Now, FOUR Years in China

With the extinguishing of the Olympic torch less than 12 hours ago, we closed the book on pre-Olympic Beijing.

For those of us not directly involved with the Olympics, we were at least standing on the sidelines and cheering for the hordes of anonymous workers who were tirelessly putting the finishing pieces on the new buildings around the city.  Like watching a marathon, there were decisive winners followed by a slew of those who either dropped out or crawled across the finish line in wretched condition.  For example, the new CCTV building which looks a bit like a acid-trip version of the Arche de La Défense in Paris is still sporting cranes and still encircled by tall construction barriers despite having 100% of it’s skin on.

Buildings which couldn’t get their facades in place got massive, colorful Olympic banners to cover their naked skeletons.  I can’t imagine what it was like for project managers 9 months ago when realizing their pre-Olympic deadline would be impossible. Yet it was thrilling to see the projects that tried and succeeded to hit their deadline like the Sanlitun Village (home of the new Apple store) where they had thousands of workers scurrying around at 3am to put the finishing touches on the shopping center days before the torch was lit.

But it wasn’t just about the physical build-up.  There was definitely an emotional one for all of us here.  I don’t imagine that it’s easy to characterize the vibe to someone who has never lived through an Olympic city’s preparations and ultimate hosting of the Olympics.  It’s a slow heating to a rapid boil which is only perceptible after the flame is doused.

But in a nutshell…it was awesome.

My Chinese SUV has been mechanically sound under the hood but not always great in other parts like the door locks and other secondary amenities. And except for the fact that the car isn’t very comfortable or quiet inside, it’s actually a pretty decent vehicle. It’s definitely more “utility” than “sport”.

Last week, I noticed a small pool of water under my car as I left work. Uncertain whether it was mine or not and the fact that my home is only 5 miles from work, I decided to risk it by driving home. It turned out that the water was indeed, from my car and that automobile engines really DO require some sort of coolant. Two thirds of the way home, the temperature gauge was pegged in the red and there was noticeable change in power. Instead of heading to my house, I took it to my auto club’s shop and shut it down. Steaming smoke was seeping out of a few seals and I was certain that this was going to be a very expensive repair.

The next morning (Sunday morning…yes…you heard me) the shop called me and let me know that my engine wasn’t ruined but it was in need of new hoses, gaskets, fluids along with other maintenance items. Below is my invoice.

I’m not sure what this repair would cost in the US. I recently replaced my front bumper, had it painted and installed for about $90 including parts, labor, paint…everything. In this case, I probably got screwed in some areas but in all, I think this is probably much better than U.S. prices for car repairs.

This week, Beijing Olympic Committee launched the online ticket website for the 2008 Olympics and I impulsively signed up for tickets. It’s interesting.

http://www.tickets.beijing2008.cn

You don’t actually buy the tickets when you check-out of the store. You are creating a list of desired events. The purchase date occurs in June. Based on demand for various events, you are either issued the tickets outright or put into a lottery if the event has a greater demand than supply.

Pricing and ability to reserve more than one ticket is based on the perceived demand. The following is a list of prices for the Opening Ceremony:

¥5000.00 - A
¥3000.00 - B
¥1500.00 - C
¥800.00 - D
¥200.00 - E

The ‘A’ level tickets cost about $650 USD. and they only allow one reservation. If I don’t get the ‘A’, then I’m in the drawing for the ‘B’ etc. I’m actually hoping that I don’t have to pay for ‘A’…it’s a bit steep. The other scary prospect is that this is just one ticket..what about the rest of the family?

I have to go through and do the same for them as well and cross my fingers that they get tickets too. I imagine that there will be a lot of creative trading happening in July.

Along with the opening ceremonies, I reserved tickets to the mens and women’s mountain bike events and the mens track & field final events. If I get all my 1st choices, I’ll be looking at almost $900 USD.

Your identity is verified with your passport. I can envision ticket brokers using their friends and family’s passports overwhelming the system. They do say that 70% have been reserved for China residents. Apparently we’re in that pool…yea.

China does not have (many) personal injury lawsuits nor do they have an expensive healthcare system. But when it comes to snow skiing here, you sort of wish they did. There’s comfort knowing that a greater monetary investment in equipment (and staff training) would be less than a catastrophic lawsuit from an injured skier. It’s like the Ford Pinto where it was cheaper to pay off families of dead victims rather than have a recall to replace a $2 part (or something like that). There just isn’t a high cost of failure here…yet.

