Sunday, December 18, 2011

Tracy and I went back to the airport for the flight home. On the way, we saw what looked like a military exercise in an airfield we passed. We scrambled to get the camera out, and our driver was kind enough to slow down to allow us to get off a few shots. This made me grateful and nervous all at the same time, since we were on the freeway, and people were whizzing by us and honking at us a lot. But we made it anyway, because the drivers over here are used to everyone else on the road being crazy!

Well, that's it for now. We'll update this again when we get back over here in January. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Spent the day sightseeing. Saw the place where the first Communist Party meetings took place in the 1920s (Mao Zedong was at those meetings!), toured a museum showing the history of Shanghai, and went up in the Pearl Tower, a TV Tower downtown with distinctive architecture that lights up at night. The cool thing about this tower is that, in addition to getting a 360 degree view of the city, it has a glass floor all the way around that you can stand on. It makes you feel like you're 300 feet in the air standing on nothing. I'm not bad at vertigo, but I'll admit it freaked me out a bit--I didn't stay out there very long. We saw one kid who was desperately trying to break away from Mom so he could go out there. He finally succeeded in breaking away, ran a few feet away, and then tried to force himself out onto the glass. It was cute to watch him try once, twice, three times before he finally succeeded in forcing himself two feet onto the glass . . . and right back to being wrapped around his Mom's leg (who had moved out onto the glass herself by this time). We all need our Moms from time to time!

Friday, December 16, 2011

Morning

I went to work, and spent the morning traveling from SW corner of Shanghai to the North central part of the city to see a supplier. The supplier is starting to make parts for our trucks in the states, and we wanted to see their facilities and if they were set up properly. Let’s just say that Chinese suppliers are not set up quite the same way as American suppliers, and leave it at that. BTW, the sixth picture is too far away, but I’m trying to show that they have a stop light that only lets you turn right from the far left lane, and yes, the right lane can also turn right. Weird. They also have a feature with their traffic lights that I think we should adopt—they count down how many seconds until the light changes from either red or green. Very cool!

Tracy got a personalized tour from the local tour guide. She went to a market with many wares—mostly knockoffs—and picked up an item or two. Then she went to the China History Museum, which has artifacts dating back to 10,000 BC. She really enjoyed that, as you might have guessed!

Afternoon

After checking email for an hour or so (first time all week!), we spent the afternoon in meetings. We then went to dinner at an Italian place, since the Thai place was already booked.

Tracy, on the other hand, spent part of the afternoon getting another spa treatment, where the massage was really excellent, including massaging her hair somehow (I don’t get it, but she says it was great). She joined us for dinner, and after fighting rush hour traffic for over an hour, we got to our destination which was normally a fifteen minute drive. Our restaurant was in the old French district of town, one of the few places they haven’t torn down the old buildings to make way for the new, and it’s a wonderful part of town. The dinner was again excellent, and we walked for a few minutes afterward to take in the scenery and the Christmas decorations. The photo is of some dancers in the square entertaining a lot of the onlookers. The Communists know how to party!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Morning

We flew to Shanghai—first class—as you can see in the photo. Someone was really enjoying herself! Apparently, it’s so cheap to fly in country, that everyone flies first class when flying for business. There are so many different flights between the two cities that this airline has a flight leaving every hour, and they are pretty full. As you can imagine, it was a great flight.  We went to our hotel, the Longemont, where I dropped Tracy off and left for lunch with the Shanghai team. While at lunch, I went into the bathroom, and saw a sign, shown in the next picture. I thought it was pretty funny, but I’ll let you guess why (tee hee!).

Afternoon

Tracy had a down day—she spent the afternoon in the room chillin’. She spent the afternoon working on Canon’s Christmas stocking, and also walked across the street by herself for lunch (no small feat here!). I had lunch with the Shanghai team, and was introduced to the idea that the food here in Shanghai is sweeter than the food in Beijing, but similar in most other respects. There was one sushi dish that had a sauce with it that brought tears to Daryl’s (my boss) and my eyes—it was a lot like wasabi! After, I got briefings on what the Shanghai team is doing, and we wrapped up the day with dinner on the 36th floor of the Shangri-la hotel, which is downtown, and overlooks the bend in the river, where you can see the old part of town, but also all the high rises behind. Shanghai is a town of lights at night. All the buildings have amazing lights all over them that are constantly moving and changing.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Morning

