Author: Expat Richie

Work and Mandarin lessons are keeping me pretty busy during the week. As I guessed, daily updates to the blog are getting more difficult to pull off. With that said, it’s time for a mid-week update!

So … I figured it out! Well, sorry of. Somehow I managed to install the ICBC China app on my phone and could login! But it wasn’t easy; it was another adventure, this time with a happy ending.

Don’t even ask how I was able to install an app that is available only to those who have bought a cellphone from a Chinese provider, but I got it done. And after it was installed it was time to log in to my account. 

Let’s play a game for  a moment: Close your eyes right now and picture trying to create and then log into your account for any app. No, really… Close your eyes and picture how that might be done. Now change all the English you’re picturing to Chinese. Near impossible, right?

Thankfully I came up with an great idea: Since I have two phones I could use Google Translate & the cell phone camera to “live translate” the banking phone app on my other phone! If you’re not familiar with this feature of Google Translate, basically you can use the app in camera mode and point it at printed material like a menu or book and it will attempt to translate from one language into another. (Yeah, I know but only because I found out about it tonight… You can do it all with only one phone by taking a screenshot and sending that screenshot to Google Translate…I digress.)

The process was slow but in the end I was able to navigate enough to create my account, set new password, and pass the 2FA (two-factor authentication) challenge. It only took about two hours to get done. Uggh. But, I was able to get logged in and see my balance. Yay!

Then, after I called this process a qualified success, I decided to do a few other things around the apartment. While I was folding laundry an idea came too me: Maybe I can now log into the English language version of the ICBC website. Previously this was tried but never successfully as an error kept being displayed saying my account is broken and I should go to the ICBC branch and speak with someone. This time things were different! Apparently logging in on the mobile phone app triggers something behind the scene and the website became unblocked  and allowed me to login. Boooh yeah! Much easier than navigating the Chinese language phone app. 

Next banking related tasks:

1. Figure out how to checking my balance via WeChat (if possible)
2. Determine how to move money from this bank account to my account in the USA so I can pay some bills from back home

Both will be daunting for sure!

Hello, Shanghai! 

Today is my first trip to Shanghai with the main reason being an evening poker match at a coworker’s place. I didn’t have much else going on today, so why not!

Getting there

Based on where I’m staying in Suzhou, getting to Shanghai is a bit of a process that involves three separate train systems:

1. Suzhou subway to Suzhou rail station
2. Bullet train from Suzhou rail station to Shanghai Hongqiao rail station (and airport)
3. Shanghai subway from Hongqiao to final location

First, I hopped on the Suzhou subway to get from Moon Bay (月亮湾) to the Suzhou Rail Station (苏州火车站). Getting a ticket for the Suzhou subway is easy: You walk into the station and find one of the automated touchscreen kiosks. There’s an option for English, so no struggling with learning the Chinese characters of where you want to go. Put your money in the machine after selecting where you want to go and grab your ticket then walk to the security check. If you have a bag, place it on the conveyor belt so it can be scanned. Closed bottles of liquids are OK to bring on the subway but for open ones you may need to prove it’s not a dangerous item by taking a sip or using your fantastic Mandarin skills to explain what the liquid is; I just leave the liquids at home, unless I bought a bottle of wine or six… Once past security, tap your ticket at the gate, walk through, and make your way down to the subway platform.

Riding the subway is easy as almost all sinage is in both Chinese and English and there’s an LED display indicating which stop you’re at and where the next one is. There are also announcements in Mandarin and English. For getting to the rail station I opted to change from Line 2 to Line 4 to cut about 15 minutes off the trip. Both lines stop at the Rail Station, however, so I could’ve just stayed on Line 2 all they way.

Once at the Suzhou Rail Station (苏州火车站), I needed to pick up my train ticket from the ticket office that was prepurchased using the CTrip phone app. (It’s in English and accepts credit cards!) I went to the North Ticket Office which is outside and to the left of the security check point. That’s very important to know as when I first attempted to find the ticket office I passed through security and was completely lost! (Good thing I gave myself a a full hour to navigate the rail station before my train left…) 

After waiting in line for a bit, it was my turn at the ticket counter. I handed the clerk my passport and my phone which displayed the “ticket pickup information” from the CTrip app. The clerk handed both those back along with my ticket. Time to walk through security again.

