Sanlitun, Sanlitun, Sanlitun

Well, this past week has been very busy for me.  I had several client deliverables this week which kept me late at work.  I'm working with a graphic design intern who is sweet, but terribly terribly slow.  At any rate, between the commute, evenings at work, and Muir's language partner meetings, I just haven't seen him that much. :(

We managed to spend Tuesday evening together at a Cornell/USC alumni mixer in Sanlitun.  It was held at a bar called Punk in a boutique hotel called The Opposite House which itself was very trendy and modern.  Luckily, I had gone out Monday night and purchased a few nicer things to wear to work from ESPRIT and didn't feel underdressed.  Does anyone else remember that brand?  It seems like they practically disappeared after 1995.  More about that later.  We were mostly outnumbered by USC grads at the mixer, but still collected a lot of business cards.  Exchanging business cards is, as one attendee phrased it, "the Beijing handshake."

On Wednesday afternoon I had my first Chinese lesson at the new school, called Capital Mandarin, which is conveniently located on the 10th floor of the building where I work.  :)  My teacher is a 13th generation Beijinger and is great.  He makes me talk a lot, corrects my mistakes, and then has me repeat the correct sentences several times for practice.  I think it will help speed along my speaking ability significantly.

Muir's new favorite store

The weather has turned quite chilly here rather quickly.  Even though the high is probably still around 60F, it's 35F when Muir and I leave for work in the morning, and the sun has long since set by the time I leave work in the evening.  For this reason, we decided to go out and purchase some warmer clothes and headed back to Sanlitun for some serious shopping.  We found a few good go-to stores.  The first one is called Uniqglo, which I think is Japanese.  It's basically like the GAP and a great place to buy affordable basics.  Next, I took Muir to the ESPRIT store, and I think he fell in love.  It had an entire floor devoted to men's clothes and many many jackets and blazers. On Sunday, we went out to the smaller mall in our neighborhood and picked up a few more things.  I have a new hat, which I love, and Muir has a smart new black felt jacket with a hood and fancy toggles.  We both got several pairs of long underwear and warm pajamas.  Sadly, I couldn't buy any new boots because they just don't carry my size.  My feet are officially too big for Beijing.  :P

Enjoying big bowls of wonton soup for
less than $2USD each!

Wining, Dining, and Web Wednesday

Just a quick post about our socializing this past week.

On Wednesday, Muir and I traveled to a trendy shopping area close to the area where I work called Sanlitun.  Muir's language partner, Nora, had invited us to attend a presentation (in English) hosted by an international common interest group under the moniker of "Web Wednesday."  The group has a small chapter in Beijing and last Wednesday they met at a Belgian-owned bar called Nearby Tree.  The topic was group buying (think Groupon) and the speaker was the Korean CEO of a group buying aggregator who extolled the potential profitability of the future of group buying services in China.  Neither Muir nor I were impressed with the speaker's argument.  As the moderator noted, the explosive growth the speaker talked about could also describe the increase in China's consumption in general, not just with regard to group buying.  We met a few characters after the presentation, and will probably attend the next Web Wednesday.  Hopefully, it will be more compelling.

On Friday, Muir and I had dinner with some Aruba employees since a few folks from the Sunnyvale office had been in town during the past week.  We again ventured to Sanlitun and dined at a Mexican restaurant called the Saddle Cantina.  Everyone had appetizers and frozen margaritas.  Unfortunately, the drinks proved too much for the Chinese HR woman who fell ill and had to leave early.

On Saturday night, Muir came with me to Flow's offices while Gontran (Flow's CEO and my boss) and I met with an Australian client.  Afterwards, the four of us went out for dinner at a Malaysian restaurant near HouHai called Cafe Sambal.  The restaurant was located in an unpretentious hutong and the food was expensive and only of fair quality.  Muir did a great job socializing and I was glad that he was there to meet my new boss.

Making Friends: Cherry

Not that I disagree with him, but Muir thought I needed a Chinese friend here in Beijing, so after work on Tuesday I agreed to meet a young woman named Cherry.  (The Chinese often pick their own English names, sometimes with hilarious results.  Watch this video about Beijingers picking English names if you have the chance.)  I haven't asked her why she chose that name yet.  I guess I'm saving the question for our second meeting.  Anyway, Muir's Chinese language partner, Nora, introduced us and suggested that we could be language partners since I need someone with whom to practice my Chinese and Cherry recently started her own English school and wants to further her English skills.  She is about my age, super cute, and likes to watch American TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, and that new show on the CW "The Secret Circle."  It's about witches I think, although I haven't seen it.  How she manages to find it, I have no idea.  And that's where the similarities end.  I guess we'll see if language exchange is enough to make a friendship.

