To put that in perspective for those of you who don’t like sushi and teppanyaki, my last trip to our favorite place here in the States ran over US$100 for a very modest date night meal.

I know I have eaten and drunk over 1000 RMB worth at some of our gorge sessions.  As I have written before, I have no idea how they stay in business.

What puts this in mind was this powerful piece by Reason TV, How to save a dying ocean from overfishing…, which primarily discusses the Japanese and USA role in overfishing.  Those roles are well documented (for two great books on the subject, read Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and The Big Oyster).

What is not mentioned at all – and I find it quite curious – is Chinese overfishing.  This has been reported on for years (see here, here and here for examples going back nearly a decade), so I find it very curious that they were omitted from the article.

In any case, I am sure the next iteration of this study will have to involve the seafood appetites of the growing Chinese middle class.  One of the things I love about being in China is the exquisite seafood dishes.  While a great deal of the seafood is now farmed, I know I’ve eaten wild fish, usually the daily special.

I like the concept of a market based solution as proposed in the article, and modern China is so thoroughly capitalist that such a plan would work well.

He began hitting McDonald’s almost daily to give his stomach a foundation to get by on.  Having had my share of food poisoning in China since then, I agree.  When you’ve just spent the last 12 hours on the “China Rapid Weight Loss Program”, you are NOT in the mood for more Chinese food.  A Quarter Pounder with Cheese is the most welcome sight on earth.

He started referring to McDonald’s as his “Get-Out-Of-China-Free-Card”.  What a perfect name.

It has nothing to do with PassageMaker or SafePassage or China Quality Focus – except that if you come visit us and get sick, we will make sure you are well cared for – but it is a reality of China travel that you will miss food you would never eat when you are home.  When I am in the USA, I cook Asian food 3-4 days a week.  When I am in China I crave hamburgers and hot dogs.  The grass is always greener, I guess.

Anyway, here are three crazy articles from ChinaSMACK about McDonald’s and the impact it has on modern China.

Chinese Netizen’s McDonald’s Happy Meal Rotting Experiment

Chinese Grandfather Eats McDonald’s For The First Time

Pretty Chinese Girls Run Into McDonald’s & Begin Dancing

On the last one, you see this kind of stuff regularly in China.  What a place.

Enjoy.

Since my return from China two weeks ago, I have been working like crazy trying to bag all the new business raining down on PassageMaker, SafePassage and China Quality Focus.  The world economy is not out of the woods but we are definitely seeing an explosion of new RFQs, led by Australia.  They are booming exporting the raw materials for China’s industry.  Let’s all raise our glasses to Australia!  More on that later…

I have been picking away at the travel log in my minimal spare time, but here are some interesting articles (some a bit old, but nonetheless).

• Nixon wasn’t so bad after all – USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969 – and Tricky Dick stopped World War III.  This is the kind of stuff you do as President that you can’t talk about, you have to hope historians get it right.
• From Instapundit, a link to great blog about Japan, Ampontan.  Today’s post is called Lame and Shameless, about ridiculous Western reporting on Japan.  I am reminded of Andrea Martins, our representative in Brazil, who was actually born and raised in Beijing, the first and only Caucasian I’ve met who truly speaks native-level Mandarin.  She told me once that if you visit China for a week, you can write a book.  Stay for a month, you can write an article.  Live there for 25 years, you have nothing to say.
• Every once in a while you need to remind yourself how utterly insignificant you really are – Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why.
• Every once in a while you need to remind yourself how great your life really is – N.Korean women up for sale in China: activist.  Tragic and terrible.  I hope China steps up.
• Interesting article from Mother Jones.  Yes, really.  The Last Taboo.
• The New York Times finally realizes that many jobs aren’t ever coming back – The New Poor: In Job Market Shift, Some Workers Are Left Behind.
• Speaking of vomiting…U.S. posts 19th straight monthly budget deficit.  (hat tip to Dave Learn)
• Dear God, let’s hope so – N.J. gov. sets tone for US – I have heard Christie speak, and it is QUITE refreshing.  He sounds like a no-nonsense CEO sent in to save a company on the ropes.  Math doesn’t lie.  There is no money tree.  You  have to cut spending.  However, if you could just raise taxes on The Real Housewives of New Jersey and leave the rest of the state alone, I think you could sell that.  My God, what tacky people.  The rise of China should be seen as largely a good thing, and maybe the Chinese economy will grow larger than the USA’s, but that was never a foregone conclusion.  Our current political leadership across the board seems hellbent on making sure it happens ASAP though.  As someone who has business interests in both USA and PRC, I just wish the USA would quit shooting itself in the foot.  We businessmen would be just fine if we knew from one day to the next what was coming out of Washington.
• Globish – I love it.  What a great word.  And the author nails it; I have had similar experiences many, many times in the Chinese-speaking world.
• And finally, I can’t resist – Dog on the menu for Chinese astronauts.  Actually, dog is pretty tasty, though I’ve only had it prepared in Korean restaurants in China, so I haven’t tried the Chinese version.  Have to put that on the to-do list.

Woke the next morning at 7 AM get the munchkins breakfast and start my day.  No jet lag, I’ve been doing this too long for such silliness.  At 2 PM I meet one of the academic stars of our local university, Virginia Tech, to be the capstone speaker to his class of 165 students who’ve spent a semester studying international business.  It was very flattering to be invited and it was great fun.  David Denny was in attendance and he sat in the back.  He said he even saw students close FaceBook and shut the laptops to listen to what I had to say.  Wow.  I didn’t know I was that good.

Actually, yes I did know.  I am that good.  Just ask me.

I will do a retroactive travel log of this just completed month long trip, I swear, but it takes so long to catalog hundreds of photos and videos, I have just not had time.  Swamped with all the fine folks from around the world pounding on our doors trying to give us business.  Oh, the horror.

I have a poster that says, “Maybe if we the ignore the customers they’ll quit bugging us”.  Bloody customers.

Of course I am kidding.  This is the most fun I’ve ever had.  The PassageMaker message resonates.  The China Quality Focus message resonates.  Like shooting fish in a barrel.  Like selling beer at a NASCAR race.  Ahhh, beer…

Now for some articles:

• Han Han: The Government That Cannot Protect Its Children… – very gutsy, even for China’s most popular blogger
• This is just odd for a culture as practical about sex as China (it’s like the Sweden of Asia) – CCTV Anchorwomen Not Wearing Bras, Chinese Netizen Complains – remember this is a society with well over a billion people.  As a friend once summed up, “there are 1.3 billion people in China; somebody be ****ing”.
• This is really, really bizarre – Strange: Chinese Girls Pole-Dancing In Public
• China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says – sure it might and I can see his points, but I go back to my point that an economy that is export driven and makes tangible goods will be more robust than the watchers expect.  The rest of the world has ceded so much ground in the manufacturing sphere to China, you won’t just instantly turn those factories back on.  They be already gone, baby.  Long, long gone.
• China’s super-rich are driving luxury car sales boom – yes, yes they are.  I saw an Audi R8, Porsches galore, Bentleys, a Maybach (which is damn fugly IMAO), Ferraris, even an Opel sports car.  For my money, the Bentley Continental GTC Speed is the ultimate statement car.  That statement has two words, 7 total letters and is not safe for work.
• China to force internet users to register real names – cute – I am sure this will impact the Chinese appetite for porn not one bit.

More on the trip and more topical stuff on actual China business later.  Stay tuned.

So I guess I should have known that it was not reliable as an alarm clock.  Suffice it to say I am an experienced enough traveler that I don’t cut things close, so I had planned to arrive 2 hours earlier than needed.  Despite the fact that the alarm failed, the sun woke me and I showered, shaved and “packed” in about 25 minutes.  I say “packed” because I made the decision some days back to leave most of the clothes behind as I will be back in about 6 weeks and didn’t see the point.  Because the driver is waiting and I want to get through the Huanggang border crossing before the Chinese New Year rush hour starts, everything I wanted to take got unceremoniously shoved in the bag – couple small gifts for the kids, some movies and books and medicine and out the door.

It’s a glorious morning, blue skies and lots of fast moving clouds.  It is warming up fast and very humid.  We head to the main Luohu border crossing, Huanggang, which I am fearing will be a mob scene.  Although the official Chinese New Year doesn’t start until Saturday, many factories and offices are already closed.  Around 450 million people travel inside China during the 2-3 weeks that cover the Lunar New Year season.  That’s 1.5 times the entire population of the USA.  And we bitch about travel around Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Last year the blizzards in China had over 250,000 people stranded at the Guangzhou railroad station for days.  I’ve been there on a normal business day, and it is no wonder they had to bring in the police to maintain order.

