Central China Drought

If you've followed the China news carefully you've come across the drought already.

Perhaps it's not worth it to share the full statistics again, but there are 200 million farmers suffering from a lack of water for crops and drinking. The image I dug up should cue you in on how large a piece of China we're talking about. You can find the rest from any site offering more complete news coverage.

I wish I could offer more valuable insight to this, but I've never been to these areas and I recognize I Don't Know that part of China. However, potable water is in my opinion the one issue which could cause severe unrest in China. Healthcare has improved in less than 10 years significantly. Human rights are on their way up and people are less impoverished - all these contribute to the stability. And at the moment China is stabile. However, these do not mean much to people who have no water to drink.

China is working on it, and we will need to wait and see if the efforts are effective. I hope the millions of hectars of wheat affected are not a sign of worse to come. They plan to cut the amount of water used per dollar of GDP significantly by 2020. It's a lofty goal, but perhaps not impossible.

OP Out.

Music Choices

One of my favorite things in bars and restaurants here is commenting on the music. Commenting, or more truthfully ridiculing.

The Chinese restaurants catering to the westerners make it easy. Actually, I think establishments fall in to two distinct categories, the fist one being the group where the music is mostly fitting but include a few odd songs here and there; the second group is far more interesting, and unfortunately, far more numerous.

A prime example is from stopping for a pint after dinner in Hong Kong. Lasse and I found a comfortable, mood-lit little establishment and ordered our drinks. The service was good, the decorations were fitting and everything spoke of upper middle class. Well, everything except for the playlist. I pointed out the disco beats to Lasse, and we listened a little further. They started playing Crazy Frog.

I'm sorry, I can't continue that thought further, but rest assured it's not the only example of unfortunate music here. The Irish bar in Guangzhou looks the part, except you can't really hold a conversation inside due to the disco built to an adjacent hall. Turn left from the bar, walk past the Guinness tap, through an opening and there's a mirror ball hanging over head.

These unfortunates are extreme examples though. Most restaurants just have a partially English menu riddled with typos and unclear expressions and a CD playing in the background. The DIO Cafe I used to go to actually always played the same music back to back. The selection was so narrow I caught on the second time I went there for lunch.

The menus in restaurants I will leave as a topic for another day.

OP Out.

China

How China looks from Finland? At the moment it looks like another planet, because it seems so distant. The news from China have been recently focusing on rather trivial issues, such as talking about how Chinese people spent their Chinese New Year in Finland, or then they talk about tragedies or scandals happening in China.

I don't know why it is like this, because to me China seems like a nation that is going to matter, for example in the world's economical development, a great deal. Well, on the other hand, every country seems to have troubles of their own in this moment, but regardless, I'm sure there are things happening in China every day.

I can't say I could hooray for Finnish media anyways, but still, considering how big China has come, it has struck me when I'm now back in Finland, how small amount of news from there actually reaches here.

Usable Statistics - The Chinese Market for Foreign Companies

The National Bureau of Statistics released new information regarding the real urban disposable income per capita. The figures given were as follows:

Real disposable income per capita of China's urban and rural residents in 2008 rose 8.4 pct and 8.0 pct, respectively.

The growth was slower than 2007 levels of 12.2 pct and 9.5 pct.

NBS also said per-capita disposable income of urban residents was 15,781 yuan while that of rural residents was 4,761 yuan.

I'll help you a little further and give you the urban population stat, it's over 577 million (sorry for the 2006 figure, but somewhere under 600 million is about right I believe.)

What this means is that foreign companies eyeing China as a market do not have 1.3 billion potential customers. They don't even have have 600 million potential customers if their product is too expensive.

The richer potential customer who lives in a city has a rough 1300 RMB a month to spend. For reference, that's about 190 USD. But that doesn't really matter, the exchange rate doesn't come in to play when you have a certain amount of available money and shops offer certain products. What matters is that people take a long, long time to purchase items which cost more than they have available in a month. It's a simple thought, of course, but it means the people focus on purchasing things which cost single digit percentages of their available money, as well as low double-digits more seldom.

