2010 Asia Trip, Taipei Day #2 Evening

I like Taipei... the only drawback is the frigging weather. I walked around outside a bit today and each time I ended up sweating profusely. People must take a lot of showers here.

The "work" portion of my trip was completed in Shenzhen. The only PMI related task was to bring some sample materials from Chengdu and give it to our manufacturing partner here in Taiwan. Other than that, all I've done is hang out and eat/drink stuff with friends/family. I'm staying with a friend who is on an expat assignment here in Taipei though he just left about 5 minutes ago to go back to the US for a week.

The flight from Shenzhen was pretty quick though turbulent at times. International flights, including my flight to Taiwan (ha!), departed from a small terminal next to terminal A. It was a bit confusing. Similar to Chengdu, we had to take a shuttle bus to our plane even though there were plenty of open gates with jetways at the terminal.


Helicopter landing at Shenzhen Airport


Terminal A of Shenzhen Airport


China Southern served lunch even for a 90 minute flight. It was the worst airplane food I've ever tasted.


Girl next to me on the plane. She had these weird bumps/scars on her arm... not sure if it was some kind of body modification. She ate all of her lunch... maybe I'm just too picky.


Engrish?!

After arriving at CKS Airport (not sure if it's still called that... DPP/KMT keep changing the name), I got my luggage and took a bus (NTD30) to the Taoyuan HSR (high speed rail) station. From there it was only NTD155 and 20 minutes to Taipei main station, and another NTD20 to take the MRT to my friend's apartment. It's much faster than bus or even a car if there's traffic.


Taoyuan HSR station. I think they're building an additional line to the airport so you don't have to take a shuttle bus to reach the train anymore.


Northbound platform. It looks like a regular MRT station in Taipei but much longer.


HSR train. It certainly looks fast though they never displayed the speed inside the train so I didn't know how fast we were traveling.


Train diagram on the seatback tray. Each train has 12 cars with one for business class and three with general seating. Since it was Saturday, the general seating cars were pretty empty. Leon said the train fills up during weekdays.


End of the line at Taipei station. It was only two stops away from Taoyuan and all underground from Banciao station into Taipei.

I remember looking at a map of Taipei train station and it had 8 levels or something. After getting off the HSR train, I had to go down another level to get to the MRT lines. Taipei station is a transfer point between the blue and red MRT lines so there were a lot of people.


Instead of paper tickets for single trip purchases, they now issue these blue plastic tokens. You hold it next to a sensor pad on the turnstiles, similar to the electronic fare cards, and deposit it into a slot when you exit at the destination station.


My friend lives right next to one of the MRT stations. Next to the exit where I was waiting for him, there was a lady selling food. There are lots of street vendors everywhere but I didn't see any chengguan beating people up like in China.

After meeting my friend and unpacking (he let me stay in a spare bedroom in his apartment), I contacted PMI's sales rep and arranged for him to pick up the material sample. Since there was road construction on the main street, he stopped in mid-traffic and I ran over to hand him the sample. It felt like a drug deal. :)

Since the friend I was staying with had previous dinner plans (he asked me to join them but since they were having spicy hot pot, I passed), I contacted a co-worker who recently transferred to Taipei, and we went to Shilin night market to get something to eat.


At the front of the building with all the food vendors, there was a huge line with >100 people. It was the line for a "chicken steak" vendor where you get a deep fried piece of chicken for NTD50. I had it last time when I was here in 2005... it was so-so. Not sure why the line was so long while other "chicken steak" vendors didn't have any lines.


We got some drinks (mango slush... they use real fruit here) first since it was so hot. Next we got some small dishes (tapas?!): oyster omelet (蚵仔煎), fried tempura (甜不辣, not the same as Japanese tempura), and stinky tofu (臭豆腐).


We walked around and had a few other things, ending up with some shaved ice. One of the more unique stalls was serving Mexican food and the guy running it was a foreigner. He didn't seem to get much business though. We stopped by and chatted for a bit (in English). He has only been there for a month.

After stuffing ourselves, we walked around a couple of side streets with mainly non-food vendors. There were portable stalls set up in the middle of the pedestrian walkway and occasionally they would pack up and take off with the merchandise. These were "illegal" stalls and a system of lookouts would warn them whenever the police showed up. It didn't seem like the enforcement wasn't too serious though.

