China 2008, Part VIII: Revenge of the Public Security Bureau

I find it interesting that, for the nearly entire month that I was away, Grant's Pad maintained a steady flow of daily visitation of close to 60 visits per day, while, over the last few weeks, despite that there have been new posts every few days, visitation has dwindled to just over 20 visits per day. Maybe if I stop writing completely, we'll see more visitors! But what would be the fun in that?

Bright and early on the morning after our reception, we left our large but somewhat grungy hotel to go pick up Cherrie's parents. Our flight was scheduled for around 8 in the morning or so, and we had told them to pack warm clothes the night before. However, when we got there, they had not even changed their clothes! In fact, Cherrie's parents didn't really feel comfortable going on a trip with my family - I wonder if their not being prepared might not have been a last ditch effort to not go... but we ended up leaving on time, although they still didn't pack any warm clothes - something which would bite us a bit later on in the trip when we would go up a snow-capped mountain!

After about an hour drive, we arrived at Wuxi Airport. I'd never been to Wuxi Airport before - it was actually quite nice - a bit smaller than Shanghai Pudong Airport and thus less crowded. At least at 7 in the morning, anyway. I was a bit surprised when my mom recognized a poster ad featuring the Korean singer, Rain, at the airport. Rain is the hottest artist to come out of Asia over the last few years, exploding on the entertainment scene when he starred in the comedy series Full House opposite Song Hye-kyo of Autumn In My Heart fame. A recent online user poll by TIME magazine found him to be the most popular entertainer - and he wasn't even on the official list in the actual magazine feature! In any case, I did not even know about Rain until Cherrie's Korean roommate told me who he was earlier this year - I guess my mom is more in tune with the Asian entertainment industry than I am!

The major challenge of this morning was finding out whether or not Cherrie would be allowed to board the plane. If you recall from my first post about the Public Security Bureau, Cherrie had surrendered her old passport and Chinese ID card so that she could renew her passport, which was due to expire in July. The only problem was, she needed at least one of those documents in order to fly! Luckily for us, there was a local PSB office right there in the airport, so we hurried over to try to figure out how we could solve this problem. The PSB officer told us that we would have to fax a copy of her ID card in order for him to let her board. The problem was, it was Sunday morning - how could we get the person holding her ID card to find a fax machine at 7AM on a Sunday?

After a lot of pleading and trying to call the local PSB office in Cherrie's home district, we decided we would stay behind and wait to have the ID card brought to us. The tour coordinator lady then made one last effort and took Cherrie and her dad to the airport PSB office again. Remarkably, Cherrie's dad recognized a superior officer who happened to walk by the office who then had the other officer pull up Cherrie's registration information on the computer and print out a temporary ID card, complete with her profile photograph! The officer could have verified her identity just by looking her up in the computer this whole time, but chose instead to have us run around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to get the information ourselves!

Score another victory for "A$$es of the Public Security Bureau"!

China 2008, Part VII: The Reception

The first ten days of our latest trip to China went by as quick as can be. I remember the first time I went to China in 2002 - that was a long three months! So long, in fact, that I haven't even finished blogging about it! I promise I'll finish my China 2002 series someday!

Those couple days of rain really... rained on our parade, for lack of a better cliche. Although we'd already been in China for ten days, we really didn't get to see a lot, having spent most of our time indoors in shopping malls or otherwise hiding from the rain - in fact, as you can tell from these blog posts, we were only really able to do any kind of traveling twice, and we actually spent quite a bit of time shopping even in Shanghai!

The day after we got back from Shanghai, people started arriving at the house. A lot of people. Most were neighbors pitching in to help set up tables and prepare dishes - in fact, one of the neighbors was the chef who would prepare over 20 dishes for about 200 wedding guests! Cherrie and I, not wanting to do nothing all day, actually pitched in to help as well, wiping off the floors and old furniture in the house that hadn't really been cleaned in probably several years. I suppose it was somewhat strange for the guests to see the bride and groom cleaning the house right before the 喜酒 (xi jiu, or happiness wine, typically associated with a ceremony of sorts). Cleaning the house, however, was quite a hopeless task - with all of the people walking in and out of the rain (Cherrie's house actually has an open-air courtyard in the middle of the house near the kitchen - helps keep the oil from the kitchen from getting out of hand indoors), the floors would get muddied mere seconds after wiping them down again.

My parents, grandparents, dad's younger sister, dad's older brother, Ed, and Melinda showed up at around 4:30 in the afternoon. My parents had arrived in China with Melinda the day before, while my brother and my aunt (小姑姑, or xiao gugu, meaning dad's younger sister) arrived earlier that morning. They came in and sat in Cherrie's room for a few minutes before heading to the hotel that we had booked for them the night before. In the evening, my parents, Ed, and Melinda came back to have dinner with us and many of the other wedding guests - a preview of what we would get the next day.

