Tomb Sweeping Holiday Growing in Interest

Right now I'm in the middle of a nice 4 day break before a crazy month of work, travel, races, etc begins (Sunday 3 NY colleagues arrive for the week, with the last one leaving on Saturday, then Sunday I depart for the US, heading to NY, NC and then back to NY/CT to see my mom, upon getting back to Shanghai I have 4 days before my first 1/2 Ironman race of the year - Challenge Taiwan.

 In any event the holiday right now is generally called Tomb Sweeping Day and the below article which appeared in the April 5th edition of The NY Times, lays out what goes on.  Short recap though is that it is a time to head to your ancestors tombs and burial site and pay your respects by cleaning up the area, burning fake money, food and anything else that those ancestors might need in the afterlife.  It's pretty interesting as this year I've heard some people talk about burning fake iPhones and iPads (made of paper by the way) but then others say they couldn't do that because their ancestors were farmers and wouldn't know how to use such advanced devices, so they stick to money and food.

 Check out the article here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/asia/in-china-a-newfound-interest-in-keeping-dead-relatives-happy.html?emc=eta1
 

 

March 2013 a record of sorts...

Now that we have somehow moved into the month of April, I noticed something pretty cool.  Even though I've been keeping this blog off/on for about 5 years now, last month, March 2013 showed the most traffic to the site.  I guess that means someone is reading it?  Shoot, guess that also means I will have to keep it going a bit longer....

Yes I still owe you more on my trip to India, my birthday, and other such events.  So keep checking back, keep reading and please feel free to post questions, give ideas for future posts, etc.

Learning to drive

Driving in China is a bit different than back in the states.  It has gotten much, much better over the past couple of years though.  I think in part this is due to them having more experience, keep in mind as recently as 20 years ago there were limited cars on the road and mostly bicycles.

Speaking of bicycles I have long said that they drive cars the way they ride bikes, which in fact makes it relatively safe as long as everyone is that way.  They drive slowly, merge effortlessly but the difference is a bike vs bike collision is rarely too harmful.  Car vs car can be devastating.  Car vs bike is really bad.  Heck as I know firsthand car vs motorcycle simply sucks!

In any event another description is that they drive like a school of fish swim.  One moves they all move almost in unison.  Again great for here, bad if you were to drive like that elsewhere.

Lately some colleagues have been taking driving lessons.  I find something really weird at least going back to when I took driving lessons.  As I recall the instructor always said keep the hands at 10 and 2.  Here I have polled a few drivers to see what they were taught.  The older ones, my age and up, were also taught 10/2.  However the younger folks are 4 and 8, so at the bottom of the wheel.  To me that constricts movement, especially in a critical situation.

Any of you have kids or know folks who have recently gotten their license in the US or other places?  What is the current training method?  Would love to know.

Pig Soup anyone?

Well as the article says, Beijing has it's pollution but we have PIG SOUP! 

Pretty nasty all in all.  No I thankfully do not intentionally drink the water...but you never know. 

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-world/20130320/AS-China-Dead-Pigs/

Yummy...

In the alleys of Shanghai...

A pretty cool article on Shanghai from the NYT.

Click on the link for the full article...

Alleys of Shanghai


Or here is the article in a different format in case the link is temporary...

By SETH KUGEL

Published: March 15, 2013

Street signs in English, not-so-spicy cuisine, locals who don’t stare, contemporary art galleries, modern youth hostels and even interpreter hot lines for cabdrivers who don’t speak English. For independent travelers about to start an expedition into the huge, mysterious nation of China, I have some advice: stop in Shanghai and take a deep breath.

Enlarge This Image

Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Vibrant street life and vignettes are abundant in Shanghai, especially along the alleyways. Above, a scene outside a house in the alleys of an old Shanghai neighborhood.

Not literally, at least without checking the air quality index; the smog can be brutal. But do stick around for a few days — as I did before I set off up the Yangtze (article at left) — to ease into Chinese ways in the city where expatriates have flocked since the First Opium War ended in 1842. Here, strangers are less strange.

Even on $50 a day, Shanghai is perfectly feasible — once you accept you will not be taking a sightseeing boat along the Bund, eat in fancy restaurants or stay in luxury (or even midrange) hotels. That’s because much of the city is yours free or, in the case of public transportation, hostels and noodle shops, close to it.

