Category: China Life

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Day 200: Chinese Christmas

(Disclaimer: This post was written in advance and set to be published on/around Christmas Day, which happens to be my 200th day since arriving in China.)

Living in a country where religion is not a major factor, when the major Western holidays roll around, it feels a bit weird. Christmas is no exception. Having never experienced Christmas in China, let alone experienced it in another country other than the USA, I wasn’t sure what to expect, how it would feel, and most importantly would I be able to find candy canes and eggnog!

Ok, so I wasn’t so worried about the candy canes and making eggnog from scratch isn’t that difficult, but what about Christmas decorations? After all, most Christmas decorations and lights purchased in the USA likely were made in China (what isn’t these days!), so you’d expect to see at least a small smattering of holiday decor, right?

Well, right before Thanksgiving when the brand new Suzhou Center (a 7100sqm shopping mall that is just amazingly expensive as it is expansive) opened, my concerns were all but squashed! One week after it’s grand opening I went to the mall for an Internations event and was greeted by Christmas trees, reindeer, and lights. Crazy!

As the weeks passed and Christmas inched closer, more decorations and lights were seen throughout the city. Even my apartment building and work building were decorated.

I have to say even though it seems weird to have this little touch of Christmas spirit in a non-Christian country, it made for a rather nice past few weeks. Now my only concern is if the decorations are all taken down before the Ephiany!

Chinese Christmas 2017
Random holiday decorations in Suzhou and Shanghai, including the Starbucks holiday cup!
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Day 28 – One month and counting!

28 days = 4 weeks = 1 month! …and I’m still alive 🙂 To celebrate the fact I’m still breathing, here are a few things I still cannot figure out about this country in which I’m now living:

  • Why does the “rule” of biggest mass win out on the roadways? Pedestrians here have less chance at crossing safely than deer caught in headlights on a back country road.
  • There’s a definitive lack of acknowledging others while out in public. Walking down the sidewalk while being heads down involved on one’s cellphone, not moving slightly to the side to let someone approaching you pass without physically brushing by, and pushing to get onto a bus or elevator seems to be the norm. Speaking of elevators, no one seems to know what to do when you’re in the back of it and you say “excuse me”; no one moves! 对不起 (duìbúqî) is the phrase for “I’m sorry” in Mandarin…
  • Why waiters (服务员/fúwùyuán) hover over you the MOMENT they give you the menu as if you magically know what you want to order… I need to learn “give me a moment”!
  • And the most confusing issue of all, why does wine cost so much here?!? After moving from California where, depending on the current drought conditions, wine is sometimes cheaper than water!
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Day 25 – Internations & The Camel

Friday I went to a meetup that was organized by the Suzhou chapter of Internations.org. (If you haven’t heard about Internations before, definitely click on the link and learn what the site is all about! You might find that being a local in a city or country where you did not grow up can be made easier by connecting with people in similar situations.) The event was branded as a monthly mixer where you can network and connect with other members of the organization. Since I don’t really know anyone here in Suzhou I figured what the heck — let’s do this!

It stormed pretty good on Friday and the event was going to be held outside, so I was a bit worried I’d get to that part of town and find that the event was either cancelled or crammed into a really small room. Fortunately that was not the case as the rain stopped about an hour before the event started.

The monthly mixers are held at different locations throughout the city, allowing members to explore new areas and making it easier for some to attend. June’s event was held at the Crown Plaza, at the northwest corner of Jinji Lake (金鸡湖).

During the event I met a number of interesting people from all over the globe. As the official language for Internations is English, it was pretty easy to communicate with everyone. I spoke with people from England, the USA, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Croatia, Canada, Mexico, Romania, and Poland along with some members who are from other parts of China. Everyone had interesting points of view on many topics, and one of the hot topics — to avoid in my opinion — is anything having to do with the current political environment in the United States. Next subject, moving on …

Wine, beer, and softdrinks were free flowing — and free, with the cover charge for the event which was about $20 — and some really delicious appetizers were passed around. Towards the end of the event there was a raffle prize give away for a number of gift cards for places around town. There was even talk about going to one of the bars at Ligongdi Road (李公堤路）, but I wanted to make sure I could get home before I missed the last bus. In hindsight I should’ve gone to the bar because I did miss that last bus; it’s always 20/20, that darned hindsight!

