More about China

Work

Today at work, people played Wolverine by sticking pens in between their fingers, mimicked British accents, talked about American TV shows, and told one-liners. I made a 3D model of a TV + independent audio system on Rhinoceros and created a handful of new company logos on Photoshop that we’re reviewing tomorrow. Oh, and the company bought everyone ice cream because it was above a certain [really hot] temperature. (The air conditioning isn’t on because it’s not burn-everyone-alive-July yet.) Also, after lunch, I bought two mangoes bigger than my face for $1.50 USD total.

I feel oddly like this is an excerpt taken from The Office ..

Traffic

Went on a run twice this week so far – though I should’ve known how it would turn out. a) I was a spectacle – “that crazy girl who’s running on the streets holding money and keys. she’s either American or just stole somebody’s money,” b) going on a “run” = weaving through 9 million people on the streets … foot traffic is the craziest, and doesn’t have to follow rules (not that automobile traffic follows the rules that well anyway), c) the flow is turbulent on sidewalks and viscous near bus

stops, and seemingly always quite dense … poor conditions for running. China puts our coaches’ once-quote (during a crew team triathlon) of “don’t go darting out in front of traffic because you won’t win the triathlon

if you’re dead” to shame. Both this morning AND this afternoon, I was walking to/from work and a car passes me, literally 3 inches away from my right foot. Strangely I didn’t even flinch … China kind of trains you to duke it out with cars, and to believe you won’t lose. Your life. Usually.

Weather

It’s interesting how relatively we perceive “hot.” For example, walking back from work in the afternoon, it’s “crazy hot” and I’d never want to be caught dead in tight jeans or long sleeves unless I wanted to go for a swim in my own sweat, eww. But, after running through the city to the supermarket and having eaten dinner, the walk back (while super sweaty) is refreshingly cool ... it's like, as long I'm wearing work out clothes, I redefine "gross."

Besides that, the weather for today:

Sunny

High 94° F

"Mainly sunny. Hot. High 94F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph."

no kidding, weather.com

Food

Again. Extravagant. See. Also, we love fruit.

(fig. 1 waiter at Roasted Duck restaurant)

(fig. 2 mango from after lunch)
(fig. 3 we like all the body parts of our food)

(fig. 4 dessert from Shangri-La buffet)

(fit. 5 reppin' the Asian Tourist. yes it is a standalone name)

p.s. that is DRAGONFRUIT on a STICK covered in CHOCOLATE.

I can’t decide what to listen to right now in my apartment. I think Spanish pop will do. Might as well dive into a foreign excursion while I’m at it.

Tomorrow: supermarket PHOTO ADVENTURE

Summer Internship at Hisense (so far ...)

The summer internship I'm doing is at Hisense. It's an electronics/construction/telecommunications firm with several divisions and headquarters in QingDao. I'm currently working in the Industrial Design group, with an intention of getting a feel of corporate China (already getting totally immersed), how things work here, how companies interact, how the people within companies interact, etc. I started work my second full week back, and it's been fantastic so far ...

I LOVE my job. I'm part of the Industrial Design team, so basically I conceptualize ideas, sketch a bunch using pen/paper, then build the designs on 3Dmax, Rhino, Solidworks, or ProE, and render 3D models, and amp them up on Photoshop. Right now I'm designing a separate audio system for their latest LCD TV. Basically everybody here majored in Industrial Design or Art in college, so everybody is a wicked drawer and is into all the same artistic stuff I'm into, and loves pencil sketching/oil painting/watercolor and photography and all the things that I love that I have trouble talking about with people at MIT. For example, today I sat around and played on Photoshop (which is what I do for fun anyway), played around with my boss's and my cameras, talked with my co-workers about the latest DSLR cameras on the market, looked at each other's photography, looked through popular photography magazines, and made up English names for my co-workers ... the best part is that all of that was relevant to work, because Industrial Design is a creative process, so talking about stuff like photography and cameras is all considered part of the mind-relaxing routine ... or maybe an even better part is that they all know what they're talking about! haha, we were talking about cameras yesterday and my boss was like "OK bring in your Nikon D80 tomorrow and I'll bring in my old Nikon 35mm and we'll trade lenses for fun, I have a 50mm fixed focus f/1.8 lens, we can try out your AF-S lens on my film camera at its actual focal lengths, not x1.5 since digital SLRs nowadays are not FX and its sensor isn't film sized" and then today we sat around during work hours snapping random photos of stuff in the office and looked through Nikon catalogs hahaa.