Don’t get me wrong…I hate the lawsuit culture that has emerged in the U.S. I also believe in common sense, intelligent judgement, and appreciate the darwinistic consequences of idiocy. But let’s face it…sometimes you have to put trust in those who claim they will keep you safe and intact. Or you could stay at home and watch TV your whole life.

Apologies to everyone who enjoy following this site. I’ve been extremely busy in the past months with a number of things and complicated by the fact that I had to be a single-dad without a car for a while. Here’s the story…

Summer Crunch
My last entry was in late May and from that point, I was sucked into a vortex of extreme busyness. When Lisa and Maddy left on June 17, I kicked it into Red Bull overdrive and pulled 80 hour work weeks with a couple all-nighters to complete some big projects prior to my return to the US on July 4 to work at a tradeshow, meet with US customers, and present justification/outcomes of this whole gig to the VPs. The pressure was overwhelming. I was able get about 1.5 weeks in Atlanta which was nice but I was focused on the meetings which would determine the renewal of my contract here. The meetings went well.

Prior to my arrival, Lisa ruptured a disk and severely herniated another. Within 3 weeks, she was in and out of surgery 2 days before I had to go to to California for meetings and then back to China. We did some shuffling with United Airlines to put Lisa on a flight during the first week in Sept. and moved Maddy’s flight up so she could travel with another family from Beijing.

Single Dad in Beijing
It actually worked fairly well. My mom flew to Atlanta, picked up Maddy and took her to Chicago for a couple days of fun in the city before she rendezvous her friends at O’Hare.

This time is the busiest time of year for a school’s IT department and the hours are long. Throw in a failed mail server and it gets really fun. Thankfully, Maddy was able to go home with some friends after school and I would pick her up at dinner time. I have a newfound appreciation for single parents.

Lisa returned in the first week of Sept and is still in a bit of pain with weakness in the legs. She does her prescribed physical therapy every day and is slowly getting better.

Temporarily Carless
To complicate things, I had a fender-bender on the airport expressway while coming home from dinner with Maddy. It was quite scary but when it was all done, I realized that it’s much easier to have an accident here than in the US. First of all, it’s not a litigious society yet and the post-wreck interaction is more gentlemanly. It also helps that blame is decided by the police for even the slightest accidents.

The key to having a car here is having a membership with a car club similar to AAA but more tailored to foreigners. The minute I bumped into the guy, I called the club and got out and waited. The representatives of the club handled the police, the towing, the paperwork, all insurance issues, interactions with the other driver and even repaired my car. It was quite amazing. It reminded my of the Trunk Monkey commercials where a press of the button makes all your troubles go away.

The downside of the accident was that insurance reimburses the faulty party after they pay for the other person’s car repair and it takes a month to get the money back. In other words, I had to dip into my savings for a big wad of cash that I won’t see for a while. Luckily it doesn’t cost a lot to repair a car. Mine was fixed within 2 weeks and it runs better than it did before and I was very impressed with the quality of the repair. It only took 1 return trip to fix some minor details.

Taxes
As an expat, you have a different set of rules for taxes…some good, others not. You qualify for an automatic extension until June 15 and can have a free extension until October 15. But note that you have to qualify as an expat by various tests of how long you have been here etc and being here half a year doesn’t really work. If you arrive in the summer, don’t count on the full expat-tax benefits and make sure you file by April 15. I had an extension until Oct from another tax person and it worked out fine but my new accountant put the fear of G*d in me that if I owed something, I wouldn’t be so lucky. Lesson learned. I could write an entire document on taxes and probably should.

Overall
Life here is fine…even pretty good. It’s starting to feel more like a home as I make repeat trips down the same roads and interact with the locals more. That’s one reason it’s so hard to blog…nothing is much different than living the suburbs of the US. The differences don’t seem so big anymore. Lisa, on the other hand, is still having a hard time with her perceptions of China and letting the little things bother her. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that she finds her groove, but until then, I think she’s counting down the days just like the other “tai tais” who she initially thought were so pathetic to not embrace the experience. It’s harder than it looks and certain personalities do better here.

This past week was the national holiday and instead of traveling, we opted to stay here so I could work on the servers without the risk of annoying students and teachers. We had a few days of beautiful weather. I got lots of work done and enjoyed later nights out with some friends. I’m beginning to collect some new blog material with visits to karaoke bars and Russian restaurants with strange stage shows. Despite the pollution and personal hygiene habits of some locals, this is becoming way more enjoyable this year.