So I am not surprised that Huanggang is in fact a mob scene. The company driver drops me off at the stand where they sell tickets for the mini vans that run you across for 150 RMB.  I usually get a limo for 700-800 RMB, but decide to try this less expensive method.  In the future, I will be using the limo again, more on that in a minute.

Photos inside are strictly forbidden, and I did not feel like taking the risk 4 hours before my flight, so you will have to visualize the chaos of maybe 3,000 people with their luggage squeezed into a room designed to hold perhaps 500.  There were 30+ lines for Chinese and only one for Foreigners, so getting through took a long time.  They were really being critical this morning, usually passport control for a white guy takes 30 seconds, but today he looked through every page of the passport and spent several minutes looking things up on his computer.

If I had hired a limo, I would have been able to go through passport control in my own lane, never getting out of the car.  700 RMB (cost of the limo) – 150 RMB (cost of the van) = 550 RMB = US$80.  That savings is looking less important all the time.

Outside I find our van and it appears I am the last man.  I expected as much, due to the 3rd degree from the border patrol.  Except the driver insists I am not the last, he says we are missing one.  When we buy our tickets, we are given stickers with the van’s number on it so the driver can keep track.  The van seats 7 passengers – 3 in back, 3 in the middle and one riding shotgun.  I did not look in the back when I boarded, but I take it on faith that he is correct – they would never run these things across a passenger light, certainly not on a day like today.  In the van with me are a Singaporean man, four Taiwanese men and one Taiwanese woman.  The Singaporean is mighty worried about missing his flight, and after 30 minutes waiting for the missing passenger in the 80 F warmth and bright sunshine, he is starting to get hot, as in pissed.  The driver placidly insists he can’t leave the 7th (which none of us can exactly remember) because he paid too, we have his luggage, and if we leave he will be stranded, as there is no way to hire a car on this side.  The driver is quite right…in theory.

The Chinese was fast and very heated, but it seems the Singaporean insists there is no 7th, something none of us can confirm.  The Taiwanese woman who was also in the back seat, says nothing and refuses to answer when asked.  Very strange.  He then opens to back and starts counting luggage.  He points to different bags and the various passengers chime in to claim ownership.  When he points to mine, I say “我的”, “mine” which makes him actually do a dramatic double take that the laowai can speak Chinese.  It appears the mysterious 7th has no bags, so we double count, and indeed all the bags on board are accounted for by the six of us.  The driver sees that the luggage is no longer an issue, but still insists on waiting.  The Singaporean in now in a rage and calls over another driver from the same company who just pulled in.  He loudly explains the situation and the other driver agrees to find the missing 7th, who may not even exist, and tells our driver to roll out.

Back in the car, for the the first 2-3 minutes the Singaporean loudly berates the driver, who must be a Taoist, as he is completely at peace and does not get the slightest bit ruffled under this assault.  Finally the Singaporean realizes the futility and quiets down.  I find the whole episode educational and an example of what fascinates me about Asia.  Singapore is wealthy and sophisticated city state (I lived there in 1994 and loved every minute), and this guy acted like he was a typical rich snob from good side of town.  The driver must have a special permit in order to cross the border so regularly, but my guess is he is from the Mainland.  People on the Mainland, especially the older generation, have been raised to just take it.  I’ve seen Singaporeans, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers pull this stunt on Mainlanders, berating them publicly, because they know they can get away with it.  One of my rules for life is to show as much respect as you can to the people who wash your clothes, cook your food and drive you around, etc., because they are the ones who make your life easy.  They deserve more respect than this guy got.

Huanggang border crossing

So many Chinese drivers have these awful perfume dispensers on the dash - note the gold tiger for the Year of the Tiger.

Huanggang - when you are using a Porsche Cayenne for your border crossing van, that's just showing off.

Huanggang - Shenzhen skyline

Huanggang - to Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of the coolest places on earth.  The drive to the airport is always amazing but is especially so this morning with dramatic and fast moving clouds with occasional bursts of sunlight.  The natural setting is glorious and dramatic, hundreds of mountainous islands covered in verdant green rising out of the harbor.  The cities and towns are built to work with the land, unlike the wholesale flattening of the hills that takes place in Shenzhen.  The bridges that connect to Lantau island and Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) are brilliant – one each of suspension and cable-stayed – and the whole setting reminds me of a scale model too perfect to be believed.  My camera stinks, so this is the best I could do.

views of Hong Kong

container ship in the harbor

We arrive at HKG with less than two hours before my flight, far less than I normally allow.  I know before I even get to the airport that there is no chance of getting better seats, not so late and not on the Thursday before CNY.  Nevertheless, even though I checked in online last night, I head over to the United counter and chat up the very attractive lady at the counter (in Asia it is still OK to hire public relations personnel who are good looking – it is often part of the job description) and she tries every trick in the book to get me a better seat.  Nothing doing, flight is booked solid.  Oh well, I appreciated her efforts and gave her a business card (she didn’t believe that I’d been in Asia for 5 weeks with no luggage so I told her to check the blog), so if she’s reading this, thank you very much for your help!

HKG entry hall

HKG entry hall

I head through passport control and security, and get accosted by the eager young folks who are always there taking a survey of foreigners to find out how much time and money you spent in Hong Kong on this trip.  I am in a hurry, but I take a minute anyway to talk to them.  Yes, I absolutely love Hong Kong.  I would move here tomorrow if my wife would come with me.  I’ve been here many, many times and will be back again soon.  It’s awesome and now I have to go.

Five minutes for a quick bowl of noodles and to buy some candy bars (paid for in 1 second with my Octopus card – love it).  Then up and down the seemingly endless series of escalators with the train ride to the other terminal in the middle and on to the gate.  It is very humid and pretty warm and HKG, like Shanghai Pudong, is built to be big and impressive which means by the time I get to the gate, it is now officially sticky uncomfortable.  It is February, so I don’t think they have the AC on, but this not how you want to board a plane.  The security is far tighter than the USA, with every bag searched.

I am in a aisle seat in Economy, which means the next 14 hours will only be mildly tortuous.  My seat mates speak not a word and neither do I.  Both sleep through the entire flight.  Just as well as I’m not in the mood.  United is sticking with the 4 movie format, but at least they are good – The Invention of Lying, Where The Wild Things Are, My One And Only, and The Informant!  The food sucks and is even sparser than last time.  Thank God for candy bars.

Land in Chicago exactly on time, and after a pretty thorough grilling by passport control, out into the airport.  For some bloody reason you have to go back through security again, which in O’Hare is less than fun.  Security in HKG is MUCH tighter than in the States, but nothing for it, so shoes off and laptops out.  My flight to ROA is out of one of the commuter terminals, to one with no good restaurants.  Lunch at McD’s.  blech.

I sit down to read the Wall Street Journal Asian edition they gave me on the plane and wait the two hours for my flight.  There is a great article on Chinese Intellectual Property law that I would love to be able to concentrate on, but instead I spend this time listening to an astoundingly annoying woman tell the lady across the aisle from her nearly every detail of her life and recent travel history, including how her underwire bra sets off the metal detectors EVERY TIME (I feel so much safer now knowing they actually work).  I know this because despite the fact that she was about 100 feet away, her voice was SO LOUD everyone in the terminal heard her.  At least when people in China are loud and obnoxious, they are all loud and obnoxious at the same time, so the result is sort a loud silence.  They all just drown each other out into white noise.  Oh, how I wish I were back in China.

Bumpy flight to ROA with the annoying lady talking only intermittently during the flight.  I think she was airsick.  Thank God for turbulence.

Finally, almost exactly 24 hours after I woke up, we land at Roanoke Regional Airport.  Out into the cold and snow covered mountains.  24 hours ago I was in 80 F weather, now below freezing.  Yipee.

Roanoke Regional Airport

clear and cold at ROA

It’s been a great 5 weeks, but when I see the family again, I know where I belong.

Happy to be home.

