China, Part 5

I've been here 2 weeks. I found out this weekend last that I have 4 more weeks to go.

Last week I wanted to see some history. Shenzhen is, however, not a city with history. Well, at least, it's not a city with an obvious palpable history. About 30 years ago some financial wizards decided to make Shenzhen, at the time a small fishing village, an international business metropolis. I don't know the specifics but given it's proximity to Hong Kong, I wonder if it was a competitive move.

What this has meant for me is that as far as the eye can see out of my lovely 5-star executive hotel room, there are tall buildings interspersed with small buildings. Roads, streets, metro subway systems, cars, everything a major city usually has. Even parks, trees lining sidewalks, golf courses...all perfectly manicured and styled to be "appealing to the discerning eye". Everything is as one would expect it to be. Everything is sterile. There is no life, on the surface.

To see "life", or the heart and soul inside the city, you have to peek inbetween the buildings. You have to look around corners, walk on the streets inbetween the nice English-translated street signs.

When you do this you get a glimpse of how the non-financial wizards are living. You also get a glimpse of what they think about others. I've been hollered at, cat-called, sneered at, glared at and shoved aside so many times I've lost count. At first I thought it was a culture difference. But I don't think so. If I walk around a place where the majority of the people have a decent income (they're dressed well, they carry nice bags and have clean, new shoes, etc.) I don't get this treatment. As soon as I step into a more low-income area, the entire vibe changes.

Nonetheless, I'm still seeking the hidden culture in Shenzhen. I found the remains of an old city in Nantou, in the Nanshan district, where there were amazing old structures from the 1300s dropped sporadically between larger apartment buildings that had noodle houses at the bottom floor, where a very thin man would be tossing, twisting and spinning dough to make long noodles. Or a small vagrant dog would sleep on the steps of a buddhist temple, occasionally looking up at me, then away in disinterest.

I wish Shenzhen had more of this. The executive-style room is just not what I'm used to. Walking everywhere is. Taking the subway instead of a taxi is. Walking around a park instead of driving by it while talking on my cell phone is. For someone like me who is desperately trying to learn Mandarin and learn about the Chinese culture, this town is a prison.

This weekend I got out of my prison to visit Hong Kong. My cousin lives there, and I spent the weekend hiking in the hills, soaking up the rays at the Marina club and swimming in the Repulse Bay beach. I loved it, but still feel like something's missing. I've travelled across the Pacific ocean, and I feel like I haven't experienced much that was different.

Part of this is my own fault. I haven't been learning Mandarin fast enough, so I can't talk to anyone. I can't take a cab to Dapeng Fortress (a Ming dynasty fortress that I'm dying to see, but it's 55km away with no ties to public transport). When I go to new, non-touristy places I get lost very quickly and have trouble finding my way back, because the streets that are away from tourists are only in Chinese characters, and no one speaks English.

I think the other part is where I am. I think that even if I spoke fluent Mandarin, I would be disappointed in Shenzhen for being so "Los Angeles". For tearing down and rebuilding instead of preserving and building around or above. For not respecting old ways and insisting that new ways were superior. I'm spoiled I think in living in San Francisco. Old buildings are kept, people still live in apartments from the 1920's, and in that sense it's almost European. I think that if the big earthquake hadn't happened in SF, people would still be living in homes that would be much, much older.

So I'm trying to remedy this by making plans to visit Shanghai. I know it's a modern city, but I also know that there are some areas of historical interest that have been preserved. I know there is a history and a culture and a life there that is so very Chinese, and I want to experience it. I'm also planning to visit Taiwan to see what has gone on there as well.

And, I'm still plugging away at Mandarin. I think it's silly to expect others to know how to speak your language if you're the one coming to their country.

And for the short-term, I have "Lost in Translation" ready to watch as soon as I'm done with this post, for a little sympathetic comfort.

China, Part 4

Eating in China is difficult. If you're vegetarian. Moreso if you're vegan. There's egg in everything that doesn't have meat, unless you're fortunate enough to get out with a native Mandarin speaker who can utter such phrases as "She doesn't eat anything but vegetables. Really! No, Seriously! Just vegetables!".