Now consider entering the Chinese market. You have 600 million customers who are willing to spend 1% - 25% of their available money on a purchase. This is not a real statistic but the point is valid. The money spent is around 13 RMB to 325 RMB. This is what a foreign company will have to consider as their more affluent customer. Suddenly it isn't a very welcoming market with 1.3 potential customers, is it?

Now consider there already exist a Chinese alternative for most of the goods foreigners would import. Anything from electronics to clothing to food can be made differently enough to be unique and brought here, but there will be a domestic good that is at least somewhat similar and cheaper.

Recall the first statistic the next time you see a movie studio or a software producer complain about piracy in China. It's not that the Chinese love copies for the sake of copying, it's because the legal alternative is priced way out of their range. Want to sell Windows Vista here and price it at 140 dollars? Well don't be surprised at the huge backlash when your anti-piracy tool blacks out thousands of computer screens and the people are angry at your software. But that's just one example showing how difficult a market China is for foreign companies. And this comes up before you even think of the trouble localizing your product.

OP Out.

Welcome to 2009

Welcome to 2009 from the YDKC Team!

The holidays here in China are very much what you make of them except for the Chinese new year. It's fun how my wife thinks of the coming New Year celebration ahead of time but other holidays may come as they are. The New Year however has started in shops and advertisements, just as Christmas starts two weeks or a month ahead in the west.

Our regular supermarket is now chock full of red banners. I'll take a picture next time I'm there, but there are hundreds. You don't need to speak a lick of Chinese to know it's going to be the year of the bull next.

Christmas, as I hinted, isn't a mainland holiday. Shops play Christmas songs and you see some decorations but that's all. In Hong Kong (and I hope Pekka elaborates) you see 10-story tall light advertisements and Christmas designs on building walls. Much like everything else, HK Christmas is about shopping.

The western new year gives a one day holiday to most workers but there's no major celebration. And even though fireworks are so popular and available around the year, nobody plays with them for the western new year. Saving up for the Chinese New Year I suppose. Actually, saving up for the New Year is very much a topic.

I've heard that small crime is on the rise a month before the holidays. Like legitimate workers, thieves will try to get some extra money to spend the holidays with. Even our neighbourhood as additional security measures in place. Nothing obtrusive but they make an effort.

But all in all, I've enjoyed my break.
Welcome back everyone!

Oh, a mention to my friend Eero. He's in China getting a nice Chinese marriage with all the hassle and (strange) wonderful ceremonies included. Congratulations.

A Nice Way to Show Power

So, I'm writing on a snowy day. December wasn't as cold last year and this year delighted my wife with ice falling out of the sky. A first for her.

China in general has another "first" going on. They are taking part of the international anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia. You might recall a news item a little while back where pirates captured a cargo ship loaded with tanks, spare parts and ammunition. The ransom demand was in millions of dollars and they still hold the ship captive. The Russians sent the Sovremenny missile destroyer to the area, but so far the ship has yet to be released. A little later and now the Chinese are also going in.

They aren't going in for the Russian tanks, of course. They are doing it because the Gulf of Aden is an important shipping route and because the international effort already rescued the Chinese merchant Zhenhua 4 last Wednesday. It's most likely a tacit show of force as well. Nothing threathening, but a quiet reminder that yes, China has a modern navy and is capable of deploying it outside of local waters. Unfortunately the news in English haven't stated which ships China is going to send. The People' Liberation Army Navy has quite a few modern ships to show off, including the two 1996 bought Sovremenny's and the two improved models of the same, bought in 2001. I'm hoping of course they send the destroyer Taizhou (it's the latter, an 956EM Sovremenny.) I wouldn't be surprised if the group of three ships being sent includes one of the newer domestic destroyers too.

The Chinese have said they will play nice, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao: "Chinese naval vessels will strictly follow U.N. Security Council resolutions and international laws. They are willing to work with other countries and to take part in humanitarian relief tasks." I'm not even joking when I say there's no reason to doubt this. The Chinese only showed interest in the operation after the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved of the action and the Chinese merchants have had pirate trouble.

Yes, to be honest I expected to see more cool warship pics in the news. If you share a bit of similar interest, here's a link to the news item and to the Sovremenny.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081220/wl_nm/us_somalia_piracy_china
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/row/rus/956.htm

OP Out.

