Author: Expat Richie

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Day 22 – A big day is coming

Today, twenty-two days after arriving in the People’s Republic of China, I received a work permit card! This is indeed a big day! It means I am able to legally begin employment and be a productive member of society again.

While the work permit is in hand, my passport is not. It’s still being held by the Suzhou government while they process my application for residency. That permit is a pretty big deal as it will allow me to have multiple entries into the country, meaning I can head back to the States or other countries for business trips, holidays, family reunions … You name it! 

From what I understand of the process, the work permit and/or resident permit are only good for one year, then a different process needs to be followed each subsequent year that I wish to remain in the country. That process should be easier and that bridge will be crossed when the time comes.

Next up on the “getting settled” list includes:

  • Determining my first day at work (maybe Monday? Which would be weird as Tuesday is a national holiday in the USA: Independence Day!)
  • Opening a local bank account & charge card
  • Getting a local phone number (and perhaps new cell phone)
  • Finding an apartment/signing a lease

For the last three items on that list there should be someone available to help me figure out the details. The top item boils down to when work wants me to start — which I think was three months ago!

So here … We … Go!

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Day 21 – A small iOS rant

If you know me and my technology preferences, you know that I’m not a fan of iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod, iWatch, iWhateverelse). To add some more heft to my iDismay, last night I found one way that Android devices are definitely superior: The ability to spoof your physical location.

Now why the heck would you want to spoof your physical location? Why would you need to have your device think you’re in a different spot? Why would this even be possible? The long and short of it is easy: Testing apps and fooling apps. Sure, there are other more nefarious reasons, but I’m not interested in those. I’m more interested in making my new life here in China more … easier to transition into.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how I was able to sign-up for YouTube TV and caught the Golden State Warriors basketball game where they beat the Cleveland Cavaliers to win the NBA championship. Whoo hooo! Technology!! (Since then I found out that CCTV5 plays nothing but sports on the cable channels here, but it’s mostly soccer teams I’ve never heard of — or know where they’re from — or professional table tennis. Zzzzz…) Since I have a VPN connection back to the USA, there’s been no trouble accessing the https://tv.youtube.com website and viewing whatever content I wanted to see.  However, for some reason I was not able to view content on my iPad nor Android phone.

So last night I started playing around with my phone. Normally I have my phone’s data connection secured through a VPN tunnel (don’t want people tracking what I’m doing and making it harder for advertisers to target me), so I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting an error saying the YouTube TV app couldn’t load any content especially since the setup on my phone was the same as my laptop. Then it dawned on me: My laptop does not have location services so any website needing my physical location would use an IP address lookup to determine where I am; my phone *always* knows where I am and using the GPS location for that purpose. (If you haven’t guessed by now, whenever you’re on the internet, your physical location is known by the sites and services you’re using. This is yet another reason why connecting via a VPN connection that helps to obfuscate your physical location is a great idea!)

Opening the fake GPS app I have on my phone, I changed my location to somewhere in the USA and then reopened the YouTube TV app. No surprises here, but the TV content was available for streaming! Score!!

My next steps was to try and get a similar type app for my iPad as it has a much larger screen than my phone and would be much better for watching video content. It was then I found out that iOS does not support the ability to spoof your location. Sure, there are a few crappy apps out there, both free and paid, but they do not work as the APIs (application programming interface) does not exist for developers to call and spoof your location. This makes it impossible for app developers to fully test their applications across multiple geographies unless they are physically in those locations. Boo on Apple!

Summarizing this long post, what does it all boil down to? The iPad I have is over 5 years old at this point and it’s no longer receiving iOS updates from Apple, which makes it quite vulnerable to hackers. The iPad is will be sunset and an Android Tablet will likely be purchased once I get my first paycheck.

(Full disclosure: I currently own the following computer technology: 15″ MacBook Pro (roughly 3 years old), Retina iPad (bought in 2012), Nexus 6 (Android Phone), Nexus 6P (primary Android Phone). Soon I’ll have a Windows laptop for work…)
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Day 20 – Getting caught

No, no … Don’t worry, I didn’t get in trouble or anything even close to that concept, but I did get caught in the rain today. The PM team at work wanted to get together for lunch and invited me to join them. We want to a restaurant for a Hunan style lunch of soup broth, toppings, and rice noodles. Gosh it was delicious! So delicious in fact, I forgot to take a picture. 

