While I was in China....

The kids look like they grew an inch a piece and they have turned into little brown people, they are so tan (and I know they use 30 SPF sunscreen).

Brian tested for and received his Blue Belt. And to think that he was just an Orange a year ago.

Erica is playing Bach's Minuet 1 very nicely on her violin - she has definately been practicing.

Many of the garden plants have been decimated by Japanese Beetles, those cursed things!

My tomato plants are doing fine, even having been neglected for 2.5 weeks.

The water lilies in the pond are doing great - the lily pads cover about half of the pond and they are blooming like crazy. The new koi are getting bigger.

There is this huge weed growing out of an abandoned pot in the front. It is taller than me, but Scott doesn't want to get rid of it because he thinks it is "cool".

Finally, gas prices haven't done anything except go up. How depressing..........

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En route back home

I can see the sun setting across the clouds this evening as I am heading back on my flight from Beijing to Chicago. During this 5th leg of my trip, my seat is located in the upper deck of the 767 – right by the flight cockpit. Here, I have observed some of the flight staff’s security procedures – when one of the pilots needs to use the restroom, the flight attendants do not allow passengers to access the other restroom by the cockpit. I have counted four pilots for our flight.

This morning I checked out after breakfast – my bill was a whopping $5000 yuan – note that this was for merely two days and that my bill in Nanchang for two weeks totaled $6000 yuan. Wow – Beijing isn’t cheap, but I will have to say that the Grand Hyatt Beijing is a wonderful hotel. Last night I went to the pool. Hopefully I can find a picture of it – it is a full 55meters long and boasts two huge hot tubs – you could fit more than ten people very comfortably in each one. It has a tropical island / grotto feel to it and is certainly one of the nicest pool areas I have ever experienced. The only other one that comes close would be one in Hawaii. I told Scott that we should come to Beijing with the kids in 2009, after the Olympic games.

We headed to the Summer Palace – the weekend residence of former emperors and leaders of China. With its own large lake, wonderful gardens, mighty Pavillion and Opera house, it is a quite nice weekend home., with similar elegance of the Forbidden City wih more informality. Tony tells me more about the “Dragon Lady”, ShuQi who really ruled China during the Qing dynasty, behind the child emperors of that time.


After lunch we have time for a stop at the National Silk factory. I learned that they use two different types of silk cocoons – the smaller ones are spun into silk thread while the bigger ones are pulled apart with the natural silk matrix in tact and combined to form a silk batting. There was a spinning machine in operation – the smaller silk cocoons immersed in water and threaded up to the spinning machine, then over to the spools of raw silk fibers. I watched as one woman worked with the larger cocoons, pulling them apart by hand and forming the raw silk batting. Each piece of silk batting is then pulled as a thin layer in the manufacture of a silk blanket – many, many layers form the blanket filling, much like polyester fiberfill, but obviously with much different properties. I guess this is the silk equivalent to down. All of the pulling is also done by hand to ensure evenness. I helped pull several pieces for a queen-sized blanket. I really thought this process was really interesting and loved the concept of the silk blanket, so of course, I bought a king sized one! They ‘vacuum pack’ it for you so that it is fairly thin, but I am now carting yet another satchel in my collection of carry on bags.

The last stop before heading to the airport is the DVD store. I now know that you can’t get the inside scoop in Beijing unless you hire a guide. These places are backrooms behind store normal storefronts – through people’s kitchens and down alleyways I would never venture to on my own. Tony tells me that the area we are in (right across from the very respectable looking Holiday Inn Beijing) is really not all that good and the one doesn’t go into the Foot Massage place to get a massage (wink, wink). I guess the give away is the woman at the doorway to the Foot Massage establishment is in a cocktail dress vs. a traditional Chinese dress.

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Forbidden City and the Great Wall

As I write this, I am enjoying my dinner in the Red Moon, a Japanese sushi bar on the hotel property. Actually, I am not entering this into the computer, but rather jotting things down on a piece of paper. I find that when I am eating alone, this helps to quell the boredom. So, I am too tired to venture out tonight and I am craving sushi, so this is the place. The restaurant décor reminds me of a wine cellar – dark and mysterious. An eclectic mix of music helps to set the mood – initially some jazz and now some jazzy electronica, if there is such a thing. As I watch the sushi chef prepare my meal, I recount the day’s activities – TianAnMen Square, the Forbidden City, the Jade factory, the Great Wall, and some shopping. Whew! I am tired just thinking about it again.
Today’s adventure starts out with a trip to the Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is just across the street from TianAnMen Square, where we begin. The square is bustling with Chinese tour groups – summer camp groups and college groups, all waiting in a long snaking line to catch a glimpse of Mao’s body in the masoleum. We clear through the crowds in order to get a view of the famous Palace gate – the one with Mao’s enormous picture in the center:


Inside the main gates is the main courtyard area, along with several of the main halls. Like in Tengwang, there are big thresholds at the entrance to each main hall. Since Anthony and I could on guess on their significance, I asked Tony – his explanation was that the high threshold served to keep the “Foreign Ghosts” from entering into the Palace, as those Spirits could threaten the rule of the Emperor. Tony then tells me how the Last Emperor, Pu Yi, as a young child had been given a bicycle and ordered many of the thresholds to be cut away so that he would be able to ride the bike more freely around the Palace grounds. And so it goes that 3 years later, PuYi was stripped of his throne and ended the feudal rule of China.
A few pictures from the Forbidden City:
Detail on the Main gate leading inside the Palace grounds:


Dragons that also serve as water drainage spouts during the rain:


Detail on the handles of large water jugs, found throughout the Palace grounds:


After my visit to the Forbidden City, we drove out towards the Great Wall, stopping first at the Dragon Land Superior Jade factory and gallery. There I witnessed the making of jade carvings and had lunch. Oh yeah, I bought some jade pieces as well.
Then it was off to the Great Wall. I consider this to have been the highlight of my trip to China. Seeing this massive structure cutting through the mountainside was breathtaking. First of all, today’s weather was just perfect – sunny, medium humidity, with blue skies and a light breeze. Tony tells me that such day is “precious” and cites that in the year 2005, Beijing recorded only 30 such days.

I head up the West portion of the wall, carefully climbing the steep steps:


Along the Great wall are Towers, which originally served as manned posts. If you recall the movie Mulan, the opening scene shows action along the Great Wall and its Towers – smoke would be used as a means of communication between the Towers. Tony has suggested that maybe I’ll make it to four Towers today. But I just keep climbing upwards. I make it to the first tower – here is a picture from inside the tower, overlooking the mountainside, There is a pagoda far up in the distance:


I climb higher and higher – at each ascending tower there are fewer and fewer people. Here, I asked a young girl to take my picture, around the 4th Tower:



I finally see that I have almost reached the pinnacle for this portion of the Great Wall and make my towards it. I have lost count of the number of Towers I have passed, and later on, I am told that I have made it to the 8th Tower.


The view from this high point is breathtaking (plus, we are all out of breath from climbing up all of those stairs!). You can see one of the far suburbs of Beijing in the distance.


And here I am at the top!


On the way down, I spot that Pagoda again – but this time I am above it rather than well below it:

Gosh, that’s all for today, and this will probably be my last entry while I am in China – tomorrow morning I will head to the Summer Palace before heading out to catch my plane back to the US.

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Tale of Two Cities

My flight from Nanchang relatively uneventful except for the occasional turbulence, during which the flight attendant gave instructions for the passengers to stay in their seats and “in the event you should feel motion sick, please use the motion sickness bag in the pocket in front of your seat”. I thought that was funny – like you needed to be told what to do…...

The flight started at 18:00 and lasted two hours – just in time for a glorious sunset. I normally don’t take pictures from the plane, but clouds and the sun painted a scene just too wonderful to pass up:





For my two days in Beijing, XiaoHua has arranged for a personal tour guide who will transfer me to the hotel and provide sightseeing over the next two days before I fly back to the US. I meet my tour guide at the airport – a young Chinese man (he looks to be in his early twenties but is probably older). He reminds me of Simon, who I used to work with at GE – a natural talker and seller. His Chinese name is TianLi, but tells me to call him Tony. A big bonus is that his English is excellent (but I do tell him to speak with me in Chinese).

The ride into Beijing is a smooth 45 minutes, and not even close to some of the harrowing rides experienced in Nanchang. In fact Beijing seems to be the exact opposite of Nanchang – everything glistens with newness and a gleaming clean in Beijing, compared to the rough grittiness of Nanchang. The temperature, although warm, is no where near the sauna-like humidity of Nanchang.

My hotel, the Grand Hyatt Beijing, sits in the center of the elegant Oriental Plaza and is two blocks from the Forbidden City and TianAnMen Square. I can see the front fountain from my room.



So, it will be the Forbidden City in the morning and then the Great Wall in the afternoon……ciao!

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Some last pictures from Nanchang

Taken again in the early morning, I was struck by the calm water along the water, providing a nice reflection of the towering buildings.



I finally got a picture of a bike full of ducks. Unfortunately, it is blurry, but I guess it will have to do. I did notice that the ducks were all alive, many bobbing their heads up and down as they travel down the street to an unlikely fate. On the way to work, I noticed a what looked like a duck farm – several shallow lakes of water, full of ducks. Oh, poor Jemimah Puddleduck!