Locks

Locks are a smaller topic for a change, but let's go over some basics.

In China, whenever I've seen anyone move in to a new apartment, the first order of business is to change the locks. The occupants usually change the front door lock which is often a more expensive model to begin with and has easily interchangeable internals. These are nice locks and I would have no idea where to start picking them. Take for example the new lock in my apartment - it was changed in to the old housing and came with 6+2+1 keys. The first six are the regular keys to open the door. The second two are for maintenance people and such, who you will want to give a temporary key. The last key is a special key to allow or deny the two maintenance keys. Turn once to allow the two extra keys, turn again to disable. That's what you get for 100 RMB.

The second type of lock is the one for show. And no, I don't mean it's a pretty lock. It's the kind that says "I'm locked, kinda." My electric scooter has such a lock for the helmet case. You can open it with they key intended for it by pushing the key all the way in and turning. No surprise there. The joke is, you can also push the key halfway in and turn, it'll unlock.

So my new apartment complex has motorbike charging boxes available downstairs. We moved in and took our scooter there. I tried charging the bike and noticed that you need to unlock the box to get electricity. (You see where this is going, right?) I almost contacted the management office and asked how much a key would be, but I decided to try my motorbike key. I inserted the tip in the lock and turned. You guessed right, it unlocked. No forcing or picking, just like the key was meant for it.

That lock is similar to the one I had in my mailbox, except that instead of opening with any key, it didn't open at all. I had to change it and that, labor included cost me 6 RMB at the old apartment. You very much get what you pay for. Most people use additional tube locks for their motorbikes, hitching them to posts and supports like you would a bicycle. I don't, but that seems like a bad idea more and more.

OP out.

The eco news headlines are all bad, but is it really?

I'll comment on my new apartment with photos later. Markvs asked for some pics and I've taken a few, but haven't uploaded any. They are coming, though.

Here's a bit of ecological news I picked up. Don't drink water from the Yellow River:

"The Yellow River, the second-longest in China, has seen its water quality deteriorate rapidly in the last few years, as discharge from factories increases and water levels drop because of diversion for booming cities.

The river supplies a region chronically short of water but rich in industry.

The Yellow River Conservancy Committee said 33.8 percent of the river's water sampled registered worse than level 5, meaning it's unfit for drinking, aquaculture, industrial use and even agriculture, according to criteria used by the United Nations Environmental Program.

Only 16.1 percent of the river samples reached level 1 or 2 — water considered safe for household use.

Industry and manufacturing made up 70 percent of the discharge into the river, the notice said, with 23 percent coming from households and 6.4 percent from other sources. The notice did not identify specific pollutants."

The numbers above are not relevant, but what is, is the fact that the pollution is being acknowledeged. The real hope anyone can have at this point is that no other agency comes up with a competing study saying the water is safe (with percentages of their own.) Remember, there is no need to worry for the environment per se - you need to worry for the people living in the environment.

The news post lists a few other previous events related to water quality. Note this one: "In February pollution turned part of a major river system in central China red and foamy, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to as many as 200,000 people."

That is a case where nothing was done until the water was visibly unusable. Red and foamy. The problem is that the factories near the rivers are important to the local citizens. Working in a factory can offer a steady, safe and comfortable conditions compared to farming. And I'm not joking. Amid all the crap you hear about labour laws in China the factories are important sources for employment in many areas. You can't close them and say "go environment." But at least in this case, we are noting the water pollution before the river is red and foamy. There's hope that it doesn't become as bad.

Perhaps it will be easier to control pollution growth next year. The forecast is lower, coming to a 7.5% economic growth. That's the lowest rate since 1990. Keep it in mind when you evaluate environmental news in the coming year. The challenges are huge and control mechanisms often need to be built from the ground up. Small factories and shops have none existent or next to none environmental control.

But remember, China is trying. You might have heard Hong Kong has natual gas taxis running around, but did you know so does Guangzhou? Actually, Guangzhou has natural gas taxis and electric buses. I've even taken a trip in a domestically produced gas taxi in Guangzhou, very few cities let alone countries have similar setups. On a related note, Shell just agreed to sell two million tonnes of liquified naural gas to Petrochina under a 20 year contract.