During the middle of lunch the skies opened up and it poured for a good 30 minutes. Neither me nor my future coworkers had umbrellas so we tried waiting it out. Unfortunately a couple of people had 2pm meetings so we had to brave the rain. It did let up a bit, but it was still heavier than a drizzle. 

About four blocks from home and two blocks away from the restaurant, it started to pour again. Fortunately I was near a subway entrance and hopped inside there full well knowing I could walk underground for a couple blocks and not get completely soaked. By the time I got to the exit and up to ground level, the rain stopped and the remainder of the walk home was relatively dry.

While annoying for not having an umbrella with me in such a downpour, the rain did clear the pollutants out of the air and dropped the humidity levels a bit.

Lunch, besides delicious, introduced a new concept. I’ve seen QR codes on tables here before but did not know why they were there. It turns out if you scan the QR code it will open a web page. On that web page you place — and pay for — your order! There is either a QR code for every seat at each table or one for the entire table. 

Not only does this type of food ordering work great, it removes two potential bottlenecks and issues for restaurants: the waiter and the cashier. You don’t wait for anyone to take your food order nor do you need to flag someone down for the bill or use cash for payment! If your phone has WeChat Wallet or AliPay installed, you’re able to pay through those apps. Perfect! You just need to read enough Chinese to understand what you’re ordering 🙂
Now I need to go get a Chinese phone and number so I can utilize this new found knowledge. It’s a good thing the phones are manufactured in this country as the phones come cheap and off-contract!

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Day 19 – More of the waiting game

It’s a good thing I’m able to find ways on how to entertain myself! You see, I’m still not legally able to work in China as I’m waiting for both the work and resident permits to be approved. It’s unclear if this is one in the same or two separate documents. Regardless, today was the fourth time someone needed my passport in order to complete some of this documentation. It feels really odd to hand over your passport to someone while being in a foreign country. It’ll be delivered back at some point in the future, but yeah, such a weird feeling!

Without much else to do today besides study some more Mandarin and read up on more stuff for work, I did another load of laundry — exciting huh? Well, it kind of was! Take a look at the picture below. Apart from writing in English and Chinese, what else do you notice?

Machinery

That’s right! The machine has a setting for Wash & Dry! When I did laundry the first time that setting wasn’t used; the washing was done then the machine was set to the dryer setting. My clothes came out a bit damp, likely because I over stuffed the machine a bit too much, so they needed to be dried a bit more. This time the machine was not over stuffed and my clothes came out great! One setting, a couple hours, and boom! Clean, dry laundry! …Now only if it would fold the clothes and match up all the socks …

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Day 18 – An evening in Ligongdi Rd

Last evening I went out for dinner and some beer in Ligongdi Rd / Water Alley Neighborhood. I probably went a bit too early as around 9pm the area started to get busier, but I was getting tired and wanted to head home.

Dinner was at a TexMex restaurant called Amigos. The food was very passable Mexican, and was served with proper hot sauce! I had the Combo Plate #1 which included a cheese enchilada and a crispy beef taco. The refried beans were just OK, but the rest the meal was great!

Night out in Ligongdi

Combo Plate #1 from Amigos: Crispy beef taco and cheese enchilada.

After dinner I went to Ollie’s right across the alley. If you remember from earlier in the week, Ollie’s is the place where the Suzhou Poker Club has their games. When I ordered a beer, the waiter, Scott, remembered me from Thursday night and asked if I wanted to play in the poker game they were having that night. It’s good to be remembered!

While drinking the beer I was just observing everything going on. There was a birthday celebration, some live music from a guitarist and singer, and a couple families with their children having a night out. Apparently there’s no rules on kids drinking beer in a pub, as this one drank a good couple inches of his dad’s beer in plain sight! You can even see his small hand on the bottom of the glass. And yes, the TV had on professional table tennis instead of baseball or soccer. Only in China!

 

Night-out-in-Ligongdi-2.jpg

After a few songs of the live music, it was time to leave because it was that good. Also, instead of grabbing a taxi home I decided to catch one of the busses before the mostly direct (#146) one stopped running for the night.

On the way towards the bus stop there were a few good spots for pictures. A couple of lit up bridges over the canals, half a green camel, and some weird type of bowling alley and massage parlor rolled into one were spotted. That’s likely one massage I’ll pass up!

