Mei Guan Xi（没关系）

I’ve had my share of interviews in the US and China, but I’ve come to the conclusion that in China political correctness goes out the window….

I’ve mentioned before that often companies will request a photo along with the resume, but here is a sampling of the ridiculous questions I’ve been asked in an interview:

• How old are you? (older = more experience)
• Are you married? Are you single? Do you have a girlfriend? (an indication of how hard I’d be able to work)
• Where are you from? (for the purpose of knowing what ethnicity I am)
• What’s your sign? (the interviewer wanted to know my ‘personality’)

yeah…uhm…all very relevant to my competence on the job of course!

3G rollout in china now iphone’s coming to china via china unicom

on shanghai china unicom’s site, there is already a detailed page on the iphone shanghai china unicom’s iphone product page - though it says coming july 2008??

Last week while having dinner with friends we lamented how Shanghai can just seem like a big urban city with nothing to do besides eating and drinking. To be honest, it’s not entirely off base - but with a little effort you can get away from it all.

So that’s just what I did yesterday. Things haven’t been going so well for me so I thought it might be good to explore the outskirts of shanghai. That’s how I ended at Jia Ding (嘉定）

嘉定 is ~20km outside of shanghai or about 30-40 min direct bus ride away. I decided to go there because the gardens at hui long tan (dragon pool) is supposed to be pretty decent considering it’s proximity to shanghai.

The final tally for the cost of the trip? 32 RMBs! Yep, that’s right… less than $5 USD!

Bus ticket (direct from city center to jiading): 9 rmb each way
Money spent for lunch: 9 rmb (composed of street food and an ice cream bar :)
Entrance ticket to hui long tan 汇龙潭: 5 rmb

Really packed bus…there are even fold out seats for people to sit in the aisle. Somehow that seems like a fire hazard to me.

Jiading bus station drops you off right at city center. ~ 20 min walk to 汇龙潭

View on my way to 汇龙潭

I stopped off at Shanghai University (上海大学）on the way to check it out…

the dorms don’t look too bad…though I dunno about the color

basketball is quite popular nowadays - though people seem to have a different definition of athletic wear. Check out the jeans….I’ve actually even seen people play badminton in suits!

“学生是国家的财富, 为师生服务是我们的光荣” is translated to “Students are our nation’s wealth, serving our teachers and students is our honor”
You probably won’t see that at a convenience store near your university…

I saw this sign at a big intersection - it tracks how many accidents have happened at this particular intersection dating from Jan 1 - Feb 20. According to this, 16 people died, 26 hurt from a total of 32 accidents.

This way to hui long tan

This way to fahua pagoda

The pagoda was just ok - I didn’t really want to pay 5 rmbs to go up it

Area by the pagoda

Area by the pagoda

This is a makeshift skating ring in the park - full of skatboarders, rollerbladers, and roller skaters

The shanghai expo mascot….which is horrible in my opinion. But then no one asked for my input

Though it’s on the outskirts of shanghai - it’s still not short of people…

The main drag on the way into 汇龙潭

Finally…

My view from the bench by the water :) I took a little catnap here for 15 minutes. it was awesome

Cool patterns on the pebbled road

It’s named Dragon Pool because long ago 5 rivers came to a head at this location - thus it looked like the claws and fangs of a dragon

I don’t know if you can really see it, but basically it’s a stone bridge that juts out on both sides…I can’t say I felt particular safe crossing it

Another view of the dragon in the pool

This well was constructed around 1506! It was a ‘rest area’ of sorts for travelers

All in all, it was just what I needed. If you ever get bored in Shanghai and want to get away for an afternoon - I’d recommend it.

A couple years back, I heard about parents gathering at People’s Square (a well-known park in the center of the city) perusing for suitors, mind you via resume, for their sons/daughters when it was year of the pig – a particularly lucky year to get married.

Little did I know that the practice still goes on every Sat and Sun! I stumbled upon it making my way thru the park.

曾经听说过在人民公园父母们会帮子女寻找对象，不过我一直以为只是为了金猪年而组织的。上周末碰巧路过时发现了每周六日都有！

Check it out

No display stand? No problem :)

Even a section for shanghainese living abroad!