The full newsposts are available at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_re_as/as_china_polluted_river
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_economy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_shell_lng

OP out.

Bedroom magic

There's two kinds of magic that generally happen in bedrooms. The first one is what you all thought I would preach about, the second is geckos.

Geckos are awesome. In many countries, you'd have to build a big terrarium with funky gadgets for life-support and all that to have a pet gecko - and you'd have to feed them. Here, they are self-sufficient and don't even ask for permission to be your pet. They invite themselves in and make it home. Granted, they run around so fast that you don't get to see them a lot (that's why I don't have a picture taken of one yet). So, as such a pet, they're not as much fun maybe, even less so than a cat.

So, what's so bedroom magical about gecko's?

Well, the 'bedroom' parts comes from the fact that they invite themselves in, and pretty much go wherever they feel like going. Including the bedroom. Killing a gecko is not like killing a mosquito (a lot messier, and quite difficult as well - hence I've skipped that part so far), so they pretty much get their way. Besides, geckos are cool and they are effective insect-killing-machines so why would I want to kill one anyway? I can choose between having a cool gecko around, or a bunch of cockroaches and other insects. Not a difficult pick. Thus, if they want to go to the bedroom, they can, and they will. Luckily that doesn't happen so often, and usually not at a time when humans inhabit the bedroom - they have thing about people around and cool air (aircon).

The 'magic' part comes from the fact that geckos operate 97% on magic. This came as a surprise to me as I was researching into their case.

You noticed how geckos can walk on walls like it was no problem? That is because it is not a problem for them. In fact, they're wall-walking-wonders: No suction cups, no stickyness, liquids or surface tension! They stick to walls because (wikipedia):

• ...the patula tipped setae on gecko footpads demonstrate that the attractive forces that hold geckos to surfaces are van der Waals interactions1 between the finely divided setae and the surfaces themselves
• Every square millimeter of a gecko's footpad contains about 14,000 hair-like setae
• Each seta has a diameter of 5 micrometers (human hair varies from 18 to 180 micrometer, so a human hair could hold between 3 to 30 setae)
• Each seta is in turn tipped with between 100 and 1,000 spatulae
• Each spatula is 0.2 micrometres long (200 billionths of a metre), or just below the wavelength of visible light

So, what did I tell ya? Magic. In effect, a gecko merges with the molecular structure of the surface its walking on. Or at least that's my free interpretation of it.

Now get this (wikipedia again):

• Geckos' toes operate well below their full attractive capabilities for most of the time (...because there is a great margin for error depending upon the roughness of the surface [and so they compensate and leave room for error])
• If a typical mature 70 g gecko had every one of its setae in contact with a surface, it would be capable of holding aloft a weight of 133 kg

Try convince me that isn't magic?

Artur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.", and I can definiteky agree with that. With geckos, moreso, it's not even a technology - it's what they do naturally. Super awesome!

Now, I suppose that wraps it for geckos. I know there are tons of animals and creatures around with magical abilities. I just thought I'd share my liking to the powers of the gecko - since they've taken a liking to running around my apartment walls.

On the topic of bedroom magic, I could mention my thinking on the human bedroom magic as well, for what it comes to Asia and also how everything relates to my post earlier about sucky jobs.

Don't worry, this is mostly quite scientifical and proper.

In the 'working nations' of Asia (my freshly inveted word for China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) people work as if it was the sole purpose of human life. Or so it seems. In my sucky jobs post I brought the example of factory workers who most likely have to skip large parts of their personal life just to be able to work efficiently (and not lose their jobs). In Hong Kong, many people work 10-12 hours a day and have some overtime on top of that as well - 6 days a week.

In Japan, full-time workers, both male and female, average 55 hours of work per week. One in three men aged 30-40 puts in more than 60 hours a week. Half of them are not even being paid for any of their overtime. There was even a deathcase in July, when a 45-year-old engineer at Toyota died after working more than 80 hours of overtime a month.