I again went to work, and had more briefings on office issues. Tracy, on the other hand, went shopping with our “CEO.” This is a bit weird for me, since in the states, I would never ask one of the people that report to me to take my wife out shopping, or house hunting, for the day. But it appears that it’s perfectly normal and perfectly acceptable here, so I’ll just need to get used to it. They went to the Pearl Mall, with lots of jewelry available. You can have a necklace custom made however you want it. They also have jade and clothing, etc. The sales people are really aggressive—one of them said to Tracy, “Lady, lady, you want Coach purse?” To which Tracy replied, with a smile, “No, thank you. I’ve got one, and it’s real.” Fakes are very, very common here. They went to lunch at Annies, which is supposed to be American food, but it’s the Chinese idea of American, so they miss the mark on most things.

Afternoon

I had a business meeting across town with a prospective partner, so we stopped at the Grand Hyatt hotel to have lunch. The lunch buffet was again superb, as the Chinese want to make sure that they show they have more than you can eat, a leftover mentality from their days of famine in the early part of the cultural revolution. We went to our meeting, which was pretty formal, with everyone seated according to rank, them on one side of the room, and us on the other. We talked about a few more details for the partnership, but nothing substantial. Then, we drove back to the Grand Hyatt hotel for another meeting, and then to dinner at “Made in China,” another duck place. Great food once again, and plenty. I’m so stuffed! Meanwhile, Tracy went with Angela, our CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer), to look at a place that the people we’re replacing had lived, but it turned out to be no good. However, the apartment manager was a WSU graduate, FWIW. Small world. Then, Tracy came back to our hotel to meet up with our agents, who had two more places to look at. One was no good, but the other is a strong possibility. It’s larger than most, cheaper than most because it’s a bit farther out, but not on the metro, so no subway riding for me.  But it’s the first place we’ve seen that has a Baskin Robbins in the complex, so we may have a winner!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A few more observations to get us started: 

• The cops here run around with their lights on most of the time, and nobody pays any attention. It’s weird. We asked how people know if they’re serious about pulling someone over, and no one could really answer, because they hadn’t had the experience . . .
• For a people that seem as compliant as the Chinese do, they sure know how to flaunt the, “No Smoking” rules. We see men smoking everywhere they are not supposed to—stairways of buildings, restaurants, restrooms, etc. I said “men” here, because we’ve seen exactly one woman smoking during our entire stay. Hmmm . . . .
• The language is starting to click a bit, but also get jumbled up with Japanese (and even ASL!) in our heads. It’s going to take a bit more before things sort themselves out, and in the meantime, the Chinese people can look forward to a few more, “Gomen nasai(s)” from us until we finally remember to say, “xie xie,” instead.

 Morning

My first morning at work. I went in and met the team I’ll be working with—there are three people in the office, and the office is on the eighth floor of the building you saw in an earlier photo (well, actually, it’s around the corner from that building to the right, but part of the same complex, so you know what it looks like). Our office is small, but nice—I’ll send photos later. My office space is walled off by frosted glass, and the rest of the team is in cubicles around a central welcome area. It’s a fun group, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know all of them. Meanwhile, while I’m hard at work, Tracy decided to get up and work out, then go to the spa to get her hair done. Trophy. Wife.

Afternoon

We went to lunch with the office team, and everyone really liked Tracy—she’s been a very engaging person with everyone we meet, and the team called her a “supermodel.” (As a side note, the Chinese people will say whatever is on their mind—they called my boss, who was with us at the lunch, “fat,” to his face! He’s not, BTW). But the lunch was an amazing buffet of food—everything you could want, and I was able to get my first ice cream! (On a related note, I hear Cold Stone is all over the place, and we’ve seen a few Baskin Robbins already!). After lunch, we left the work team and went with our agents to look at two more places. Neither were good for us, and left us with the one we’d seen yesterday as our only option for now. We told the agents that I would be at work all day Wednesday, but Tracy was available if, and only if, they found something else (we could tell they were starting to run low). We wrapped up the day with dinner at Dadong Duck, a Peking duck restaurant. We’d never had duck before, but it was pretty good. The picture shows Tracy and Angela, our office manager, enjoying some of the appetizers they brought us. You get to decide for yourself what they’re sucking down!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Morning