2010 Asia Trip, Taipei Day #1 Afternoon

Hot... and humid... but outside of the GFW so no need for a VPN.

2010 Asia Trip, Shenzhen Day #1 Evening

It's raining outside. Actually, it's been raining all day in Shenzhen and Dongguan. I had heard that there was a typhoon offshore, maybe they're referring to tropical storm Malou. It's still on the other side of Taiwan... not sure if it's causing all this rain.



I know it's raining outside because I just went out to find some food and got completely soaked. I walked all the way around the hotel just to find a small market and some street vendors right behind us. I'm still feeling sick to the stomach so I just got some bread and bottle of ice tea, and will probably go to bed early tonight.

Today was a fun filled day driving hours through the often heavy rain. We had two business meetings in Dongguan, but it turned out they were over an hour apart. Combined that with a unknown driver, we got lost between meetings and were ~an hour late to the 2nd one. You can never plan too much or too far ahead in China. I did find our destination on my Blackberry and Google Maps but was too uncertain about its accuracy to trust it while we're lost.


Breakfast in the lobby this morning. It wasn't that good. :(


We took a taxi to meet someone at the Sheraton downtown who drove us to his factory in Dongguan.


Just in case you forgot what day it was (Friday)


It rained so heavy at times we couldn't see the road. Most people drove pretty slow with their hazards on.


Even though it was raining like crazy, the bus stops were full of people waiting.


Chinese night market right behind the hotel. It was kind of shabby... I wonder what kind of people liver around here (industrial zone).


Dinner :)

2010 Asia Trip, Shenzhen Day #1 Early Morning

Business travel is lonely and tiring. We spent most of the day yesterday traveling from Chengdu to Shenzhen and didn't get to sleep until almost midnight. It's now ~5:30am and we have to get going again at 8:00am.

I spent the last day at PMI interviewing the production manager trying to figure out our electricity costs and production flow process for bottlenecks. However, I was still feeling sick from the hot pot dinner from Thursday and ended up lying down on the sofa in Leon's office, skipping both breakfast and dinner, debating whether to try to throw up to feel better. Ugh...

At ~2pm, Leon and I left PMI and headed to the airport to catch our 4:10pm flight. Traffic has gotten a lot worse in Chengdu since this time last year. It now takes about an hour to get to the factory from Jiaoda in the morning.


A temporary traffic light in the middle of the intersection. It wasn't there yesterday... and people are actually obeying it. Why can't they follow the regular traffic signals?


Bicycle/scooter traffic at a busy intersection. Again, they are the worst traffic offenders. Almost no one stops at smaller intersections regardless what the traffic light says. Every time I cross the street I'm in danger of being run down by bikes/scooters.


We took a shortcut through a gas station (along with about 100 cars). On the way out, I saw a lot of police and chengguan (city manager?), where normally they're nowhere to be seen. Turns out there was a protest at some government office next to the gas station. I saw banners that basically said their land was taken and now they have nothing to eat. Pretty typical land rights abuse by local officials but I've never seen a protest or mass incident in China before... too bad I didn't get a photo.


Typical behavior when traffic is backed up at an intersection. People would drive into oncoming lanes and try to squeeze back in at the front of the line. This only works when a few assh*les do this; if everyone pulled this stunt, the entire road gets congested and everybody loses. I experienced this one time and it took 30+ minutes to untangle the traffic mess.


On the way to the factory, we drive by a Porsche dealer. There was only one Panamera parked in front. About 5 minutes later, I saw one drive by... same color. They're pretty expensive even in the US; in China foreign made cars are taxed heavily and end up costing almost double.


When we get to the high-tech development zone, the traffic drops off significantly. There are only factories and schools here in this area. In front of each school are parked scores of three wheeled carts. These are much cheaper to ride than taxis (also much more dangerous) so a lot of students ride these instead. Interestingly, though our driver drives pretty aggressively in the city, out here he slows down for each intersection, even if we have the green light. With much less traffic, a lot of people drive fast and ignore all traffic signals. I've seen many close calls as cars and trucks run through red lights. You'd figure in a totalitarian state people would follow rules better.


