Goodbye China

Few of the many, many things and people I would miss....

my PhD friend and asst. prof who has stunning directions skills
- my Chinese friend is an asst. prof teaching algorithms and does research on P2P systems. Ironically she can not remember directions even to her own house. When we went on trips, sometimes I wonder if she is really chinese! :) Ofcourse she is and gets angry if I questioned that.

the crowd
- not just the crowd, the way people would push you past even if there is space for walking around you!

the efficient subway system
- ahh, I love the subway. Cheap, predictable and so easy to use!

the massage spa Chinese practise sessions
- this should actually go to the top of the list. I am not a big fan of massages. But the 80RMB per hour sessions are great for the amount of invaluable Chinese language practice you get. But thinking about it, I wonder why the conversations always had the boyfriend-girlfriend topic in them! I definitely wont miss the full body massage (ofcourse I tried only twice). I remember clamping down my teeth not to scream because of the pain. Even after many "Qing yi dian" ("Softer please"), the massuers were always too strong for my liking. I lie there wondering why I was putting myself through the pain and wonder if all those massage lovers were basically masochists! :)

the "bu yao" and "mei you" confusions
- did i mean to say 'dont want' and did i actually say 'dont want' or 'dont have'; or is it the other way around??!! this is in addition to the four tones and countless 'ohh its the same character but different meanings' frustrations... ohh, there is another friend of mine (who is also a Chinese teacher) whose answer to questions like "Why is it this way in Chinese language?" was a standard "There is no why!". I think its a polite version of the Western style answer "Because I said so"!!!

the spicy Hunanese cuisine and the lively Xinjiang restaurant
- the amazing lamb ribs of Xinjiang restaurant along with its lively but noisy and really bad singing and dancing! the delicious fish head of Hunanese cuisine (cheekily named the "Mao's Home").

my very professional and strict chinese teacher
- she is one of the best. I was actually scared of her and used to do my homework promptly! ohh, during my final language session, my teacher was advising that I should continue practicing my Chinese after I leave China. I replied, yes, I should take some courses and maybe find a Chinese girlfriend. She got very angry, asking if I wanted a Chinese girlfriend just to practice my Chinese! :) I had to appease her saying that it was just an additional advantage. The main ones being that Chinese girls are beautiful and intelligent and fun. Looks like she never realised that in my 6 months in China I fell in love with all the Chinese girls... (hmm that probably works out to 600 million Chinese girls worldwide! Going to be really tough to narrow down to that special someone! :) )

Still on the 'China To Do' list...
Tibet
Hua shan
Train to XinJiang
Learn to make dumplings (specifically Xialongbao!)
Speak Chinese fluently ( stretch goal, I know! :) )
Find a Chinese girlfriend (hee hee, I know, I know!)

China and I: the love-hate relationship!

All good things should come to an end - so they say. I felt really sad that I had to leave Shanghai and China. But China still had some surprises up its sleeves for me until my last day there. I was kicked out of my house yet again - just 30 hours before I was set to leave China! Yes, dont ask me how! Looks all my life I have been riding on some dumb luck and it suddenly ran out! So I get kicked out of my house the second time in 2 months!
This time the story was lot better and interesting! Seems the Chinese Security Bureau / Police wanted my house immediately to "spy" on someone! Yeah, I know. I am starting to suspect my 6 months in China is actually something like Jim Carrey's "The Truman Show" movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/)!
The manager told me that the apartment has a security deal with the police in case they wanted a house for "spying".... and in my apartment manager's own words ... "especially since a lot of foreigners live here!" Huh, now I am not sure if that meant "lot of foreigners live here so the police wants to spy on them" or "lot of foreigners live here so the police wants to spy in general to provide better security for them"!!! If its the former, something went wrong somewhere obviously. Because I am the foreigner, if you kick me out of the house, who are you going to spy on?!! :)
Anyway, after 2 hours of flat out packing (now after doing this twice, I am confident that I can pack my entire life's worth in the 3 bags and move out in 2 hours max) I moved to a hotel for the remaining 30 hours in China.
Oh, I forgot to mention. I ended up in a police station during this episode, spoke to a Chinese detective trying really hard to see if there is any truth to this story! I was even contemplating if they would throw me in jail if I said I wouldnt move! But all my TV/Movie watching didnt go to waste. My brain dug out all the scenes I have seen over my life. Questions started pouring like if they jail me, will I get that customary one phone call, if I do get it who will I call, if I call someone at work will they be able to get me outon time for me to catch my flight the next day. Or will I just disappear without trace, if I disappear where will I be taken.... ha, I would love to see Tibet or western China... If they send me to one of those places to do manual jail labour, that wouldnt be too bad after all! :) Anyway, reining in my gallopping imaginative horses I kept my mouth shut, got out of the station to go home and do some packing! Hey, this is not too bad, my life's first police station experience and it happened in China! :)
So as you see, even if I cant confidently say that China loves me, I definitely love China! The whole 6 months was one of the best times of my life. So many fun encounters and some really great, sometimes ridiculous experiences!
hmm, I still need to wrap up my China blog posts with one more about stuff and people I would miss...

Hangzhou - the picture story!

Chinese have a saying (my Chinese friend gets angry if I call it a saying... she says its not profound enough, she qualifies it as a tourist saying!)... anyway, the saying goes... "Shang you tian tang, xia you Su Hang"... in Chinese. The translation is, "Above is paradise, below are Suzhou and Hangzhou". Su Hang stands for Suzhou and Hangzhou. Since my first ever trip inside China was to Suzhou, I thought it will be appropriate my final trip (ohh, btw, I leave China in 10 days :( !) should be to the other half of paradise on earth. So I decided to visit Hangzhou this weekend. This place definitely deserves to be called paradise. I will let the pictures tell the story. And its just a 90 min ride by bullet train from Shanghai, you can escape to this paraside just for a day trip, from the hectic lifestyle of Shanghai.
Here is some breath-taking scenery...

We saw some kid feeding the ducks with potato chips and the comment from her mom was something like, "Better she feeds the ducks with chips instead of she finishing off the whole bag!"... Now it doesnt sound so bad feeding the ducks with chips, does it?!