A couple of the people I met on Friday night wanted to go out and celebrate Canada Day on Saturday — after all, the day is marking Canada’s sesquicentennial! Special on Moosehead beer, Fireball (who knew that was a Canadian drink?!), and bowl of Poutine were to be had at The Camel Sports bar, a place I hadn’t been before but had heard good things about; a few of us decided to meet up there.

The Camel is a pretty interesting place, quite loaded with expats and pretty cheap happy hour prices on beer. (A 0.5L of Carlsberg beer was only 20元, or roughly $3. For China, that’s a great price for an alcoholic drink from what I’ve seen!) Tons of TVs live streaming sports (mostly tennis and soccer that night) and a couple pool tables highlight the inside while there are a number of tables and seating outside with a huge projection screen that was showing a tennis match.

Getting to The Camel is really simple if you take the subway Line 1 and get off at Xinghai Square (星海广场) as there is an exit just to the left of the #3 exit at that stop which puts you right at the outdoor seating area for The Camel! If I move to Times Square, it’ll likely take only 10-20 minutes to get to The Camel via subway or bus. It’s a shame they don’t have poker nights like Ollie’s!

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Day 24 – Well, I *was* going to open a bank account

This is turning out to be quite the day. On Thursday (Day 22) the work permit was approved and HR sent a bunch of documentation including one email which indicated my first day at work would be on July 6, which made absolutely no sense as that day is a Friday. Seriously, people, what are you thinking?! After being in communication with my GM at work, she was able to push my start date up to a much more reasonable day, Monday July 3. Phew!

So now the official first day in the office is looming and reading through all the documentation that HR sent was a small bit of financial information saying I need to provide bank account information when I get into the office so I can be paid. (Apparently, direct deposit is the only way for such payments.) But, umm, I don’t have a local bank account. Ugggh.

Looking through the benefits and relocation documents that came with the job offer, there is a blurb about having someone local help with not only opening a bank account but also provide assistance with obtaining a SIM for my cellphone (so I can have a local phone number) and assistance with securing a lease. OK, great! So an email was sent on Thursday to the relocation people asking who I should be working with on these items. No email reply on Thursday. None on Friday (until *very* late in the evening). And then a phone call on Saturday morning came through, and I’m glad it did.

The phone call was from one of the relocation people who asked if I could meet someone at 11am to go to the various places to get a SIM card and then open the bank account. (Apparently it’s best if you have a local number before opening your bank account as it’ll enable mobile banking. OK, makes sense.) We almost had a meeting time and place set … until I was told all that is needed is a 100元 ($14.50 USD) and my passport to open the account. Ugggh. Nope. Don’t have my passport as it’s still with the local police department while they process my resident permit.

Opening the bank account and getting the local SIM card will have to wait until Thursday or Friday, which work will not enjoy as I’ll need some time off to get those things done nor will they like having to enter in some data for my paperwork (ie, bank account information) after the first day when they’re expecting it. (Some internal processes seem to take quite a while at work, including processing HR documents and getting them aligned with accounting.)

The good news is that I did not attempt to open the bank account on my own without having the necessary paperwork (my passport) and local phone number, otherwise I might’ve wasted a lot of time. The bad news is that work will get annoyed. The OK news is that I should get my first pay check before signing a lease on an apartment which is going to be extremely necessary as a security deposit (one month in cash), three months rent (via bank transfer), and payment to real estate broker who ostensibly helps to find and secure the apartment from the landlord (one month’s rent, in cash) is all going to be needed; more on all that “OK news” in a latter post.

Life in China sure is turning into an adventure!

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Day 23 – Slow start to a Friday

Not much going on today other than studying for my next Mandarin lesson (which is tomorrow morning), filling out some more “paperwork” ahead of my official start date at work, and researching how to open a local bank account. Apparently I need the latter in order to get paid. Who would’ve guessed?!

Later this evening I’m going to meet up with a number of other expats in a part of town I’ve yet to explore. The event tonight is being put on by Internations (https://internations.org/) which is a website and organization aimed at helping expats throughout the world become more acclimated to their new environs. It just so happens to be the case that there is a local chapter here in Suzhou! It’ll be good to meet some new folks.

Oh, almost forgot; last night in poker I did pretty well coming in 6th (out of 17) and knocking two places out of the contest rather early. Maybe next week I can do even better!

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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!