China recap

I sent this via email a few weeks after I got back from China. Some more people have been asking about my experience and I figured I would post it here.

The best word I can describe my trip to China is intense. It was a working trip, and it was definitely work. Long days, not much sleep, etc. I made up for the lack of sleep when I got back- I arrived after midnight on Tuesday (two days earlier than we originally planned) and wasn't back on Pittsburgh time and caught up on sleep until Saturday morning. Friday night was the first night I really slept all night, without the use of Tylenol PM (which I took Tuesday night after I got back to make sure I would sleep). The meetings themselves gave me a real perspective on the Chinese. We are selling the design to the Chinese so that they can build more plants themselves. We are contracted to build 4 plants over there- 2 at one site and 2 at another. So the Chinese need to understand the plant design so they can build it. We had the Chinese who will basically have the design on our side of the table, and the regulators on the other. The regulators and customer would talk back and forth in Chinese for a bit and if the customer couldn't answer a question because they didn't know or needed clarification, they would talk to us in english. We would explain back, and they would translate back and a conversation in Chinese would ensue again. It was very interesting. When the meeting was over, we had questions that we had to clarify ourselves, and that was when our real work began. We would contact our coworkers in China and try to answer the issue or find the background. I had some telephone conferences and things like that, and my phone bill is going to be really bad this month. (I was able to use my cell phone, which we also used during the meetings themselves, but it was $2 a minute.)

Although we flew into Shanghai, most of the time we were 3-5 hours outside of Shanghai. We drove to a town outside the first site and stayed there first. The meetings were held at site, which was about a half hour bus ride, one way, each day. This town (I can't remember the name) was being built but wasn't quite there yet. It had a neat little park with a lake and lots of construction. That was my biggest complaint about sleeping- they had construction going 24 hours a day (and not just here- there was construction everywhere we went in China!). I am a light sleeper to begin with, so hearing "wham" every few minutes certainly didn't help. (Neither did the hard beds, haha!) The other thing I found out very quickly is that they smoke like fiends over there! One of my coworkers from Pittsburgh is originally from China, so he and I walked to this drug store and picked up some allergy medicine. He talked to the store owner in Chinese and we weren't completely sure what we were getting, but it worked so that's all I cared about. I still have some of the pills in our medicine cabinet at home. I break out in hives if I'm exposed to too much smoke, so I really needed something! They didn't smoke in the meeting rooms themselves, but the second you stepped outside, there you were. Blech. And the hotel rooms were smoky as well. I'm not used to that at all! It was difficult communicating in general- other than in Shanghai most Chinese didn't know much english, if at all. For example, in our hotel in Ningbo (where the meetings for the 2nd site were held), I couldn't get the internet to work in my hotel room. I waited until the morning because I was waking up really early, and called the front desk. It took me 3-4 people to get someone who semi knew english. I kept repeating one word, such as "internet" or "computer" and nobody understood that. Finally someone did and said they would send someone up. The guy who came up didn't know english either. He was there for an hour and a half and anytime he needed to talk to me, he would call the front desk to someone who spoke english (again, kind of) and she would tell me what he wanted to say. Finally, she got on the phone and told me my computer was the problem. Who knows. I never had internet there. I couldn't get her to understand that my computer had worked in 3 other hotels already, so I finally just said fine, thank you. The best part? One of my coworkers was across the hall, so I went to use his computer. In China (and Europe) you have to put your key card in a slot by the door to get power in the room. So my key was in the door. I pushed the door to prop it open and turned around to go in my coworker's room. As I walked into his room, I heard the door close shut. Of course, I didn't have my key because it was in the slot, in the room. So I called the front desk from his room, saying "locked out of room" and "room key" to try to get them to understand. I finally got the same woman who had been talking to me, and even though I was calling from a different room, she said "Computer problem?" LOL. Guess she knew who I was at that point. So the 2nd set of meetings was in Ningbo, which is about 3 hours out of Shanghai. Ningbo is considered a town I think, with a million people. Wow. It was huge. This set wasn't quite so intense. Since it was the 2nd site, which is about 6 months behind the first in schedule, a lot of their questions were repeats from the 1st site. There were some heated discussions but the days weren't as long, which was nice. We actually got to have some fun while we were there. One of the Chinese Westinghouse employees ended up hanging out with the 3 of us who were in a group and together most of the time. She took us shopping one day, at a market centered around a pagoda. The market was ok, it had mostly clothes and purses (knock offs) and we didn't buy much. I did find a Chinese brand of purse that I thought was really cute and I bought some purses there. It was named "Bani Rabbit" where Bani is "bunny" with the Chinese accent. Really cute. And we were tired of Chinese food, so we went to Papa Johns for pizza after shopping. That really hit the spot.