In Korea, people rank highest in working hours in OECD country study: with 2390 hours a year (quick calculation: 2390 / 52 = 45.96), that's roughly 46 hours a week. South Korea and Japan are the only countries where death by work or "karoshi" (過労死) is a recognized phenomenon (wikipedia).

Anyway, to put a long story short, is it a wonder that the "working nations" of Asia rank low in sex studies? I just had a look at the Durex2005 Global Sex Survey, and under "Frequency of sex", you'll see that Japan ranks lowest (45 per year), Singapore (73), Hong Kong (78), Taiwan (88), China (96), all well below the global average (103). Finland scored 102 and the 'winner' was Greece with a score of 138. Sweden, for some reason, scored only 92. South Korea was not included.

I'm sure culture plays a very big part in this; the general view on sex and dating, and all that. However, if you spend such a great portion of your day at work, busting your balls (figuratively speaking especially if a girl/woman), you don't have much energy for anything - especially if you get home late and need to wake up early again. You manage to put some time for sex too, of course, but no way as much as the life-loving Europeans or other westeners who have jobs only to pay for the "life" and work as little as possible.

I don't know how Sweden's low (or the relatively low score of Finland) fit to this theory of mine, except that maybe the sampling wasn't really good - or, especially in Finland's case, plans for sex are frequent, but with alcohol and late-nights in the mix too, perhaps people tend to pass out and fall asleep before any action happens. Who knows.

Well anyway, that's all about bedroom magic now. Remember, geckos rock!

Tchau.


1 In, the van der Waals force (or van der Waals interaction), named after Dutch scientist, is the attractive or repulsive force between molecules (or between parts of the same molecule) other than those due to or to the electrostatic interaction of ions with one another or with neutral molecules.

Imports in China

So I'll put the photo challenge thing from my mind for a moment. I'm thinking of posting about it weekly, but that's only if I come up with the pictures in time. Let's go with something more factual which isn't from a news post, for a change. I'll tell you of Imports in China.

Have you ever found a product in China with a white sticker pasted on top of the regular product info sticker? Yeah, it's an import. If the Chinese are good at something, it's exporting. 

You will find imported goods only in the largest chain stores and marts of foreign origin. Seven Eleven will have some imports. Wall Mart will have imports, as will Costco, Tesco and such. The local Chinese supermarkets C&U, Hao You Duo and others will not. 

At some point most foreigners will crave a good from their home country, or at least something similar. Or if all else fails, they might crave something ... not Chinese. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but you grow vary of Chinese goods and from time to time the imported items seem like a luxury to splurge on. And you go looking for what you find in your local chain stores.

You're in luck if you have a large shop in your area and you want cheese. Actually, with the dairy scare, foreign goods appear all the more enticing for the lao wai. You are also in luck if you like foreign beer, canned foods or expensive brand clothes (hell, even I have a Chinese made jacket with imported fabric.) But aside from those, you are out of luck.

Generally, this would not be a problem but for some items it's next to impossible to find imports and the local items leave a bit to be desired. Sausages spring to mind. And after eating a stick of meat with corn inside I know I've tried. 

So why is this? There exists a 1.3 billion people market opening up to foreigners by the day, eh? Yeah, good luck entering the market here. Your average consumer earns, on average, anything between 800 to 1500 RMB a month. Yes, the rich locals might find value in high quality expensive items and there exists the face culture which means they are willing to spend money on luxury. So imagine your target market is the small minority of wealthy city Chinamen. Consider the difficulty of entering a market where English is next to useless as a marketing tool. Remember it's a market where until the last few years you had to have a joint venture with locals to enter at all. All the while there are Chinese luxury brands coming up, competing with you for the wealthy locals. Suddenly your target market looks a lot smaller, with a lot more competition and risk.

I don't think it's an impossible market, as the people hopping in to Hong Kong to buy milk powder prove - there are opportunities for the brave, lucky and rich. But in the end it means imported goods are few and far between in select shops. 

A foreigner might think there exists a concrete difference between Asahi beer and Red Rock beer; not so much for the local consumer. They will drink beer. If they don't need to make face they can select the cheapest (and as an added benefit,) the lowest alcohol content beer. This goes for foodstuffs in general - and remember, for quite a large variety of other goods you can find cheap copies.