A rare one with a picture

Who needs matchmakers when you’ve got eager DIY parents? ：）
有了热情的父母们，媒人就免了 ：）

Ballpark figure of 200 people or so and it seemed like it went on for a few hours.
超于我的预料，两百余人

The ads were basically resume format and usually included:
-Age
-Height
-What kind of job they had
-If they owned a car and/or house
-Whether they were Shanghainese citizens (having a hukou or Shanghainese citizenship entitles them to better benefits)
-Parents’ occupations(?!?)
-Basic requirements of what they were looking for

挂在广告上的资料包括
-年龄
-身高
-单位
-有否车房
-上海户口
-父母情况
-对象需求

I was a little surprised that parental occupations made it on the ad. From the parent’s point of view, having your son/daughter marry someone with a sketchy family background isn’t ideal.

All-in-all not exactly your typical personals ad in the US, but then again personal ads aren’t usually written by your parents. Know your target audience! These are ads written up by parents to entice OTHER parents.

Reflective of the generation that grew up in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s in China, people are more practical and status oriented. I can understand the motivation because parents want their kids to have a good life (as measured by living standard) and the differences can vary drastically due to the chasm in income levels in China. Thus, a widely held stereotype in Shanghai is that an out-of-towner blue-collar man without a car/house is at the bottom of the suitor totem pole.

So my question is, how come in the Asian culture (including Korea and Japan also, AFAIK), parents are eager for their kids to get married? I don’t buy the usual argument that they want grandkids because there are lots of western parents who also want grandkids. The only thing I can think of is that in Asia, the 2 generations are a lot more intertwined, thus the parents have a lot more vested interest in their son/daughter finding the right suitor?

Or are there other better reasons?

毕竟子女介绍都是父母写的，并且是用来引起对方父母注目。但是看到描述了父母情况还是相当得惊讶。在国外，父母们大多数只会以对象本身的状况，背景，和感情来衡量是否合适，而稀少会问父母情况更何况用来评价。

最终，不同时代有不同的价值观，国外也不例外。

有一点还不是很清楚，为什么在亚洲父母们（句我说知包括日本及韩国）都会特别为子女着急婚姻大事？有些人说此来于盼望早一点抱抱孙儿女，但是难得西方人就不要吗？也不会。唯一想得通的是成年时两代关系仍然亲密（相对国外而言），因此父母自然会注重子女的对象？

还有别的更好的解释吗？

I’ve written about how black chickens (aka silkies) are good for you so I thought I’d actually make black chicken soup at home.

This is what a black chicken looks like defeathered…with the head and all.

I do a decent amount of cooking, but it’s the first time I’ve cleaned out the innards of a bird, much less chop off its head. I’ll be honest, it was a little unsettling, but it’s a good reminder to me that I’m eating a previously living animal. Eating meat in my mind not inherently good or bad, but recognition of that choice is important, especially in today’s society where we put plastic wrapped deskinned, de-boned meat or frozen fishsticks or chicken nuggets into our shopping carts.

之前写过乌鸡对身体比较补，因此最近在超市看到时突然想在家亲自试试扽一锅乌鸡汤。

买回来之后才发现乌鸡除了去毛基本上都没怎么处理。在一个塑料包装，去骨，去皮的社会里长大对我而言，看见食物的头是一件令我心里不安的事。更何况还要把它斩掉！

我知道这也只不过是生活习惯的区别而已，但是我觉得看到完完整整的一只鸡给了我个提醒我是为了我的生计而牺牲了这只鸡。在我眼里食肉本身并不好坏，但是意识到这交换在是重要的。

China is finally getting 3G！

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that “3G is just around the corner”

Last week, the gov’t finally gave out 3G licenses! As opposed to the US where carriers bid on spectrum, it’s doled out to the state-owned carriers.

There are probably a million reasons as to why the holdup, but first and foremost is the desire to develop a homegrown system - TS-WCDMA used by the almost monopoly carrier, China Mobile.