On the way to the airport we saw a huge congregation of driving school cars outside our factory. They like to train students in the high-tech development zone because of the lack of other traffic. However, since they all come here, most of the traffic are student drivers. This probably makes driving here more risky for the rest of us.


Sure enough, around the corner we saw an accident. There was a motorcycle down in the middle of the intersection but we didn't see anyone injured. Typically when there's an accident in China, they don't move the vehicles involved but stand in the middle of the road arguing, thus blocking traffic and making it more dangerous for everyone else.


The other vehicle involved in the accident. Uh oh, white license plate (on a black Audi of course) means military. Maybe the motorcycle rider was "disappeared" already. Our driver told me to take a picture but he closed all the windows so they wouldn't see me... how exciting! He later told us that cars with military plates can do anything they want since they're outside all police jurisdiction. They run red traffic lights, double park anywhere, and drive as fast as they want. Often you find military plates on luxury cars too. Despite being the People's Republic of China, it's easy to see which group (military) holds all the power (not the people).


Okay, enough political ranting and back to boring travel stuff. After arriving at the airport and checking in, we found out that our flight was delayed for an hour. The waiting area for our flight was packed so we sat at another area. While we were waiting, this guy came over to ask me where he should wait for his flight. It turned out that he was on the same flight so he ended up following us for the next two hours (more delays). Leon was joking that I made a new friend.


Shenzhen Airport baggage carousel #6. The flight itself was uneventful. We overheard a flight attendant say that a typhoon was near Shenzhen and there would be a lot of rain. When we landed and walked across the tarmac, there was only a light sprinkle of rain.


After finding a taxi that would take us to our hotel (lots of lazy drivers that didn't want to take us), we met Leon's aunt and cousins. They were at the airport early to meet us but since our flight was delayed, they went to the hotel to wait. They treated us to dinner at the hotel restaurant. Leon's older cousin ordered a lot of food, including sea cucumber... which came in individual servings (one each). Yum!


He also ordered lobster sashimi. I usually don't eat sashimi but this was pretty good. They also ordered roasted dove, some pig intestine dish, and several more. I was still kinds of nauseous so I didn't eat that much. Dinner was expensive... I thought I saw his cousin count out 1400 RMB from a brick of red bills. He seems like a nice guy but definitely had a Chinese mafia feel about him.


Hotel room at the Langshan Hotel in Shenzhen. This hotel is definitely an upgrade from the RMB 138 room at the Fuyuan. We got a discounted rate through another PMI person and only paid RMB 288 per night, including breakfast. I'm here for two nights then off to Taipei.


Even though it's a nice hotel, there's still a lot of Chinglish. This is the fire evacuation notice on the room door.

Please don't worry if a fire is occuring, the hotel have owned succour scattering facilities to ensure you transmitted safely.

Dang, I've wasted an hour on this post. Time to take a short 30 minute nap and get up again.

2010 Asia Trip, Chengdu Day #3 Evening

I saw an ad on Chinasmack for a paid VPN service. You can subscribe for a month a time so I spent $5 to try it out. It's working pretty good on my netbook (connected right now from behind GFW). I actually wanted to try it on my Samsung phone... it's supposed to work with Android OS but I haven't got it to work yet. This way, I don't have to keep using the VPN from work just to update Blogger or Facebook.

I've been feeling slightly nauseous since yesterday's hot pot dinner so I skipped the noodle breakfast at the factory and only had a bit of food for lunch. Everyone was going out for dinner again tonight but I decided to come back to the hotel and sleep. Leon came back with some KFC; hopefully that won't make me any worse. Actually, I can't remember the last time I had KFC back in the US.

Sam sent me a link to a NPR segment about Chinese language and culture. I was able to access NPR here even without a VPN. It was basically a story about an American linguist and her experience with learning Chinese. It was somewhat informative but I was a bit irritated with the tone of the interview, as if she was the first Westerner to discover the nuances of the Chinese language. Sheesh... there are millions of Chinese people that are bilingual, couldn't NPR find someone that knows what they're talking about? I know that laowais are sometimes still a novelty in China but is the same true of the Chinese language in America?

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I finally got speedtest.net to load using the new VPN. It shows that I'm connected to somewhere near Los Angeles. The latency and bandwidth is pretty slow.