We went to the medical center across town. It took us an hour to get there—the traffic is really tough. Once there, we had our medical check for about an hour, as part of the requirements for our work/resident visas. It was a typical physical, with blood, x-rays, and the usual poking and prodding. Oh, and an ECG. But it went pretty fast, and after the hour ride back to the hotel, we let our driver go for the day, and walked down the street to the shopping center around the corner to grab some lunch. We ended up at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and took a chance by pointing at a few pictures. The fried rice and egg drop soup (with corn!) was good, but Tracy didn’t like the beef and potatoes dish I ordered, because it was too spicy. Ah, live and learn, I guess. On our way back, we stopped in at a local bakery, because Tracy’s gotta have her bread. We selected a few pastries, as you can see in the photo.

Afternoon

More apartment hunting. We went and revisited a couple of apartments that we visited yesterday—the ones (that’s just for you, Jas!) we liked best—and then one new one. We discarded the first of the three today because the apartments are not being kept up that well, and the layout is poor. Also, the furniture is bare minimum (all the apartments here seem to come furnished—we can bring our own stuff, but we have to figure out what to do with the apartment owner’s furniture until we move out). We still have the second apartment on the list, because the owner actually lived in the apartment for several years, and has made some fairly nice upgrades to the fixtures and furniture. (Most apartment owners own only for the investment, so to keep their costs down, they only spend what they have to). But the layout is a bit funny, and it’s north facing, so not as much sun, and it’s a ten minute taxi ride to work—not bad, but not on the subway line, either. Finally, the new one is right across the street from the American Embassy, and about a five minute walk from my work. The apartments are the largest we’ve seen, and the closest to the western standard. But the big problem, and the reason we’ve crossed it off the list, is because the heat is insufficient in the building. The apartments are overlarge for the heating system, and there’s no backup heat. The backup heat issue is a big deal, because the government only allows the primary heat to run from November 15 to March 15. If it gets cold early, or stays cold late, then you have to have some sort of backup heat. In addition, this had marble floors, which were flat out gorgeous, and exude nothing but cold. Good in summer, terrible in winter. <sigh>

So, we floated the idea to our agents, about paying a bit more out of pocket to get a bit more apartment. They said that we’d end up with what they call a “service” apartment, meaning that the rent is a bit more, but the apartment complex is better maintained, and the amenities are first rate. Even though we sprung the idea on them late in the day, they took us to one about an eight minute walk away from work with about a half hour notice. Even though the building was older (2003, I think), there was a noticeable difference right away. The elevators weren’t all scratched up. The lobby was more betterly maintained. The gym was amazing, and the pool was okay, as well. Sauna, spa, restaurants, coffee house, maid service twice a week . . . well, you get the idea. I’m not excited about the extra $1,000 a month, but it was very nice.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Morning

Our driver met us out front at 9:00 AM. I was ready for them with the map to the church (the Jin Tai building) on my laptop, and it seemed to work okay (the driver spoke no English). We knew we were at the right place when we found an unusually large flock of Americans moving into the building. We arrived and found out that they were having a special district conference that day, broadcast throughout the entire country. Elder Perkins and Elder Wan were in attendance from the Seventy, and after a first hour of a normal sacrament meeting, the last two hours were called off in favor of a one-hour, district-led meeting. In it, they announce that another new district was being formed, only three and a half years after the last one, because the growth of expats has been so large. Beijing, once the district headquarters for all of China, is now its own district, and Shanghai and China at large are the others. Pretty good timing on our part to be part of this historic day!

Afternoon

We drove back to the hotel, said goodbye to our driver for the day, and grabbed a quick bite at the Italian restaurant downstairs. We were in a hurry, because we needed to change and get back downstairs in 35 minutes to meet our housing agents. The second photo of the day is Tracy’s meal—they did a pretty good job with the pizza, and with my lasagna, but it was pretty expensive. Our agents (Ricky Xu and Jason Du—Jason is more friendly and laid back, but Ricky is a salesman through and through. Both are very good at speaking English, but Ricky sounds exactly like the Geico gecko to me, because he’s spent time in London) took us to see six different apartment areas, with a couple of apartments in each. The apartments are roughly the size of our upstairs, with stark white walls and fairly good views. None are older than 2005, and all have different amenities (gym, pool, restaurants, etc.). Most had great views. The distinguishing factors, we think, will be proximity to work, subway availability, shopping nearby, and parks nearby. But after looking at more than a dozen apartments, and being tired because of the end of the day, we called it quits with the agents, who dropped us back at our hotel.