Speaking of food, I should describe it. We got wined and dined by the customers and regulators. It was really political. They wanted to show that they have money, and are willing to spend it on us. They threw banquets for us, and the tables were basically a huge lazy susan in the middle. They brought a TON of courses and put them in the middle, and you would move the inside of the table around and put what you wanted on your plate. They had wine, a really potent clear liquor, and orange juice at the table. Anytime you finished any of the 3, they were instantly there, pouring you more. And the owners for the plants kept coming up to have a toast, saying "bottoms up!" so they wanted you to finish it. Because they were trying to show they had money, they ordered a lot of seafood. Tons of kinds- jellyfish, crab, shark, fish with bones in it, who knows what else. It was a TON of food. I don't like seafood, so I was kind of stuck there and didn't eat a whole lot. Even the "normal" foods, like chicken, etc, were interesting. The bone was still in there and cut through so you could see the marrow and the beef did not look like normal beef. So I had a hard time stomaching that stuff as well, just based on the looks. I lived on dumplings and fruit. :) They had watermelon at the end of every single meal. I did try shark fin inadvertently in one of the soups. I didn't care for it too much, and that was before I knew what it was. In Ningbo, we also went to a disco bar, which is their club with dancing. It was mostly male dominated. They were playing drinking games with dice and cups like those in yahtzee, slamming the cup down with the dice in it, and hiding what it was from the other person. Sometimes one of them rerolled, and eventually one of them would do a shot of something that was a mixture of whiskey and tea. They also had a video playing that was pretty risqué. Clothed women (well, scantily clothed) who were pole dancing. Definitely interesting, LOL. I impressed the Chinese with my drinking skills. At the banquet, I was doing shots and some of the Chinese were in awe. And at the disco bar, I threw back the rest of the beer in my hand and apparently one of the Chinese, his jaw dropped and he just stared for awhile, unbelieving. My coworker saw and told me about it afterwards.

We ended up finishing the meetings 2 days early, and the three of us were done earlier than the rest so we kind of snuck back to Shanghai in one of the manager's car (with a driver). The car brought him over for the closeout meeting, and was taking binders back, so we loaded our luggage and went back to Shanghai with him. We did have permission, of one of the managers, although we didn't really ask. We told him we were done, sent our meeting minutes, and said it wasn't worth us sticking around for another day or two. So we changed our flight back from Thursday to Tuesday, which was really exciting. And Monday, we were back in Shanghai for some REAL sight seeing. We went in the Shanghai Financial Center, which is the 2nd highest building in the world. The highest is technically a building in Taipei, but it's only because of an antenna or something. This is the highest observatory in the world. It was amazing. Words and pictures cannot describe it. And Shanghai is usually smoggy, but this was actually a clear day. It was perfect. The city is enormous; you couldn't see where it ended even from up that high. We were also looking for a market that had a good number of seconds (purses). One of my coworkers had been there on a previous trip but all he could remember was that it was near a park. We probably walked, no exaggeration, 3-4 miles, from park to park, looking for it. We never found it. LOL. I know where it is if I go back though- we ended up finding out later from someone else. It was near the airport and we might have seen it but went the wrong direction, headed into the city instead of out, when we started looking. We ended up going to the Pearl Market, which was an experience in of itself. This was where I bought a Burberry purse, which I thought was a second but could be a knock off. They literally had these secret back rooms. You had no clue they were there but when they saw we were American, they opened up this door and you went into this tiny area FILLED with purses. And they closed the door behind you. If you're claustrophobic and ever get a chance to go over to these markets, don't go in these rooms. You can't even turn around in some of them, and have to back out the way you came in, in order to get out.

Oh and before I forget, I need to talk about the bathrooms. Literally, in the floor. First, you had to know to get toilet paper before entering the stall because it wasn't in there. Then, you squatted really low (it did flush but was a hole in the ground) and you couldn't flush toilet paper so you threw it in the wastebasket in the stall. That really disgusted me. Thanks goodness the toilets in the hotel rooms were normal. (But not in the lobbies, those were holes as well!)