More fall colors and scenery...


Notice the buoys below? Those seem to be the ancient Chinese buoys.. but dont know for a fact.
Beautiful sunset!
Ohh, look at the below picture and can you see a bird hovering over the water??!!

Its actually a kite!! There are some master kite flyers and they have such an amazing control. Not only they have kites that look exactly like a bird (you can only say its artificial since it doesnt ever flap its wings!), they can also make it hover just inches over water, they can make it swoop and dive. Its so mesmerizing watching them!

Ohh, if you remember, my first post from China described how bad I sucked in chopstick skills. Here is a picture to boast how much I have improved in the last 6 months! I am eating using a chopstick on a boat.

huhahahaha! 6 months in China and all I can show for it is my improved chopstick skills! I definitely need to get a life! :)

The stunning Huangshan!

I am trying to squeeze in as much travel as I can before leaving China. As part of that plan was the Huangshan trip. Huangshan is such a stunning place.
My Austrian friend and I took the train to Huangshan. The train was very impressive, very fancy! Chinese are so organzied everywhere, even in train stations. The train stations have waiting rooms and gates like the airports!
Reaching Huangshan, we had to take a mini bus to the town of Tangkou, which is at the foot of the mountain. I used my amazing Mandarin skills to somehow get us to the town - ofcourse thats an exaggeration, because the bus goes only to Tangkou and I didnt understand most of what the conductor said!
Getting off at Tangkou, we were accosted by Mr.Cheng, whose English was amazing with a very strong British accent. And what do you know, he has never been outside China. He has taught himself English - with a British accent! Anyway, he owned a restaurant and provided travel planning services to confused foreigners like us. He tried hard to convince us to change our reserved hotel to the one he was suggesting. But he gave us some good advice on what to do and we followed his advice.
So the first day we just had time to go to some beautiful waterfalls near the mountain.

And it seems 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' was shot in this place. So in a flash of divine martial art inspiration, I was able to practice my hidden kung fu bamboo flying skills! :)
But the interesting part was how dead the town was when we came back around 7pm. This was a typical Chinese tourist town during off-season. Everyone had their dinner at the usual time of 6pm and the town went dead after that except for few foreigners like us wandering around wondering where the hell was everyone!

Then came the next day - the big day. Huangshan is this huge moutain, with multiple peaks, the highest being at 6000 feet. The entrance is at around 1500 feet. So now, as usual, chinese style, you get an option to hike the 4500 feet up or zoom up in a cable car. And they also had a easy eastern steps and a tougher western steps to reach the peak. We being the brave, veteran hikers decided to hike up through the western steps. Again the Chinese are so organized that they have built stairs all the way up. Hah, we think, this should be a breeze of a hike. Just 4500 feet, that too with stairs built into the rock face. Ofcourse, if it were so easy, Huangshan wouldnt be rated as one of the 5 best mountains in China. Though there are stairs, its pretty steep and goes through some precarious sections. We walked through some scary sections where the side dropped straight down 2000 feet. One tumble and you could find yourself tumbling a long, very long way down.
The most humiliating part of the hike was seeing the porters carry some ridiculously heavy load up the steps. They carry supplies to the hotels and shops that are at the top of the mountain. The load should be atleast 200 pounds and these guys carry it up the mountain. It was an eye opener for me. All I do everyday is sit in front of a computer all day and complain that my ergonomic chair is not set to the correct height or the correct inclination! And these guys carry 200 pounds of stuff up the mountain every single day!
Some awesome sights...
with Lulu, a chinese girl we met on the hike... sticking my foot out the ledge to show a sense of the height... some 2000 feet drop!

on a wooden bridge with atleast a 500 foot drop below...

see these steps? it goes straight down to the base below... some 1000 feet of straight down stairs... fancy tripping in these steps?! :)Back to the mountain... so after 8 kms and 4500 feet of huffing and puffing up some beautiful but scary sections of the hike, we reached the peak. As usual, the hike had its share of photo shoots with Chinese people, who were fascinated to see two foreigners. Ohh I forgot to mention the unique sight we two were. My friend is this 6.6 feet tall European and I am this 5.5 feet short Asian. So you could imagine the contrasting sight we presented! :) The peak was so beautiful. It was a sunny but very foggy and breezy day. This meant that in the 30 minutes we were at the peak we witnessed a montage of views. The fog would move in and we couldnt see anything but a snow white blanket surrounding us. Then suddenly the fog bank would move away and we could see the other peaks far away. It was indeed a stunning sight.

By now we were beat, we were so happy to take the cable car back down. We then went to some Ming dynasty ancient village before heading back to the train station.

Biking in Beijing!

Finding myself in Beijing for the third time within a span of 6 weeks, I decided to try something different - not the usual starry eyed touristy stuff. So I ended up renting a bicycle and started riding around Beijing - especially around the Forbidden city area. With this experience, I have come to realize that this is the best way to enjoy a city! Oh, the only problem with the bicycles was that they were all girly looking ones! All that were missing in my girly cycle - a bunch of pink ribbons and flowes in the front basket! :) Still it was awesome!

Riding randomly with no plan in mind, I saw some interesting sights and places. I rode through countless Hutongs. (Hutong is an area that has been preserved over a period of time, where you can see old buildings and normal people living in clustered houses and narrow roads.) I saw interesting sights where people sat around tables playing a chess-scrabble like chinese board game. I even saw a bulldozer that squeezed itself through one of the narrow roads!

Another interesting place I ended up in was a hotel called Courtyard 7. The specialty of this luxury hotel was that it is in a building that is 700 years old. So this building is a traditional Chinese quadrangle building with 3 courtyards. Ofcourse this place caught my attention only because there was a cute chinese maitre-d'! :) She spoke decent English and I got to practice my Hanyu! She gave me a private tour of the place, gave me a primer on Chinese history when I had coffee in their café and definitely brightened my Beijing trip!
After that, I found myself in some random road, which opened itself into a huge vegetable market. The market was probably the size of a football field. Rows and rows of open shops that sold fresh vegetables.

