One stolen Smart Phone, 15,000 frequent flyer miles, 27 hours of travel...and I'm home. I touched down in Montrose Saturday night after cars, ferry, planes, and a late night drive to the North Fork. I fell asleep around 1:00am and proceeded to keep on sleeping until 4pm. Yes, p.m., not a.m. Glorious. I woke up, looked at my still packed bag and got motivated out the door for a run. When I left two weeks ago there was still snow on the mesa and the trails were muddy. Now there are patches of green on the hills, the sage is starting to wake up and the trails are dry. I had a nice sunset run through the pinons; one of those rare runs where it feels like I could just keep going. I don't get that variety very often.
This pic above is of my new friend Mary. She handles all the material orders for us at the factory. She knows about as many English words as I know Mandarin words but we managed to build good trust and affinity. It was refreshing after all the handshakes, two-handed name-card exchanging, nodding/smiling, and feigned interest to actually make a new real friend. Honesty and reasonableness (is that a word?) go a long way. I don't have much tolerance for the factory dinners, toasting, and such...so the opportunity to actually connect with people is awesome. I got to spend the weekend with PI friends. We went to their townhome outside of the city center and spent time watching Japanese cartoons, talking, eating amazing fruit, taking walks and catching bugs, frogs, and snakes. Here's Cathy and her family.
And her crazy husband with scary Asian snake of an unknown (to me) variety.
Sometimes scary is fun. I'm pretty sure it's not poisonous or he wouldn't have picked it up. We had so much fun that weekend.
As memorable but not as much fun: getting my cell phone stolen. I was warned. Don't leave the hotel, if you do you'll wind up dead in an alley with a knife in your back and your kidneys gone. I didn't believe it. I left my wallet in the hotel and stashed a little cash in a Velcro pocket, but left my work phone in my front pocket...in case I needed to call the paramedics to take a knife out of my back. A guy pushed past me in a crowd, reached into my pocket and it was gone. It happened so fast. I started sreaming but it was no use. There were too many people and no one could understand what I was saying. I got more "dumbass" looks than "oh, I'm so sorry for you" looks. A few nights before I had two hookers follow me out of the hotel elevator. They couldn't understand why I turned down their offer; they were hot, but who wants to go home plagued with crushing guilt and The Clap? If you sat in the hotel bar you could see a pretty steady stream of them come in around 9pm every night. I figure that they must be paying off the hotel to let them come in and ride the elevators. Weird for that to happen in a four-star western hotel, but maybe that's why there are so many American and European men staying there.
I've said before that South-East Asai changes each time I go. Aside from the construction cranes, the big change I noticed this time is a blase attitude toward Westerners. Walking into a hotel lobby used to mean that you'd get swarmed by bell-boys trying to practice their English, enamored with foriegners. Dinner, even at a local restaraunt, would mean a waiter at your table through the entire meal. Desk clerks would show you to your room. It all made me feel uncomfortable as, obviously, I carry my own bags, drive my own car, and do pretty much everything for myself. I wanted to let them in on the secret that I am only a member of the middle class (and recently at that), that for a time in my life I used to search for dropped quarters in the laundy-mat to get enough money to eat, and that I scrub my own toilet. I ride my bike to work. I sleep in the back of my car instead of getting a hotel. I'm not a bigshot or a high power exec...it's simply that the dollar is stonger than the RMB (for a little while longer anyway). But now the attitude has cooled off. The Chinese are still annoyingly polite but they don't swarm, hover, and fret over you. Personally, I like it a lot better this way. I can tell that many Westerners are pissed. Pissed to have to wait, to not have a fluent English speaker serving them, to not get treated like a bigshot. The Chinese have their own money now. Many have cars, cell phones, designer watches (yes, sometimes even real ones), and condos. Most people I know there who are in middle management or technical jobs are insulted if I try to pay for a meal or a shared taxi. They want you to know that they have their own money. Don't get me wrong, many hundreds of thousands of people live in factory or hotel dormitories making about 1500 yuan a month (between 200-300 USD). They work long hours and don't get much time off. The factories or hotels that they work for own their housing and can exert a lot of pressure and control. Still, I see so many people there grabbing on to every personal freedom that they can. People have aspirations of owning their own business. Access to cell phones has changed the way people can organize or communicate. The RMB is worth more every day against European, North American, and Australian currencies. They know that things are going to look very different in their generation.
Olympic fever has not quite set in. I'm not sure that people realize the significance of Bejing hosting the Olympics. Maybe it's just the area that I'm confined to. The special Economic Development Districts of southern China must be different from the rest of the country. I think that people there are focused on their careers and on making money. They are too busy with their jobs and getting ahead to think about sports. I'd like to travel to other areas, because someone somewhere in China has to be freaking out about the Olympics. I certainly am.
I also learned a secret about guan zee: tell the people in your network what you are capable of doing for them, and what you can't do....honestly setting expectations. It sure takes the stress away. Humility has to be subtle though. Still, I wish I could do more for friends there. They work so hard with so much pressure on their relationships and lives. I'll take the good old USA any day.
