state gets to define it’s own time.) If the USA ends the practice, it’s likely the rest of the world will as well. Until that happens, accept my apology in advance for being extra grumpy in the morning over the next five months! And until the spring of 2018 when the time shifts in the other direction, unless by some miracle Congress gets its act together and forces a national time standard that never switches for part of the year, and then I’ll go back to being grumpy morning Expat Richie.