Ohh, and this you need to see. I found myself around the Houhai lake area. I was riding around happily, and I sensed I saw something weird. Couldn’t put my finger on it immediately. So I turned around and started riding back looking at the buildings. Then I realized what was so interesting. There was a very very authentic Chinese building (ofcourse its absurd to say that since I am in the heart of China!). But still this building was the old style chinese building. And the interesting part, which had caught my attention in the first place, was a banner just above the door - glass doors - that said "NFL Evenings"!!! It turned out to be a bar for expats that showed the NFL world series!

The best part of going to Beijing three times is that I have seen all the three popular sections of Great Wall around Beijing - Simatai, Mutianyu and Badaling! I probably have seen more of Great Wall than 98% of Chinese! The famous words of Mao Zedong about Great Wall: "Bú dào Chángchéng fēi hao hàn" loosely translated as "You are not a real man if you haven't climbed the Great Wall"! So my Chinese friend has conferred upon me the title that I am a "tri - hao hàn"… "three times a real man"… hee hee, some achievement that is!!! :)

Scintillating Chinese experiences!

Some interesting experiences .....
- Getting kicked out of my house!
- Having frog legs and dog meat!
- Verbal joust with the taxi driver - in Mandarin and winning it!!

Getting kicked out of my house…
So my company employs a rental agency and this agency finds a house for me to live in. My company pays the rental agency and the agency pays the actual house owner. Simple, right? You wish! The people in this rental agency is one of the most incompetent in this whole world, no strike that, if there is intelligent life form anywhere else in this universe, then I should say they are the worst in this whole universe!
What makes this experience more scary and interesting is that my friend was visiting me when this happened. I convince my friend to visit China telling her that China is so awesome and she should not miss it. To be true to that word, I put her through this experience and helped her become that much wiser! :) So she was home when the house owner barged in demanding that she vacate immediately or he would throw us out. I was at work at that time. Imagine, she was in China for 4 days and there are 4 Chinese people sitting inside the house and threatening to throw her out. I guess she is better than me in handling bad situations like these, she managed well, didn’t panic and called me at work. Luckily one of the guys spoke good English, understood she was new in town, so gave us time till I could come back home and get things sorted out.
The worst part of this story is that the agency kept lying to my friend to get her out of the house before the owner could barge in. One of the agency people calls my friend at home saying there is an electrical emergency and she needs to vacate immediately. My friend wonders whats wrong, everything seems fine. Funny part is right when the owner was sitting inside the house saying the agency didn’t pay any rent, the agency manager calls and says, "Oh, there is a water emergency in your house and we need you to vacate immediately". My friend replies, "What are you talking about? What water emergency? Your colleague just said electrical emergency." The manager tries to cover up, "Ohh, actually the water emergency caused the electrical emergency." My friend gives up and says, The house owner and his 'gundas' are sitting here and telling me the actual truth that you didn’t pay the rent!". And the managers goes, "Ahem….".

Moving on to more happier experiences….

Having frog legs and dog meat…
(hah, this post is out of order with the 'scorpion' post… still will leave this as is…)
On my list of interesting meats to try in China are Frog, Dog and Snake, for now. Of these, 2 are down 1 more to go. But after going to the Donghuamen Food street in Beijing, I think this list is agonizingly inadequate. I will have to add Centipedes, Beetles, StarFish and other exotic foods to this list.
Hearing my interests in these interesting meats, Mrs. Y took us to a nice restaurant in Shanghai and ordered Frog legs for us (us = the Nigerian Mr.J and myself). Hmm, I should say as long as you don’t think you are actually eating frog, its actually quite tasty. A bit crispy. On another occasion, Mr. X ordered dog meat specifically for me. Though I was happy to try it, I should admit dog meat was bit of a disappointment. It tasted like shredded chicken, that’s it. No drama to its taste whatsoever. Looking at my behavior, my colleagues and friends here have decided that I am the only Indian who has no reverence to my culture or religion. But hey, come on, enjoying God's creations is not irreverent!

Verbal joust with the taxi driver…
This happened in Beijing. This taxi driver tried to cheat me with a "sudu vacha" meter! For those who don’t know that phrase used for the Auto(3 wheeled Taxi) meters in India, it just means that the meter in the taxi runs as if it had a shot of caffeine mixed with a shot of Red Bull mixed with a shot of adrenaline! So the taxi meter showed 50 Kuai (Chinese Yuan) instead of the real rate of 20 Kuai! When he asked for 50 Kuai I started my joust using all the words I have learnt in Hanyu(Chinese) till then. I kept on arguing though I perfectly knew some of the sentences didn’t make any sense in that context, or any context for that matter! And since I didn’t know how to say 'Police' in Hanyu, I ended up saying that in English. Somehow he seemed to understand that word and finally gave up after arguing for a while. So there it is… my first verbal joust in Hanyu and winning it, though not convincingly!

The Joys of Exotic Chinese Snacks!

This post definitely doesnt need too many words... Look at the following pictures (at your own dietary risk!)... Silk Worm, Fish sleeve, Scorpion, Starfish... Yummy... ofcourse gulps of Sprite in between every mouth helped!


Silk worm...

Scorpion...
Starfish...


Best moment of the evening... we didnt know how to eat the starfish and we started eating it as is... While eating, we realized a chinese girl and a guy were curiosly looking at us... We turned and smiled and they taking pity at our stupidity, stopped and taught us how to actually eat the starfish... this is how you eat it....


Ohh well... live and learn... 'how not to eat starfish' adds on to the list as one of those many 'Aha' chinese moments!

Chinese lessons and Foot massages!

Ha ha! I cracked the Hanyu (chinese) mid term test! I got 96 out of 100 and my laoshi (teacher) was very impressed! But that’s where my amazing Hanyu skills stop! :) When I try my hand outside it rarely works to my satisfaction! Here are some examples.