Dongmen shopping district

view from the pedestrian bridge - note the construction for the subway

view from the pedestrian bridge

Dongmen shopping district

a micro McD's that only sells ice cream in Dongmen

Chinese New Year decorations in Dongmen - featuring Disney knock-offs

Dongmen - Kobe, skyscrapers (that's Di Wang Da Sha from the front), faux temples and a plaster giraffe

Chinese breakdancers - only 20 years late to the party - as the proprietor of www.theshenzhenrules.com said, "the Chinese will never be able to beat Americans at cool".

yes, that's a Dunkin' Donuts in Dongmen - and no, I did not have one

the incomplete building across from Di Wang Da Sha - it has been this way for years, caught up in another corruption scandal

That evening we head out to meet Anne Kuschert of Karl Gross Logistics, aka Banana (adopted from China and raised in Germany and Hong Kong – yellow on the outside, white inside – her term), and one of our Endorsed Service Providers, Ms. Li Yan of the JunZeJun Law Firm.  Li Yan and I have been referring people to each other for a while now and she’s done an exceptional job with our clients, 8-0 on IP cases.  It was nice to finally meet her face-to-face.  We dine at the Da Yu (Big Fish) the crazy teppanyaki place with the all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink special for 150 RMB.  The place is packed to the gills for CNY celebrations.  Ultimately we are seated and have a spectacular meal.

Lamb, sushi, grilled fish, beef cooked several ways, raw kobe beef sashimi, and copious amounts of beer, sake and fruit smoothies to keep it healthy

Since we were one of the last tables to eat, the chef used our grill to make a massive batch of egg fried rice for the staff’s dinner.

that's a dozen eggs at least

you should have seen the slab of butter he threw in this thing - a pound at least - say it with me now, egg fried rice is NOT diet food

whole process took only about 90 seconds

The group breaks up after dinner, though some of us go for a few more drinks – Erdinger at McCawley’s (my favorite German beer).  Banana is with us and says I’m pouring it wrong.  That may be so, but I’m pouring it the way I like it.  Besides, my way is more fun for entertaining the wait staff.  No way to describe it, just have to show you the next time I see you.  Starts raining which sort of kills the fun sitting outside.  Head for home.

Day 33 – rained hard all day, forcing us to cancel our trip to Hong Kong and Macau.  We did nothing except sit inside all day working and watching movies.  When the rain finally started to abate, headed out to get some KFC.  Yes, I know, but sometimes you feel lazy.  We pay for it later with wicked acid indigestion.  KFC is much spicier and greasier than in the US.  Later in the evening we head out to Shekou to get rooms at the cruise ship so we can watch the Superbowl live in the morning at the sports bar downstairs.  We take our clients to dinner at Tasca, the Spanish tapas bar and have a grand time.  Early to bed.

ship hotel room at Seaworld - that's a port hole in the upper right of the "window"

Day 34 – Up early to watch the Superbowl.  I don’t care about either team, but fun nonetheless.  Our clients head out early via hydrofoil ferry to HKG, which is much quicker than crossing by land (the “business” excuse for our trip to Shekou – have to take care of those customers).  This is the first time I’ve been to Seaworld in the daylight in years, and after the rain it is a gloriously clear morning.

Seaworld in Shekou on Superbowl morning

This is the boat where Deng Xiao Ping signed the paperwork for the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone

It now houses a hotel, a Western sports bar, the New Orleans nightclub and a German brewpub where we ate breakfast. Communist...right.

The water is to give the illusion it is still afloat

Little Foreigners Town

The opposite of China Town

Starbucks, KFC, McDs, 7-11

It's far from perfect though. This was all filled in (it used to be a harbor) and this area is below sea level. All the water has to be pumped out.

Merry Christmas in Shekou - in February

Because it’s Monday (China is 13 hours ahead of the east coast of the USA, so Sunday night is Monday morning), after the game we head to work.  We have to stop by B&Q again.

I was thrilled to see this in the parking lot at B&Q - tool trucks that deliver make plant life in the USA much easier and it is a good thing this in now available in PRC.

On the way home from the plant, we see a VW Santana with a big involved graphic across the back of the trunk lid.  It says “SOCCER” and has a picture of some famous footballer.  Only one problem – it’s backwards, a mirror image of what it’s supposed to be.  You see this kind of stuff all over the place here – English words on t-shirts, handbags, advertisements, etc. that are misspelled or upside down or backwards or just thrown together at random.  My wife has a t-shirt from our time in Taiwan that says “I’m Fine Muck”.  Yes you are, sweetie.

We are interviewing a Filipino process engineer to work with me at the Assembly Center.  He looks like he’ll be a good fit.  He’s got loads of plant level experience working for major global companies and has lived in Shenzhen before.  He has family in Dongguan up the road.  He tells us a harrowing story about his last time in China when he was kidnapped and robbed at knife point in broad day light.  I have heard these stories about SE Asians in China, but never about a Westerner.  I guess the gangsters assume the police will care less about the SE Asians.  Sadly, they are probably right.

Day 35 – Last day at the Assembly Center.  We hired the process engineer, Harold Roman, this morning and he’ll spend today and tomorrow with me reviewing our kaizen agenda for the next couple months.  I intend to return for the month of April, but don’t want things to go cold after CNY.

The last lunch is celebratory, the first lunch with beer since I’ve been here.  Had I been doing the factory visit two-step, every vendor would want to treat me to an alcohol-soaked luncheon.  I was not here for that, but in this case, a couple cold beers in the afternoon is an appropriate reward.  Only problem, no cold beer.  No problem, we’ve got ice.  Iced beer.  That was honestly a first for me.

The chicken was exceptional - Teresa asked me to pick a dish (I chose the little fish), but of course when they accidentally bring the mushroom dish in the foreground, my choice is the one that gets canceled. Lao wai's don't know how to order anyway.

sizzling black pepper steak - this was great - eat it off the bone with chopsticks - easier than it sounds

the chicken feet were not eaten by the ladies because they were 'too small'

It was a beautiful day, bright sunshine, 75 F, low humidity, so we walk to and from lunch, about 10 minutes each way. Landscaping on a street in an industrial part of town. The new China takes civic beauty increasingly seriously

typical traffic on a Chinese SIDEWALK

When we get back the postman is delivering the mail on his green China Post motorcycle with saddlebags.  Very cool.  We get back to work until Julien Roger of China Quality Focus calls and asks me to join him for a business dinner.  The schedule requires me to wrap things up early and head back to Liantang.  We have our closing meeting and say our goodbyes.  I’ll be back in April, but will miss these folks in the meantime.  A good team all around.

Chinese postman - note he just drives right into the building - walking is for sissies.

Our team at Buji. Wonderful folks. L-R: Mr. Tang, Teresa Chen, Josephine Ji, me (man, am I not photogenic), Candy Cheng, Marc Yue, Honey Wu, Hebe Wang, Bruce Li (yes, really) and Nancy Lan.

On the way home I finally get a not-completely-blurry photo of the “staircase street” we pass every day.  They are not good, but this is a very cool little oddity of Shenzhen.

I tried everyday to take a photo of this 'staircase street' which we passed on the way back from the Assembly Center - these are the best two - very cool

Can you imagine living on this street?

When I get back to Liantang, the driver drops me at the end of the street.  Our street is private, meaning that you have to pass through a gate and take a ticket to get in.  If you stay on the street for more than a few minutes, you have to pay to get back out.  We have a parking spot outside the wire, so this is typical.  Nearly every shop is already shut down for the Chinese New Year, a bit of a ghost town.  I come across one scene outside of a restaurant that is very cute and hugely disturbing at the same time.

This is a lot less cute when you realize that the bunny is dinner.

Julien and I head out to meet up with Renaud Anjoran of the Quality Inspection Blog at a northeastern style restaurant.  I love this style, and was wickedly disappointed by the last place I tried, so I went in hoping for a good experience.  Julien said this was his favorite place and I see why.  It was excellent across the board.

This is the best salad in the world - warm onion and cilantro with peppers.

This is by far the best fish I ate on the trip - boneless, deep fried, sweet & sour with pine nuts - what's not to like?

A light meal for 3 people - sweet potato noodles, pai huang gua (bashed cucumbers), sweet & sour fish, lamb & vegetable dumplings, some meat dish with chilies, cilantro salad, potato 'noodles' with 9 beers for a total of 178 RMB or US$26! I love this place!

After dinner, I go for my last massage of the trip.  I have a bad back, had to wear a back brace when I was a teenager and am used to regular pain and discomfort.  On this trip, I have definitely been spoiled by the affordable and effective massages.  My back feels better than it has in years.  The woman tonight is in her 40′s and her experience shows – she is an expert and despite the momentary thrashing when I wake up in the morning I feel like a million bucks.  Total cost around $25.  Love.  This.  Place.