That includes the Shanghai Museum (shanghaimuseum.net/en), which is free. It also provided a lesson in the sort of friendliness I’d encounter on the rest of my trip. Just as I’d placed my passport, wallet and camera through the museum’s X-ray machine, two guards pointed me to the coat check, signaling they would watch my valuables. Returning two minutes later, I was outraged to find them intently leafing through my passport.

“We like your passport!” one exclaimed, beaming. My cultural-disconnect alert sounded, just in time. “Thanks,” I said. “Lots of countries, but my first day in China.” I feebly joked that I would be fatter when I left. “You like Chinese food!” the other exclaimed. Smiles all around.

It was as if China were tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Psst, we do things differently here.”

I found a more historical lesson inside the halls of the museum, a powerful reminder of just how old and complex Chinese civilization is. I gazed at an almost-4,000-year-old battle ax and ancient instruments in the bronze gallery, gawked at stone heads of Lokapala from the Tang dynasty in the sculpture section and tried to come to grips with the gorgeousness of the porcelain collection. Finally, I headed to the top floor to see the traditional costumes and art from China’s minority ethnic groups: the Kirgiz, the Uighur, the Bai.

But Shanghai is also into newer creations; luckily, just as budget-friendly. M50 (www.m50.com.cn), an enclave of galleries in former industrial buildings in north Shanghai, is as funkily contemporary as the museum is dazzlingly ancient. I especially liked the ShanghART H-Space (shanghartgallery.com), a cavernous space showing large-scale installations by Chinese artists. At the Pacific Perspectives gallery (ppl.bz/en/), I became intrigued with landscapes by the Chinese-American artist Thomas Leung, pierced with fiery, near-neon lighting, and I said as much to a man working in the gallery. “I’m Thomas Leung,” he responded.

Frugal shopping options are limited, but you can try Tianzifang, a web of back alleys in the French Concession that now house restaurants (too expensive) and artsy boutique gift shops (not always). Check out La Woo’s reasonably priced felt animal figures, handmade on site, more Velveteen Rabbit than Hello Kitty adorable.

For any great city to be budget-friendly, it needs intriguing street life to stroll through — and Shanghai doesn’t disappoint there. I spent a good hour wandering behind the Peach Garden Mosque near the Old City section, in one of the city’s dwindling traditional neighborhoods of residential alleyways, and found life lived in the open: a man and woman washing a fish at an outdoor sink, a pair of red and purple rubber gloves hanging near just-scrubbed sweet potatoes, a cart full of fluorescent light bulbs lining a side alley.

Bustling (but fully Chinese) commercial streets on the outer edges of the French Concession also drew me in, eliciting more questions than answers. Why were fish hanging out of that second-story window, each with a playing card attached? What services were rendered in that small store with nothing more than a person behind a desk and signs I did not understand? Did people really have no qualms about stopping for conversations and completely blocking the narrow sidewalk to all coming pedestrians? Could that temptingly wrapped gelatinous candy taste as good as it looked? (I do have an answer for the last: it was disgusting.)

The Chinese apparently look down on the city’s native dishes. Shanghai’s cuisine “is the redheaded stepchild of Chinese food,” said Jamie Barys, an American who, with Kyle Long, runs UnTour Shanghai (untourshanghai.com), a food company. Yet Shanghai food is a good baby step toward eating in the nearby provinces. Take the most famous Shanghai export, soup dumplings called xiao long bao, comfort food even for nonlovers of Chinese cuisine.

UnTour Shanghai charges $60 for a three-hour tour (too much for my budget), but you can cheat using articles by Ms. Barys and Mr. Long in the Shanghai pages of CulinaryBackstreets.com. Or (less likely) you can be connected to them through a Chinese neighbor back home and have them invite you to dinner, as I was. We had sesame paste noodles (8 renminbi, or $1.30 at 6.1 renminbi to the dollar) at Wei Xiang Zhai; soup dumplings at their favorite place, Nanjing Tang Bao (which has Nanjing-style dumplings similar to xiao long bao; eight for 7 renminbi); and Macao-style Portuguese egg tarts (4 renminbi) from Lillian Bakery. (At those prices, I took the rare opportunity to treat.)

