Archive for December, 2009

I am feeling much better today, and went back at our manufacturer to oversee production. Unfortunately, that left me a bit too busy to do the post I had hoped to do today, with some factory pictures I took my first day here.

So, in the meantime I thought I’d share some of my impressions about life in China. Or, more properly, about life in Shajing Town, Shenzhen, since Shenzhen is a special region, and not really representative of the country as a whole.

FIrst off, you know those people who stop and chat right in the middle of a doorway or narrow hallway, without even thinking about other people trying to get past? Now imagine a whole country full of them. Seriously, everywhere I go, I find myself having to push and squeeze past people. Sidewalks, supermarkets, elevators, everywhere. I’ve noticed for years, flying to Thailand and back on Chinese arilines, how the Chinese passengers always ignored the announcements at the boarding gates about waiting in your seat until your row was called. As soon as boarding is announced, whoosh, people jump up and crowd around the boarding line, and when they do get the go ahead, its less of a line, than a long crowd as everyone competes to get ahead. I just never realized it wasn’t anything limited to boarding aircraft, that’s just their way of navigating through life in general.

And traffic is the same way. It’s by far NOT the worst traffic I’ve ever seen, mind you. Cambodia has easily the worst traffic and driving habits I’ve ever seen. And Thailand isn’t exactly a paragon of good driving, either. But China ranks up there, a bit worse than Thailand, if not as bad as Cambodia. I have seen my driver suddenly pull a u-turn ON THE HIGHWAY because he missed a turn. I’ve found myself sitting in traffic, perpendicular to the flow of traffic, with a HUGE truck grill inches from my door, blaring his horn. It’s common for cars, bikes, and tuk-tuks (or whatever they call them here, kind of a motorized rickshaw) to drive against traffic to get to a side street or driveway. And left turns from the right hand lane seem to be the norm.

And just like with the pedestrian traffic, every car is aggressively jockeying for position, pushing their way ahead of others, usually just barely squeezing past each other without hitting.

Grocery shopping is an interesting experience in China, especially when you can’t read. Row upon row of nearly identical looking jars, bottles, bags or cans, and I have absolutely no idea how to pick one brand from another. Worse, very few things are packaged the way we would expect them to be packaged, so I can’t just look for something that looks like I would find at home. Take milk for an example. I searched in vain for any familiar looking carton, jar, or jug. Instead, I finally found out they were all in unrefrigerated, shelf-stable juice-box style boxes. And there were at least a dozen different types, for the most part without any english labels to tell me the difference. One brand did have english labels, and it came in high calcium, low calcium, low lactose, a couple more variations I forget, plus flavored varieties.

And of course, there are many grocery items which are completely unfamiliar to me. Like there seems to be an endless variety of some sort of cereal based breakfast drinks. At first I thought they were some sort of porridge, like cream of wheat. But they have a picture of a steaming cup of liquid on them.

I can’t find any pre-prepared frozen meals. Frozen foods seem limited to dumplings, sausages, and raw ingredients.

Fresh prepared foods, on the other hand, are abundant and readily available. There are two supermarkets near me, and both have huge prepared food sections, with what seems like every kind of prepared food you can imagine (as long as you only imagine Chinese food, that is.) Lots of different pastries, and meat, tofu, and bean paste filled buns. Cooked beef, pork, chicken, duck, and fish. Dozens of different fried rice or noodle dishes. They even have cooks there who can whip up a chinese style omelet, or other fresh dish right in front of you. I ate there a couple of times before I got sick, on the nights I wasn’t taken to dinner by the girls from the factory.

I have been loving the food in general. It’s nothing like Chinese food in America, of course. And most of the time I don’t know any more about what I’m eating than whether it’s chicken, beef, pork, or duck. Eating is a communal activity here. You seldom see someone dining alone. Several dishes are ordered, and served in the center of the table. It’s interesting the way they handle the table settings. At each place there is a dish set with a small plate, two bowls, a chinese soup spoon, and a tea cup, all shrink wrapped in plastic. You take the chopsticks and poke through the shrink wrap and peel that off, then stuff the plastic in a big bowl in the center. Then, you take some tea and pour it into the bowl and swirl that around with the spoon, transfer that to the other bowl and do the same, pour a little on the plate, and then dump it all into the center bowl.

All of that is because they don’t trust the dishes to be clean, despite being all shrink-wrapped.

Then, all the dishes are served in the center of the table, and everyone just eats right out of them, except for rice or noodles, which go in one bowl, and soup which goes in the other. The small plate is just to spit out bones, because it seems like they never de-bone anything.

My favorites dishes so far are a cold roast beef dish with a delicious chunky black sauce. A soup with ham hocks, and large chunks of potatoes and corn cobs, which you eat with your hands, using plastic gloves, and you also use a pointed straw to suck the marrow out of the bones. And also a kind of sweet roll with a hollow in it that you stuff with a similar sauce to the one on the roast beef dish.

Being an adventurous eater, I had to try some fried insect larvae at the place the factory girls took me to for lunch my first Saturday. They were big fat suckers, about an inch to an inch and a half long. I’ve eaten various insects many times before in Thailand. Compared to Thai bugs, these Chinese ones weren’t seasoned enough for me. In Thailand they use so much salt and garlic that you hardly taste the insect at all. These were much more au natural! Also, in Thailand, insects are a common snack item. From the reactions of the chinese girls it’s not quite so common here. They thought I was crazy! And when I pushed them to try it, you should have seen the expressions on their faces! They could barely swallow!

On another night, the next Monday, I was taken to a place that had a lot of really exotic meats on their menu, like two kinds of elk, one pronghorn, and another with curved horns. Wild boar instead of domesticated pig. Snake. And something that looked like a large guinea pig, and just night have been. They had one of those in a cage outside the restaurant, and knowing I liked strange foods, the girls pointed it out, and said we would be eating that. But I think they were just pulling my leg, because the dish they said was made from it just tasted like beef.

But the joke’s on them, because now that I’m feeling better, I’m going to go back there, and order that guinea pig thing for myself. And the snake, too.

What else? The weather here has been varying from warm during a clear day, like low to mid 70’s, to just a little chilly on a cloudy or rainy day, like low 60’s to mid 50’s. It’s been raining a lot, and so it’s tended to be a bit chilly at night. I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing a sweater around the house at night, since homes in Shenzhen don’t have heat.

And that’s about it. Work, food, shopping, and a trip to the hospital. That’s been my trip so far.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to get those pics up. And tomorrow I will be touring the battery manufacturing area, and will try to get pics and maybe vids of that up in a day or two afterwards.

Stay tuned!