My friend and I were in a massage parlor getting a foot massage. The foot massage itself sucked - Huan Huan (the masseur) is way too strong for her size! My foot hurt for the next two days. But still the massage experience was totally worth it because I could practice my Hanyu skills with non english speaking girls and believe me, it’s a fun experience communicating when its one way either side. Back to the example that shows how poor is my Hanyu skills.

So the masseur asks me (or atleast I believe that’s what she asked me) in Chinese: "Do you have a wife?". My brain says I should reply "I don’t have a wife". As usual, I take a minute to repeat her question. Take another minute to understand what she just asked. Take the third minute to identify the translator that I should use to translate the answer to Hanyu! (Remember, I have more than one half-baked translators in my poor over burdened brain now - English, Tamil, Hanyu)! Take the fourth minute to actually translate the words and string them together into a proper Hanyu sentence (atleast what I think to be a proper sentence!) And take the fifth minute to actually say the sentence. Ha, don’t smirk! You don’t know how tough it is to speak a sentence in hanyu even after thinking it through for a while. You think you are going to speak a word in the 3rd tone but your mouth (as ever the one that gets you into trouble saying things that it shouldn’t) speaks the word out in 1st tone! So after 5 minutes of intensive thinking and struggling, what do I end up saying?!!! Yes, something stupid as "Wo bu yao tai tai"!! (If you are wondering, that translates to, "I don’t WANT a wife!"). Remember, right now my brain is thinking that I am going to say, "I don’t have a wife". But after 5 minutes it comes out as "I don’t want a wife!"

"The reaction of the masseur is interesting", thinks one part of my brain. "Why does she look so surprised", queries another part of my brain. Yet another part of my brain is frantically replaying and reviewing the last 5 minutes to see what the hell went wrong! Electric signals fire all over the brain, one part trips over another part to figure out the apparent disconnect between my answer and the reaction of the masseur. "Aha, you stupid idiot", says one small part of my brain that’s showing atleast a semblance of normalcy still! Now every other part of my brain looking dumb as usual, frantically tries to correct the mistake! My mouth goes into overdrive and finally says the correct words, "bu bu yao, mei you!" (Not don’t want, DON’T HAVE!). And finally the masseur understands and stops freaking out at my answer! :)

Hmm… I have to abruptly break off this post, since I started writing this 4 weeks back and now I lost my train of though! :(

A post from the past.... UK...

... the one that started it all!

This whole travel blog idea actually started more than a year back. But with the usual starting troubles I have, it took me this long to start writing! ZhongGuo (China) was a big factor in motivating me to start. And a shuttle ride of 90+ minutes everyday gives me a lot of time to find ways to harass people with my blogging! :)

So here are some notes about my UK trip that I should have written a year back!

The places…
UK was awesome. It’s the perfect example of East meets West. It has the historical charm of the east and the lifestyle of the west. London was great. Thames was bit of a disappointment with little water in it, though I did take the boat ride! Ohh, I never knew till I actually went to the Big Eye that it goes around really slow! Sorry about the spoiler, just wanted to save you some heartache if you plan to go there expecting the usual speed of a Ferris wheel! I was walking along Thames and saw the Big Eye from a distance. I saw it wasn’t moving around fast and started to panic that it was an off day. It took me a while to peer at it closely to realize that it was indeed moving but really slow! But still the view from the Big Eye is worth the ride, though I would have preferred it to be faster!

Ahh, and the London Bridge! You wont believe me. All these years I thought the Tower bridge was called the London bridge(incase you are like me, tower bridge is the elegant one with the towers and a prominent fixture in photos about London! See link below.). I didn’t realize my ignorance even when I was standing under London bridge and reading the name on the bridge! Don’t ask me why! I went to the extent of thinking that something bad happened to the towers and the British have rebuilt the Tower bridge as this current dumb looking bridge without telling me or the world! So I was cursing everyone in the world and myself, for not coming to London before whatever happened to Tower bridge. And guess what, I turn a corner and see the Tower bridge in front of me. Note that previously I was standing on the north bank of Thames under the London bridge. Tower bridge is less than a mile away to the East but I couldn’t see it yet since the Thames bank curves a little bit in between these two bridges. And there it was, the most stupid moment of my life! Hmm, one of the most stupid moments of my life, to be honest!! But to my defense, why would you name the landmark bridge of your city Tower bridge (actual reason is in the link at the end of this post) and why make the namesake bridge look like any usual bridge! Weird, the British!! :)

So two lessons learnt in one evening on my first ever travel trip. Big eye doesn’t go around fast! London bridge and Tower bridge are different. So they are indeed right, Travel makes you wiser . Or as I have started realizing these days, Travel makes you realize how dumb you really are!

The accent…
I thought after watching BBC for so long, British accent shouldn’t be a big deal. Guess what, British English in London is way different from what you hear in BBC. But here is the kicker. Two days later I find myself in Scotland and London accent started to feel very easy compared to Scottish accent. And yes, it doesn’t stop there… Two days later I am in Belfast and Irish accent made Scottish and London accent sound so easy. Infact to me Irish accent sounded like some other language. I think I used "Pardon me" and "Sorry, can you please repeat that?" a zillion times in that one week!

The fun moments…
Someone scared me before my trip that racism is a bit more obvious in northern UK. But based on my experience I didn’t feel it that much. Actually I believe I was the one who scared people when I was there. I would attribute those instances to the way I looked - a scruffy, unshaved, backpack lugging, typical hobo style look!

So I get off the train in Edinburgh at 5am. I get out of the train station with a map in my hand and blood shot eyes from overnight travel. I had the map and the address of my hostel, but I didn’t know where I was standing. So the roads are deserted, its partially dark, the wind is howling… yes, I am trying to build up a horror movie like scene! :) But you get the picture, right? Then I see a woman walking towards me and I decide to ask for direction. I think by now you know what is going to happen. You should have seen the look in her face. I scared the hell out of her, the blood in her face drained and she hurriedly crossed the road and started walking in the other direction as if she had seen a ghost! As if I wouldn’t follow her and harass her if I had wanted to!