Even on my own, my initial language-based trepidations about eating out in China dissolved. English speakers would materialize out of nowhere to help me order a bun filled with shepherd’s purse, a green related to mustard; I fumbled through China’s hand-counting system (1 through 10 on one hand) to pay street vendors for roasted sweet potatoes, misshapen beauties with crispy skin and soft yellow flesh.

My biggest expense was lodging, but even there Shanghai came through. Unlike most other cities I visited, it has good hostels, and good hostels often have private rooms mostly indistinguishable from (though often smaller than) those you’d find in decent hotels. That was true of the Shanghai Soho International Youth Hostel, (yhachina.com), where I booked a private room for 180 renminbi a night. Though the mattress was hard as a rock — par for the course during my trip — the place had amenities that most Chinese business hotels in a similar price range do not: English-speaking staff members, and no-smoking policies that are not entirely ignored.

It also had a great location, on a pleasant pedestrian path along the downtown bank of the Wusong River, a five-minute walk from the Xinzha Road subway stop. Actually, plan on six minutes: if you can resist a 60-second stop at Xiaocheng Shengjian to grab four scallion-and-sesame-seed-sprinkled pot stickers for 4.5 renminbi (at 392 Xinzha Road), you probably shouldn’t be budget-traveling in Shanghai at all.

The big 4-0!!!

Today is the day, my days in my 30's are behind me.  That's right as of now I am in my 40's.  At least for a few more years I can honestly say my early 40's...

So what did I do and how did I celebrate?

 I spent the day in the car visiting customers and factories.  This was my lunch.  A muffin and slice of cheesecake from Starbucks.  Honestly not bad. 

I saw this shirt someplace and asked one of my Chinese colleagues to get for me.  They ended up getting it made and giving it to me for my birthday.  Best part is many of them took it a bit more literally as in "I don't bring food to the table, just borrow/take from others.

So dinner this evening with another Shanghai buddy who shares the same birthday, then Saturday the real fun happens with Dim Sum and Green Beer (St Paddy's day celebration as well).

India - Agra

Well I've lived in China for 4 of the past 5 years at this point.  I've always said I wanted the chance to see India, but at the same time sometimes you "get what you asked for" is the theory in business over here.  What I was always cognizant of is while I'd like to visit one time and see what it's all about, I wasn't sure I would want to go again and again.

So bring on my first trip to India.  I was there last week for work as late in 2012 a decision was made in the company that our India office would essentially report to me through Shanghai.  So after plenty of b.s. getting a Visa I was off to Delhi. 

My flight took me to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and then on to Delhi arriving at the Westin hotel late on a Friday night.  This was my welcome gift from the hotel...

Beers?  Cheese/crackers?  They must have known a born and bred Cheesehead was coming!

 Saturday morning I met with our local GM, met the driver and began the fun part of the journey.  Off to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.  But first a 3 plus hour drive...

Never figured out what was on this cart but the colors are symbolic of what you do see in India.  Very cool.

Thankfully this wasn't my ride!  No window on the passenger side (yes that means they drive on the "wrong" side of the road), a destroyed front fender and enough bling to be distracting!

Before the Taj I checked into my hotel in Agra and found this waiting.  Awesome!

Notice the driver isn't riding the bike but walking it to propel forward on the slight uphill.

Near the entry to the outer gates of the Taj Mahal

Stunning!

Amazing attention to detail

The view and photo that one must get at the Taj from the approach.

My guide "Vinnie" wanted a natural walking photo, so here goes...

Look at how huge I am able to grab the Taj in my hand!

Cutting the grass in India I guess is a two man job.  Man on the right pulls the mower towards him...but notice he has bare feet.  Hope he still has all 10 toes.

Damn cool photo!!!

All the inlays in the Taj were hand applied. 

There are some great areas to take scenic cool photos like this.

Vinnie my guide for the afternoon!

Fix that bike up.

This is at the Red Fort which is the 2nd of the main tourist attractions in Agra.

Even the lawn at the Red Fort is done simulating a famous textile design in India.

That is the Taj in the distance.

There is a reason its called the Red Fort!