The train station is pretty massive with many platform, restaurants, seating areas and signs. Sadly most of these signs, including the depatures board, are in Chinese. It took me a while to figure out that my train departure wasn’t listed on the departure board because I was there a bit too early. Phew, nervous energy gone. Twenty minutes later my departure gate was announced and so I went to the waiting area. A little bit later it was time to scan the ticket and walk down to the platform where I somehow needed to find carriage 15 before the train arrived. (Carriage spots are not marked on the platform…)

The train arrived and I took my seat in the first class car. Hey now, that ticket upgrade was an extra $0.80! So why not 🙂 Seating in first class is 2×2 vs 3×3, very similar to a USA-based airline flying a domestic route. There’s also more legroom in first. But don’t expect beverage or meal service. (Maybe on longer routes those items are offered, but not for this short hop.)

The train was very quiet and fast. Max speed was 244kph (about 150mph) on this trip. There was only one stop between Suzhou and Shanghai Hangqiao (上海虹桥) station and the entire train ride was less than 30 minutes including the one stop.

Shanghai Hangqiao rail station also connects to the Hangqiao airport (SHA) via one stop on the subway. Sadly that airport doesn’t have many international flights. The main international airport for Shanghai is the Pudong Airport (PVG) on the eastside of Shanghai. Anyway, I queued up for buying a ticket for the subway, entered the security line, and found my way to Subway Line 10 as that route will take me within a couple of blocks where I’m meeting my coworker and a number of her friends.

The trip to Shanghai was pretty easy, but a bit long. I left my place at 10:45am and made it to the Hongqiao rail station (ostensibly the westside of Shanghai) by 1:30pm. It took another 45 minutes or so to get to the Shanghai Library subway stop.

Thoughts

Traveling by train is pretty easy and far less boring — and cheaper — than taking a taxi. Not sure about the intercity or long distance bus routes as I’ll likely avoid those. 

While staring out the train windows I got my first glimpses of the Shanghai skyline, including the building that looks like a bottle opener and the completely massive Shanghai Tower.

With this huge metropolis less than two hours away (now that I know how to navigate the Suzhou Rail station), I’ll likely spend some weekends here taking it all in: the shopping, the nightlife, the food, the museums, and the people!

Oh. My. God. It’s just after 8pm and I finished dinner not too long ago and made the mistake of ordering another beer at my usual restaurant. Why? I was having fun playing a Texas Hold ‘Em poker app on my phone and it’s not like I have anything better going on tonight. (Did I mention before that a beer here usually comes in 0.5L sizes only? I ordered the small one and it still came as a 0.5L size!)

Normally that would not be a problem as I can hold my beer, even after one litre of it. And Suzhou is a seriously safe city plus the place I’m staying at is maybe 300-400 meters away.

But none of that is the cause of my “OMG” outburst. You see, there are all these karaoke places near by and I know a bunch of my coworkers really enjoy singing. Like REALLY enjoy. I’m pretty sure they are all part owners in karaoke joints…It’s not just a myth that karaoke is popular over in this part of the world.

Anyway, it turns out tonight’s live music at this restaurant/bar is a guy with a CD collection of karaoke hits, an electronic keyboard, and a microphone. Apparently all he knows are codependency songs from the late 70s and early 80s…And he’s the only one singing. It feels like I’m stuck in a timewarp and no matter how hard I try and drain this beer, the bottom of the glass seems further and further away! It might be a night to leave a wounded soldier upon the field of battle …

Tomorrow’s agenda: My first trip to Shanghai! Yep, you guessed it; there’s a poker match to be had 🙂 And no faux karaoke!

As the one month mark marched on by, I find my self comparing my old life in SF to my new life in Suzhou less and less. I don’t need to convert money exchange rates to determine how expensive something is and I can discuss distances in km instead of miles. I learned celsius along time ago so when I went running tonight after work with the running club I knew in advance the outside temperature of 36C rivaled that of New Orleans in the dog days of August, humidity and all! 

But what exactly are some big differences between SF and Suzhou?