I would stay with my parents at their hotel that night. Per Chinese tradition, the groom is supposed to pick up the bride, and thus, we couldn't well pick up the bride from her own house, so we used the hotel as the "groom's house". What would really get confusing was the actual day of the reception. The reception this time was intended to be an enactment of the Chinese wedding ceremony that Cherrie and I never had three years ago. Basically, as mentioned earlier, in the morning, the groom is supposed to pick up the bride and bring her back to the groom's house, symbolizing her official entry into the groom's family.

So, fairly early in the morning, my dad, Ed, Melinda, and I went to go get a bouquet of flowers in preparation of goint to 娶新娘(qu xin niang, or bring the bride). Shortly after Cherrie had her makeup done, we sent an envoy consisting of Ed, Melinda, and myself to Cherrie's house, where we picked Cherrie and Anna up and, with firecrackers going off around us brought them back to the hotel. There, we had a tea ceremony to honor my family and our elders (my grandparents) and received Red Packets (红包, or hong bao, basically red envelopes containing gift money).

At around 11, our fleet of six cars, all decorated with Double Happiness characters, arrived to take us to the site of the ceremony, which traditionally, is at the groom's house. However, in this case, the site was actually at the bride's house,A funny story about the fleet of six cars, as well. Basically, the number of cars picking up the bride has to be an even number. However, the rest of my family was also to ride along with the fleet, and obviously all nine of them couldn't fit in a second car following ours. However, we couldn't use four cars because the number four is symbolic for "death" in Chinese. Thus, we settled on six cars, which worked out well, since six represents "happiness" in Chinese. Yeah, Chinese numerology is pretty complicated!

We then proceeded to have the wedding lunch, which consisted, as mentioned before, of over 20 separate dishes and Cherrie and I greeting about 200 guests, starting with Cherrie's maternal uncles and working our way around to my family and Cherrie's granduncles and family friends, saluting them with drinks each time. I haven't really had any alcoholic drinks since I turned 21, and so I had to cheat a little bit, taking only very tiny little sips of my wine! I didn't even finish my second small glass! Immediately after lunch, many of the guests went home, and we sent Anna off with my uncle to head back to Shanghai as she was headed back to Poland the next day.

Immediately after sending Anna off, Ed, Melinda, Cherrie, and I rushed into downtown Wuxi to pick up our wedding photos, which we brought back to show to Cherrie's family and the remaining guests. We stayed for dinner, which consisted of the vast amounts of leftovers from the wedding lunch. However, Cherrie and I actually didn't get to eat much, as we spent much of the time battling the huge fleet of mosquitoes that picked today, of all days, to come to the house - previously, the weather had been cool enough to keep the mosquitoes away, but this night, they were out in full force! In addition, one of Cherrie's grade school friends, a young lady named Liu Ting, came to visit. Liu Ting was now an officer for the Public Security Bureau, or basically a police officer, but more interestingly, her post was to "encourage" people to move from their houses so they could demolish them and build new buildings! I always knew this kind of policy existed in China, but I never thought I would actually meet one of the enforcers of this policy, especially in a nice girl like Liu Ting!

Traditionally, having a wedding at the bride's house meant that the groom was officially entering the bride's family - which typically didn't happen unless the groom was of a lower social status than the bride. This tradition was also the reason we set up the hotel as the groom's house - because we would later return together to the hotel, once again symbolizing the bride's entry into the groom's family. Our room was the Deluxe Suite of the hotel, and we got the room for under a quarter of its sticker price, since Cherrie's brother knew one of the managers of the hotel. At least, presumably, this was one of the reasons for the low price. The room itself must have been very nice at one point in time, but now, much of it had deteriorated to a pretty poor state - the carpets had holes and were soggy in some spots, and there were even holes in some of the walls! Still we would only be here for one night, for the next day, Cherrie and I would head out on our official honeymoon, albeit with most of our respective families!

Be sure to check out the photos from the Wedding Feast here: Wedding Feast Photos

Percieved Value

Some Monday humor...

Guys just don't value certain things the way gals do...


In this next episode, the Guy takes what he learned previously to the battlefield, but... well, see for yourself!

China 2008, Part VI: Traveling with a White Person in China

I think I've mentioned the typical grey skies in China several times in the past. I'm pretty sure the grey skies are a product of the gazillion cars that now roam the streets of China as well as the bajillion factories that are spread throughout the cities. It's also well known that China is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to air pollution. However, there really are days when the sky is actually blue, or bluish anyway - it's quite possible that one of the reasons I rarely see cloudless blue skies in China is because I've always gone to China during the rainy months of summer.