I love my co-workers too, they are so cool and friendly and fun. Everybody walks around the cubes and chats pretty often, talking about each other's designs, and then we get on random tangents (like whether this guy's English name should be Sean or Chris or Ian or Frank). They take care of my lunch for me and show me around local places after work. And beg me to teach them English. We talk and laugh all the time at work which is really a change for me since last year in all 10 weeks at GE I barely spoke to any of the people in the cubes around me (granted, the team I was on last year wasn't all located in the city, let alone the same room in the same building). People always have really cool stuff open on their screens, like Rhino 3D rendering software or ProEngineering, or they're doing some wicked crazy stuff on Photoshop. One person is working on User Interface, which means those menus and buttons and icons that pop up on the TVs when you go through the menu, or icons that you see in computer programs that are all nice and sleek and pretty and shiny or whatever ... somebody had to draw that stuff from scratch, and that's what she's doing. (a fact I often overlooked as "oh those images/interfaces just ... exist.") Like, in my Firefox browser, the bars on the top and the right, with the shiny reflection on the top half, etc, all have to be drawn from scratch somewhere and that's what she does for the company's TVs! So sweet. They're all pros at Photoshop too - I can't tell the difference between their "effects images" and actual photographs. Except that their images look better.

A huge difference already evident is that Chinese companies are more fraternal than American ones. In America, it's all about protocol, confidentiality, standards ... in China, business is more friend-to-friend (often accompanied by let's-chat-about-business dinners). My team all eats together at the same table every day at the company cafeteria, and socializes quite a lot throughout the day. I'll often go with a co-worker to the fruit stands to get fruit after lunch, and last week one of them brought me to local shops for dinner after work a few times. People here live in their own apartments, but if they recently graduated from college and haven't married/bought their own house yet, then the company has "company apartment complexes" for their employees. Meaning the youngers workers all live together in the same company housing. Life and Work are intricately intertwined in China (Asia) so that probably contributes to the whole fraternal feel of it all. My specific team is pretty casual and relaxed, but that's because we're in the Research & Development building, and we're in charge of design. It's not necessarily this relaxed all throughout the company nor in all Chinese companies (obviously) but it gives me a feel of a broad work atmosphere here.

The usual day consists of:
7:45am - wake up, get dressed, breakfast either on my own or at company cafeteria
8:30am - start work
11:15am - lunch time at company cafeteria, surprisingly good! (and buy fruit/go to the bank/go for a stroll somewhere/chat in the offices)
1:00pm - as long as you get back to your seat by then, you're good
3:00pm - half hour company break (chat with co-workers, go out and shoot some hoops on the basketball court)
5:30pm - work day ends
6:00pm - get home, change, go out in search of dinner, eat, wander
8:00pm - back to apartment, shower, tv, internet
10:30ishpm - sleep!


... and now it's past the sleep time. Goodnight.

Extravagant Eating and Driving Habits ...

The Eating

So far, have gone to two ridiculously extravagant dinners ...
My first weekend, a friend of the family invited us all to a dinner at the restaurant he owns. It was the epitome of Chinese Extravagant Eating/Social Gathering ... dish after dish of delicacies, waitresses tending to your every need, endless desserts, all around a giant round table with a spinning glass tabletop for easy food-passing. All in a huge private dining room (the entire fourth floor of the restaurant), outside of which there was a large sitting area with sofas and a glass floor overlooking a big pool/tank of deadly sharks.

I sat next to the 5-time China Champion/4-time World Champion/Bronze medalist at Sydney Olympics female fencer. We seated 20 at the table. I had, among other things, flaming red lobster, sushi, kobe beef, and 3 desserts. Typically Chinese.


we were all afraid the glass would break:



The Driving

Chinese people love Audis. I don’t know why but the street is riddled with them. Literally, the first day I was there walking down one block, 5 Audis passed me, and as we drove by an intersection, literally driving from 10 ft. before the light to 10 ft. after the light (during a green light) I counted 6 Audis at the intersection.

Most people get around by foot, bus, or taxis. A small percentage own personal cars, but the driving gets kind of crazy ...

Here's an excerpt from an email from my little sister (who also just arrived in China, but another city):
people here drive like crazy... like... haha it's really funny. they don't follow the rules at all and now i understand where there's an "Asians are bad drivers" stereotype. The red lights don't really do anything, but moreso, people don't follow the lanes AT ALL. people are driving on top of the lines for like ... most of the car ride, and sometimes where there are 2 lanes on a street, there are actually 3 cars next to each other. and then people honk like they're in NYC. it's crazy, but pretty amusing. and what's even better is we were in a taxi going down a one-way/one and one half-lane street that was crowded by pedestrians/bikers not to mention the lane of parked cars, and the taxi driver was driving at like 25 mph. I had no idea a cheap taxi car could brake/accelerate that quickly.
... the best part is my first day here, driving to the hotel, the taxi driver made a u-turn from the far right lane. he did that and i was like "......... !!!!?!?!? did you really just do that..??"

more random musings from my sister:

guys...

i just ate YELLOW watermelon.

i took a picture.