If I disconnect from the VPN, then I'm "back" in China. The problem with speedtest.net is that there are no hosts inside China, with the closest one being in Hanoi. I also tried Hong Kong and both are really slow. However, the non-VPN connection at the hotel feels a lot faster than the VPN, when you're surfing the unblocked portion of the web of course. Must be the GFW causing problems with the speedtest.net website.

2010 Asia Trip, Chengdu Day #3 Early-Morning

It's a routine now... falling asleep early and getting up way early to update the blog. With my main audience stuck behind the GFW with me, I'm not sure if anyone is reading this... oh well, this has always been more of a public diary than anything else.

So I was wrong about the snoring noises from the next room. Umm... there are other "noises" that wake me up though not too long each time.

Anyway, yesterday was a full day at work but I didn't get much done because I was tired and felt sick. I think that's becoming normal for me in Chengdu, whether it's the food or the bad air. I hope I start feeling better later in the trip. We had a couple of meetings and the guest Leon picked up from the airport last night showed up at around noon. Leon said the airport was crazy busy at midnight since most flights were delayed and he didn't get back to the hotel until 1:30am. When I got here Sunday night at 11:00pm, the airport was also packed with people.


First day of school at 西南交通大学 (Southwest Jiaotung University). This was in front of an elementary school on-campus and it was packed with students and parents.


One of the two dogs at PMI's factory

After work, we decided to take the guest (Chinese guy from the US) and Leon's uncle to a Chongqing style hot pot place. I've been to a few hot pot places with locals and we always end up with weird stuff in the soup. Last time it was sheep brain and pig blood... and I always managed to get sick each time. Sigh...



On the way to the restaurant, our driver made a 1/2 block long left turn into oncoming traffic. I think I read somewhere that China had the most number of accidents per person/driver and I believe it. Everyone is impatient and ignores traffic signs/signals, even pedestrians, and especially bicycles and scooters.



At dinner, they did order lots of strange stuff that don't seem like food to me: goose intestines, black tripe, pig throat, and duck blood cake. At least they ordered some fish balls though it didn't look like ones I buy for hot pot back in the US. I was exhausted after dinner so I fell asleep as soon as I laid down on the hotel bed.


Everyone ate out of the spicy outer pot except me. I did try eating a fish ball out of the spicy soup and it nearly killed me.


Leon and I couldn't tell what this was... it was goose intestines. You wrap it around your chopsticks and let it cook for about 10 seconds.


Cart full of "goodies"


Duck blood cake. This was the last thing they threw into the pot. They kept trying to get me to eat it; I just let it sit on my plate.


We got a small bottle of baijiu. It was marginally better than the stuff I had last time but still pretty strong and had a nasty aftertaste.

GFW = PITA

One of the things that's convenient with my new Android phone is to check on social media stuff whenever and wherever. I finally got it connected with the WLAN router here at PMI but nothing works thanks to the Great Firewall of China.

Facebook => blocked
Twitter => blocked
Blogger/Blogspot => blocked
YouTube => blocked

Wow, that means I can pretty much only check email and weather (hot and humid) with the phone. I'm too cheap to turn on data roaming though China Mobile but that probably has all the above blocked as well. I can try to connect through a VPN using the phone, as I'm doing with my netbook, but why should I have to jump through hoops?

If China is so great, as the CCP keeps telling everyone, what are they afraid of? My silly blog? People Twittering random notes to their friends? Seriously, Facebook?!

Hotel Mini-bar

Okay, just one more post before going back to sleep...

Most hotels in the US have a mini-bar where you can drink/eat stuff and the hotel then charges you for the items when you check out. Well, the Fuyuan Business Hotel has something similar.



Instead of a mini-fridge stock with alcohol, there are a few cans of soda, instant noodles, and two bags of mystery snacks on the table. Each item is ~$1. But since this is China, there are other items for sale.



The basket of goodies contains a dehydrated towel (just add water), his and hers underwear, box of disposable razors, a small towel + razor pack, hair + body wash (the series make it possible for the bath to be one of your favorite enjoyments of your traveling), and... a three pack of "premium" condoms. Hmm...I hope they're individually wrapped inside the package.