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Work culture

The work culture at my company’s JiangXi plant is unlike anything in the US. The plant is located about 50 km from Nanchang, in a small town called YangJiaLing. Because of its small size, not many people recognize this town’s name, so normally this location is referred to by the county name only. The area is an industrial park, with several chemical plants in the vicinity – like the rows of refineries in Houston or Louisiana. The main difference, however, can be seen in the employees’ work – life situation.
The vast majority of the employees here have apartments very near to the industrial park, and they live in these apartments during the week, away from their families in Nanchang. On Sunday, they take the train from Nanchang back to their “work – apartment”. My assumption is that many cannot afford to travel between Nanchang and work every day, and perhaps this is the expectation of them during the week – to be close to the plant during the week.

The exception to this is the plant’s upper management – about 5 people from this site are provided transportation to and from Nanchang on a daily basis. I was part of the daily convoy this week, as is customary for those visiting the plant and staying at the hotel in Nanchang. However, I did learn that although these men are provided this luxury, their families do not live in Nanchang. Only one of them has his family in Nanchang. The others all live in Shanghai, all for various reasons, but probably because Nanchang isn’t quite the big and glamorous city that Shanghai is. It is probably like living in NYC vs. Elizabeth, NJ. Or for me, Boston vs. Houston (I would much prefer Boston!).
So it seems that regardless of one’s position in the company, there are enormous tradeoffs when it comes to quality of life and family. As I talked with one of the managers here about his family in Shanghai – his wife and 6 year old daughter - I could tell that he missed them terribly. And so I can see that the managers at this facility really aren’t going to stay long term – many will try to go back to the plant in Shanghai or transfer to a more desirable location.
I know that there are similar situations in the US where the family unit is disrupted, but it so common here – just a part of everyday life. I guess I am so very fortunate to have a different situation where I can work and be fulfilled that way, yet still have the experiences with my growing children.

It’s now 3pm on Friday afternoon and most of the engineers and managers have left for the weekend – the engineers leave at 2:30 to catch the bus that takes them to the train depot. The plant manager left at noon to fly to his family in Shanghai. And so it is just me again, waiting another hour to catch my ride to the airport. Later…………

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Last Night in Nanchang

It’s Thursday night, which represents my last night in Nanchang. Tomorrow afternoon I will fly to Beijing to spend Saturday and half day Sunday sightseeing before making the long journey home. The oppressive heat has returned to Nanchang. I now know that clear skies mean scorching heat. Somehow, though, I have become used to it - or maybe I have been fortunate enough to be spending time in a place where the air conditioning unit is fairly new, so it works consistently.

The management team at work has been nice enough to take me out to dinner most nights this week, and as a contrast to last week’s more drawn out, formal dinners, these have been more informal and more importantly, shorter. My appetite has come back and I am enjoying most of the Chinese food. I did break down on Sunday and went to the Pizza Hut, but since then, it has been Chinese food. I ventured into a bakery store Tuesday night and tonight and actually felt comfortable buying some bakery treats – egg tarts (DanTa) and buns with dried BBQ beef (I know, that last one sounds kind of yucky, but they are really yummy).

I continue to be amazed at how cheap food is – for example, tonight’s dinner cost $2.50 per person in US dollars. Heck, I am drinking Diet Coke out of the mini-bar in the room that costs $2.00 per can. And speaking of Diet Coke, I cannot find it in any of the little stores around the hotel - plenty of regular Coke, Sprite and Pepsi, but no Diet. So I will continue to drink the extremely expensive stuff out of the mini-bar.

After dinner tonight, I went out to buy Erica a Chinese-style silk dress. The small laundry and dress shop across the street from the hotel has been closed for over a week, so I had to go with plan B – head back out to the dress shop where I had purchased my Chinese-style, “cheong sam” the first day we were here. This store is in one of the main shopping areas – this area is open only to pedestrian traffic, with various stores lining the street. The ladies at the store remember me - the Chinese woman who couldn’t speak much Chinese! They also remember the dress that I bought (they probably charged me too much). But my Chinese has improved over the past two weeks and I am able to tell them that I needed a dress for my daughter, that she was nine years old and not too skinny (but not too fat, either!), and that the dress had to be blue. Ten minutes later, I am walking down the street with a beautiful turquoise silk dress.

So, my suitcase is all packed and ready to go. I can say that this week hasn’t been all that bad – I have gotten used to the cultural differences between the Chinese and Western cultures and haven’t suffered too terribly. However, I am ready to head back to the comforts of my home and family.

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