Day 36 – Last day at the office.  Beautiful morning.  We battle the usual chaos before the CNY, mainly problems with customer payments clearing in time to release goods to get a berth on a freighter.  Customers often can’t envision the traffic at the ports during this time of year, and think that if they get the check out on the last day that that will translate to goods on the water.  To clarify, no it won’t.  If you are one of these customers reading this blog, it is nothing personal and trust me you are not the only one, but in the future, send the money early.  The earlier the better.  The Chinese have been celebrating CNY for 5,000 years.  It’s not like you weren’t warned, and trust me, there is NOTHING I can do about it.

last morning - beautiful

Our favorite local restaurant is still open and so we have our final lunch there.  All the favorites plus this that I’d not had before.

last lunch - very good sizzling beef dish - the dish was so hot it was still boiling 4-5 minutes arrived it arrived at table

We have a very productive day and then select Mao’s House for the final dinner.  How I love those chili shrimp skewers.  We have at least 4 plates between us – Mike Bellamy, Brian Garvin, Adam Supernant, and Harold Roman of PassageMaker and Julien Roger and Ludovic Larry of China Quality Focus.  Much later we head out to meet up with Dave Learn at Viva, running into Banana and other friends on the way.  How bizarre it is to have such a dual life.  And how exciting as well.  I am looking forward to being home and seeing my family, but I will miss this place when I am gone.

Home at a reasonable hour and to bed.  Early day tomorrow.

More articles and weird stuff:

• Toxic Linfen – regardless of Climategate, there is still room for commonsense pollution controls in developing nations
• Think You Know China? Eight Things Foreigners Get Wrong
• Interesting talk on Vested Outsourcing – not sure if I care for the new buzz word, but worth a listen
• Fox Premiers Its First Chinese Film

Day 31 – I awoke early and found that our apartment complex had been decorated with live flowers and orange trees for the Lunar New Year.

Flowers for the New Year

We had a productive morning at the Assembly Center, working on streamlining and improving our process documentation.  I have a manufacturing background and enjoy working on such kaizen initiatives.  Where I wear out is the day-to-day scheduling and personnel management.  I can do it, but it quickly becomes tedious, especially HR (which is admittedly less of a problem than in the USA).  For the next year we will have so many opportunities to make improvements, I don’t see myself getting bored anytime soon.  It also helps we have so many new assembly-inspection-packaging projects rolling in, each of which needs process engineering to get it started.  2009 was actually a strong growth year for PassageMaker, with 19 new assembly projects launched.  Selecting tools, writing work instructions, designing jigs and fixtures, laying out the line and setting the Drum-Buffer-Rope targets is the fun stuff.  I really have an awesome job.

The managers and I head to the cafeteria for lunch, which is notable for a couple reasons.  First, they order Coca-Cola.  Now in the USA I might go six months without drinking a soda.  I don’t particularly care for them and I have alternatives I prefer in the States, such as iced tea (unsweetened with lemon, if you please).  Not so in China, where I know that sodas are safe to drink, and no one has iced tea without a pound of sugar in it (and then usually only in rare SE Asian restaurants).  So I drink sodas pretty regularly in China, but I am the one who orders them, not the Chinese.  More important to this anecdote is why my co-workers ordered the Coke.

The cafeteria was out of tea.

Being out of tea in China is like being out of wine in France or out of whiskey in Lynchburg, TN (Pop. 361).  It doesn’t happen.  It’s a sign of the apocalypse or something.  I felt like walking outside to see if the sun was going nova.

They didn’t even have any 开水, kāi shuǐ, boiling hot water, which is also commonly drunk, the concept of sanitary cold (bottled) water being a recent innovation.  This was truly bizarre.  So we drank Coke from tea cups.

How can a Chinese restaurant IN CHINA run out of tea? We drink Coke instead.

Lunch was also memorable for four dishes, one I can’t wait to try in the USA.

Beef with sweet peppers - I don't eat the peppers, but the flavor they impart on the meat is subtle and exceptional.

Spicy pork & wood ears. This was great - keep in mind this is like getting excellent food at your high school cafeteria.

Tomato & Egg soup - actually very good.

Bitter gourd (also called bitter melon, 苦瓜, kǔ guā) omelet - this was absolutely exceptional - one of the best egg dishes I've ever eaten - the gourd tastes a bit like cucumber and matches beautifully with the egg - I can sometimes get 苦瓜 at our local Chinese market and I am going to try this at home. Awesome.

At around 4 PM, things start to wind down and everyone migrates about 10 minutes away to the banquet hall, because tonight is the joint PassageMaker, SafePassage and China Quality Focus annual Chinese New Year party!  These companies have grown rapidly over the last few years, and we had about 160 people in attendance.  I tried to capture the event, but my camera did a relatively poor job.  Apologies in advance.

we had an upstairs room at this banquet hall

downstairs a much larger company was also having their CNY party

their 'stage show' was far more formal than ours

our banquet had 160 people total

each table prepare with drinks and snacks

this is about 1/3rd of the refreshments for the evening

Christina Feng, our Office Manager, did an exceptional job organizing this party. She and Marc Yue, Production Manager of the General Assembly Center, acted as our emcees

Anita Tang-Bellamy, Mike Bellamy and Julien Roger of China Quality Focus. And hand signals.

Anita Tang-Bellamy, Jesse Chang and Aileen Wang - now it's a party! Don't ask me about the hand signals - all Asian women do this.

Candy Cheng & Teresa Chen - our very effective purchasing team. Teresa also serves as Mike's right hand for company-wide operations. Again with the hand signals.

Hebe Wang, Honey Wu & Teresa Chen - I worked with this team (and others) on streamlining the format of our Product Quality Manual. I've got to find out about the hand signals.

Jesse Chang, Accountant and Master Drinker; Pramod KC from Nepal, head of Project Management for those projects that have moved into regular production ("Vendor Coordination-Export & Logistics" in our parlance); and Adam Supernant, Project Manager from Michigan. And more hand signals. WTF.

Most of the management from our General Assembly Center (the precision Medical Assembly Center has a separate team). My lao pengyou, Sabrina Liao is on the far right. I caught them by surprise, so no time for hand signals.

L-R - Dave Learn, head of Project Management for those projects still in development ("Vendor Coordination-Product Development"; once they go to production, they transition to Pramod's team). Our distinguished guests - Mike Lopez of Campus Emporium, Tyson Daniel of LimbGear, Collin Peel of Camrett Logistics, and Brian Garvin, Director of New Project Development, my sales counterpart based in Shenzhen.

Brian's wife, Ada, who also does hand signals. A wonderful lady.

Buji staff enjoying an evening away from the Assembly Center - they typically work 6 days a week, well into the night to prepare for CNY. All of them would be back at work by 9 AM the next day, a Saturday. Whenever I hear Americans bitch about "all the Chinese holidays", I kind of want to tell them to shove it. This is one of the hardest working groups of people I've ever met. In the foreground is Josephine Ji, Manager of the Assembly Center and a very competent woman. Sadly, this is clearest photo of her I got all night.

Hunan cuisine - many of our employees are from Hunan, the province to the north

hand knotted noodles in duck soup - very elegant

Mike and Teresa give the annual state of the company address and announce the new profit sharing program to raucous applause. Most of our employees are farm kids from the provinces. The idea that they were going to be able to earn a piece of the action blew them away. The party really got rolling after that announcement.

Can I get a witness? Mike had the crowd going.

Mike presenting a 红包, hóng bāo, literally "red bag", a small red envelope containing money. Typically these are token sums, perhaps as little as $0.05, meant to foster luck and prosperity in the new year. Ours had real money and each one that was awarded had more than the last. The final hong bao had over US$100. Everyone also got a bonus hong bao for the New Year.

Julien Roger of China Quality Focus was a big hit with his French-accented Mandarin.

One of the top prizes was a LimbGear t-shirt and a very generous hong bao from our guests.

Jesse Chang toasting an honored guest, Tyson Daniel of LimbGear.

All the lao wai's were asked to speak, draw names, hand out hong bao's & drink...

...everyone drinks...

...and drinks...

...and drinks...

...and drinks some more.

all are rapt with attention as the grand prize is announced

Later things got a little crazy, with dancing, card playing, and for some bizarre reason, arm wrestling.  I was reminded of the Festivus Feats of Strength.

Jesse Chang referees the arm wrestling

All in all, it was a wonderful evening.  Our guests were impressed by the camaraderie and team spirit and by shear amount of fun everyone was having.  Having seen the USA go through the politically correct wringer in the last 15 years, during which all forms of corporate sanctioned fun were done away with and replaced by silly and useless “team building” exercises, aka “manufactured fun”, it is nice to be someplace where “corporate bonding” means cutting loose and eating and drinking and dancing and, you know, having fun.  I left the automotive industry because the lawyers and the accountants and the buyers had drained every ounce of enjoyment and excitement out of it until it became a soul-draining slog.  Life is to be lived and thank God the Chinese understand that.