The cloudy skies and low visibility never really bothered us for most of the trip, though. I mean, I'm from Florida - I get enough blue skies all year round, what's a little grey? Who am I kidding... I love blue skies! But in all honesty, the cloudy skies actually were pretty welcome, since they tended to keep the temperatures at a pretty comfortable 75-85 degrees during the daytime.

On this particular week, however, we would have appreciated a little less rain. Having managed to complete most all of the tasks we had to do prior to our wedding reception, we didn't really have any plans for the next few days, and it certainly would have been nice to have a few nice sunny days to enjoy. However, Tuesday happened to be just about the rainiest day we would have on our entire trip, so we just stayed at home and helped Cherrie make flash cards for her marketing final.

The next day, we went on Anna's favorite leg of her first trip to China. We headed to Shanghai at around 11 AM, again taking the old school route of 90 minute bus ride into Wuxi City, followed by one hour train ride into Shanghai Station. From Shanghai Station, we took the subway to the downtown district of Shanghai in search of a hotel that would be near our objectives for the next two days. On asking some locals about where to stay, we were first directed to the Four Seasons hotel, where room rates started at something like 2800 RMB (about $400 USD) per night! I don't know if maybe having Anna with us caused the locals to assume that we had anywhere near that kind of financial ability... In fact, we were told at some hotels that Anna actually wasn't allowed to stay at some of the lower priced lodging that Chinese people usually stayed at - part of a policy to ensure that foreigners got the best impressions of China possible.

We ended up tracking down the hotel that I stayed at the very first time I came back to Shanghai to visit Cherrie, a hotel that was just a few blocks away from Plaza 66, where Cherrie used to work, and a lot of up-scale shopping malls, and at a very reasonable 320 RMB (about $45 USD) room rate. However, we would be met with another challenge here. In order to check into the hotel, we were required to produce a form of Chinese or internationally recognized ID (i.e. your passport). Now, as a rule of thumb, I try not to bring my passport with me when I'm traveling, since the consequences of losing it would be... well I don't know exactly what but it can't be good. Of course, Cherrie's passport and her Chinese ID card were with her parents' friend who was trying to expedite her passport renewal. Finally, Anna apparently had the same travel habits that I had, and had also left her passport at home for safekeeping. After some whining, the receptionist finally called her supervisor (presumably the manager of the hotel), who was nice enough to let us register using his own Chinese ID!

We spent the next few hours doing some shopping the aforementioned high-end shopping malls, and then it was off to the main event of the night - the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe. I went to see this show way back in 2002 with Tom, Eric, Kir-Wei, Candy, and possibly Jelani when I was on my Study Abroad. It's apparently taken off quite a bit as the price is now up to 150 RMB per person for a seat in the balcony or off to the side. I also seem to remember it being in a smaller venue than this time, but clearly this was all part of the effort to put more production value to the show. The added production value was evident, as generally there was more lighting and smoke effects, but I have to argue that the show itself was pretty similar to the one I saw once upon a time. Still, I think it's something that you shouldn't miss, especially if you haven't seen the world class talent of Chinese acrobatics before!

After the show, we took Anna on the obligatory tour of the Bund, the curious street along the Huangpu River which features late 19th century European buildings on the west side of the river and 21st century skyscrapers on the exact opposite side. The three tallest structures in China, Shanghai's symbolic Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and the newly completed World Trade Tower, reside on the east side of the Huangpu River, a stark contrast to the Imperialistic European architecture of the west bank.

The next morning, bright and early, we met up with a very excited Anna (this was probably the first time in her whole trip that she got up before we did!) and tried to hail a cab to Shanghai's Old City near Chenghuang Miao. Interestingly, after several attempts, Cherrie and I could not get a cab, so we turned to our Laowai companion. Amazingly, Anna was able to hail the cab almost instantaneously, illustrating once more how hard China tries to create a good impression for its foreign visitors!

However, once at Chenghuang Miao and the Old City, we suddenly felt the ill effects of traveling in China with an obvious foreigner. You see, Chenghuang Miao is something of a tourist area in Shanghai, the main area in Shanghai that features traditional Chinese architecture instead of the 19th century European and high tech skyscapers seen in many other parts of the city. There are quite a few foreigners around as well, and more or less it is made up of shops selling mostly traditional Chinese arts and crafts, making it a good place to get cultural gifts for family and friends at home. However, there are also a lot of vendors that will come right up to you and try to, in English, sell you knock-off watches and bags. We couldn't go more than ten steps without another of these salespeople approaching us. I later found out that these vendors specifically target foreigners, for towards the end of our visit to Chenghuang Miao, I went off on my own for a few minutes, and I was not approached a single time! So it was Anna that attracted all of those annoying salespeople!