China Mobile (>450M users) - TS-SCDMA
China Unicom (~100M users)- WCDMA
China Telecom (previously fixed-line operator only) - CDMA 2000

With the issuance of these licenses, the gov’t also seeks to shake up the playing field a bit since up until now, whatever China Mobile says goes. I am a little skeptical since once an operator has established dominance, all the supporting infrastructure serves to perpetuate the advantage (retail service centers, stores carrying recharge cards, etc).

Of course, with state-owned enterprises anything can happen, since they don’t exactly play by ‘normal’ market rules.

The other day I asked a cabbie if they did better business in the summer or winter. He said the best is during the summer when it’s blazing hot. I replied, oh, so it’s not so great now? He said, yeah, and especially because of the financial crisis.

Huh?

He said a lot of firms are either no longer reimbursing for cab expenses or have capped a quota, so he’s feels a tangible impact on his business.

talk about the trickle down effect…

on another note, there seems to be a bit of reverse migration going on. Before a ton of people would venture to the 1st tier cites like shanghai, beijing, etc for work, but with manufacturing plants closing down, people are heading back. Unfortunately, there probably aren’t a ton of jobs back home either!

whew…51 episodes and 17 hours later, I finally finished my marathon viewing of “Full Metal Alchemist 鋼の錬金術師“.

Binging on tv drama series is a pretty common occurrence here amongst my friends…thus, I found myself doing it waaaay more since moving here. In comparison, I can count on 1 hand the number of marathon tv series I’ve watched in the US (Sopranos and Band of Brothers come to mind).

It seems to me that both tv watching habits and the show formats themselves play a pretty big role in the differences:

1) First and foremost, US tv shows have episodes that are truly episodic - each episode has its own story arc that far outweighs the arc of the show. What I mean is that the consequences of the plot developments in each individual episode often have little impact on the others. Thus, you can watch an episode of “Friends” from season 1 and then follow it with another episode from season 3 and you won’t feel like you’ve skipped a beat.

Maybe it’s done this way for syndication purposes?

In contrast, watching Asian dramas is the complete opposite. It’s more akin to one really long movie - each episode too has its own arc, but the focus is on how it advances the arc of the entire show. So forget about watching episodes out of order…and when you start watching a series in the middle, well, it’s like starting a movie 30 minutes in. Yeah, you can do it, but you feel like you’d rather start from the beginning. Which brings me to my next point….

2) All the shows you see on tv in China are online (often the most popular ones are from korea or japan). So when you stumble upon a show you like on tv, it’s highly unlikely that it’s the first episode. So what do you do? Go online and start from the beginning. 15 hours later, you realized you’ve watched the entire series.

Viewing habits do seem to be changing in the US with more dvd sets coming out and some series moving to the continuous format (24 for example)…but still behind China in this respect.

…yeah, I see binging on tv dramas as a good thing. so?

No need to reprise the lack of intellectual property in China - but I’ve always thought (as many people much smarter than I) that when the day comes that domestic companies have IP to protect, it’ll become a focus.

Remarkably, I’ve been seeing a slew of IP court cases recently such as Ctrip (think travelocity) suing Qunar (think kayak) for literally crawling Ctrip users’ hotel reviews - essentially syndicating content without paying. And Dianping (think citysearch and zagats and yelp) suing Aibang for basically the same thing - in which case dianping won. Lastly, Sohu (major portal) by Shanda (major online game publisher) for republishing online novels.

Blatant ripoffs are still a plenty - I can’t even count on my hands and feet how many facebook ripoffs are other here (copying the entire site and sometimes even forgetting to change logos!) but it’s a small sign of progress.

It’s not really ethics driving the change but I think people feel like they’ve work hard to build something and want to protect it. Who’d thunk it?

UPDATE: looks like Qunar just lost and will have to stop infringing! Though the penalty is a paltry RMB 1,000. Doh! but it’s progress!

Thanksgiving is not much of a holiday here in China, but I usually have virtual Thanksgiving via webcam. (thanks to skype). But this year was especially fun because not only did I have virtual Thanksgiving with the fam, but we also got to watch the Macy’s Parade together live! (thanks to earthcam).

Check out the flying snoopy! Fuzziness courtesy of my webam :)