Believe me. If you ever end up drinking The Great Wall Cabernet Vine or Pearl River beer you too will think it's a cheap copy. 

OP out.

Tales from the Traffic Front

So every one has been with a bad driver. Sure, you can talk of your experiences here.

But please do not say you met the worst driver in China or Asia. Don't go on lenghts about how horrible the ride was. The China "vets" have been there and done that. Coming from anywhere except perhaps Italy, we all find the traffic much worse here. We all pay attention to it and at some point we all feel dread, be it doing 120km/h in a bus during a monsoon rain, or with a company driver who nods off on the highway - or just your common "Crazy Chinese Taxi Driver."

I won't be impressed by tales of how bad the traffic is in your home state. I have my tales of awful traffic, and no, you can't top them. Still, every so often a visitor here will want to talk about traffic. On and on. It's such a popular topic, but really, it's been done. My boss and a coworker of mine spring to mind immediately.

I'm not going to share any close calls I've had with my scooter, nor am I going to recount how many similar scooters I have seen stuck under trucks, smashed to bits. If you've been to China, you've seen the like and know what I'm talking of. And if you haven't, you don't need the mental image of a guy laying on the asphalt squirming in pain as onlookers wait for an ambulance. I've avoided any major bumps but I've seen my share.

Traffic. The one topic of which everyone has a top story.

OP out.

Saving Face

The Olympics gave a great amount of face to the Chinese, too bad the Chinese children had to suffer for it. I don't mean the children working for Nike or Adidas (and they do use child labor) but the fact that China knew about the Melamine tainted milk powder but hushed the media.

Sanlu (the biggest baby formula manufacturer in China, also blamed) recieved the first complaints of sick babies last December and the first death occurred 1st of May. Newsreporters were prevented from investigating and reporting the incidents, in order not to tarnish the olympics.

Here's the newspost, from AFP, through Yahoo!:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081001/wl_afp/chinafoodsafetychildmedia

It was an intentional act to add Melamine to the milk powder. Then it was deliberately covered up. 50.000+ babies got sick and four died.

OP out.

Baby Formula, The Chinese Way

Hey, recall the post I wrote regarding the baby shop? The one where I wasn't completetly convinced all the products were for me?

Well, in case you haven't been following news of China, here's a tidbit.

There's a big thing being reported, where baby formula has been tainted with melamine. The most recent news from today cite 3 dead babies, over 6200 sick and (from yesterdays news) more than 50 babies in critical condition. Among these are over 150 cases of acute kidney failure

A probe was launched to find out the extent of the problem and it appears that approximately 20% of the companies providing formula are involved. China's largest dairy announced a product recall too.

Want to guess why they would add melamine? They likely used melamine to make the milk appear higher in proteine content. Yeah, that's right, it's most likely not an accident you find a chemical used in the plastic industry in baby milk here in China.

The previous formula-scare is from 2004, when 13 babies died of malnutrition, as the formula was fake and contained no nutrients. Let's see how big the numbers get this time.

Sorry for not posting about Finland, but I'll upload a few choice pics once I get them organized.

EDITED- Sorry. It's the 150 babies hospitalized and over 6200 sick, they are not all in hospitals.

Welcome to the Games!

The opening ceremony at the full stadium was magnificent. And now the games have begun.

With 48kg Women's weightlifting. Now there's a sport. The girls do their best to lift less weight than the bigger girls who come after them. And those girls do their best to lift less than the men who come after. It's the Olympic ideal of achieving the best weight lifted per gender per body mass. It doesn't sound too grand, and seeing a girl fail at 90kg lift on TV, it doesn't look too grand either.

But the conditions look nice, the equipment is solid and the arenas are all sold out. Still, when you fail at lifting 13kg less than the Chinese athlete coming after you, the arena is still dead quiet. So far the Chinese audience has only cheered for their own.

I wonder how they react if their athletes fail.
OP out.

Security Through Superior Firepower

So I flew from Guangzhou to Taizhou on Monday and the airport had much more security than before. Specifically, it had more armed security. In a country where civilians are not allowed to carry arms, the decision makers believe more guns will help the Olympic games.