Olympics Music Videos

Dun dun dunnnn... it's time for another YouTube Cop-out!

These videos are in promotion of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The first is a music video for the song 北京欢迎你 (bei jing huan ying ni, or Beijing Welcomes You), and features a boatload of singers, from famous international superstars like Jackie Chan to famous singers in Asia like Emil Chau, Richie Ren, and Jolin Tsai, down to lesser known, more local singers and what appears to be just some random people as well.

The second video is music video of an instrumental theme song for the Olympics featuring the Fu Wa (Happiness Dolls) Beijing Olympic mascots and the Gu Dian Shi Shang Girls band, a band of girls (go figure) similar to the 12 Girls Band, only specializing in Western stringed intruments as opposed to the traditional Chinese musical instruments that are featured by the 12 Girls Band.

As an added bonus, since I'm in the Olympic Spirit mode, I've gone and changed the "I'm currently listening to" playlist to the Beijing 2008 Olympics selections, so crank up the volume and get pumped for the Games!

Enjoy!

China 2008, Part V: The Friendly Neighborhood Public Security Bureau

Over the past few days, I've done a bit of discussion and reading about history. In particular, I've been interested in history that ties the West and the East together. Naturally, this interest led me to the Marco Polo case. One interesting thing that we uncovered was the proximity of the dates of the Polo family's voyage to the peak of Chinese civilization and the rise of the Renaissance. Marco Polo traveled through China during Kublai Khan's rule, which was in turn part of the Mongolian Empire, the largest empire in human history, which, though known for its violence, is also well known for its advanced technology and religious tolerance. Of course, at this time, Europe was only about one hundred years removed from the Dark Ages and the notoriously non-tolerant Crusades, and it is well known that Europe's technology and culture was more than a step behind that of the Middle and Far East.

It is interesting then, that following Marco Polo's travels, China did not make any further progress, while there was a renewed interest in science and the arts in Europe just a century later. Did China perhaps, after having firsthand contact with an inferior society in the West, decide then that there was no longer any reason to continue to improve? On the same token, did Europe, after hearing of a strange and advanced culture to the east, suddenly become motivated to ramp up their culture and education? An interesting thought, but I haven't yet been able to find much discussion on the subject on the web. If anyone finds out anything more about the links between the East and the West, please let me know!

Anyway, on to the next episode of China 2008!

The day after our trip to Ling Shan Da Fo, we went with Cherrie to get her hair cut and straightened. When Cherrie and I first met, she had very straight hair, but since then, she's usually kept her hair in a pony tail or cut short with her natural waves. In the States, it is prohibitively expensive to do your hair very often - Anna told us that it sets her back about $80 per visit to the hairdresser, and that she goes once every one or two weeks! That's potentially over $300 a month! In China, however, one of the things that has remained inexpensive among the rising costs of everything else, such as clothes and housing, is service. The reason for this is because service is essentially the same thing as labor, and labor, obviously, is very cheap in China - it's cheaper for most companies to have their products built in China and ship them to the states than just having them built locally! The cut and straightening worked out to about 150 RMB, or a little over $20 USD, which is actually still quite a bit - you can usually have your hair cut in China for some 5 to 10 RMB, but I suppose the straightening is a bit more expensive. Still, it's better than $80, and I've found that Asian hairdressers are usually more skilled anyway!

On Monday, we headed back into Wuxi city with a few missions: Renew Cherrie's Chinese Passport and find a red dress and red shoes for our wedding reception. So, we headed to Wuxi's Public Security Bureau (PSB) office. What is the PSB office, you ask? The PSB office is basically the Chinese equivalent of a police station, but it's also where Chinese citizens register their residential status and apply for passports and most other services that we in the States would usually go to City Hall for. I imagine one major difference is that the PSB office are all state run, so they all basically report to the central Chinese government. Don't let the cute cartoon and the seeming convenience of having your police and registration services at one place fool you - the PSB, while it serves to protect you, is also probably a good example of why Chinese government is... not good.

When we arrived at the PSB office, we were concerned that we wouldn't be able to receive Cherrie's passport in time for us to go back to the United States. The PSB informed us that it typically took ten working days to get it, but it was possible, though not guaranteed, that we could receive it earlier. After some time, some of the PSB officers assured us that the new passport would arrive before our departure date and one lady officer told us that she would call us upon receiving the new passport at the office, so we began the somewhat tedious process. First, Cherrie had to go and take a new passport photo. While in line, the lady officer, noticing that Cherrie lived overseas, asked her whether or not she worked in the States or knew of any people that worked in the States - a somewhat suspicious gesture. Then, since the PSB only accepted bank notes, Cherrie had to run over to a nearby bank to get a bank note. Then, upon paying the processing fee, they clipped the corners of Cherrie's old passport, rendering it invalid in the system, and gave her the receipt which she would need to pick up the passport on June 30th.