Then there was this overnight stay at the ferry terminal to catch a ferry from Scotland to Ireland. Dont ask me why! My amazing planning skills put me in a small, deserted town in Scotland in the middle of the night and nowhere to spend the night but the ferry terminal!! There were these 2 drunk Irish guys and we started talking. As I said earlier, Irish accent was like a different language to me. Still I manage to catch a few words and we ended up discussing sports scores. Only after a while did I realize I was talking about cricket and he was talking about soccer!!

Ohh, and never, repeat, never ever order the local popular beer in London. I made that mistake and ended up getting a warm beer! Though they called it warm it was actually hot!! I have never spent 30 minutes drinking a glass of beer! Ofcourse after 30 minutes of torture I had to wash down the after-taste with a shot of Baileys! Even after more than a year, I still cringe when I think of the taste of warm beer! :) For all the warm beer lovers out there, I salute your quite unique and interesting taste for warm beers!!

The amazing sights…
The giant causeway, the coastal drive north of Belfast, The Royal Mile in Edinburgh and London in general. Ohh I was disappointed at the Highlands of Scotland. Expected something like in Braveheart. But the only interesting sight in the Highlands trip was the Scottish cow. Wow, they look so different from the usual cows you see!

The people…
Travel is especially fun since you get to meet new people! There were these Australian girls in the Belfast hostel, whose name I never quite caught but I do remember they were pretty! The manger in the Edinburgh hostel was a sweet Italian girl, whom I wowed by guessing her nationality from her accent, thanks to my Italian friends at work! Don’t worry, I know what you are thinking! I am getting to the guys!! On the bus ride to Giant Causeway and back in Ireland, I met this Indian guy - tamil speaking Indian guy - who for some weird reason started advising me to get married!! Small, weird world! Small for meeting a tamil speaking Indian guy in the northern Irish coast and definitely weird considering the fact that he started advising me about wedding after knowing me for just over 3 hours!!!

PS: I did some background search on London bridge and Tower bridge online before publishing this post. Now I am even more intrigued why they rebuilt London bridge (one of the oldest bridges in London) into this this bland looking structure!
Links:
London bridge
Tower bridge
You can see that the misconception I had is actually common! Its so satisfying to know that you are not the only dumb person in the classroom!!

Chinese eccentricities!

1. You probably remember in mathematics, negative and negative becomes positive. Have you ever seen that concept in dishes? Here it is… how does a dish with a name that contains the words "Chicken" and "Meat" become a vegetarian dish?!!! (But my Chinese friends here swear it is pure vegetarian!)

2. Who said we are not democratic? We are way more democratic than almost everyone of the countries out there!!! Proof? Here it is… see anything interesting in this picture? Where else can you sell these fridge magnets?! We don’t care if you are considered evil by the whole world, as long as you are (in)famous and we can make money out of you, we don’t have a problem!

3. Some elevators have floor call buttons outside, not on the inside!
Some of the interesting scenarios this brings about:
- You hit the wrong floor, the elevator comes to pick you up. You get in and realize you hit the wrong button. What do you do? Yes, get off on the wrong floor, call the elevator again using the outside keypad and wait for it again!
- I found that you cant act like a gentleman and impress a girl by jumping to catch the door from closing when you see her walk towards the elevator. Because, once the door starts closing, even if someone calls for an elevator on that same floor, a different elevator is sent. So you holding the door for her is pretty foolish, she still cant take your elevator; which I found the hard, humiliating way! :(
2. Chopstick skills can regress any time, any where, without any warning whatsoever!
3. Soup comes at the end of the meal not at the start!
4. You can have a full lunch for 10RMB but Starbucks still costs 30RMB for a cup of coffee!
5. McD and KFC are ultra famous, so is Buick! Yeah, I have no clue too.
6. Calls from China to US costs 0.37$, but from US to China it is 0.02$!!
7. "ma" in Chinese has 5 different meanings based on the tone you use! So does every other word! You might think you are calling your mom, but you are probably calling your horse if you get the tone wrong! How much more interesting a language can get?!
8. Aptmt comes with a safe box. Two key-locks, one electonic lock, but, here is the kicker, the box weighs only 20 pounds or so and not bolted to anything!

My experiments with Chinese! - "I am a cow"!!

Yes, the "My experiments with…" phrase has been used so many times in so many combinations that it has become a cliché these days. Still, I cant find a better way to capture the essence unless I call it as "My tragedies with Chinese!".

So this is how my conversation (experiment!) with our van driver went today morning! In Chinese because he doesn’t know a single word of English.

Me: Hello, How are you?
Mr. Li: Hello, How are you!
(No problem so far. I am cruising along smooth with my new Chinese skills! Patting myself on the back!)
Me: (Smile)
Mr.Li: How old are you?
Me: (Smile wiped right off, replaced with a dumb look and to cover it up, a stupid grin! I had no clue what he just said) huh?! (In English, I still haven't learnt how to say 'huh' in Chinese!)
Mr. Li: (Tries to help me by saying some numbers) 19, 29, 39….
Me:(Recognize that he is saying some numbers but have no clue what its for!) No.. Yi…(Blabber and mix up English and Chinese now!!!)
Mr.Li: (Laughs and says something, again no clue what it is)

Right then, a colleague walks up to the van. Mr. Li and he discuss and both laugh now! Remember the dumb look and stupid grin I adopted a while back? That’s still planted on my face, except now, it has aggravated to dumber and more stupid!!

The colleague elaborates what actually transpired between me and Mr.Li. Seems Li asked me how old I was and I had responded "I am a cow". (Yes, when I was mixing English and Chinese, I have actually told him that I was a cow!!)

So I had successfully managed to respond "I am a cow" to the question "How old are you?". Never mind that the answer is wrong or a disastrous reply, still I had said something in Chinese that made the sentence meaningful! Ahh, the bliss of seeing the cup half full!!! :)

Ohh, and the conversation continued during the ride back home. This time he asked me a question and also followed it up with some sign language and showed me real life examples. I successfully understood and even replied correctly, though only after referring to my Chinese notebook. I am not going to make an ass out of myself anymore by calling myself as various animals! Yeah, Yeah, ok, but ass is a fine animal!! :)

The wild ride to the Wild Animal Park...