Very cool accents in the hotel

More from the hotel

I believe this is lemon's but I took it from the car on the drive.

Sunday morning I headed back to Delhi, again another 3+ hour drive navigating all sorts of vehicles.  More on Delhi in the next post...

How to do business in China, one person's opinion

Here is a pretty interesting article on doing business in China....

http://shanghaiist.com/2013/03/05/12_rules_for_doing_business_in_china_for_small_medium_enterprises_stanley_chao.php


I don't agree with all of it but in general I think it's pretty accurate.

Chinese New Year "Vacation"

For this years Chinese New Year holiday I decided to do something different.  Nope, no beaches, no adventuring to a new and undiscovered place.  In fact I decided to go back to someplace I've been a few times but this time to do something totally different.

Where and what?  I went to Phuket, Thailand to a triathlon training academy to swim, bike and run for 10 days!  While I don't regret it one bit and I plan to go back again in the future, I can guarantee that when I go back it will be in shape, not starting to get in shape!  Wow it hurt!

Here is a link to Thanyapura (difficult at best to pronounce!)...
http://www.thanyapura.com/tslc/tslc-academies/triathlon

The coach that runs it, Jurgen Zach, is described as a "legend" in the triathlon community, having won numerous Ironman races in his time.  The cool thing is he not only leads the workouts, he joins in and participates as well.

Over about 10 days of training I got about the following distances in...
Swim - 18.3k
Bike - 323.5k
Run - 38.5k

This kind of says it all.  First sign is the British Swimming National Sprint Team, the other a swimming team from China.  I guess this isn't just for slackers like me!

500m track, that kicked my butt!

Unbelievable 50m pool with the mountains in the background.  Highly motivating!

They literally have to hose down the pool at night to keep the temps cool.

Cool view near sunset

So what was in store for me?  Basically a group regime was sent out on Sunday nights showing us the workouts for the week.  Given some people live/train there year-round and others come for shorter periods there was activity everyday.  Generally speaking the week starting on Monday is just a swim and as the week progresses it gets more and more intense/challenging, finishing with a 110k ride and run off the bike.

Time for the morning swim...

Nope not a simple set at all!

On the morning of Valentine's Day one of the Pro Women brought roses for all the coaches before the ride.

Rest stop and time for some refueling of fruits, pastries and caffeine during our 110k ride in the heat!

Post workout, not much is better than a fresh mango/banana smoothy!

I loved the options the hotel had in case of a fire.

Great flowers and landscaping around the resort as is expected given it it Thailand.

A smoothy and this little pad was great for some afternoon sleep.

More hotel decorations

I saw this rare "double rainbow" one evening and went searching for the pot of gold.  Had I found it, I doubt I would have left Thailand, but alas no luck.

 

Overall I absolutely loved it and learned a lot.  There were the hiccups of course.  Day one I had a bike malfunction when my pedal came off the crank, thanks to the crank being stripped out.  I was about 45k from the hotel and had to find a taxi to take me back.  Another time I was involved in a crash with another person from Shanghai ironically.  However that ended much better for me than for her.  I didn't hit the ground but she did as she hit me from the back on a turn and skidded to a stop.  Other than that it was all a fun pain and suffering.

 

 

 

 

 

Chinese New Year 2013

2013 rings in the year of the Snake!  As per usual we had about 70 people at our Chinese New Year (CNY) dinner celebration.  This year we also invited three of our key suppliers to join us.  While it was great to have them, they also decided to bring gifts.  So to say we had lots of gifts to give out was an understatement.  Some of the grand prize gifts were iPhone 5, iPad Mini, Microsoft Surface, etc. 

My opening speech, translated by Paul Tang my GM

Games are always played.  Some more fun than others.  In this one we had people competing in a Gangnam Style dance off, with the winner taking home an iPhone 5. 

Gangnam Style.  These two finalists put their all into it, with the woman on the left winning.

Recipients of our 5 year employment recognition.  They all got a certificate singed by myself and the owner in the NY along with a 5 year mug and 500rmb.

Enjoying cake on one of the last working days of the year.  Cake was paid for by our US salespeople.

Watching them cut cake is always quite amusing, obviously chopsticks are simply not practical.