The problem was, our flight back to the U.S. was on June 28th! After all that reassurance, the official receipt still stated that the pick up date would be two days after our intended departure! We complained to the lady officer and told her that, due to our circumstances, it was very important that she inform us immediately when the passport arrived in the Wuxi office, when, to our surprise, the officer bluntly said that calling the applicant was not part of their job, and it was the applicant's responsibility to track the passport's status! Merely 10 minutes earlier, she had assured us not only that it would arrive on time, but that she would personally call us to let us know when it arrived. Perhaps, after her dubious questions about Cherrie's status overseas, the officer decided that Cherrie was of no value to her own overseas ambitions and thus no longer felt the urge to help us in any way. This episode really made our faith in Chinese government take a big, ugly hit.

We did our shopping and found the dress and shoes we wanted, and then went home. During dinner, we told Cherrie's brother about our adventure at the PSB office, and he told us not to worry, and just wait until her parents got back. Fortunately for us, Cherrie's parents know the family of a PSB officer who was able to contact the head of the Wuxi branch office, who personally took the passport to Nanjing to expedite and complete processing. Unfortunately, he still could not get the passport back in time before our scheduled trip to Yunnan after the reception, which would later present us with another challenge. Still, our passport issue was more or less resolved. I guess, just like everywhere else in the world, it's not what you do or how you do it, but who you know that really gets things done!

China 2008, Part IV: Brides and Buddhas

The day after we picked Anna up from the airport, we went to Wuxi for our grueling Wedding Photo Shoot. We left home at about 7:30 in the morning and arrived at the photo studio at 9 AM, had our makeup done and took two sets of photos before having a crappy provided lunch, then continued with sets 3 and 4 before heading outside to a park to take sets 5, 6, and 7. Let me tell you, piling into a van in the streets of Downtown Wuxi with about 10 brides is a pretty interesting spectacle!

Cherrie's brother dropped Anna off to join us at the photo studio while we were out taking the outdoor scenes. We finally got back to the studio at about 4 PM to finish taking the last few sets, which were the sets that featured traditional Chinese garb. We finally finished shooting at around 5:30 PM, but we weren't done yet. We still had to pick which photos we wanted for our package!

When the photos were finally ready for us to pick at around 7 PM, we struggled mightily to pick our favorite 28 shots. With over 100 to choose from, this proved to be an impossible task, so we opted to dish out another 1000 RMB to upgrade to the 46 total shots that we ended up keeping. Head over to the Wedding Photo Album to check them all out! We finally had dinner at close to 9 PM and got home at around midnight.

The next day, Saturday, for those of you keeping count, we decided to take a day off from all of our hustle bustle and take a real, live, sightseeing trip out to 灵山大佛 (Ling Shan Da Fo, or Grand Buddha at Ling Mountain), a nearby park that happens to house one of the largest Buddha statues the world (which also happens to be one of the largest statues in the world). Cherrie's house is mere minutes away from this park, and it is probably one of the more famous tourist attractions in the area. Plus, Cherrie's brother has a friend that could get us in for free! Cherrie and I had visited the park back in 2003, but on this particular trip, we got to see the water show that we missed on our first trip here. It looked as though they were actually expanding the park some more, so next time we go, it will probably have something new for us once more!

An interesting coincidence occurred on our daytrip to Ling Shan. I got a call from my uncle when we first got to the park. My uncle was in China doing some work for my aunt's company, SoCo, one of the leading manufacturers of agricultural and industrial machinery, headquartered in Taichung, Taiwan. My brother Ed is currently on internship there - you can read all about it in his blog. SoCo has a plant near Wuxi, and that was where my uncle was deployed to. My uncle also happened to be taking care of my grandparents while they were visiting China from Taiwan as well, and they were staying with my uncle near the SoCo plant.

That morning, my uncle and grandparents made a trip out to Wuxi to help my family book our tour to Yunnan after our wedding reception. After booking the tour, they heard about Ling Shan Da Fo. My grandparents love nothing more than sightseeing and large parks with lots of foliage, which is exactly what Ling Shan Da Fo is. So, when my uncle called and told me that they were on their way to Ling Shan Da Fo, you can imagine my surprise! My uncle and my grandparents were supposed to attend my wedding reception, but by this interesting turn of events, they would actually meet Cherrie's family a few days earlier! Talk about 缘分 (yuan fen, something along the lines of "fate" or "karma")! Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were at a huge Buddhist park!