I've tried a few unusual foods (for my American palate) while here, mostly to prove to my husband that I am, in fact, brave and willing to step out of my comfort zone. But tonight I asked a chinese friend of mine to order for me, keeping in mind that I don't eat meat or meat products or anything to do with animals. He smiled, shook his head, and said that he would make sure I was happy. Here's what we had tonight:

• Eggplant with black pepper, onions and spicy green peppers. This dish was amazing. It was full of spices, loaded with garlic, and mashed up to a rich, peppery goodness that I cannot wait to make once I get home. I've never seen anything like it before at a chinese restaurant. 
• Potatoes with dried hot peppers, green onions and a vinegar sauce. Again, amazing. The potatoes were sliced like they were noodles and because they were that thin, absorbed the flavor of the green onions and hot peppers perfectly. He told me that if he cooked the dish, he would have first soaked the potatoes in water (after slicing), then tossed with vinegar and cooked them. Then added a bit of white wine, a pinch of white pepper, the dried chopped peppers and green onions, and sauteed until soft. Then drizzled a bit more vinegar on them. Again, can't wait to make this one. One just cannot find these flavors together in a typical american chinese restaurant.
• Sponge cucumber. This was a really strange dish. It looked just liked sliced (vertically) cucumber, but tasted so strange I can't even tell you what it actually resembled. Wait, yes I can. It resembled sponge cucumber because nothing in the world tastes like that. It was sauteed in soy sauce and chili oil with garlic and salt. Simple and scrumptious.

He and another friend split some liver and spicy pepper dish and another meat dish, but I really wasn't paying attention. I was too engrossed in the decadent veggie feast in front of me.

When I'm eating alone here and I tell waiters and waitresses that I do not eat meat, I'm usually greeted with a very confused look. They then beckon someone else over to the table who says something to the broken English effect of "Really? No meat? Seriously?" Of course, I'm paraphrasing. They honestly could be saying "I have no idea what this silly girl is saying, let's just give her some broccoli and shut her up already". Whatever. My point is that this is just not a culture that gets my vegetarian choice.

I'm really grateful that I have a friend here who is helping me live the way I want to live and eat the way I want to eat despite cultural differences. I wish there was a gift I could give him to show my appreciation but I fear the only things that would make him happy would be meat on a stick or cigarettes.

China, Part 3

Yesterday I decided to get a massage at the hotel where I'm staying. The 3 days prior, I hadn't slept more than 8 hours. Total, not per night. And the thing is, when it's been 3 days of very little sleep, it's surprisingly difficult to just lie down and get to sleep at night. So, I thought I needed some relaxation.

The massage was really nice; one of the best I'd ever had. Very swedish-like with aromatherapy kind of oils, one hour of muscle rubbing, all that stuff. Your typical massage.

Today, one of the women that works for the printer where I'm doing press checks offered to take me out for my first Traditional Chinese Foot Massage. I accepted, as I had spent the morning hiking in a nearby park up and down stone steps for about 2 hours. I was beat, and wanted some foot love.

FYI, in China, "Foot Massage" means 2-hour whole-body massage, ending in a foot massage.

I sat down in a chair that resembled the chairs one sits in when getting a pedicure at a nice nail salon. I was then asked to sit up and put my feet in almost boiling-hot water while a man got behind me and started massaging my shoulders. Painfully.

The woman who took me there, a native speaker of Mandarin, told him at my request to take it easy as I had just had a massage the day before and had tender muscles. He responded with "She just needs to relax and it won't hurt". I thought, no, other way around. Don't hurt me and my muscles will happily relax. I was certain this was not to happen.

However, after a bit of time, I just decided to do what I do when in yoga and in a difficult, painful pose...breathe. It worked, kind of. The massage progressed to my back, then he beat my back and asked me to lie down on his lap.

Yeah, I thought this was weird too. But everyone else was doing it and didn't look like they were feeling taken advantage of, so I rolled with it. Nothing weird there. Apparently he just wanted to massage the muscles in my back with his knees. Which hurt like hell once he started massaging my spine with his knees. I don't think the spine is meant to be massaged with bone tissue.