July 4th. All of us got this unbounded patriotism to our residence country and decided to go celebrate the US independence day in an US bar. I can confidently generalize to residence country because of the medley of 7 or 8 people, more than half were non US citizens! Still the allure of beer and fat loaded cheese burger is all it took to convince us that we should celebrate July 4th.
So in the middle of all the drinking and eating, someone got the urge to see some animals in captivity. Reasoning being, if you as foreigners feel unique (translated to, feel like specimens, in a good sense!) in this country, how do the animals feel here?! Hence started the plan to go to a zoo nearby in Shanghai. Most of us being the kind who would jump at any opportunity to explore new places, we decided we will go the next day.
Next day came, everyone started as planned, left for the subway station as planned, and even somehow got waylaid to take an international Gallup survey about what foreigners think of the upcoming Beijing Olympics! Unfortunately we didn’t qualify for the entire poll. I guess my friend got one of the answers for the 3 initial questions wrong. The girl said that the survey was over with just 3 questions. Our guess is we got the question about how long we were in China wrong! My friend said 4 months and that’s it, looks like we were not considered foreign anymore, we are now almost an all knowing native Chinese and didn’t qualify for the poll!!
Hmm, yes, back to the zoo (note I am still calling it Zoo and not the park as in the title, you will see why soon!), still everything was going as per plan. That is, until we got to the subway station and realized we did not know where the zoo was! So, here is the deal… someone yesterday night, thought they had seen a subway stop with the word zoo in it and said they knew where it was! Huh, don’t ask! When you are part intoxicated, anything is a great idea and doable!! So we search the whole subway map, don’t find any zoo or park or farm or sanctuary or petting station or even an animal hospital!
Of the four of us, one knew a little bit of Chinese. Enough of Chinese to clobber our destination from the local zoo to the Wild Animal Park outside the city!!! The outside the city part we didn’t realize and decided to follow the directions given by the subway official. So after 2 subway line rides and a long bus ride we found ourselves at the park, 2 hours after we left our homes. Ohh, the bus part was very interesting. People were standing in a queue to board the bus. The bus terminus official was kind enough to take us to the correct queue(because everything was written in Chinese and there were no route numbers!). So we stood in the queue, the bus came and people started boarding. But the queue stopped as soon as all the seats were taken. We waited a bit, looked around and didn’t understand why people stopped boarding. After few seconds of meditation on the issue at hand, we decided to be the usual stupid-foreigners, jumped over the railings and got into the bus. Suckers! Aahh, but wiser were they who stayed put and waited for the next bus. Little did we know that it was a long ride. To aggravate it, we were stuck in traffic for the next 1 hour. So, we being the suckers now, happily sat on the floor to the amusement of the entire bus, having no clue how long the bus ride was!

Ofcourse, all the adventure was worth it, because the park was awesome. There were giant pandas, scary ostriches, poop kicking rhinoceros, lions, tigers and bears.
Ohh, to make the day of all the Chinese visitors to the park that day, we were the free bonus attraction that day in the park. I think we generated as much interest as the other animals. Especially since we rented big colorful self ride rickshaws and pedaled around the park. Animal parks are a fancy, red rickshaws in an animal park are interesting, four laowai-s in a red rickshaw in an animal park are certifiably ridiculous, interesting and awfully fancy sight!

And to round off the experience, not just me, Mr. J got ripped too, Chinese style. So I paid 5RMB for a bottle of water when we entered the park. Mr. J came along, looked at the rate I paid and walked away. Immediately the lady offered the water to him for 4RMB. Come on, lady, the idiot that paid 5RMB for the water (that’s me, if you are wondering!) is still standing here! But she got to Mr.J, just when we were leaving the park in the evening. She came running to him offering water for 3 RMB now!!! Mr. J was so touched. One, for she remembering him from afternoon, two, for offering him water for 3 RMB now! Again, yes, you guessed right, suckers!!! As soon as he gave her a 10RMB note for one bottle of water, she promptly dumped 3 bottles of water and 1 RMB change and walked away! So he ended up with 3 bottles of water and 9RMB down just because he was so touched that she remembered him!
That sums up our adventurous trip to the park, which was totally worth it! Thanks to Mr. A for using his 3 month Chinese lessons! He was awesome because, he would get into the taxi, talk to the driver in Chinese, listen intently to the long reply from the driver, nod knowingly, mumble a word or two and turn around and say, "I wish I understood what the driver said!!!" :) Still he got us around without getting too lost! :) Ofcourse I should thank Mr. R, our pro trigger happy clicker, for the pics that I have linked here!

PS: The names have been ambiguated (ha, I have coined a new word in English!) to preserve the secret identities of these spies I roll with! :) Nah, its just to avoid any lawsuit. Two of them are Americans, you know! The third is Nigerian and US settled, so you never know, he might sue too!

HuangGouShu waterfall and the 50RMB wife!

This is the second pending part of the Guiyang post. The most impressive part of the Guiyang trip was the HuangGouShu (Yellow fruit tree, though I didn’t see any yellow fruit trees!) waterfalls. But whatever it may be called, the place is worth the 2 hour journey from Guiyang.

In short, the specialty of this waterfall is that you can walk behind the entire width of the waterfall and see the waterfall through the cave windows and cave halls. So you get the unique view of this pretty big waterfall from behind it. The noise and just the feeling that you are standing behind a roaring waterfall is very captivating! It’s a round trip hike following one wall of the valley towards the waterfall, enter a cave that goes behind the stretch of the waterfall, exit the other side and follow the other valley wall outside. So it’s a loop that traces the river and the back of the waterfall and again the river from the other side. Ohh I definitely need to tell you about the idea of a hike - Chinese style! To reach the trail that follows the river, you have to hike down 700 feet or so from the top of the mountain. But na-ah, the Chinese saw the amount of crowd to this place and being their usual efficient self, they figured out how to make this whole experience of hiking down very easy and methodical! They have built one humongous escalator down. Yes, I am not kidding. It’s a long, very long, very, very long escalator down the valley wall! Somewhere around 400-500 step escalator, 5 minutes ride and not a single sweat, you have hiked 700 feet!!!

