Hybernation mode and China travels....

Sorry it has taken me so long for a new post / update, but I've been traveling with clients here in China this past week.

Totally NEW information:

a) Jen stole a topic from me while I was on the road, so I'll skip mentioning the steel cranes as China's #1 bird... so on to #2

b) Txt Msging vs. Voicemail - It is very uncommon to find people here that have the "voicemail" option attached to their phone / plan. 99.9% of people here rely on text messaging to convey thoughts if said person is not immediately available. As a matter of fact, I think that text messaging is the preferred method of communication here. Seems like everywhere I go there are 50 or 100 people all frantically typing away at their phone keypads. I've only recently noticed this because I fell directly into the habit as well and spend most of my time with my face buried in my phone msg than looking around me.... I think the last trip I took on the subway here I saw maybe a total of 12 people... there were multiple stops and several hundred people transitioning on and off the train. Hmmm... am I starting to assimilate and not even know it?

c) GM, Chrysler and Ford [some of the Asian Big 3 (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) as well] - Lost the car war a long long time ago... although Buick is still regarded as a highly envied brand, VW took over this market twenty years ago. I would venture to say that 1 in 3 cars here are Volkswagens. The "upper end" vehicles are comprised of Audi A6s/8s, BMW 5 & 7 series and of course the world renowned Mercedes Benz. There are several significantly smaller players here from France and some other domestic Chinese brands, but when you boil it all down the money spent in vehicles here ended-up in Germany.

d) Pen Ink Thicknesses - It's no big secret that Chinese characters are complex in visual style and method of scribe. Simplified Chinese, which is what the Main Land primarily writes not speaks, (we'll get into that later), is significantly different that Traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese is simply that... people took Traditional Chinese and eliminated a large portion of the complexity, additional strokes, accent marks, etc. to create a language that was easier to read and write. This being said, thousands of years of Chinese history and evolutionary development has imprinted the ideas of accuracy and legibility on the population. Simply put: people try very very hard to be precise in their writing due to the complexity and the commonality of 50,000+ characters. WHICH means that people like to use extremely fine tip writing instruments. The finer the better when you are creating complex characters on sometimes small pieces of paper - or maybe just trying to condense written text to less than 3000 pages for a newspaper article. Being from the U.S. I've grown extremely fond of using pen thicknesses of no less than 0.7, sometimes I like 1.0, but usually 0.7 will do it for me... here the standard (which is also the maximum) is 0.5 - and often times people use 0.38. All in all what that means for me is that my penmanship - that was once so nice and neat and professional - now looks like I just graduated from 3rd grade with a D- in Language Arts [that was true, but I've passed that class since then].

e) Casinos - How do they say: fuhgettaboutit - Feels like I'm quoting Joe Pesci or DeNiro or even Ray Liotta from any number of gangster movies they've put out in their collective careers. Nevertheless - gambling is STRICTLY prohibited by the government. Which I originally thought, "yeah, gambling in the U.S. is illegal too" - but there are the 'exception' states like Las Vegas, Nevada that pretty much organize and control it in a legal manner with gaming commissions and all... and there would be something at least similar to that structure here: illegal everywhere, except in some government controlled or government regulated location or something. Not so. Some island off of Hong Kong has gambling or casinos or something of the like, but definitely no where else in China. People are also very reluctant to talk about it, so it gives me the impression that it is somewhat of a taboo topic - which means I don't ask anymore.

f) Money - Money here is a funny thing... everything is based on the RMB or Yuan, pronounced U-ON (close enough). Interestingly the notes are in primary denominations of 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 1 - very similar to the U.S. only that each note is a different color and a different size. 100's are large and pink, 50's are medium and green, 20's are medium and brown, 10's are smaller and white with blue writing / pictures, 5's are even smaller and purple and 1's are super small and are usually green. There are also 1 Yuan coins that look like U.S. quarters and they also have nickles, dimes and pennies that are different metal materials and vary in size. Every time I pull a wad of these out of my pocket, it always seems like I've just robbed the banker in the game of Monopoly. What is also weird is that with the current exchange rate 100 Yuan bills are about $12.90 USD. So it is funny when I pull a gangster roll [this is about 100 - 200 bills thick with a rubber band around it] out to pay for lunch and I have to sort and organize this huge pile of money to accomplish anything. Makes me feel like I'm getting ready to buy a car or a house CASH but then I get a plate of mixed rice and vegetables. I'm starting to put all of this in a frame of reference... but, I'll be the first to tell you that I haven't figured out money here.

g) Popcorn - If you know me, you know that I love popcorn - as a matter of fact, I've considered that I have truly mastered that art and like my popcorn exactly the way I like to make it. A substitute worth honorable mention is movie popcorn - usually has too much butter and the wrong type of salt - heck, the wrong type of corn for that matter, but, all in all it is edible and enjoyable when going to the theater. HERE - they don't do popcorn. The popcorn they serve in the theaters is white, so they got that part right, it's not cooked in the right oil and worst of all it is DRENCHED in some type of sugar glaze very similar to carmel corn, only less by volume. I'm not one to overly complain, but this is the worst thing I've experienced since I've been here.... my next return trip to the U.S. will be to package and box all of the John Specific foods and spices into a box and airdrop it at my building in Shanghai. Ugh.... I can see me booking a flight back to the States just to make this happen. :)

I'm going to attach some pix from my most recent trip around the country... and for my cousin Katie I'm attaching pictures of our place here.