China Bug

Well here we are! I have said my first xièxie and I now reside in darkest China. It is a funny old place, trying desperately to be a western country and so obviously not. The land of beautiful, skinny women, wearing sexy clothes with ugly boyfriends, I generalize of course. I apologize for the length of this monolog, but this is a diary entry as well as for your entertainment.

So where to start! This could turn into a ten page epic just on my first two days experiences. I could be here a while, so I will try to take it easy on you.

The journey from Hong Kong to Liuzhou started with a bus trip to Shenzhen airport, as foreign countries cannot fly to many internal destinations. True, HK is no longer British, but it might as well be, China and HK are massive worlds apart. The bus trip was well organized, as was the immigration and the continuation of the bus journey to the airport.

I can only describe the airport as fairly spectacular. Not a Singapore, but it kicks UK airports into the gutter. Aesthetics, design, layout, organisation, efficiency, cleanliness, atmosphere, all these words to describe an airport might as well be in a foreign language back in the UK. The ultimate airport experience is Singapore, but not far behind are Malaysia’s KLIA and KLCC (only a few kilometres apart), even Jakarta (Indonesia) would challenge the likes of Manchester which is about the best that the UK has to offer. No, I am not bragging, I’m English – I feel ashamed more than anything!

Moving on to my first impressions after arriving at Liuzhou airport. Nothing classy about this airport, more like a very large bus terminal. After getting through baggage check and exiting the green channel, I lit up a stress relieving nail and eyeballed the taxis. I had been warned that negotiation was a part of the deal here and so thoroughly psyched up, I tackled the front of the queue.

The boot lid was opened and the guy tried to wrestle my bags from me and seemed surprised at my reluctance. But, once they have your bags locked away, you lose the power of negotiation. There was much jabbering, but I was ready with a piece of paper and a pen. One hundred was the number that he wrote. I had no idea what a good number was, but I could pretty well guarantee that it wasn’t this guy’s best offer. I covered my mouth, rolled around making laughing noises.

He handed back the paper and I wrote down 70. He showed it to all the other taxi drivers standing around and they all covered their mouths, rolled around making laughing noises. I kinda expected that, it breaks the ice. He wrote 90, but I refused to budge. He wrote 80 and still I refused to budge. He would not go any lower, so I walked away down the long line. No one was going for 70 so I had to agree 80. He had followed me knowing that no one would agree, these guys were organized!

It seemed like a reasonable negotiation, given that there were no alternatives. I showed him my hotel booking written in Chinese and off we set. Half an hour later, he dropped me at a very fine hotel, and there was me expecting a bit of a flea pit. Strange though, the Li Jing hotel must be associated with the Radisson, judging by all the signs. Nah! You already guessed, the taxi driver took me to the wrong hotel. It was actually another 20 Yen taxi ride to the correct hotel. So it doesn’t take a genius to work out who won that negotiation. I wasn’t angry, in fact, I found it fairly amusing. Probably not as funny as he found it!

The Li Jing hotel is very nice. I was booked into a more expensive room for two days, as the standard rooms were full. That worked for me, the bed was incredibly comfortable with its feather mattress and plethora of pillows. I’m not looking forward to moving to the cheaper room, but it can’t be that bad.

Even though it was past midnight and I had work in the morning, I really wanted a beer to wind down, and in any case, it is kind of a tradition with me to drop the bags and go for a welcome to your new home drink. I was very tired so it was never going to be a session, just half an hour or so.

I wandered around the block, saw some lights down an alley and so followed. Turned out to be just a tiny sushi bar, but useful to know. I asked the girl cleaning the tables if she spoke English, with really little in the way of expectations. Her English was perfect, well as perfect as I could ever hope for. Not bad for a cleaner and way better than anyone else I had spoken to in this country.

We chatted for a while. She was just finishing up her shift and offered to take me to a quiet bar with some background live music. The route was complex; down alleys, steps, tunnels, more alleys, but the bar, although not the Ritz or the Rose and Crown, but it was full of character and had its appeal. We chose the best of a row of wobbly bar stools and got on with it.

Jerzi was a charming young lass of 22 years. Very hard working, two jobs an hour cycle ride between them. Very lively conversationalist, intelligent, travelled, very cute. Hardly touched her half glass of beer, almost the perfect woman I would say. She introduced me to some friends; cute Kurt and the gang. I tell you, I am like a magnet for gay boys, but that is OK, I love the humour and attitude.

We finished the large bottle of beer and Jerzi walked me back to the hotel. It is now approaching 02:00 and she has an hour cycle to her grandfather’s where she lives. Jerzi has offered to show me around at the weekend and I may well follow up on that offer.

Met the boss in the lobby at 07:30 as arranged after a pretty good hotel breakfast. He insisted that I was the boss, so I suggested that we just work together to solve the problems. I really am not a boss kind of person. I am here to do a job and share my knowledge, not rack up hierarchy points.

I met my team of about a dozen very young engineers, mostly in their twenties. I was the expert brought in on the job, to guide and advise. It was all they could do to resist calling me sensai. They spent the day explaining the job to me, but it was all I could do to stay awake. The two hour meeting in Chinese was the killer, but I managed to get through somehow.

Survived and dropped my bags off at the hotel and around the corner for some of Jerzi’s sushi. The boss allowed her to talk with me, seeing as I was only there because of her, and paying.

I did some sushi and a bowl of noodles. The sushi was easy enough with the chopsticks, but I was not looking forward to tackling the noodles – this could get messy. A young boy, about 5 years old sat next to me. In front of him was the same huge bowl of noodles. I decided to have some fun with this.

I took one stick and flipped the noodles around. The boy was intrigued by this giant bald man who was obviously going to starveto death if he didn’t help. He showed me the chopsticks in his little tiny hand, skilfully separated out a couple of noodle strands and sucked them up spaghetti style. I looked at him surprised, he tilted his head slightly and did it again. No words spoken on either side. Mom and Jerzi were starting to get the giggles by now, both intrigued by our non-conversation.

I repeated the couple of strands of noodles thing and the boy gave a wry grin. Within a minute or two it was like a noodles GP with sauce splashing everywhere. Once the noodles were gone, I picked up the ladle, scooped up some soup and sipped it in a refined manner. The boy gave me this disappointed look, scooped up some soup and slurped it down very noisily, then looked to me. I mimicked his demonstration and the grand prix continued.

By now, Mom and Jerzi were howling. People walking by were stopping to find out what was going on. This was probably the first time the boy finished all his meal too. We did a high five and he took his Mom home. Desperate for some sleep, I said my goodbyes and did the same.

The second day in work went a lot better, in fact I woke up at 03:00am, my mind buzzing with solutions for some of the many problems presented to me. Obviously I cannot talk in detail about the job, but we have three weeks to show solutions and prove that we can do the job. After that, if agreed, the job should last at least a year, possibly two.

As for the bug, looks like a ladybird bug to me,

Dave