Of course there is the matter of 50 RMB wife. So they say, the initial investment of getting married is very less compared to the expensive life long servicing cost! :) Believe me, I did not make this up. I heard it from someone recently. And true to that fact was this whole 50 RMB wife episode! So during our "hike" towards the waterfall, there was a small show kind of thing. There were beautiful young Chinese girls dressed in their ethnic wear, singing and dancing. So we stopped to take pictures. Once the song got over, the girls came around and started garlanding guys in random (the garland was basically a colorful tote bag kind of thing). The guys were trying to run away. I was wondering why were they running away and attributed it to shyness. Some of them (I guess the ones who were as ignorant as I was!) got caught and taken to the stage. They were dressed up with the ethnic stuff like capes, crown and extra garland kind of things! Then they were made to posture and hug these girls. Yeah, of course, each got their own beautiful girl to stand beside them!

And when the whole thing was over, I saw them paying some money (I thought it was usual tipping) and I was amused why others around were making fun of those guys on the stage. One of my friends realized that I was completely unaware of what was happening and came around to explain me the story and meaning behind all this. Seems this was the traditional style wedding and those guys were role playing in the wedding and they had to pay 50RMB to do it. Those beautiful girls were now their "wife"! Whoa, coming to think of it, I was standing right there and no one picked me. Damn! This is certified racial discrimination. Who do I sue in China?!

The Medical Check-up "Assembly Line"!

Chinese are definitely very organized! I would say way too organized based on my experience when I went to take the mandatory medical checkup for my work permit.

Have you ever seen an assembly line? If not in person, maybe on TV? The assembly lines like the ones Honda has to build its cars, or the ones computer hardware companies have to assemble their motherboards? If you haven't seen or don't remember, please allow me to paint the picture of an assembly line first. Say, Honda is assembling the car body. Its not like the old days where the car is assembled at a single spot and workers move around it assembling. Now the car-being-assembled moves from one spot to another, and as it moves forward it is slowly built up by adding one or two pieces at a time! With this system, remove the people and you can add robots that will do the intensive, manual, repetitive work. Each robot specializes in doing one job and does that job only, forever. I hope your mind has a rough picture of the assembly line now. Infact, its beautiful and mesmerizing to look at an assembly line.

Now all you need to do in the painted picture is to remove the car and imagine me instead of the car. Ofcourse, remove the robots and put in nurses. Yes, I was a patient in the check-up assembly line being 'serviced' (ofcourse, not assembled, that would be weird! Wouldn't it be?!) by a bunch of nurses.

So for the medical check, you go into the clinic, fill out a form and register. That's it! You get a full assembly line service, nuts and bolts to upholstery and body panel to quality checks and full body wash with wax and tire dressing. Oops! Sorry, I fell back to the car analogy. You definitely don't get a full body wash with wax and tire dressing, you almost get an equivalent of everything else I mentioned for the car!!! :)

There is a long hallway and either side are rooms labeled ominously as Ultrasound, X-Ray, Blood sample, Gynecology, etc!! You are guided by two cute female staff onto the chairs that are placed along the walls of entire stretch of the hallway. Then the 'servicing' and jigsaw puzzle starts! Oh yeah, I will explain the jigsaw puzzle part of this assembly line in a short while! You kickoff with blood sample. Two nurses sit behind a counter. You get to sit in front of the chosen one and thrust out your hand on the counter. You get a very efficient and awfully quick wipe down of your arm with alcohol and in goes the syringe, all this in a blink of an eye! Even before you can make a face showing you are afraid of syringes, you are staring at the blood draining out of your arm. They definitely use the shock factor to their advantage. Before the shock is over your blood sample is done and you are out on the hallway for the next servicing stop!!!

Now comes the jigsaw puzzle. This is why I said they are efficient!! Once you get out to the hallway you don't blindly go to the next stop. Instead, you are expertly guided by the two cute staff to a chair in front of one of those many stops, whichever is free. So they are constantly working on the puzzle of moving people around between the stops based on what's available. You are even politely suggested to move one chair closer to the door of the next stop when the person in front of you goes in to that room!!! I bet they are experts in queuing algorithms! :)

So there was this French girl in front of me in the registration line. Once we went into the hallway and recognized this awesomely well oiled, efficient servicing assembly line, we couldn't stop laughing. By the second stop once we realized the puzzle part of it, we started to bet which one of us will finish first. Care to guess who finished first? Ofcourse, logically its me!! Why so? Did you read the list of stops we had that I have listed above?! Yes, there was an extra Gynecology section that I didn't have to go!!!!! Woohhooo... India beats France in this Chinese assembly-line-puzzle!!! :)

All in all, I had a very comprehensive medical check, infact, enough checks in those 30 mins that I have not had all these years of my life!!! Wont you now agree that the Chinese are super efficient and good at puzzles too?! :)

Guiyang and the Chinese Charm

Lucky. That’s what I should describe myself as. I land in Shanghai and what do I find myself doing in two weeks? Travelling to one of the less developed areas of China and to a breathtaking waterfall - HuangGouShu. Lucky not just because I caught the morale event at work right on time, but because of the place we visited. I am so tempted to label my very first outside visit in China with the words Chinese Charm and I am giving in to the temptation. I am sure China has more places and charms to wow me in days to come and I am going to go hunting for superlatives. But I sure did experience some chinese charm in this visit.

The trip was amazing and it got better by the minute! We landed in Guiyang Friday afternoon and there was a long, very long team meeting. Yes, I did groan too. But like I said, the trip got better by the minute, so looking back I think the meeting was a good starting point and I am happy we got it out of the way first! Ohh, I forgot about the lunch before the meeting. The charm started right there as soon we landed and went to get our lunch. Yes, culture or location or people don’t matter. Its always food first and true to that universal fact , we went for the food first! We went to this local minority owned restaurant. They had their traditional welcoming act for us. They were dressed up in their colorful ethnic wear, sang (though, I didn’t understand what were they singing, they might have as well been cursing us melodiously!) and gave us rice wine. As usual, being the genius I am, I didn’t have a clue it was wine. Assuming it was traditional tea, I gulped it down and it sure did hit me! It was definitely a wine falling on the stronger side of the spectrum!