Shanghai-ed!

Early Saturday morning, Muir and I flew (of our own free will) from Beijing to Shanghai for the weekend  and to watch the final round of the Shanghai Rolex Masters!  It was a much smoother trip than the one to Xi'An.  We didn't get lost or stranded, and we successfully rode our first bus in China, which I think we were both dreading...probably because riding the bus in the US can be such a confusing disaster.  But no, the buses were clean and modern, with an electronic marquee and automated stop announcements.  Anyway, back to the trip.  I'm sorry to write that Muir took some photos on his phone which are now lost because he recently upgraded to iOS5, which now makes my job harder because I have to be twice as funny.

After landing at the domestic Shanghai airport, we decided to tour around the city before heading to our hotel later in the day to check-in.  I was still wary from the Xi'An taxi fiasco and had picked a hotel mid-way between the airport and the tennis center, but that meant it was unfortunately located outside downtown Shanghai to the west.  We decided to take the subway all the way to the far (east) bank of the Huangpu River and work our way back west.  In the first few hours, I noticed a few differences between Beijing and Shanghai:

1. Shanghai is a lot more modern than Beijing.  It just is.
2. And better maintained.  You just don't see the piles of dirt and construction detritus that you do in Beijing.
3. And there's less smog.  We saw blue sky both days while we were there.
4. And the women are prettier.

I realize that last point is rather subjective, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  There were a lot of pretty laides riding the subway that Saturday.  I can't imagine it was just a coincidence.

On the east bank of the river we sort of went hog wild on some of our modern creature comforts.  We walked through the (old) Apple store (insert missing photos here), drank a latte at Starbucks, ate a doughnut at Donut King (I don't even think you can get a good donut in Beijing), and ate Burger King at the food court in a big shopping mall.

Heaven, with sprinkles.

After lunch we walked to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.  It's 88 stories tall, but we didn't pay to ride the elevator to the top.  

No, it's not a ride in Tomorrowland, it's
the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

After that we walked along the river bank and took some great photos (sorry!) of the famous historic riverfront street in Shanghai called The Bund.  Although we didn't pay to ride the elevator to the top of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, we did waste--I mean spend--our money to take the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel back to the west back of the Hung Pu river.  Oh my goodness, how can I describe it?  It's completely cheesy.  Exhibit A.  Exhibit B.

After that we rode the subway to the end of one of the southwest lines and took that bus I mentioned to our hotel, the Fortune Forever Hotel.  It wasn't as nice as the one in Xi'An, but still a good one.  We had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant near the hotel, and had a quiet evening reading on our iPads.

On Sunday we are the buffet breakfast at the hotel, and spent pretty much the whole day at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena (insert missing photos here).  I wasn't familiar with the team that won the men's doubles final, but it was pretty cool being able to watch Andy Murray trounce David Ferrer in the men's singles final.  We flew back to Beijing on the first flight out Monday morning and went straight to work.  It's been sort of non-stop ever since.  Anyway, I guess I'll end this post by saying that I would definitely visit Shanghai again.  It offers everything you could want from a modern city.

A Room with a View (sort of)

Well, it only took me 27 years, but I finally got my own office!  Unfortunately, on Monday I also got an office-mate, so it's no longer just mine.  Ah, well.  My business cards officially say "Project Director," and so far I've met at least five or six different clients, updated some wireframes, sourced stock photos and vector images, edited some English content, and bumbled through some meetings with my Chinese graphic design co-workers.  My Chinese classes will start back up next week, but I'll be going once a week for four hours instead of two hours every day.  I'm looking forward to it, though.  I can tell that I'm not learning new things as quickly without a structured class.  My boss is great.  He's from Belgium and speaks French natively, but his English is also excellent, so that's what we use to communicate.  He's 30 years old, oh, and his favorite color is fuschia.  Love it.

My desk and south-facing window

Haagen Dazs

 Hello blogstalkers.  I found a picture of a trip to Haagen Dazs Muir and I took while in Xi'An.  Sorry for not posting it earlier. The Haagen Dazs shops here are decorated like the Mad Hatter's tea party.  You sit at a tiny table in easy chairs and order from an elaborate menu of coffee drinks and ice cream drinks and sundaes, and then when you reach the end and decide that all you really want is one scoop of ice cream, they give you this golf ball-sized scoop for USD $5.  Ridiculous.