Walking through the doors, a squad of three, all in different uniforms was standing at the gate. Obviously on display. The security and their armament. No, you don't need submachine guns at the door to the airport, but the Olympics bring out this side in their Chinese. They want to show off. There were patrolling guards as well, equipped with pistols. And bear in mind, this was in a country where even the regular Police do not carry arms, on the other side from the Olympics.

Now imagine how many more security guards there are in Beijing. Imagine how the situation turns out if something happens. I won't paint a bleak picture here, but remember China's track record in dealing with disturbances. At least they are trying, very hard, as even the protests at the torch relay were met with non-lethal force. The Chinese do not wish to crack down on foreigners, but if someone was to try causing damage at the Olympics there exists a very real chance of the security escalating the situation.

OP Out.

My favourite colour is transparent

I'll be off to Finland for a few week holiday so my posting will be slow for a while. With that said, let's move to the two issues at hand.

There is a trainstation close to the border of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Not the KCR station, but the real train station. It's a really nice and modern station. The trains on Chinese railways (especially in our neighbourhood) tend to be quite new as well. With the economy booming, China has been improving the infrastructure quite well, and it's a really nice feeling taking a train which smells like a new car.

Anyway. The train station in Shenzhen. For incoming trains, there is one platform and one small exit from it. The exit is about 5 meters wide and has stairs going down. What this means is that when a train unloads its passengers to the station (last station on the rail), the whole system just chokes.

It takes forever to get anywhere. It's ridiculous!.. The reason I'm writing this is that I had to wait for a good 10 minutes to get out of the platform in the blazing heat of mid-day sun. I was wearing a full suit (had a meeting earlier) and carrying my bags. And I was sweating like a pig. Not your cute little piglet but a fullgrown swine.

Warm weather is nice. Sunny days are nice. Even hot weather can be nice sometimes. But NEVER when wearing a suit! Damn it all to hell.

Few hundred little Chinese trying to squeeze through a 5 meter opening all at once. And one super pissed off Gweilo.

No point in the above. Nor in the below.

One thing I've noticed in Hong Kong (and now in China too) is that a large percentage of girls/women in Hong Kong (and probably in China) who dye their hair are actually not that good looking. And they are probably thinking that doing these kind of "improvements" would somehow improve their situation and make them stick out of the crowd to their advantage. Well, no. They don't.

What they do, is attract attention, yes. But... You see an asian girl with a funky colour hair and you're bound to pay attention. 'First mission accomplished', thinks the girl. But you'll quickly realize that despite the hair colour it's just an ugly broad.

Fail.

Off to Finland in 7 hours. Super fun times. Tchau!

Last One Out

In the news again, Three Gorges Dam.

The government finally finished evacuating all the people from under the Three Gorges Dam project. The last person evauated was a lady whom the police dragged out of the water. She protested to the end but was removed.

The key concerns of the people are of course the meager compensations given for their houses. In the usual Chinese style the payments aren't much and the protesters say many have been forced to move into their relatives houses. The houses weren't even left for the water to take care of - a few hundred people reportedly came and dismantled the last houses last week.

The whole artificial lake displaced some 1.4 million people. It's a grand monument for Hu Jintao. You can critisize the dam all you want, but it's very grand to have built a 2km+ wall holding back a 660km reservoir of water during your administation.

Several smaller hydroelectric dams along the river would have been more efficient, I recall hearing 12 being the optimal amount instead of 1. And we don't know yet how much the hillsides next to the reservoir will erode and fall to the water. We also don't know how much waste the local cities will dump in to the huge lage. Oh, and we won't know how corrupted the relocation program really was, all we have is accusations.

But we can hope the dam doesn't break. It's a nasty worst-case-scenario, with possibly millions of lives on the line. Luckily China isn't the most likely target for a military or a terrorist attack targeting a dam, but it's a large target. We must also hope no large earthquake hits the area and that it was well enough built to withstand the masses of water.

At least the government doesn't see cause for worry and claim the site is safe. But as an unrelated note, they have "encouraged" anohter 4 million people to relocate from the areas nearby by 2020. Completely unrelated to the dam as they say.