It has been very difficult to keep this blog fresh lately. Why? This is a tricky and complex question which will require a deep study into human, no, MY psychology and an understanding of my motivational triggers.

If I were a real geek, I would create a colorful 2d chart representing my blog frequency vs. topic. I could then overlay another chart representing my state of mind and there would probably be some correlation. So, without this chart, try to visualize the following…

Neutral blog entries
There’s probably only a few of these such as “We’re OK…we didn’t get blown up in Bali”. Sometimes I just have to get the word out about where we are and what we are doing. It’s easier than sending an email to the grandmothers etc.

Positive blog entries
Think of this akin to aspirational marketing or dressing for the job you want etc. When I’m glowing about the magic of Chinese New Year, I’m really saying “I wish I had gone to a beach in Thailand but because I’m here with 1.3 billion friends, I’ll make an extra effort to find something nice about the place.

Negative blog entries
These represent the times that I’m relatively content with life here. When China-life stinks, and the pollution stinks, I’m not going to feel like writing anything. I’m going to be at the clubhouse getting an $8 massage followed by a positive post about how great it is to be able to get an $8 massage.

Frequency
Imagine tossing a stone into a pond, or in this case, a whole family. There’s a splash, followed by diminishing ripples equal to the inverse square of…never mind…you get the point. The diminished frequency of this blog is an indication that we are basically living here the same way we would in any other place in the US. Life is not much different than if we moved to Omaha (though that might be just as difficult).

We now have enough command of the language to go into the city without the “critical” tools - phrase book and mobile phone and flagging a taxi is no big deal. I’ll be doing a “Year in Review” page where I go into more detail about this.

In previous posts, I mentioned that we see things on a daily basis that surprise, shock, or gross us out. These things are still here but they don’t seem to make an impression anymore. I’m a bit sad about this because it made us feel like we were really living in a “foreign” country. Now it just feels like we are living in a city with a bunch of Chinese people. I’m looking forward to having friends visit so I can see this place through their eyes.

Only a handful of my friends know that I’m a sucker for electronic club music and despite Beijing being a bit behind the west in some ways, this city has a more to offer in terms of nightlife than any city I’ve lived in.

Last night I went out with a group of friends to one of the many “mega-nightclubs” near Worker’s Stadium in the Chaoyang District to see one of my favorite club DJs - Paul Oakenfold. He is one of only a handful of techno/trance DJs who has crossed over to the mainstream. You may not know the name, but I’m sure you’d recognize some of his music from movies, commercials and TV shows like Alias.

The clubs adjacent to Worker’s Stadium are crazy (but that describes a lot of things here). In front of them is an endless row of Porsche Cayennes, BMWs and Mercedes belonging to the “little emperors” - an extremely wealthy (or seemingly wealthy) group of 30-somethings. Parking lot attendants direct the nice cars to the front and the rest are relegated to the back. Ironically, a black license plate (which indicates a foreigner ) on a $7500 Chinese vehicle must give it enough stature to park next to $120K BMW - yes…they let me park my Soldier up front and when I left, I had to wait for a $600K Maybach to move out of the way. Well, enough about cars.

Once inside the club, the first thing you will notice is the great sound quality and light show. But you will also notice that the clubs have lots of private VIP areas akin to skyboxes at an arena. The large groups of Chinese usually share a bottle of cognac which they mix with a popular, sweet ice tea beverage that you get for 2 RMB at any corner market. Last night’s event was sponsored by Hennessy and the logo was glowing everywhere. China appears to be a battle ground for beer and liquor companies and it’s rare to see a bar without logos everywhere.

Anyway, I was really worried that last night was going to be a big disappointment (living here makes you a bit pessimistic). But for once, my expectations were blown out of the water. The show was incredible and the crowd was really well mannered despite being shoulder-to-shoulder. This particular show drew a large number of western foreigners (like myself)…probably about 30% non-asian. The staff were abundant and very professional. Even the bathroom attendants would give you a a shoulder rub as you washed you hands ;-).

At 3:00 am, Paul seamlessly handed off to the local DJ and we decided to leave then. I’m not sure what time the clubs close but we seemed to be the only ones leaving. I think I’ve answered the question about all the people who sleep on the sofas in Ikea.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mommas around the world. China celebrates it as well.

Today, Lisa, Maddy and I went to the Kempinski Hotel for an amazing champagne brunch with 2 other families. It was excellent.