Our (somewhat annoyingly) cute table

Big News

It's the moment we've all been waiting for...I got a job today!  A real job!  Hooray!  I will be doing product management/project management/some business development/and wireframing for a web design agency in the financial district of Beijing called Flow.  It is pretty much the perfect job for me, the perfect combination for my skills and interests.  And, possibly the best part is that I'll be working with foriegn clients in English and my employer wants me to continue with my Chinese lessons, so I'll still get one half-day a week to practice with a teacher.  Here's their website:  http://www.flow-communications.com

I start this Thursday. :)

Xi'an and the Terracotta Soldiers

Since Muir already did a great job typing up a summary of our trip to Xi'an, I'll add additional details and a few photos.

Many thanks to my mother who reminded me to double-check the terminal from which our outbound flight departed.  They are not close together and could easily cause a hapless traveler to miss his/her flight.  But we knew where we were going and arrived two hours before departure.  As Muir mentioned, airport security was a breeze relative to the US.  We didn't even have to take our shoes off!

A bridge in the lobby. Fancy!

 We stayed at the Kempinski hotel.  It's listed as a five star hotel in China, and it was quite nice.  The service was fantastic and even the hallways were clean.  Most of the staff spoke at least some English.  It had three in-house restaurants:  a buffet, a Chinese restaurant featuring the local cuisine, and a German brew pub.

Um, do the pony?

Local specialty--mutton and bread soup

We ate dinner the first night at a famous restaurant in Xi'an, 同盛祥 (Tong sheng xiang).  The Muslim dish we wanted to try was a mutton soup with unleavened bread that kind of turns into dumplings in the broth.  There are also some meng bean noodles in the soup and you can add pickled garlic and cilantro to your liking.  It reminded me a lot of Vietnamese pho, except that the mutton was already cooked.  It was terrific!

Drum Tower

Bell Tower

We were really close to both Xi'an's drum tower and bell tower, so we snapped some quick photos of them.  You can't really tell from the photos, but the weather was drizzly the entire time we were in Xi'an.  Getting back to the hotel was a nightmare.

Ok, here come the pictures from the Terracotta soldiers.  Besides what Muir already described, we decided that it was not worth it to get the audio guides sold at these kind of big tourist attractions.   They're expensive and of rather poor quality and hard to hear with all the other visitors around, and the point is really to be able to see the site for yourself.  If you want to learn about the site, you can find better narratives and detailed photos and maps online or in documentaries.

One small part of the shopping area around the Terracotta
Soldiers

A partially excavated pit showing the rafters
of some of the buried chambers.

Restored terracotta horse and cavalryman

The famous kneeling archer.  His bow
had long since rotted away.

Another pit with more horses and cavalrymen

The last and probably most famous pit
containing row after row of excavated
soldiers.

Eating lunch of noodles, the province's specialty.

This dish is biang biang noodles.  It's sort of "a little bit of everything" noodles.  It has onion, celery, potato, choice of meat, green pepper, and a tomato sauce.  "Biang" is written with a new character that has about 57 strokes and hasn't yet been encoded so that one could type it with a keyboard.

That evening we just stayed in the hotel and read for the rest of the afternoon.  We had dinner at the German brew pub (not bad), and went swimming in the swimming pool.  Oh, I almost forgot!  The bed was my favorite part of the hotel.  It actually had a pillow-top mattress like in the US, and not just a stiff box spring.  I slept like a baby both nights.  It was heaven.

Wednesday morning we took a taxi back to the airport to fly home and encountered the thickest fog I've ever seen in my life.  Everyone started driving slow and flicked on their hazard lights.  I kid you not, we couldn't even see the huge toll plaza until we met up with the concrete barriers that separated cars into the different lanes twelve feet before the booth.  Good thing the driver knew it was somewhere around there.  Oh, and we also arrived at the airport so early that we couldn't use the e-ticket kiosk to check-in.  We had to wait until 90 minutes before our flight's departure.

On Wednesday night, we met up with Mark Dieters and his family at a fancy pants Chinese restaurant near Wangfujing shopping district and had a sumptuous dinner of peking duck.  Several other people joined us, including Mr. Chen, the new assistant facilities manager in Beijing, Jenny (Mark's furniture vendor), Jenny's mother, and Jenny's month-old daughter, and lastly, Dave Peterson the Beijing office general manager.  We had some wine (a first since being in China because the wine is known for being made with fake alcohol (?) and generally not a good idea), several good Chinese dishes, the peking duck (so good!), and traditional Beijing desserts like green pea ice cream.  