Our final event for the day was to head over to the branch president’s home. His wife had invited us over when at church, so we could see what their building, the Embassy House, looked like. Our taxi ride over was a bit of an adventure, since he also spoke no English, and our directions are not the greatest. But the ride was only three dollars to get there, and two to get back. Not bad! Their place is on the high end of the scale—very nice. He works for Boeing as a senior pilot, and used to be the branch president of the Gig Harbor YSA branch before coming over here three years ago (Rici Johnson is his name). They’re very nice people, like all the people we met at church, and we’re guessing that we will develop some great relationships, just like we did on Okinawa.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Sorry it's taken so long to write, but we've been super busy, as you can see from the note below. As a result, its pretty long, but hopefully interesting.)

Well, if this is what weekends are like here in Beijing, we’re gonna be exhausted all the time!

A couple of general observations:

• I’m amazed at the number of Christmas decorations here—they’re everywhere, and most stores/hotels play Christmas music, as well. Surprising, but true.
• I’m also amazed at how few accidents we’ve seen. For all the crazy driving, there are very few accidents, and none involving scooters or bicycles (fortunately).
• Cab rides are dirt cheap—we paid three dollars for a cab ride last night to go about fifteen minutes, and that included the driver getting lost. It was only two dollars to get back home for the ten minute ride.
• They use a 24-hour clock (think military time), which I think is awesome, but Tracy is not so happy about. I don’t know how she’s had a military ID her entire life without learning military time. She mumbles something about, “Communism” every time she has to figure it out.

Morning

We started our weekend, as you already know, by heading up to the Great Wall. Well, actually, we started our weekend at 3:00 AM, since our time clocks haven’t yet caught up with us. Anyway, Daryl (my boss) took us up to his favorite section of the wall, which is about an hour and a half away. On the ride, our tour guide for the day, told us many things about Beijing, Chinese culture and language, and points of interest along the way. We had a van (a Buick SUV—Buicks are common over here, along with Audi, MB, BMW, Hyundai, and a few Toyotas sprinkled in) and driver for the day, so the six of us arrived at the parking lot about 10:30 in the morning. The sun was blazing, but it was still below freezing, though Judy (our tour guide) told us that it was fairly warm (yikes!). As we started climbing the short distance from the parking lot to the cable cars that would take us to the wall, the street was lined with many vendors, most of whom were not shy about approaching us with their wares. The two most interesting things I saw that they had were those Chinese fur hats, and some jade that looked interesting. They also had t-shirts that said, “I climbed the Great Wall,” of course. We arrived at the base of the cable cars, paid our 40 RMB fee (about $6.00), and then jumped on board. Think of a gondola/ski lift type setup. When we got to the top, we were at the Great Wall.

It’s a pretty amazing site to behold. As far as the eye can see, it stretches across the top of the mountains in both directions. The number of stones in any one section make it seem like it would have taken years to build, and each section is only about 100 – 500 yards long. We walked along several sections, checking out the towers and lookout points along the way. A wonderful site to behold!

Now I should pause here for a moment, because I’m sure you’re wondering, “Hey, where are the pictures to back this up?” Well, we remembered to bring our camera, and the cord to charge the battery, but not the cord to download the pics to the computer. And, because we had the camera with us, we didn’t take any phone pics. But now that we know, we’ll do both, so you can see some of the stuff we’re doing. As an aside, the photo below is a Beijing morning from our hotel—the haze you see is the smog. We were told it’s not that bad right now. Can’t wait.

But back to the story. The most fun part was coming back down. The have a sled that you can ride to get back down—it’s almost like a luge situation, where you sit in a toboggan with a lever in the middle, and ride down a smooth metal track. The lever allows you to speed up or slow down. So, naturally, we caught up all too quickly to the folks in front of us, and ended up going slowly the rest of the way. But it was still a blast—we’ve luged down the Great Wall!