"Oh my GOD" he says. In english. I think this was the only english he knew.

He complained to my host in Mandarin that I was too tense and wouldn't relax. I told her that it was my muscles, not me. I was trying to relax. My muscles were in pain and not interested in further treatment, so they were tensing to send the message to back the fuck off already.

He asked me to sit up, then grabbed my head in a weird way and pulled up. CRACK went my neck, then he pulled my arm across my body and before I knew it, cracked my back. Then the same on the other side. All of a sudden I no longer felt tense. My muscles gave up the battle.

More back knee massaging followed, until he felt I was adequately tenderized. I sat up and he began looking at my feet.

"Oh my GOD" he says again. My host laughed and told me that he wanted to shave the calluses off my feet. I said fine, as long as it didn't hurt. Everyone laughed, except me, horrified at the shame of my overly callused feet.

Then I finally got my foot massage, which was wonderful. And he then took out something that looked like a glass light bulb without the metal bits, sprayed alcohol in it and lit it on fire. And then stuck it on my feet, twisting it as though he were screwing in a lightbulb.

He said in Mandarin "This will rid your body of it's humanity. Your body has too much wet. You need to eat less cold food, only hot food. This will help you sleep better tonight. You will see."

What could I say? I had lightbulbs stuck to my arches. I rolled with it.

The thing is, now that the massage is done, I feel amazing. I didn't think I would because of the excrutiating pain I was in during the process, but I really feel like I did a great workout and I just need a short stretch and I'll be ready for bed. And my feet feel amazing, like walking on pillows.

Who knew? 2-hour relax is just as good as 5-minute relax.

China, Part 2

It's summer in southeast China.

This means that when you step outside it feels like you just stepped into a Bikram yoga class, but you're wearing more clothes and within 5 minutes, have sweated through most of them.

It also means mosquitos.

In an effort to keep us cool in the press check waiting room yesterday, our vendor opened the doors. Which let in a cool-ish (85 degrees compared to 95 of the standing air) breeze, but also the mosquitos. These little bastards are nothing like we get in the States.

They look just like the tiny, small mosquitos we used to see in summers in Michigan, a far cry from the giants of California. But they don't make the typical mosquito "hum"...they are silent, and brutal. Instead of the traditional itchy welt that progresses to a red bump by the end of the day, these bites itch with a fury, swell up to the size of a half dollar, then disappear and leave a huge bruise about the same size. It doesn't hurt, and once they're at the bruise stage they don't itch, but that doesn't take away the hours of itching agony experienced prior to the bruising stage.

So today I decided to get bug spray.

This was a bit more difficult than I had imagined. I have practiced the one phrase I can say without offending billions of Mandarin speakers, "Nee huay schwa yingwen mah?", which means "Do you speak English?" This, for your information, is practically useless, as most people in Shenzhen reply back by shaking their heads in the negative.

Fortunately, my drawing skills took over and I quickly drew a little mosquito with a very long proboscis and mean, beady eyes. I then drew an aerosol can and showed mist spraying out of it at the mosquito. I looked at the shop keeper and nodded, saying "Huay?" in Mandarin, which means "yes?". She nodded for me to continue, or just nodded to be polite. Whatever. I was on a mission.

Next I drew a big "x" on the bug and circled it, illustrating its' untimely death by undefined mist. She seemed perplexed and smiled more. I knew I was fucked.

A young girl of about 12 saw me drawing, looked at the illustration, and made the international hand signal for "I'm spraying my arm with bug spray" with her hand. Everyone who spoke Mandarin (note: not me) laughed and repeated something I couldn't understand, and the shop keeper handed me a box that had a picture of a little girl dressed in a suit of armor and a cartoon mosquito looking irked.

I took it gratefully, knowing now that not only are my drawing skills awesome, but that the real phrase I should have learned was "Do you sell bug spray?".