Wangfujing Da Jie

On Saturday, Muir and I headed into Beijing early to meet Aruba Networks facilities manager, Mark Dieters for breakfast. Yes, breakfast. Why? Because he's staying at the Hilton, a five-star hotel in Beijing and he has three buffet breakfasts included in his stay. I wasn't really blow away by the food, but the variety was impressive. They had traditional Chinese, Japanese, English, and American breakfast items. It was also the first chocolate frosted donut I've had in I don't know how long. Also, we didn't want to miss the chance to visit a building that wasn't new but yet already dilapidated and the service was unparalleled. Even the bellboys and porters spoke English and were helpful and courteous, unlike the man selling tours to the Great Wall that pointed us in the wrong direction when we told him we didn't want to buy any tours from him. It was a nightmare getting the last mile from the closest subway stop to the hotel, and we spent an hour and fifteen minutes wandering around and asking people for directions. We learned three important lessons that morning. 1) Google maps is worthless in Beijing. Even major buildings are not in the right place. 2) Security guards and even many people who work in local shops are either clueless or mean-spirited and not worth asking. 3) Always take the address with you in Chinese so that you can get in a cab and let the driver take you to your destination.

After breakfast, we got a tour of the hotel's gym, pool, and executive lounge and then headed out to stroll around Wangfujing, a famous high-end shopping district. It's basically a huge boulevard that has now been closed to traffic and converted into a pedestrian mall. It's a lot like Bay Street in Emeryville except four or five times as big and without any traffic running through the center.

I noticed an Hermes on Wangfujing and a GAP, but not many other branded stores that I recognized. There are also several indoor malls leading off of the street, which inside, have that classic shopping mall look and feel. They even have that familiar, ubiquitous shopping mall smell--perfume, industrial strength cleaner, and paper money.













We didn't spend any time in the malls, though, and instead preferred to stroll through the jam-packed area selling your run-of-the-mill tourist junk. We, of course, bought lots. :) Muir got a pair of chemical pocket warmers. They seem so handy, I don't know why you can't find them in the US. Muir thinks it's because they somehow cause cancer or are otherwise radioactive. I bought The Insider's Guide to Beijing, which Chris Tang recommended as a good resource for lots of things. It's more 'survival guide' than 'tourist book' and seems like it will have some interesting information. Mark picked up 13 of those pocket warmers and ten or so key chains. He said that he loves to bargain and I think part of his strategy is buying in bulk.

After that we sampled lots of the local food--some Tsingdao beer in an outdoor beer garden, some dumplings, and fried banana. We topped it off with a scoop of Hagen-Dazs ice cream at the luxury price of US $5 a scoop! So by the late afternoon, we had managed to end the day on a positive note.

National Day

Happy birthday People's Republic of China! You're 62 years old this year and everyone gets next week off to travel home and celebrate. Well, everyone actually just gets Monday through Friday off and then has to work next Saturday and Sunday through to the next weekend. On Friday morning, the elementary school close to our neighborhood must have been having some sort of assembly because the PA system was extra vociferous. Normally, there is some morning singing and/or address, but I think this was a longer send-off before the holiday. Here are a few shots I took around showing the extra decorations that had been put out.

Flags flying on our apartment building

Far From Cayuga's Waters

On Thursday night, Muir and I had dinner with Chris Tang, a Cornell Alum whom Muir had met through the Cornell Club in Beijing. Chris graduated the same year as Muir (in 2007) from the School of Hotel Management and was currently finishing the year-long IUP Program and working for a micro-finance company on the side. Since he's also in IUP, he was living in Wu Dao Kou, and he took us to a Korean BBQ restaurant that Muir and I hadn't been to before. For those who have not had Korean BBQ, it's one of those restaurants that bring out a flattop grill and you order raw pieces of meat which the restaurant staff cook for you at the table. The meal comes with lots of little sides and relishes. This restaurant was one of the best Korean BBQ places I've ever been to and was sort of priced accordingly. Chris successfully recruited me to conduct informational interviews with Beijing applicants who wanted to find out what Cornell was like from an alum's perspective. The club isn't super active, with only two events from now until the end of the year. At any rate, it was still nice to connect with a fellow Cornellian.