Check out photos from Ling Shan Da Fo and other photos from my latest trip to China in my China 2008 Photo Album, and stay tuned for the next episode of my China 2008 series!

China: We Must Protect This House!!!

With the Summer Games fast approaching, China has decided to put on a few shows to demonstrate how seriously they are taking the possibility of terrorist threats. I've linked a photo gallery of these events at the bottom of this post. To me, the reader comments are particularly interesting - they provide some very educated (as well as some very ignorant) insight and opinion.

To sum up, some readers commented on how silly they are making themselves look (no thanks to the Segway picture to the left), and how these exercises expose China to be what most of the world already thinks China is anyway - a militaristic regime with little regard for "basic human rights" and "individuality". What these readers fail to realize is that these are, in fact, military exercises, and what military on this planet places any emphasis on individualism, rather than working together as one?

Secondly, while foreigners may think that these events are symbols of repression, most Chinese citizens are probably very proud of these demonstrations of their military might and national security. Believe it or not, the United States is not the only country concerned about terrorism! The difference between most Western countries and China in this regard is that China is eager to show the lengths at which they will go to crush any and all terrorist activity that decides to show up.

Among the more controversial photos are one of an paramilitary police officer operating a flame thrower. I have to admit, this one did bother me a bit. Bullets, yes. Even the SAM missile battery I can understand (as one commenter put it, the Chinese have every right to be worried about the possibility of terrorists attempting to crash a plane into a building. If it can happen in a country like the United States, what's to stop it from happening in China?). I don't know if flame throwers is the right way to deal with any kind of insurgence, but I do know that after seeing that particular photo, I'm pretty sure I don't want to stir any trouble in China for fear of being incinerated.

Anyhow, I'll let you browse through the full size photos and read through the rest of the comments for yourself. Follow the link for the photos and commentary: Anti-Terrorism Exercises in China

China 2008, Part III: Airport Pick-up

Those of you who poke around the site when you come to read the incredibly insightful material on Grant's Pad might have noticed a few changes over the last few days. First, I've been messing around with the music player again, starting with David Tao, then going to 12 Girls Band, and then finally deciding on Wang Leehom. I figured he would be appropriate since he is on the event card for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. If he's good enough for the Olympics, he should be good enough for Grant's Pad, right? I've also added a sort of "web clips" view of the blogs in my "Blogs I Read" list. This is actually pretty handy for me, since it let's me know which blogs I read have been updated, and for the most part, let's me know what they've been updated with, so I can decide whether or not it's worth the extra right mouse click to open the blog in a new tab! Lastly, I've added an RSS subscribe button thing for frequent readers to use. I've actually never really understood how these work, but I guess it somehow feeds my blog to the subscriber when I update. Which might be pretty useful, but I know you guys pretty much check out my blog every day anyway, right?

On with the story! On the 12th, Cherrie and I got up early in the morning, just as we had been doing every day since arriving in China, to study. Study, you say? That's right, both Cherrie and I continued to take classes this summer despite the fact that we knew we were going to be out of the country for three weeks. Dedicated, right? Anyway, we got up early in the morning for two reasons - first, we were probably still a little jet-lagged, and second, we had a new mission for today: get to the 104 building! Oh wait, wrong game... (That was a The World Ends With You reference, for those of you whose lives have yet to be enriched by that amazing DS title).

Rather, our mission for the day was to pick up my wife's Polish roommate, Anna, whose flight was scheduled to arrive at Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 2:40 PM. When we told Anna in the spring that we were going to China for the summer to hold a wedding reception, she decided that she would come visit us, which I thought was pretty nice of her. So, I tried to make my best effort to make sure her trip was worthwhile. Unfortunately, it got off to a pretty crazy start right away.

I mentioned how crazy traffic was in my last two posts - I believe it was Culture Shock #1, in fact. However, not only is traffic crazy in China... it's slow. I can't say I completely pin this on Chinese culture, but rather on city culture. I would say, from my in-laws house to Shanghai Pudong International Airport is somewhere around 130-140 miles. By car, this distance takes about three hours to cover, which is forgiveable since a few segments of the trip are not on freeways. However, on this particular day, we did not have a car at our disposal, so we had to make the trip to Shanghai the old fashioned way. First, we took a bus to Downtown Wuxi, a trip that takes around 90 minutes. Then, we bought train tickets to Shanghai and waited about 40 minutes for the train to arrive. The train ride to Shanghai was fairly quick at just over one hour. From Shanghai station, we waited briefly for the airport shuttle bus to pick us up, and then it took the bus about an hour to get to Terminal 1 of the airport. Having started our journey at just past 10:00 AM, we made it to Terminal 1 just a few minutes before Anna's flight was scheduled to arrive.