China, Part 1

Last week Wednesday (the 10th), my boss told me he wanted to send me off to Shenzhen, China for the next 2 weeks to press check our fall packages. I've been once before, to meet our vendors here, but never by myself. And I've never travelled internationally without a friend or family member accompanying me or meeting me at the airport, so this was a bit of an adventure.

First thing I did was book my flight. Non-stop, Economy Plus, window seat. Some like aisle because they don't like to crawl over people to get to the toilets or want to get off the plane faster. What they don't realize is that if you're on an aisle seat you have people constantly crawling over you, back and forth. The decision becomes: to crawl or to be crawled upon. I prefer to have the command decision in this situation, probably because I'm a control freak.

As far as getting off the plane faster, the aisle saves you maybe, maybe about 30 seconds. That's just not enough to make a difference in my book.

What the window seat really offers (other than a false sense of control and a nice view when landing) is a corner where you can wedge yourself in and sleep for most of the flight. And on a 14-hour non-stop flight from SFO to Hong Kong, it is essential to sleep as much as possible on the flight. Not just to make the flight seem shorter, although this is a nice perk. Sleeping the flight away (at least when headed West) allows you the opportunity to reset your internal sleep clock, which means less jet lag issues. You sleep about 5-6 hours on the plane, arrive around 6pm the next day, get to your hotel, and go back to sleep. When you wake the following morning at 8am you feel great, refreshed and sans jet lag.

I chose a different hotel then the last time I was here, primarily because we received a corporate memo that said the original hotel was not to be used anymore by our company. Apparently they couldn't work out a cheap executive discount rate or something, and so they switched us over to this new one, the Marco Polo hotel. It's cheaper, and for some reason the hotel has decided that I'm actually entitled to the Executive Privileges (though I did not book an executive room): free breakfast in the morning and cocktails in the evening. It's a nice perk, but doesn't quiet make up for the lack of perks from the former hotel: an iron and ironing board in the room, a huge claw-foot tub with bath salts provided every day, and wine delivery to my room each night. First world problems, I suppose. At least this hotel has a huge pool for me to swim in (open at 6am), yoga classes and a day spa. Things could be worse.

Like not being able to check your work email while on a work trip. Or your work not paying for an international phone (or international calls).

The company I work for is very tight on security, so we have to enter a code from an RSA key (which changes every minute or so). Unfortunately my RSA key seems to have given up the ghost; instead of 6 clearly lit digits I see 3 or 4 garbled ones. Which meant when I went to check my work email last night, my attempts were futile.

As one might surmise from earlier sentences, my work does not think it's necessary to provide us with an international phone when travelling internationally for work. They also don't think it's necessary to provide us with compensation for international calls if we already have an international phone. So I'm essentially phone-less when I come to China.

This is particularly a problem when you've been put under the assumption that your very important press check, for which you traveled over 6,000 miles, is the next morning, possibly at 8:30am, and your ride to the printer has not been scheduled. And, you're in mainland China where almost no cab drivers speak English and all you can say in Mandarin is "Nee huay shwa yigwen mah?" which translates to "Do you speak English?".

So I tried to email my boss from my personal email account to alert him of the issue (and get it resolved), but then realized that my laptop wasn't plugged in. So I plugged the power supply into my China adapter outlet and nothing happened. I tried again and again, to no avail.

Finally, I gave up, put my lap top to sleep and took a hot bath. And ate some food. And came back to my laptop and thought...hmm. I don't recall actually plugging the power supply into the computer itself. Perhaps I might try that. And of course it worked perfectly, proving that one shouldn't make complicated decisions like plugging in a laptop without proper relaxation and sustenance.

I went to bed and woke up to an email from my boss saying he had contacted our IT guy here and that he would be providing me with a new RSA tag today. Which he just did. And another email from our printer that said the press check today doesn't start until 4:30pm, which means I have most of the day to relax, get my things together, and enjoy.

Then I checked my work email and found the usual flurry of 69 panic-stricken email threads, each ending in the usual "ok, glad this was resolved" email. So, there it is.

Did I mention today is my birthday? Happy birthday to me.