After wading back through the merchants, we drove about a half mile away to a restaurant run by an American for lunch. We both complained (politely, of course) to Daryl that we didn’t come all the way to China for American food, but he correctly pointed out that we’d be a while getting back into town, and this was a great place in the meantime so we didn’t get too hungry. (And, he more than made up for it for dinner, but more on that later.) The lunch was pretty good, and we had a comfortable ride back into town.

Afternoon

We found ourselves right in the very center of town—Tiananmen Square. It holds half a million people, and has large buildings on all four sides, including Chairman Mao’s tomb, a large museum, the parliament building, and the Forbidden City, where the emperor lived back in the day. There were thousands(!) of people in the square doing the touristy thing, most of them locals. Our tour guide told us that it was lighter than normal volumes of people, since it was winter. I can’t imagine what the summer would be like!

We then headed across the street to the Forbidden City, using an underground walkway. On the other side of the street as you walk through the gate to the Forbidden City grounds, are all the bleachers where all the Communist dignitaries sit for the parades. Back in the day, to display their might, the Communist would have these large parades where they would show off huge numbers of soldiers marching in unison, along with tanks and missiles. It was an impressive sight, but I’m glad they don’t do it anymore!
The Forbidden City itself looks just like it did in the movie, “The Last Emperor.” They’ve restored much, but not all, of it, and you can see where the emperor, his wife, and his concubines all lived. Very large, covering over 180 acres, the grounds truly are a city unto itself. The family seemed to have everything, and it took a cast of thousands to support them. Much of the detail, including the marble carvings of dragons, and the painting near the rooflines of the buildings, are very impressive. After about an hour and a half there, we decided to head back to the hotel for a short break before dinner.

For dinner, we went to a dumpling house. The basic idea is that you pick out the type of dumplings you want, then they bring them to you, hot and steamy. Then, you eat until you’re stuffed. And stuffed you will be, because they are really good! We had pork, shrimp, and vegetable dumplings, with a side of fried rice. We also had this weird mushroom dish, and they were okay, but the dumplings and the fried rice were absolutely fabulous! We couldn’t put our chopsticks down for a second—the food was just too good!

How Did We Get Here---Tracy

“Whaddya mean, you wanna move to Beijing, China—are you crazy?”

I’m sure you can guess my attitude as I initially reacted to my husband’s question, but a little background is probably in order for you to get a good feel of the depth of my emotions just then.

Our kids have all left the nest, I recently graduated from the University of Washington and just started my dream job in archaeology, I have my husband all to myself, and now have grandbaby times two, one 18 months old, the other four weeks old, and we live in beautiful Victor! Life doesn’t get any better!

And then, one nice fall Friday, there I was, minding my own business, cleaning my Archaeology field gear and getting ready for the next dig site, when my husband comes home and asks, “How would you feel about moving to China for three years?” I am hit with so many images at once I actually had a stupor of thought (a first for me!). Then everything started flooding in all at once—leave my grandbabies, sell the house and cars, quit my job, and did I already mention LEAVE MY GRANDBABIES? He also said that there was no pressure—we had until Monday to decide.

Well, after a long weekend of weighing the pros and cons, and much internet research about China’s history and culture, I finally crossed my arms and agreed to go, but only if the kids agreed to come for long visits, and if we can come back for regular home vacations.

 We called all the kids to break the news to them.  They were not as distraught as I had thought they would be, and were actually very supportive about the whole thing. As it turns out the kids and their families plan to come for extended visits.

By Sunday night, I must admit that I, too, was excited about the adventure that we and our family would get to have. 

So, here we are four weeks later, getting the house and cars ready to sell, untangling ourselves from our community commitments, starting our Mandarin lessons and waiting  for our visas.  We have also been in contact with our church in China and real-estate agents that will be guides on getting our lives set up there.  

Life is made up of small steps in one direction or another, and it’s usually only when we look back that we can see the magnitude of the turns and changes that those small steps have made for us.  One of those turns is before my family and me right now and we have chosen the road that leads to China. We will miss everyone here terribly, but are really excited for this wonderful opportunity!