Unfortunately, it didn't arrive at its scheduled time - it was delayed for about half an hour or so. Interestingly, I couldn't find Anna's flight number on the Arrivals board, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Instead, I thought to myself that it was probably a good thing the flight was delayed - Anna was pretty nervous about coming to China all by her lonesome for the first time, and I can't say I blame her. Without any Chinese language ability, it would be pretty difficult for a foreigner to get around without a guide. Now that her flight was delayed, I figured we would probably be able to collect her as soon as she got her luggage. However, we waited for over an hour, and she still hadn't arrived at the exit of the terminal.

Finally, I decided to try to page her over the broadcast intercom. When I got to the desk, however, I was informed that her flight indeed wasn't arriving at this terminal - it had arrived instead at Terminal 2. Actually, Anna had told us that she would be arriving at Terminal 2 before her flight left, but I didn't think that Terminal 2 would actually be in a separate building from Terminal 1! In all the times I had come to Shanghai in the past, I never even knew there was a separate Terminal 2 in existence! Plus, Terminal 2 isn't just "across the street" in the traditional sense. To get there, you actually had to take a bus that looped to across the large mass of land that separated the two terminals, as you can see on the map.

Anyway, we finally were able to find Anna roaming around in Terminal 2. Turns out she had tried to page us as well, but we obviously couldn't hear it because the broadcast system in Terminal 1 is separate from that in Terminal 2. Brilliant.

Stay tuned for the next segment of the China 2008 series!

China 2008, Part II: Wow, That's Expensive

Well, this last week has been a doozy for me. After not having had any significant illness for some time, I had to catch some bug on the last few days of my trip to China. The symptoms, coupled with the intense jet lag from over 16 hours in the air, made it pretty unbearable to even live - much less study for two exams, complete a project, and prepare a presentation for my classes over weekend which would immediately follow, so I had no time to rest! I actually still rested anyway - I've never been one to sacrifice all comfort for the sake of cramming for a test. And good thing too, because I managed to pull one of the only 100s on my Finance test, and my supply chain management test, while more difficult than our first test, was never much of a concern for me anyway. I did find it somewhat puzzling that I had such bad jet lag this time - it never seemed to be that bad before, but maybe that's because I didn't have a job before that forced me to be awake for the exact opposite time as I had been awake for the previous three weeks...

Anyhow, that's enough header material, I think. Back to the main point of the story - the second part of my travelogue for my latest trip to China.

We spent our first day in China by heading out to downtown Wuxi to make reservations for our Wedding Photo Shoot. After we made said reservations, we had to go to the mall to get a pair of black leather shoes, as requested by the photo studio. Why I had to wear black leather shoes (with white socks, no less) is still a mystery to me today, because, as you can see in the album, none of the photos actually showed my feet. Anyway, we shopped around a few malls to check out our choices, and it was at the malls where we experienced our third major bit of culture shock. To review, Culture Shock #1 was the insane traffic and Culture Shock #2 was the poor air quality. Culture Shock #3 was the cost of living in China. Shopping around all four major malls in Wuxi, we discovered that leather shoes for men start at around 400-500 RMB. That's like $60 to $75 USD! Similarly, clothes, like polo shirts, also start at around 300-400 RMB, or $45 to $60 USD! Four years ago, this didn't seem to shock me that much, however, this time, maybe since the exchange rate was worse than it was before (less than 7:1 vs. over 8:1 back then). What I can't really understand is how all the Chinese people are able to regularly buy these clothes and shoes when the typical monthly salary for a college graduate with 5 years of experience is reported to be around 5000 RMB, and for the non-educated worker only about one-third of that, AND you still have to pay for housing and food after buying your clothes and shoes!

Speaking of paying for housing, housing in China is also not cheap - I was told that a condo in the outskirts of the city would run about 5000-7000 RMB per square meter. That works out to about $60-$100 per square foot! For those of you who haven't bought a house before, that kind of price per square foot is on par with what we pay here in the southern USA, for a single-family detached home with a back yard and a two car garage! A 1000 square foot condo would thus run on average 600,000 RMB. In other words, it would take that college graduate with 5 years of work experience 10 years straight to pay off just the principal amount of any loan, and that's without eating, drinking, wearing clothes, or using the bus to get to work. Of course, any loan will also have interest, Chinese people, just like anyone else, have to eat and drink, and on top of that they buy shoes and clothes that cost on average 500 RMB per item... I could never get the numbers to work out. Anyhow, that was Culture Shock #3.

We managed to find shoes for me, but not Cherrie, on that particular day. Which would mean we would have to go shopping again before our wedding reception, becaues Cherrie's mom insisted that she had to have red shoes and a red dress. The color Red is definitely a recurring theme for Chinese weddings - everything has to be red!