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Day 17 – First tutoring session

Today I had my first one-on-one session with my Mandarin tutor. While it was a good session, I do have to say having to go through most of the initial sounds and final sounds (the base “sounds” that make up syllables and thus words) was pretty tough. One of the apps I have on my phone, Hello Chinese, does have all these available to listen to so I can replay the sounds and try to mimic them. Ugggh. It feels like I’m back in elementary school and going to speech class!

Tonight I think I’m headed back to Ligondi Road for dinner and a pint — ok litre — of beer. It’ll be interesting to see how that area is on the weekend. Instead of taking a taxi there, I’m going to attempt jumping on the #146 bus which should have a stop about 20 mins walking from where I’m staying and will save cash for the taxi ride home instead!

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Day 16 – Water Alley / Ligongdi Road neighborhood

Last night I was asked by one of my future coworkers to join her for dinner and then a poker match in a part of Suzhou that is new to me: Water Alley Neighborhood, also known as Ligongdi Road.

This part of Suzhou is very expat friendly with lots of international style restaurants and pubs and tons of English spoken. The place where we played poker, Ollie’s, is a restaurant/bar that sometimes has live music, a pool table, a few different beers on tap that come in the customary 1L glass, and a semi-private area in the back for the poker league. I did not sample the food at Ollies — maybe next time — but I did have a litre of beer. 

While I didn’t do too much exploring of the various restaurants and bars in this area, Google Maps seems to detail them pretty well as you can see in the picture below.

Water Alley - Ligongdi Road

But where is this neighborhood in relation to everything else? Yeah, I heard you ask that question. Ligongdi Rd is on the southwestern corner of Jinji Lake (金鸡湖), seemingly in the middle of everything yet not really that easy to get to via public transit. A 30 minute cab ride from this neighborhood to where I’m staying in Moon Bay was 30 yuan (元), or less than $5 USD. (Considering the bus would cost only 2元, it’s could be pretty expensive if you’re on a budget … )  Anyway, I decided a visual representation of the various expat friendly neighborhoods or areas is needed:

SIP Map Annotated

Currently I’m living in Moon Bay, which is a short 20 minute walk to work. There’s a few things in this area for those who only speak English, but not much: Coconut Bar (expat type restaurant and bar, a bit on the pricey side), Papa John’s Pizza, Four Points Sheraton Hotel, three different Starbucks, and a Subway restaurant. Do not expect to do much shopping in this area nor expect the Chinese restaurants to have picture menus. On a post another day, I’ll detail the neighborhood a bit more, same with Times Square.

How did poker night turn out? It was my first time playing in a real game in 3 or 4 years, so I was happy that I was not the first one “out” for the night. I ended in the lower third, but that’s ok as it was fun and was good to meet some new people! It would’ve been nice, though, if my best hand of the night didn’t wasn’t a suited King-10. (No pairs! No Aces! No suited connectors. Ugggh. Maybe next time…)

Suzhou Poker Club Chips

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Day 15 – Design and branding

Yesterday as I was doing some grocery shopping I stumbled upon something rather interesting. In one of the aisles in the little grocery store were bottles of BBQ sauce. It didn’t matter what the brand was, but through the dark color of the viscous liquid inside and the shape of the bottle, I knew exactly what was being sold even if I could not read the label.

As I meandered through the rest of the store I noticed a few more items that were in familiar shaped containers with labels I could not read nor understand yet knew exactly what I was looking at: Toothpaste, jars of spaghetti sauce, and even laundry detergent.

While I’m in a very foreign place for an American, it’s good to know some desired items can be found and purchased without knowing how to read. It kind of makes me wonder if this type of container design and, to an extent branding, was done on purpose or if certain industries just followed suit with similar containers based on the first one that hit the market.

In the end my shopping trip was a success as I bought some fruits to have in my apartment, I found sponges to clean my dishes, was able to bring home a container of laundry detergent, and even treated myself to a bottle of wine.  Yes, even wine bottles are mostly ubiquitous in shape and labeling no matter where you are in the world!

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Day 14 – Two weeks here and I’m still alive!

Two weeks ago today, right around the time this blog post goes live, marks my entry into China as an immigrant of sorts! While at some point in the distant future I will likely move back to the USA, I currently have no plans to do so.

To celebrate two weeks of still breathing — arguably somewhat not-so-clean air — I’m compiling a list of things that were encountered and not expected. Hope you enjoy!

  • Western-style places charge a lot more! From Starbucks (星巴苦咖啡) to that expats bar & restaurant around the corner from where I’m staying, there’s definitely a 25-40% surcharge on what things really should cost.