I'll credit this info to Yahoo News, who got their news from AFP and Xinhua.
OP out.

Consuming - Supplemental

Consider this a supplement to Pekka's post on brands.

In addition to paying attention to the expensive brands the wealthy Hong Kongese / Chinese wear and use, pay attention to the small mistakes they make.

They enjoy the western trappings, but they don't have quite the history with the items to make them look comfortable or familiar.

The easiest to spot is the "loose watch" - it's when a Chinese man has a Tudor or Rolex watch, which costs more than a 5 year average wage, they still often leave the strap as-is without shortening it to fit. It's very common, and looks quite silly with an expensive watch.

A second common one is "My car's expensive but I don't know how to use it" - you can spot this on a rainy, cold day. The Chinese have no idea why their windows fog when it's cold outside, but they've heard the fog clears if you open your window. So the t-shirt wearing factory bosses roll down their windows doing 100 km/h on a highway in a brand new Mercedes or a BMW. It's too bad no-one actually taught them to use the thousand dollar AC the car is equipped with, nor explained what the little button with a window and lines on it means.

It's things like these that make looking at the rich Chinamen a little more fun to my eyes.

OP out.

On the Ease of Eating

I'll throw in a second $0.02 worth of opinion to the discussion on food.

One of the things I appreciate in Hong Kong is the ease of eating. It's safe and they have a great selection available almost anywhere. The advantage over Malaysia lies in the ease of finding a restaurant. The information on where to eat is available easily and finding a restaurant doesn't really rely on prior knowledge. Malaysia, on the other hand, has more Indian food - perfectly suited for me.

In both Malay and HK eating the food will be safe and decently priced. And to be honest, I prefer both places to Chinese eating.

I'll share a short news story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080711/ap_on_re_as/china_dog_meat

It's just a short article on how Beijing is taking dog off the menu for the Olympic Games. Nothing new in the fact that the Chinese eat dog, but it serves as a reminder that while eating in Continental China it is very possible to order something quite unpalatable.

Chicken feet in vinegar is the only dish I have been literally unable to swallow at all. Smoked tofu came close, and there have been various oddities ever since. I never ran to anything as strange in Malaysia or Hong Kong.

Seafood is, like Pekka mentioned a good alternative. If you are open minded enough, most of the things that crawl from the ocean bottom to your plate are fresh and according to some, tasty. I'm not that open minded, but I can eat the shrimp and crab shoved on my plate.

The key in eating in China is to find a dish or two that you like, and when asked what should be ordered, always pick the favourite. The other people will order stuff too and you will be safe in the knowledge you get something you like. It's a way of betting on a winner.

There are other tips as well. Eat in a restaurant where you see locals eating. Perhaps it is a coincidence that a restaurant is empty at the moment, but I haven't really gone wrong in following the popular opinion. Even a small dodgy looking place gets an instant "good enough" certificate if it's full with people eating.

In China, you are allowed to say you don't like a certain dish or a food. The Chinese consider it as an honest response and won't think twice of you eating something else instead. This is true especially since the Chinese have a large variety of food. Guangdong food is seafood based, Sichuan is spicy, Shanghai sweet and so on - the Chinese understand fine if someone doesn't like something.

It also helps if you don't really think of what exactly do the crab eat on the ocean bottom, or how clean the water is in the pool used to grow the fish.

OP out.

Welcome to the New Site

Hello everybody, and welcome to the new site.

For everyone that's new here, I'll provide a brief introduction. I'm
the Taizhou perspective to You Don't Know China. I might occasionally
talk about Guangzhou and Hong Kong, as I often visit both, but I live
and work in Taizhou. If you haven't heard of it before, don't worry -
very few foreigners have.

I'll explain the whole "You Don't Know China" motto a little later,
but I firmly believe any China expert who conveniently forgets to tell
you he really doesn't know China isn't worth your time. Here we are,
trying to avoid the same mistake.

And for my old readers, just remember that I'm still writing about the
same topics and concerns as before. I've been complaining about the my
previous blog site for a long time, and I pushed to get a joint effort
started. The other guys writing here are my friends, and I hope their
perspective is different enough from mine to make the whole site more
enjoyable.

OP out.