So, with meeting and some skillful chair dozing out of the way, we started for an early - no, I should say very early - dinner. Sure, I don’t blame your incredulity. I thought it was interesting too. We had only a four or five hour gap between lunch and dinner, with only a meeting in between, to show where all our energy from lunch went. But you have to realize the chinese style of eating is sometimes called grazing. You eat little and often. Ha, but you wont believe the word grazing when you see the pictures of our dining table. But remember that each table serves atleast eight people! After dinner, we decided to walk back to the hotel. This is when the chinese charm started hitting us fully head-on. Guiyang is developed for sure. The infrastructure is pretty good compared to a lot of Indian cities and there are enough skyscrapers and shopping malls. But the people still retain the eastern, old style charm. So the city is a clash of times. Modern buildings, decent new age infrastructure compete with the charm of crowded road-side, open-air, flavor-filled (a little bit of road pollution added for a good measure) food shops. Looking past the dirty pavements and the clash of times, the local faces that is the most important part of this whole system is what makes the place charming. They sure are more curious than people in Shanghai. They stare at you, because they don’t see as many 'Laowei' (foreigners) here. But all it takes on your part is a smile, not even that, just a hint of a smile or a nod of your head. That turns those stares into a gleeful delight. It makes you happy, forget you are in a foreign place with no knowledge of their language or custom. If at all anything, it only inspires you to learn the local culture, the local language and to go interact with the people more! Ohh, that reminds me to caution you. If you are a person who is conscious of people looking at you curiously, come prepared. You will definitely get a lot of attention here! You will feel special. If you are a 'laowei' looking for a little 'pick-me-up' ego boosting experience, this is the place, I would say!

We ended the day with a chinese foot massage. It was good but it made a impression on me from a more philosophical point of view. We were chatting with the girls (yes, definitely the masseur needs to be a girl, if not, don’t even bother rating it, because the charm of a massage is half dead already!) and that’s what started me thinking. When you have enough to enjoy your life, when you are travelling the world, live in relative luxury you sometimes tend to forget the state of majority of the people in the world. Those girls have come to Guiyang from distant parts of China in search of work. They work and live as masseurs in this massage place. They get boarding, food and a 800RMB per month salary for a 14 hours a day, 6 days a week work schedule. But you have to realize that these girls are one of the well doing ones as per developing-world standards. And when you spend 100RMB for a one hour massage, some of the pleasures of the massage goes down the drain when you hear the tough situation they are in. But believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say those girls are doing relatively well compared to local standards. So don’t worry, indulge yourself and get your massages once in a while. You do surely help them with your business.

The awesome waterfall - HuangGouShu, the 50RMB wife and the Karaoke bar have to come in the next report, in a day or two. I still have this one page virtual barrier to my writings!

Chopstick Betty

Using chopsticks has always been tough for me. Whenever I try, pain and embarrassment overcomes the enthusiasm to use the chopsticks. The embarrassment factor multiplies when you try to use chopsticks in its home country, China! You are not just a dark skinned amusing specimen, you are now a dark skinned chopstick ignorant amusement! So that's the intro to the story of my crash course on how to you a chopstick by "Chopstick Betty"!

Ken - the awesome Sante Fe consultant assigned to take me on the city orientation tour - took me to this amazing Chinese restaurant - Din Tai Fung - near the Yu Garden in Shanghai. They have some out of the world dumplings. Seems they have a branch in LA too, but not sure if the food will be this good there. Ahh, I digress. So the place was very sophisticated, the waiters and waitresses were polite and welcoming. The food was great - dumplings and spinach and Fried rice. The only hiccup in this whole setup was my chopstick wielding skills! But they were considerate and polite enough to bring me a fork and a knife. Cant blame them for not knowing that I am from down south Asia where the only cutlery we use to eat is the plate that holds the food. They don't seem to know that I am from a place where we believe that the human body is self sufficient when it comes to the feeding tools! Again, I digress! And ofcourse, when the restaurant people are considerate, my ego steps in to take stock of the situation and naturally to make it worse. So I bravely go for the chopsticks and see if I can make a fool out of myself. Yeah, I know, that's just rhetorical. I should have known when the beautiful Betty started giggling while pouring out beer into the glasses. Still my ego is lurking around the table and wouldn't let me realize that she is giggling at the way I was handling the chopstick. All I could think was how cute she looked when she was laughing, not knowing it was at my expense! Time passes, one or two dumplings dives on to the table from the chopstick, instead of my mouth. I notice Betty circling around our table shyly and whispering something to her colleagues. I keep fighting with the dumplings and the spinach and even the rice. Yes fighting, because I was not exactly eating them. Part of the food fell on the table, part on my plate and only what was left clinging to the chopstick made it to my mouth! Overall I was proving enough quality amusement to the people around me. Unable to take this anymore, Betty steps in with a very polite, smiling offer to teach me. Though I am pretty sure her mind was thinking (in Chinese, ofcourse!), "Those delicious dumplings should go into the mouth, Einstein, not to the table!". Infact when she stepped in to show me, she did it so swift picking the dumpling , dipping into the soy sauce and placing it on my cup, that for a moment I thought she was actually going to feed me!! Anyway she showed it again, even brought another pair of chopsticks and walked me through the steps. She was genuinely ecstatic that I was able to follow her directions and pick up the dumplings easily. Not that I became an expert, but I felt I had conquered something huge and she was actually beaming with pride.

So that's the story of the beautiful Betty (btw, Betty is not an invented name to keep the girl's identity secret, its her English name!) teaching the ignorant south Asian in the mysterious art of chopstick usage. The simple girl who couldn't bear the sight of a stranger making a mess of the fine delicate art of chopstick usage, the modest girl who spoke only a few English words like Thank you and Please compared to my zero Mandarin vocabulary, the "Chopstick Betty" will always hold a special place in my heart.