  • The air quality in summer is decent. At least here in Suzhou (苏州市) there haven’t been any days where the air quality kept me inside; the rain and humidity has done that a heck of a lot more!

  • Waterproof boots are a must. I’d look pretty silly wearing waterproof boots and shorts as the temperature is high (typically 28C/86F), but my feet would feel much more comfortable. Too bad those boots are packed with my goods on the slow boat across the Pacific ocean.

  • It’s seriously safe here to walk around. Not once have I felt personally threatened or seen any confrontations of any kind. Well, almost …

  • When crossing the street remember the smaller, less massive objects should yield to the more massive ones. Unlike in the United States, pedestrians will get mowed over in a crosswalk even when the sign says to walk by a car that should stop at a red light. It just doesn’t work that way. Peds seems to be the lowest priority on the streets, then bicycles, then e-bill, then cars, and then it’s a toss-up between trucks and busses. Always double-check before crossing a street!

  • You don’t need to speak Mandarin to get by, but it does help! Today, for example, I took the bus up to Times Square to do some grocery shopping. I visited three stores and not once did I even try speaking Mandarin. The one time I needed to communicate, pointing and using hand motions worked fantastic. While this won’t work for the long run, it did make for a decent haul of fruits, veg, cleaning supplies (laundry!), and even a bottle of wine.

  • Restaurants with picture menus will also help. Check out Harmony City Mall in Times Square for some of these.

  • The bus in Suzhou is really, really cheap and efficient. For 2元 you can hop on an air conditioned bus and go pretty much anywhere. The 5 or so miles to get from my hotel to Times Square takes only 40 minutes (17 of that is walking to the bus stop). Considering the subway takes 1hr 10mins and costs 6元 for the same distance and requires at least one transfer … the bus is great! And the #156 runs every 10 mins up and down Xinghu Street, the main north-south road in my part of SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park).

  • Napkins are … different. More than half the time at restaurants, instead of a proper paper napkin, small packages of facial tissues are passed around. I find these terribly inefficient at cleaning one’s hands or face during and after a meal. Guess it’s just something else to get used to!

  • Carry cash, including the coins, but be prepared for shrapnel. Depending on where you go, credit cards might not be accepted, so bring cash with you or look for an ATM. (Don’t worry, most ATMs have a button to press for English…) Also depending on the place, they may or may not be able to break that 100元 bill you’re attempting to pay with. If that’s the case, grab another item or two or hope that you have smaller bills! When you collect your change, you’ll get lots of 1元 coins which can be used on the bus and subway. You may also get smaller coins (1 or 5) which I find are useless; they’re just adding weight to my coin pouch!

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Day 13 – Lingering Garden and Shantang Street

The rain held off for most of today, but gosh was it humid! I spent about an hour on the treadmill this morning and my shirt weighed three times as much by the time I was done. Eeek!  After a morning of studying Mandarin, SharePoint, and catching up on the latest episode of Rachel Maddow, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon exploring two sections of old town Suzhou: The Lingering Garden (留园) and Shantang Street (山塘街).

The Lingering Garden is one old gardens that help give Suzhou its mystique as a beautiful city. In fact, this garden dates back to 1593 when China was ruled by the Ming dynasty. It is known for its collection of bonsai trees (about 200 of them) and interestingly shaped rocks. In fact, in the bonsai section of the garden, there was this rock collection that reminded me of a combination of a dog and an Egyptian Sphinx!

Lingering Garden Sphinx-16

While the Wikipedia article on Shantang Street is rather … skinny … I’m pleased to report there’s a lot more going on in this area than that article would lead onto, provided I was on the right street! (Directions in China are still confusing to me…) As I walked north along Guangji Road (广济路), from the Lingering Garden, I crossed a stone bridge that went over a canal (pictured below) and on the other side of the bridge was a narrow street (maybe 4-5 meters wide). To the west, the street had a number of shops selling anything from prepared and fresh food, fruits & veg, baked goods, and textile good. To the east, the street was a bit more upscale and housed a number of other shops including a number of jewelery and art shops.

 

Canal near Shantang Street (left) and looking down Shantang Street (right).

If tomorrow remains mostly dry, another garden and perhaps a trip to an expat bookshop, library, bar, restaurant and events space all rolled into one might be had!

Today’s word of the day is 花园 (Huāyuán), meaning garden.