I recently re-connected with an old friend from B-school living in Switzerland and he is much better networked with our class than I am.  He tells me nearly all of our classmates have taken dull domestic jobs.  What was the point of getting a degree in international business, he quite rightly asked?  I know I did it to get out and see the world, to live a life less ordinary.

Some reading this will think our company frivolous.  If you get that impression, I’m sorry you missed the point.  PassageMaker, China Quality Focus and SafePassage all provide professional, affordable and reliable services in a timely fashion.  Our Endorsed Service Providers do the same.  A big part of the reason we are able to do our job so well is we still have the joie de vivre that keeps us excited about our work of helping our clients succeed.  So have a drink and Happy Chinese New Year!

Articles, articles, articles…

• Chinese diplomat:  Ties with US deteriorated recently – no, really?
• More from Reuters
• This is just wrong – Chinese girl, 9, becomes one of world’s youngest mothers after giving birth to a baby boy
• India forms new Climate Change body
• Uh oh – Fears of sexual frustration among workers in China
• Proof there is a God
• China’s Debt Bomb – as good a reason as any for Washington to quit spending so much money
• Dazzled by Asia – a different perspective, far less rosy about China’s future, and hard to argue with
• Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China – a rather silly article in Time magazine, which again reminds me why I no longer read Time magazine.  As Dave Learn put it, “it sounds like an article written by someone who read a book about China”.
• And this also popped up on the Google search (from the Business Insider) – TIME Magazine’s Ridiculous Five Things America Needs To Learn From China
• China PLA officers urge economic punch against U.S.
• Stay rates for foreign Ph.D.s rebound after decline

A little random tidbit from Dave, who is going on another Asian adventure for the Chinese New Year.  Airlines are just no damn fun anymore (from the terms and conditions on his plane ticket):

- Guests can no longer carry guns and/or ammunition on flights to or from Indonesia

Killjoys.

Day 27 – A client from the USA arrived today, one of a group of three we were expecting.  The other two were delayed by fun winter weather in the USA, so they will arrive tomorrow.  After a long day at work, I met the client for drinks at our preferred corporate hotel, the 999 Royal Suites.  Nice rooms for a very reasonable price.  The bar caters to foreign businessmen and they have the standard Filipino cover lounge singers.  Some have been there for years and it was catching up with old friends.  The Filipina hotel day manager, Queenie, looks great and I am glad to see her rising in her career with the 999.  I once spent 5 weeks living at the older 999 hotel across the courtyard, so I got to know the staff pretty well.

Day 28 – We have visitors today from Karl Gross, a German 3PL based in Shanghai with offices in Shenzhen.  The head of the Shenzhen office is a self-described “banana”, yellow on the outside and white on the inside.  She was adopted from China as a baby by a German family and raised in Germany and Hong Kong.  Very interesting young lady.  We have a great lunch and then they head off to tour our facilities.  Here they are with Mike heading into our medical assembly center with clean room and sterile packaging capabilities.

L-R - Mike Bellamy, founder of PM, Anne Kuschert and Martin Kollmann of Karl Gross Logistics, prepare to enter our Clean Room Assembly Center. Too funny.

Later the rest of the clients arrive and off we go to the traditional first-night-in-China Xinjiang dinner.  Great time.  The highlight was the staff practicing their traditional dances out in front of the restaurant late at night.  I’ve seen them do this before, and really don’t understand it, because none are from Xinjiang and they don’t work in local costume and don’t perform at the restaurant.  But this is one of my favorite scenes from China.  I’ve tried before to take photos and this is the first time they were any good.

Dance Practice

I have no idea if the dance has any significance.

Kind of like a square dance.

They finally realize they have an attentive audience and fall out laughing.

Day 29 – Very productive day of meetings with our clients from LimbGear and our Endorsed Service Provider, Camrett Logistics.  They have a great new family of products and I expect we will see great things from them in 2010.  At night we head out for a Northeastern style dinner, normally one of my favorite styles, at a restaurant called 东北人, dōngběirén, literally “northeastern person” or “northeasterner”.  We were told it would be awesome.  It wasn’t.  The food was a warm cup of OK, but the service was bloody atrocious.  After waiting more than 10 minutes I actually had to get up to go find a waitress and mildly berate her for leaving us sitting so long with no tea.  She was embarrassed enough to come immediately and take our drinks order, but the service stunk throughout the meal.  This is extremely rare in China, where most of the time you have almost too much service.  If you are in Shenzhen, Dong Bei Ren near King Glory Plaza (GuoMao station on the subway) is one to skip.

It's not MONS beer.

Day 30 – Another day at the Assembly Center.  I am starting to feel the end of the trip and have so much to do I eat lunch at my desk.  When I lived in Taiwan, I loved the lunch boxes (bien dang in the local dialect).  Today’s take out was not the same (bien dang are more complete rounded meals) but it reminded me a bit.  A good light and healthy lunch all the same.  Now if I can just get my TrekDesk (one of our clients!) set up in China, maybe I could actually LOSE weight on these trips.

lunch at my desk - better than 95% of American Chinese food

On the way to dinner, we saw one of the more memorable sights of this trip.  We are fast approaching the Chinese New Year, and families stock up on fresh produce to last through the long holiday (1-2 weeks).  And when I say fresh, I mean live.

This is 3 chickens and 2 geese caged on top of an SUV, with cardboard rigged up to block the wind. These birds will be kept on the guy's balcony or in his yard until required at meal time during the CNY. Sorry, but this is the best photo I could get in the moving traffic and low light.

Dinner was one of the best of the trip, which is really saying something.

personal hotpots - chicken broth seasoned with garlic, ginger, thousand year old eggs - you add green onions, cilantro, miso paste and chiles to a soy dipping sauce to taste - cook the raw ingredients yourself in the broth and dip in the sauce - lamb, beef, tofu, wood ears, golden needle mushrooms, lettuce - wonderful

RAW BEEF SASHIMI with soy + wasabi dipping sauce - this is the best thing in the world - ZOMBIELAND be damned

Everyone’s tired and a little lubricated, so early night.  More adventures tomorrow!

More interesting articles:

• Hong Kong remains world’s freest economy: report
• For this American, the idea that the US government can get Google to do anything is silly
• Impressive China economic growth numbers
• An ode to the internal combustion engine
• Now IMDB is blocked in China
• From Wired, In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits
• De-industrializing Detroit
• How to Push a Dump Truck Out the Window – the wreckage that was America’s 4th largest city
• US slaps duties on electric blankets from China
• Bacteria Rebuilt To Make Oil
• We Are So Screwed – a fascinating look at financial crises
• China protests US arms sales to Taiwan

The last two weeks have been insane.  The pollution was unbelievable up until this past weekend, as bad as I’ve seen it in over a decade.  I could taste it and feel it on my teeth.  Blowing your nose was a bit of an adventure and made me wish for black handkerchiefs.

It has also been fun as the Great Firewall is now blocking Bloomberg completely and Reuters about half the time.  Several IT guys we’ve worked with in the past have left China for Thailand because the Firewall is too big a pain in the neck.

Day 15 – Customer visits seem to to be an almost daily event.  So far this trip we’ve had them one after the other from USA, France, Australia, etc.  I was running late, so I hired one of the gypsy cabbies who hang out by our apartment complex to run me across the street to the office instead of taking 10 minutes to walk.  He proceeded to pull straight out into oncoming traffic driving the wrong way down the main road and then cutting across 4 lanes of oncoming traffic to get to our side of the road.  Such is life in China.  After 10 years here, Mike still doesn’t drive.

Lunch was nothing special, though I am constantly amazed at how fatty the meat here is.  In the USA, where nearly everyone can stand to lose a few pounds, fat is bad, horrible, terrible stuff.  Here, it is where the flavor is.  And hardly anyone is overweight.

fatty pork and bok choy with garlic

lovely beef and mushrooms

At night I head off to Futian to meet an old friend who is now a rep for PassageMaker.  He was born in Hong Kong but raised from infancy in the UK, so he speaks perfect British English.  He moved back to HK on the day of the handover in 1997.  He wanted pizza and beer, so we go to NYPD (New York Pizza Delivery), an outdoor place that serves the best American style pizza I’ve ever eaten.  Really.