We went to Xin Jie Kou today, and WOW it's a lot cheaper than Pu Dong. AND hahaha i was looking at jeans. and there was one with the word "JENAS" on the back pocket...........

and every time i walk into the street, i feel like i'm gonna get run over :[

Lao Shan (Mountains)

The biggest mountain range in QingDao is Lao Shan ("shan" = mountain). We went on a trip during my second weekend in QingDao, with a family friend. Their friend owns a house in the mountains, and we sat out under the gazebo in the cool morning breeze, eating fruit and chatting. (pretty Asian.) We'd left the city by 8am and gotten there before 9, and the weather/entire atmosphere was incredible ... being out near the top, with the wide expanse of mountain range in front of us, the morning was a true nature-immersion trip. I really can't describe the feeling of immense space so I'll just post pictures.

We also had a (seemingly) endless tray of apricots, cherries, peaches, strawberries. So delicious.

Exploring QingDao

Apparently anybody arriving from a foreign country is supposed to be under self-imposed house arrest/quarantine for 7 days. The H1N1 (swine flu) scare is quite intense in China … I guess SARS really scared the hell out of everyone back in the day, and they don’t want a repeat. Which meant, I wasn’t going to officially start work until a week later. Which meant I had all day every day to go out and walk around real China (vs. Chinatowns in the US).

I love China. Aaahhh, it’s been so long -5 years- since the last time I was here, and I’ve definitely missed it. Last year during the school year, I’d randomly walk out of Burton Conner or down Vassar St. or in/out of classes, or just down dorm row, see some construction, hear Cambridge bustling in the background, and be like “whoa. I feel like I’m in China right now.” It was weird, I guess I missed the atmosphere over here and was full-forcedly trying to imagine myself here even when I wasn’t.

The place I’m living for the first week is a family friend’s house. First off, to clarify: there are no such things as individual “houses” in China. Nor does the concept of suburbia exist. The “house” is basically half the 15^th floor of an apartment building – think NYC apartment flats. The elevator only goes to that floor, and opens right into the doorway of their “house.” The view is fantastic, and it’s one block from the ocean, so evening strolls and afternoon runs: check.

from the sidewalk by the ocean, looking back at their apartment/house:

view from my bedroom in the family friend's house:

looking out the window of a typical "house" in China:

Didn’t really do much my first week besides going to the supermarket (which is like a mall) and the bookstore (also like a mall) and the actual mall (like a mall). We visited a small town center/area before dinner once and people were flying kites everywhere! with little small street vendors selling random things like conch shells (it's a coastal city) and other souvenirs.

Also went out onto the rocks by the ocean in the early morning to just sit there and soak in the whole being-in-China thing. It was nice, we were there one morning for almost 3 hours, sitting on rocks, taking pictures, making sketches of the oceanside …

I love Chinese ice cream bars and popsicles. Just throwin’ that out there. Beats a lot of Nestle … but probably because I’m sick and tired of Nestle. The bookstore I went to had 5 floors including a basement, which is pretty average. It’s kind of ridiculous. Besides all of that, on rainy/gloomy days when we weren’t going out, played with Photoshop and the internets a lot … since China is exactly 12 hours ahead of the US, we overlap quite a few waking hours, so I was able to have several long, long conversations with friends in Boston or CA or the Midwest or wherever, via gchat and Skype.

I leave you with a couple views of modern China.

Flight to China ...

… was ridiculously long. Not as bad as I remember it though. Sitting in an airplane seat for 15+ hours is never pleasant, but Japan Airlines had typical great Asian service, which made travel bearable and almost even enjoyable. My itinerary included a 19-hour layover in Tokyo though (what?) so JAL arranged for a hotel near the airport. Almost met up for dinner/evening exploration with another MIT student working in Tokyo, until I realized that would entail a 2.5-hour travel by 4 different subway lines in a country where I’ve never been and don’t read, speak or understand the language … each way. Add to it that it would all take place during my biological clock’s 4am-12pm after not sleeping all night, while I’d then have to get up less than 7 hours later to catch my flight to QingDao, I decided to save that adventure for another time.

The hotel was decent – but talk about space efficiency! Literally the hotel room was a door opening into a room about the size of an average MIT single. Plus a bathroom. It had your standard bed, desk, desk chair, nightstand, coffee set, internet connection, clock … but no extra standing space. It was interesting. Hotel breakfast was mad expensive at $12 USD for a rather small buffet. Nonetheless it was good to be fed before heading off to China.

Tokyo --> QingDao was a little over 3 hours. I added Confessions of a Shopaholic to my growing list of in-flight movies this trip including Valkyrie, He’s Not That Into You, The International, and Gran Torino. Score. Got to QingDao, picked up by family friend’s driver, back to apartment, and ready to start off the real adventures in China …

MISTI

MISTI-China (MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives) Office funded me for a summer internship work-abroad experience this year (2009). This blog chronicles my adventures - both in and out of the office - back in my home country. The last time I was back was 5 years ago, and I've definitely missed this place. MISTI is AMAZING. They completely fund students to be able to work, learn, and live abroad and the experience is irreplaceable. I really couldn't have made it here without them, thanks MISTI!