Still no photos today - I had no desire to take photos of us shopping (although it might have been good to take a few pictures of the extravagantly high prices at the mall!). Tune in next time for the continuation of the China 2008 series!

China 2008, Part I: Culture Shock

Well, it's certainly taken me a while, but I'll finally begin the series on my latest trip to China this past month now.

What's taken me so long, you ask? First and foremost, jet lag. I don't think I've gotten it this bad before. But, then again, this was also the first time my flight went from Shanghai all the way to Atlanta, which adds about four hours to the usual flight to California. Regardless, I still think it's a little weird that I'm still suffering from jet lag as much as I am. Second, I managed to pick up some sort of cold in my last few days in China. So bad that I had to take a day off of work! Third, I have several exams and assignments this weekend. I had originally intended on working on them while I was in China, but that didn't work out as well as it should have. In retrospect, I don't think I should have expected to be able to work on schoolwork while I'm on vacation in China. Lastly, and this is a big one, my trusty old Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, which has served me since before my first trip to Mainland China in 2002, finally gave out while I was in China, so I have been computer-less since then. Fortunately, I won't be computer-less for long, as I'm working on putting together a new desktop to use at home, all for under 550 bucks no less!

All right, enough stalling. After my classes on June 8, we packed up our clothes (and neglected to pack any warm clothes - this part is pretty important!) and went to sleep, only to wake up again at about 3:30 AM. Alex picked us up at the house at about 4 AM so we could be at Orlando International Airport at least two hours before our flight at 7:30 AM. We took a short hop to Atlanta, and then the big 16-hour jump to Shanghai, China on June 12th (losing a day due to the time zones). From Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, we took the airport shuttle bus all the way to Wuxi, which took about two hours, where we were picked up by my in-laws. Somehow, we managed to squeeze Cherrie, my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, nephew, and myself all in the Chinese equivalent of a Volkswagen Jetta, along with our luggage. Fortunately, we didn't really have much luggage on the way to China. On the way back, that is another story...

Our first stop in China was to satisfy Cherrie's craving for 小肥羊 (Xiao Fei Yang, or Little Fat Sheep), a mongolian hot pot restaurant chain. Hot Pot is sort of like fondue, only you're not simply dipping your food into the ... dip, you're actually cooking it. That's because the dip is actually a stock with all sorts of different seasonings and spices, and it's kept boiling hot. You take strips of lamb meat, or potatoes, or mushrooms, or tofu, or whatever you want to cook, throw them into the stock of your choice to cook for a few minutes, then take it out and eat it while it's piping hot. I personally like the spicy stock, but that proved too spicy for my in-laws. Ironically, Cherrie later confided that, while the restaurant was good, it left her a little disappointed, as three years of craving left her with very high expectations that probably were impossible to meet!

Interestingly, when Cherrie first arrived in the United States in 2005, she did not experience a great deal of culture shock. Perhaps this was due to the fact that she basically stayed at my apartment for the whole semester and didn't spend much time in public, and thus didn't feel that life was much different than her own when she was living in Shanghai. However, almost immediately on our first trip back to China since she left, she noticed how inconvenient and sometimes outright crazy traffic and transportation was in China. After learning to drive in the States, she is now more sensitive than ever to traffic. As I've mentioned before, traffic in China can pretty much only be described as Chaotic Order. Everyone drives in between lanes (for ease of shifting between them - that's what my brother-in-law explained), running red lights is okay so long as nothing is in the way, and should anything come in between your field of vision and the great beyond, thou shalt honk. Miraculously, this system works, and there are very few major accidents in China (although, on this trip, on the way back to the airport, we did see one major accident on the highway! That was probably some foreigner on the way back to the airport who couldn't handle the Chaotic Order...)

Cherrie also immediately noticed the difference in air quality, as we were almost always enshrouded in cigarette smoke. In addition, most cities in China have substantial amounts of smog, undoubtedly due to the countless factories that surround and penetrate the cities. Thus, in our 19 days in China, we only saw blue skies for three or four of them, and half of those blue skies we saw way out west in the Yunnan province, where there are no factories. In Shanghai and Wuxi, we literally did not get more than a half day's worth of sunny blue skies. I have to say, however, that this was likely also in part due to the rainy season - like in Florida, the summer months tend to bring lots of rain, but unlike Florida, the clouds don't seem to go away after each summer shower - they just linger until the end of the season!

Well, I haven't downloaded any photos to my nonexistent computer yet, so I don't have any actual photos to show for this post. Tune in next week for the next part of the China 2008 series, which hopefully will have some photos to help tell the story in thousands of words!