The owners are a couple American Born Chinese (ABC) from California who developed a dough recipe that is mind blowing.  Crispy and soft at the same time, it kicks the pants of anything I’ve tried anywhere else in the world.  All ingredients are flown in weekly from the USA.  And the beer is dirt cheap, too.  Across from our table was a skyscraper with a gigantic TV across the top 5-6 floors.  We watched TV while we ate and chatted.  My camera sucks in low light, so I couldn’t take a photo.

Sitting outside on a nice night, eating great pizza, drinking cold beer, watching a TV 5 times the size of my house and hanging out with an old friend, all for about 20% of the cost of a similar meal in the USA, I wonder why the heck I don’t live here full-time.

NYPD extra large supreme

Futian at night - the colors constantly cascade

Day 16 – Worked all day and well into the night.  We didn’t leave the office until nearly 11 PM.  Given the hour, Mike’s wife thoughtfully arranged for dinner – a meal of grilled tofu, potatoes and lamb skewers, washed down with copious amounts of cold beer.  Oh, did I mention it was on the side walk, sitting on stools that would be reserved for a pre-school classroom in the USA and eating off a plywood folding table sized for a dwarf?  It was bloody fabulous.  It cost about $5.  I love this place.

eating meat and drinking beer on the street - yang rou chua'r & toilet paper napkins

grilled tofu - really good

our dining table

our chef

delivery bike - it's a good sign of quality if the locals will order delivery - they must be doing well, as a few days later they helped me make change to pay a cab driver who was out of small money - whole operation runs on a cell phone

Day 17 – A full day at the factory.  We are working on a big order that needs to go by the end of the month, and we are using this as the first test case of my ideas for operational improvements.

The view from our factory manager's window - Buji, an industrial suburb of Shenzhen

industrial park dormatories - maybe 2500 people live and work here

Who doesn't like Corinthian columns on their factory? I know I'd like them.

Every industrial park needs a decorative fountain!

The back part of our industrial park is still under construction - note the concrete erosion control lattice on the hillside - you see this everywhere in Asia

I joined the managers from the factory and had my first meal at the park’s cafeteria.  Food was not bad, certainly not as bad as they’d told me.

Beef & mushrooms for $1

That night we picked up some prospective clients for dinner at my favorite Xinjiang restaurant.  I’d gotten them hooked up with my old friend from Taiwan as a translator and we all had a great time.  One item of note, we saw the world’s most expensive production car outside the hotel.

a Maybach at the 999 Royal Suites

Day 18 – Mike asked me to join him for lunch on Saturday.  On the way down to meet him, I passed a ballot box – the apartment complex is having an election.

The ballot box

The banner announcing the election

We head to an Algerian coffee shop in the center of Luohu.  Both of us are in the mood for something other than Chinese food.  The place has several things that rare in China – a separate smoking area and SILENCE.  The Chinese, especially the Cantonese, are not quiet people.  Going to a typical food court on a Saturday is like enjoying lunch next to a jet engine.  You get used to it (by slowly going deaf), but it is a shock for first-timers used to the USA where typically people don’t shout in restaurants.  We had business to discuss, so it was a good choice.

lunch at an Algerian coffee house - seperate smoking area for the hookahs (yes, really)

Evidently Algerians eat their gyros with french fries - a North African Primanti

Shenzhen skyline - the bronze building (two towers of the same structure) has been tied up in a corruption scandal for years and has never been finished.

That night we head to Coco Park area for Brazilian barbecue and to later join friends at Club Viva.  I love churrascaria and this one was acceptable.  The ones in China just fail on the salad bars, which is a big part of the appeal for me in the States.  However there were two items of note:  camel meat and beer urns.

Roasted camel meat - they have camels in Brazil? Very rubbery and fatty - not something I will seek out again.

The urn of beer is one of the greatest ideas of all-time. An idea America needs to adopt. And Tiger Beer from Singapore no less - my favorite!

Day 19 – despite being Sunday, we go to the office to work most of the day.  Not much of note, but a few photos nonetheless.

An accidental photo of the apartments across from our office reflected in a puddle. These are very working class apartment blocks and are fugly. Note the slapdash hand poured concrete sidewalk.

This is what I was try to take a photo of. This flower graffitti appeared today, next to the trash bin no less.

Fruit and sugar cane for sale on the street. In order to eat sugar cane, you have to hack it to length and peel it. Our sidewalk is usually covered with foot-long strips of sugar can husk.

The day ended with another wonderful dinner by Mike’s wife and the maid.  Simply magic from such a small kitchen.

Dinner at Mike's

The chefs - Anita Tang-Bellamy and the housekeeper

Day 20 – I woke to ghastly pollution.  At first it appeared a lovely misty morning, but that soon turned into choking smog that persisted all week.  That said, it was a great and productive day at the Assembly Center.  The culinary highlight was a fabulous meal at a very upscale restaurant near the factory.  The place was part of a large apartment development with Spanish style architecture, a welcome departure from the typical Chinese apartments.

the mountains are obscured by smog

This is a temple, so I am told. It is a huge sprawling walled compound like a miniature Forbidden City. I hope to visit before I leave. Note the smog.

That's Di Wang Da Sha, the tallest building in Shenzhen through the smog.

A sign for Mission Hills golf course - supposedly a great course, but hard to imagine playing in this pollution.

they literally tear down mountains here

There is an army base across from our industrial park, complete with vintage jet fighter, tank and rocket on display.

A beautiful apartment complex, with a Spanish feel, with many good shops and restaurants.

Notice the planters in the road and the brick streets.

A sublime dish of squash and mushrooms.

Savory meat buns.

Sweet egg custard dumpling - this is hot and delicious.

Sweet pumpkin and taro soup.

Day 21 – Pollution continues and is even worse.  Back early to the Assembly Center to start working on the line.  We have a big rush order of a complex assembly, around 90 parts in the BOM, and an agonizing wiring step that takes around 8-9 minutes.  No way to automate it, it must be done by hand.

First thing is to head off to B&Q to buy some decent tools to cut down on assembly time as much as possible.  For the February order I will get electrical and air tools to speed things up and allow for more people at the wiring operation, but today it is just decent hand tools.  By upgrading the tools and teaching some Drum-Buffer-Rope practices, we complete the order 5 days ahead of schedule.

B&Q is like the European Home Depot.

Because land is so expensive, even a big box has to be multi-storied. These escalators are wide and flat to allow for carts, and they make them a sale point by lining them with bins. We picked out some containers on the way from one floor to the next.

How soon until this trend of patterned appliances and cabinets takes off in the States (the refrigerator is on the left)? My guess is no time soon.

Lunch was at a North West style restaurant.

I am sad this picture did not turn out - these are some of the best preserved vegetables I've ever eaten - vinegared and salted cucumbers and long beans.

Lamb bones - you suck the marrow out with a straw.

The soybeans in the back were particularly good.

One of the Little Sheep restaurants I mentioned previously - something creepy about it.

The Source of Cherry?!

Day 22 – Another day at the Assembly Center.  A good day with more smog.  Ho hum.  The highlight though was dinner with my old friend, my lao pengyou, Sabrina.  She was Mike’s first employee 9 years ago and we have become close friends over the years.  We always go for dumplings when I am in China.  She is a wonderful project manager, a very tough lady who doesn’t take any crap from suppliers.

My dear lao pengyou, Sabrina, who wouldn't hold still for a photo.

Roast pigeon - from lunch actually, but fun nonetheless. You don't eat the heads - they're just for show.

Dumplings with Sabrina.

Wonderful sweet & sour fish with Sabrina.

The fan in the bathroom was installed upside down. You see a lot of this kind of laziness here. I once saw the grill of a DongFeng (East Wind) truck installed upside down.

Day 23 – Another day at the factory, including lunch at the cafeteria.  This time we invited members of the production staff and they played “gross out the foreigner” with the lunch order.  Good natured fun and I am used to it.  I’ve never yet backed down.  Except for the waterbugs a few years ago, but I was already recovering from food poisoning.  Oh and did I mention the pollution *cough*?

Pollution is ghastly - compare with the picture above.

So far so good - a wonderful dish of tofu and pork - the reason most people in the West don't like tofu is because they've never had properly prepared tofu.

The fish was tasty but loaded with bones - what is so hard about boning a fish?

We start to go off the rails. Pig liver soup - with valves!

Now this was just plain vile. Pig's large intestines with sweet peppers. I ate two pieces to satisfy the hosts, but this will not be on the menu again.

ahhh...hmmm

Every cafeteria needs a puppy.

This is a beer poster in our cafeteria - a work dining hall that serves beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Why can we not have this in America?

Our industrial park's cafeteria.

Icky looking sweet pastries - I'll pass.

Basketball court in front of dormitory.