• Smoking indoors in Suzhou is normal, but not at work, medical clinic, grocery stores, shopping mall, or public transport options. (I’ve not been on one of the maglev trains yet, so I only am referring to city transport options.)
• It is very clean here, except for the air. Exact opposite of San Francisco where you’d often be wondering if that pile of poop came from the human who’s in a drug induced daze or that humans pure bred dog that’s living on the streets with the owner but you never are concerned with the air or water quality.
• In SF you will walk down the street any time during the day and need to be aware of your surroundings so not to get mugged or walk into the middle of a drug deal. In Suzhou you never worry about your personal safety except when crossing the street. As a coworker mentioned today, “The traffic lights are not safe here [when trying to cross in a crosswalk].”
• Housing prices are expensive in both cities, though SF is on a whole separate level of obsurdity. 
• Public transportation, while expansive in both places, is much more reliable and convenient in Suzhou … And way cheaper! A one-way bus fare in SF was $2.25 when I left; it’s about $0.30 in Suzhou.
• Speaking about public transportation, while both systems start around the same time in the morning (6am), Suzhou’s system mostly ends between 9pm and 10pm. A few bus routes and the subway go until 11-11:30pm, but nothing passed then from what I can determine.
• In Suzhou anything that requires manual labor is extremely cheap: twice a week house cleaning for a month is roughly $100 in Suzhou whereas $100 in SF *might* cover one cleaning a month for a small one-bedroom apt.
• Food in Suzhou is still seasonal. In SF there are no seasons. 

Thats all I have for now. At some point this list will be appended. But I want to leave this post with one parting thought and something I really miss about SF apart from my friends & softball team: It’s nealy impossible to find a late night burrito stand in Suzhou!

If it weren’t for the help I received from the relocation company, I’d likely still be trying to obtain a local SIM card for my phone (which allows me to have a local phone number and use cellular data). It’s just as confusing in China as it is in the USA. The one difference, the company I went with, China Unicom, had only two plans to choose from. I paid for a few months up front (about $70 USD total for three months) and then the next bill will have to be paid online. Which means it’s time for the bank account.

The person I was working with suggested we go to ICBC (one of the three or four largest consumer banks in China). The staff there spoke fairly good English so setting up the account wasn’t difficult but there was a TON of paperwork involved. The account I opened is basically a savings account with a debit card attached to it and it came with this strange little random number generator I’m supposed to use when accessing the account online. At least I think that’s what it is for since I had to set up a six digit PIN as well.

Lots of paperwork, pictures of my passport — some of which I had to be holding as the picture included me in it — and a couple hours later add up to me being able to receive a paycheck at the end of the month! And once that happens it’s time to go apartment rental shopping!

Tonight is the weekly poker game at Ollie’s. Wish me luck!

The day finally came; after what feels like an eternity, I’m once again gainfully employed by a good company. In fact, after a four year absence, I’m back to being on the payroll for the first company I worked for out of college: Microsoft.

Yes, that’s right — the Microsoft. The one you’re thinking that is in Redmond/Seattle Washington. The one that makes Windows, Office, Xbox, and some pretty sweet Surface laptops.

But then you’re thinking “Why the heck is Richie in China if he’s working for Microsoft?” and what a great question that is! As it turns out, hiring really great software engineers is extremely difficult in the USA, especially when a lot of younger, fresh out of college students prefer to work at companies like Uber, Facebook, SnapChat (yeah, I don’t understand that app either), or Google. The old 1990s type companies similar to Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco are fighting to get that new talent but it’s an uphill battle. Once you pass that hiring hurdle, you are faced with the issue there is a severe lack of graduates with STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, math). And don’t get me started with the stupidness that is the visa process for hiring skilled overseas workers to legally enter the United  States. It all adds up to non-winning combination.

It turns out that in China Microsoft is one of the highly sought after companies for software engineers. With government friendly policies and offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzen, and Suzhou, Microsoft is getting those great engineers and the product development follows suit. This allows Microsoft to develop an increasing number of products solely in China, including the one I’m working on.

So what is that product? It’s a team collaboration product called SharePoint. It can easily act as a company’s internal website (or intranet, to use the technical term, not to be confused with internet) or a location where information, documents, and business logic/process can live and execute. It is employed by many Fotune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies as it fills a big need for organizations of many sizes. What’s also pretty freaking cool is that Microsoft’s intranet is powered by SharePoint! That means everyone in my company will be using the product I’m helping to develop! Pretty cool, huh?

My exact set of features that I’ll be helping to produce is still a bit in the air, but I’m sure it’ll be fun to work on as all my colleagues, Chinese & expat alike, are extremely nice and dedicated to making this product even better than it currently is.

Stay tuned!

Oh, before I forget, the blog might not be updated daily as now my M-F (or S-Th for those in the USA, due to the time zone difference) likely won’t be very interesting. But then again, I’m not quite sure how interesting this blog is to begin with!