The outdoor pool tables (basketball court to the left, convenience store and cafeteria on right).

Another erosion control method is to pour concrete all over the hillside - really looks nice with the pollution patina.

Chinese construction site in the back corner of our park.

Our building.

Nice landscaping jarringly accented with fake plastic trees and shrubs in unnatural colors. They light up at night for extra class.

A plastic Japanese maple - why?

Pollution turns the leaves gray with soot and dust.

The industrial park gate.

I love the dragon turtles.

Tearing down mountains yields a lot of stone - EVERYTHING is polished stone.

We leave the plant close to 9 PM and the smog has rolled in.

We join Mike at the office and walk home for a late dinner.  This involves Mike’s preferred method of crossing the street – sprinting across 8 lanes of traffic instead of the “long way” using the pedestrian bridge.  Chinese pedestrians have no concept of jay walking.  The only thing more dangerous than the air in China is the traffic.

A late, lite meal at Mike's.

Day 24 – We head out in the morning to pick up a prospective client in Futian at the Marco Polo.  Dinner involves a trip out to Shekou for dinner at Tasca, a fantastic authentic Spanish tapas bar.  Spanish food is the only thing I like better than Asian cuisines.

Futian skyline around Coco Park

Futian skyline around Coco Park - note the cranes raising another skyscraper.

Futian skyline around Coco Park

Futian skyline around Coco Park - the handsome buildings in the foreground house the new McCawley's, a Nepalese restaurant, a Chinese-military-themed nightclub that is hugely popular with the locals. The Brazilian barbecue and Club Viva are around back.

Coco Park

TAPAS!

Paella!

After dinner we walk over to Sea World, an outdoor mall surrounding an old cruise ship.  This was the ship where Deng Xiao Ping signed the papers to create the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which was sort of the real starting gun for the reemergence of China.  They’ve since filled in the harbor, completely surrounding the ship.  The place is now a “Little Foreign Town” catering to expats.  My camera did not work with the lighting, so no pictures.  I am sure you are heartbroken.  We went to the original McCawley’s for a drink and then headed home.

Day 25 – It’s a glorious Saturday.  The pollution is gone and it is deliciously warm but not hot.   Mike’s in the mood for pizza and his wife and daughter want to go shopping.  The car drops us off in the heart of Luohu, in the shadow of the “Empire State Building” of Shenzhen, Di Wang Da Sha.  It is one of the best looking skyscrapers in the world, IMAO.

This photo does not do it justice. The building has twin spires and from this angle, you can only see the one. It is perfectly symetrical, so use you imagination.

Scroll back up for the pollution shot of this building from a distance.  If China adopts a better energy source – perhaps modern nuclear as in France and Japan – this a pretty attractive city.  The clear days that you do get remind you of how awful the pollution really is.

Papa John’s is the choice for today, and like many US chains in China, they’ve gone upscale and adapted to local tastes.  The dining area is an alcove of sorts, shaded with big comfortable chairs.  Kind of like eating pizza on you covered patio at home.  The recipe for the dough was substantially different than in the States, and while it was satisfying, it is no NYPD.  Looking out from our alcove a gleaming new Gucci store dominates.  A Mercedes festooned with wedding decorations pulls in to park.  To the left is a brand new Hyatt and to the right the Huaan Conifer Hotel, a Chinese hotel that is by far the nicest place I’ve ever stayed in Asia.  I spent 3 weeks there once and it is decadent.  Next door to the Papa John’s is the most badass fast food restaurant on the planet.

Papa John's local menu.

Gucci

Just married - the Chinese have embraced many trappings and traditions of Western weddings, including white gowns and bouquets of flowers. It is also common to have two ceremonies, one Western (white color scheme) and one traditional Chinese (red color scheme) in full costume.

The Huaan Hotel - this photo is a pretty good summary of Shenzhen.

The new Hyatt.

Chinese chain of healthy fast food restaurants featuring steamed food - and Bruce Lee. Told you it was badass.

After lunch we go to the Dongmen (“East Gate”) Road shopping area, which is a sprawling warren of narrow streets selling every consumer good under the sun.  It was a mob scene.  And lots of fun to see that many people out having a good time.  We buy some movies and the ladies get squid-on-a-stick (they didn’t ask me if I wanted any, *sniff*) and take it easy instead of going out on the town.

Dongmen shopping street

Day 26 – Another beautiful day.  I go across the border into Hong Kong with a co-worker, just into the New Territories, not the famous city center.  We are going shopping for American style dill pickles (yes, really) for Mike, mainly an excuse to get out of Shenzhen and do something different.  We cross the border at Luohu, and see something across the fence in Hong Kong I have never seen in Shenzhen – a grave yard.

Hong Kong graveyard on the hillside facing Shenzhen. Little mausoleums tucked into the hillside.

Today also saw my first trips on the Hong Kong MRT and the Shenzhen subway system.  So now I have an Octopus card for Hong Kong (which can be used to buy all sorts of things, not just riding the MRT, very cool) and a Shenzhen subway pass.  I rock.

Hong Kong MRT

A small town in the Hong Kong New Territories

First we went to a Chinese “wet market” selling an amazing array of fresh ingredients.  The smells were powerful and it is not for the faint of heart.  I thought it was awesome.

Know your butcher.

Really fresh fish.

Now THAT'S a cutting board!

Live crabs and shrimp and oysters, oh my!

Chinese sausages - these are awesome - especially the blood sausage on the left.

Vegetable vendor.

Tofu vendor.

Dried sea food vendor - that's dried squid - yummy. No, really. It's yummy.

Upstairs they had a food court.  As I mentioned above, these places are LOUD, but I feel right at home.  This dynamic, barely controlled chaos, coupled with incredible food, is what attracted me to Asia in the first place.  We have two 600 ml Skol beers and noodle soup.

Noodle soup with fish balls and crispy fried fish skin. Roasted garlic as the final addition is served in the spoon so it doesn't get soggy.

Hong Kong food court.

Hong Kong food vendor.

After lunch we try a number of Western style grocery stores looking for the pickles.  They are located in malls that are part of the MRT stops.  Very sensible.  Not sure which is the chicken or the egg, but it works well.  The grocery stores are 100 times better than when I was last here, but they are still thinly stocked compared to your average Kroger and are positively claustrophobic.  I can barely walk down the aisles without turning sideways.  After an hour or so of looking, no pickles.  We buy Cadbury’s chocolate for the office instead.  Couple things caught my eye.

Imported beer is big in China - a real sign of wealth and an acknowledgement the superiority of European brands.

You can buy whiskey and fine American wines in the grocery store!

Defeated we cross back into Shenzhen at the new Futian crossing, a far more impressive building than the old Luohu crossing.  Reminds me of an airport.  In this place the Shenzhen River is much wider.

The Shenzhen River, facing east.

The Shenzhen river, facing west.

We take the Shenzhen subway to meet Mike for dinner.  Very clean and efficient.  Instead of a poster in the car showing the map of the lines, they have an electronic display that tracks the progress of the train.  Very cool.  We head to a Japanese restaurant that has the craziest deal I’ve ever seen.  All the sushi and tepanyaki you can eat and all you can drink – juice, soda, tea, beer, wine, sake, doesn’t matter – for 150 RMB.  That’s $22.  I have no idea how they stay in business.  By my count, I ate $100 worth of food alone, not even counting the beer.  There is no restrictions – you can order anything off the menu.  The absolute highlight was kobe beef sashimi – raw slices of rice paper thin beef.  I ate at least 3 orders, each 45 RMB.  It was fantastic.  It is now my official favorite thing to eat in the whole world.  Note to the FDA – it is far easier to control the diet and health of a cow than a wild fish swimming in the ocean.  If sushi is legal in the USA, why not raw beef?

This restaurant is in the basement of one of the big malls in the area, CITIC Plaza.  It is a bit of a maze, so we went round and around looking for it, including an elevator with the follow sign:

This Elevator Circulates Time - new this year from Dongguan Elevator Factory #1, the Time Warp Elevator!!

Last item for today’s blog, the Japanese restaurant had cool bronze dragons on the table.  I had seen these before in Korean restaurants, but had forgotten about them.  I need to get some of these for my home in the USA.

Can you guess what this is?

very cool

That’s all for now…

• Daring blogger tests the limits
• Article with some interesting graphs on Chinese military spending
• Article on Google
• Power rationing in China
• Why America and China Will Clash
• Avatar banned in China
• chinaSMACK – this is an awesome news aggregation site sent to me by Dave Learn – a real insight into modern China
• More on Google v China

I had some customer calls this morning and got to the office later than planned.  It was a beautiful day, clear and warm and actually worked up a sweat walking to work.  Mike is very frugal (like a good entrepreneur should be) and he sited PassageMaker and the corporate apartment on purpose.  Liantang, our “town” in the Luohu district, is not upscale at all, and most Western companies are based in tonier districts like Futian and Shekou.  Liantang is very Chinese, we are the only foreigners and there is no Starbucks or other Western shops.  We do have a KFC and a McD’s, but both these brands are so well established in China they are almost like local offerings now.  KFC especially has a very different menu than in the States, tailored to the local market.  When Mike was researching our new home a few years ago, he chose this area because he could buy a house across the street from the office.  Also we are an important tenant for the landlord, so we can control the HVAC.  In many of the high rise office towers, the landlord controls the thermostat.  And rents are also much lower in Liantang.

My daily walk takes me right beside the HK border fence. There was a photo shoot going on, a local musician being photographed looking cooly oppressed and morose sitting with his guitar next to the razor wire. The more things change...

In order to get to work, you have to cross a foot bridge over the main highway.  Chinese steps are instructive.

The ramp in the middle is for strollers, carts, luggage and the very occasional wheelchair. The angle is horrendous - lawyers in the States would have a field day - but it is better than nothing and it is crudely effective.

For breakfast I went to a vendor around the corner selling a type of flatbread.  The size of a large pizza but wafer thin, it is fluffy and crispy at the same time.  I has green onions cooked into it and is coated with sesame seeds.  A real taste delight.  I bought half a pizza, cut up into bite-sized pieces and shared with the office.  All for 4 RMB = $0.60.

Flatbread for breakfast

It was a busy day in the office.  We had customers visiting from France in the morning and USA in the afternoon.  Late afternoon, my friend from Taiwan stopped by for a meeting to learn more about PassageMaker.  We gave her the run down on all the companies – PassageMaker, SafePassage, QTP Bag & Case, and China Quality Focus – and their services – Sourcing Feasibility Studies, Vendor Coordination, Assembly-Inspection-Packaging, China Sourcing Office, our Medical Assembly Center with Clean Room and Sterile Packaging, Logistics, VAT Rebate Processing, Simple Factory Audits, on-site Quality Inspections, Market Feasibility Studies, Factory Formation, and our Endorsed Service Provider network.  She has USA friends and clients contacting her to help source in China and she wants to introduce them to us.  I am confident we will find a good way to work together.  Only one dish of note today at lunch, the variation on my favorite shrimp skewer dish, this time without the chiles and salt baked, to give them an intense somewhat smokey flavor.

Salt baked shrimp skewers - I should add that is sweet & sour pork in the background. I don't particularly care for it, but it is one of the very few dishes that tastes the same in USA as it does in PRC.

I head out a bit earlier than normal to join her for dinner.  It is not uncommon for folks at PassageMaker to work until 8 or 9 PM, so I felt a little bad leaving at 5:30 PM.  My friend is in the mood for Japanese, so we head to Coco Park, a big mall and surrounding shopping area in Futian.  Our driver heads off and we are mired in a few minutes time in rush hour traffic.  Liantang is on the east end of Shenzhen, almost to Yantian, the most eastern district of Shenzhen and the location of the port.  Shenzhen was the first Special Economic Zone set up by Deng Xiao Ping when China decided to open to the West.  30 years ago it was a farming and fishing village that just happened to abut British Hong Kong.  Today it is a sprawling city of around 12 million people.  From Shekou and Baoan in the west to Yantian in the east, even in good traffic at highway speeds it can take an hour or more end to end.  The original Luohu district is crammed right up on the border and it is obvious that the city planners years ago had no idea what was to come.  The highway in Liantang running to the port that I’ve posted in the past, was built because this area was almost a suburb.  In central Luohu, the highways take crazy S curves weaving in and out of skyscrapers, and in some areas are reduced to two or even one lane.  This is the polar opposite of the planned asphalt and concrete expanses of Pudong in Shanghai.  Thus the trip to Coco Park takes around 45 minutes.

Coco Park is across the street from the new McCawley’s we visited the other night, and is a big beautiful mall.  Lots of stone and neon and every major Western brand represented.  In contrast to some of the malls in China, I actually saw people buying, not just looking.  In we go to a Japanese restaurant, which if you take the bad blood between the two nations seriously, should be deserted.  Instead we have to wait 25 minutes for a table the size of a matchbook, crammed between a large party of Hong Kongers and a couple on a date.  This lao wai barely draws a second glance, except when I take a picture of the food.  My friend tells them I am a food critic, which I guess is accurate.

We start the meal with raw beef tongue sliced paper thin.  We initially opt to cook it ourselves on a portable butane burner, but after nearly giving ourselves 3rd degree burns (the cast iron cooking plate doesn’t exactly fit the burner and keeps sliding around), we send it away for them to cook.

Beef tongue - looks lovely

Japanese fried chicken and the cooked beef tongue. Japanese food is heavy on sweetened mayonnaise, which is every bit as nasty as it sounds. The dollop of the stuff meant as a dipping sauce for the chicken went untouched by both of us. The chicken was quite good, boneless and not too oily. It actually tasted great with lemon juice, an innovation this Southern boy raised on Sylvia's fried chicken will try when I get home.

Beef tongue is a bit more unctuous than other cuts, despite having not much visible fat, and is quite good.  I am not sure I would be able to tell the difference if I was not told though.  I remember that in his book Undaunted Courage, Steven Ambrose reported that Lewis only ate the tongue and the fat of the buffalo they killed.  Now I understand.

Japanese potato omelet with bonito shavings - not good

Japanese lamb chops - pretty hard to mess up lamb

Japanese salad, with okra and daikon radish, very tasty

Japanese fried tofu with bonito shavings - pheh

We rounded out the meal with some sashimi, which everyone has seen so I didn’t bother with photos.  My friend is into dessert, so we had ice cream and cheesecake, neither of which were anything special.  The highlight for me was the Suntory beer, which I hadn’t had since my last trip to Japan nearly 12 years ago.  Suntory is an brand rarely exported (I’ve never seen it in the USA, even in major cities) and it is a good basic lager.  Just the thing for the food.

Conversation over dinner gets philosophical.  She and I have known each other a long time through a string of career and life changes.  She’s met my family and I’ve spoken to her significant other on the phone a number of times, though we’ve never met.  She and I may not talk for a year, but whenever we do, the conversation picks up just where it left off like no time had passed.  She looks great, hasn’t aged a bit.  It has been 5 years since we’ve actually seen each other.  It felt like last week.  OK, so it WAS last week at the Italian restaurant, but you get my meaning.

Life is nothing but a string of anecdotes, with book learning thrown in for filler.  You never really know anything but what you see with you own eyes, smell with your own nose, etc.  When Mike asked me to write this blog, it was to boost our search engine results.  I immediately realized I couldn’t do it if every post was a string of key words.  It had to be about life.  It really should be called “Whit’s tiny slice of Shenzhen, Hong Kong, a couple places in Dongguan and Guangzhou, a few trips to Shanghai and Beijing, Singapore from 15 years ago, Taiwan from 12 years ago Business Blog”.  I know more about China than most people, but as our rep in Brazil, Andrea Martins, who lived in China for 25 years once told me, “If you go to China for a week, you can write a book.  If you go for a year, you can write an article.  If you live there for 25 years, you have nothing to say.”

A professor of mine once introduced me to an audience at a speaking engagement as one of the happiest people he knows.  I don’t know if that is the truth, but I AM happy.  Not because I don’t have anything to be sad about, but because it doesn’t do any good to fret and worry.  I have a beautiful wife and a wonderful family, I love to meet people and make new friends.  I love what I do, because I essentially made my own path (with lots of help from everyone in my life, including The Man upstairs).  Some years ago, I made a silent promise to myself to “live a life less ordinary”.  So far, I think I’ve succeeded.

When I am at home I am happy and content.  I love Salem, VA and the USA.  I love my family and friends.  It is a beautiful small town, safe and pleasant.  Do I miss China when I am at home?  Of course.

When I am in China I am likewise happy and content.  I cannot say I love China, so much as I am fascinated by it.  Every day is a new experience.  Buying a loaf of bread or a carton of milk is an adventure.  Do I miss my home when I am in China?  Of course.  I miss my family terribly.

But there is work to do and money to make.  You put it out of your mind.  Absence really DOES make the heart grow fonder.  I know when I see my family in 3 weeks, it will be a wonderful homecoming.