Thursday, September 30, 2010
A day in the parking lot
I really like words. I like to talk. I like to write. I like to describe situations. Up to this point in my life, words have generally not failed me (you could make a pretty good case for me using too many words, but rarely too few). Now as I sit here, I'm not sure that I will be able to do justice to 'car safety day' here at JCI China. I can't imagine that words could possibly capture what happened last saturday, but here goes. . .
So 5 years ago nobody in Changchun had a car or a drivers license. You could argue they weren't real great at riding bikes since they seem to go where ever their bike and their little hearts desire. Now a small percentage of folks drive, but a small percentate of 8M people is a pretty big number. JCI has decided it would be good for everyone then to provide a safe environment to learn some driving skills.
HR planned a perfect day of for driver skill devlopment by having everyone who has a car at JCI(I think the number was 16 out of 3500 employees) spend the day doing races through obstacle courses with their own car. To keep it interesting, we would learn safe driving by getting timed driving through obstacle courses as fast as we could. One could argue that we would be learning reckless driving on this day, but you have to start somewhere.
So the day began with a review of the prizes. First place would be a 12 volt dust buster that you could use to keep your car clean. 2nd place was a feather wand that everyone here uses to ‘dust’ their car (reference earlier blog post about pollution). 3rd place was a tool box to keep your cleaning supplies. The consolation prize was 2 gallons of radiator fluid. As a frightening side note, at the end of the day, everyone poured one of their 2 gallons of coolant into their radiators. Not sure how all 16 cars at JCI simultaneously needed a gallon of coolant added, but it was clearly the thing to do.
Then it was time for the practice rounds. Since I didn’t have a car, I was offered another guys car to use. I’m not sure what kind of car it was, but the owner used it to race once per month in this parking lot going through these same obstacles. He apparently had been one of the organizers for the day. So it was a 20 year old car with a 1.3l engine. But it had sweet racing seats with4 point harnesses and significant lateral support on the seat. It was small, but it was used to the course so I thought it would work fine. We walked through the 3 obstacle courses on foot to begin, because you don’t want to rush right in and start driving. The organizer explained how pylons worked and how to move from the outside of a lane to the inside as you pass through corners. I’m not sure anyone was listening.
The course:
Race 1: Basically a counter clockwise track with significant hair pin turns and a slalom course through 3 flags.
Race 2: Seashell shaped course with reducing concentric circles until you reach the middle. 3 point turn around and then drive back out.
Race 3: Figure 8 course with a plate of ping pong balls in the back seat. Go to fast and get penalized for losing the balls. Go to slow and lose the race.
After the first practice round in the morning, my chariot was nowhere to be seen. I ended up have to use another JCI car for the rest of the warm-ups. At lunch the owner of the ‘race car’ told me his car would be unavailable for me to drive. I asked him why and he said 2nd gear didn’t work anymore. He said that his car was Chinese and it was not built to survive the way I drove it. Still not sure what I should have said to him at that point. I settled on “huh. Bummer dude”.
Lunch was when things started going from strange to crazy. First the dancing girls. I’m not sure who’s idea this was, but there they were. Portable stereo system and all. Sequin blouse/pant combos. And doing some sort of half cheerleading, half belly dancing routine. There’s only women who work in HR and they put this program together. How they thought it would be a good idea to hire dancing girls as entertainment escapes me. The other strange thing is that no one thought this was strange but me. I told a few people that we don’t normally have dancing girls at our work outings in Holland. They all looked at me the same way (you know the look: “what world do you live in white man”) and said something like “huh, why not?”.
To add to the ‘did I drop acid on my way to work this morning’ feeling, they also had 2 adult stuffed animal mascots walking around. I think they were both mice but I’m not sure. They never really did much, but they definitely added to the atmosphere.
After the dancing, it was time for the driving competition to fire up in earnest. This particular Saturday was a working day (this is a long story that will require a different post) so all the important people couldn’t come to driver safety until after lunch. So the VW CC and the Audi Q5 were not part of the morning training runs. What followed can only be classified as bizarre. Like twilight zone bizarre. I literally pinched myself a couple times and asked out loud ‘am I really awake. Is this really happening?”
People were ‘driving’ through the courses. Some were going painfully slow. Some were running over pylons, and some were going ‘so fast’ that they couldn’t keep the car in between the pylons. The 3 point turn around was a highlight for me. Forward. Stop. Wait. Reverse. Stop. Wait. Forward. Stop. Wait. Etc. . . “Look mom, I’m racin’”.
Needless to say I fared pretty well in the prize department. It felt a little awkward taking 3 of the 4 first place prizes. It would have been 4/4 except my driver insisted that I use his minivan for the final race through the obstacle course. The Audi Q5 beat me 44.5 to 44 seconds. This was probably good for my career as beating the general manager in his $75,000 car with my chevy venture could have been career limiting.
The day ended with one more dance from the girls and the mice, everyone filling up their radiators, and then everyone picking up the pylons and going home. I’m still not convinced this day actually happened except for all the dust busters in the apartment and the pictures on my laptop. Kinda wonder what JCI is going to be doing next month.
So 5 years ago nobody in Changchun had a car or a drivers license. You could argue they weren't real great at riding bikes since they seem to go where ever their bike and their little hearts desire. Now a small percentage of folks drive, but a small percentate of 8M people is a pretty big number. JCI has decided it would be good for everyone then to provide a safe environment to learn some driving skills.
HR planned a perfect day of for driver skill devlopment by having everyone who has a car at JCI(I think the number was 16 out of 3500 employees) spend the day doing races through obstacle courses with their own car. To keep it interesting, we would learn safe driving by getting timed driving through obstacle courses as fast as we could. One could argue that we would be learning reckless driving on this day, but you have to start somewhere.
So the day began with a review of the prizes. First place would be a 12 volt dust buster that you could use to keep your car clean. 2nd place was a feather wand that everyone here uses to ‘dust’ their car (reference earlier blog post about pollution). 3rd place was a tool box to keep your cleaning supplies. The consolation prize was 2 gallons of radiator fluid. As a frightening side note, at the end of the day, everyone poured one of their 2 gallons of coolant into their radiators. Not sure how all 16 cars at JCI simultaneously needed a gallon of coolant added, but it was clearly the thing to do.
Then it was time for the practice rounds. Since I didn’t have a car, I was offered another guys car to use. I’m not sure what kind of car it was, but the owner used it to race once per month in this parking lot going through these same obstacles. He apparently had been one of the organizers for the day. So it was a 20 year old car with a 1.3l engine. But it had sweet racing seats with4 point harnesses and significant lateral support on the seat. It was small, but it was used to the course so I thought it would work fine. We walked through the 3 obstacle courses on foot to begin, because you don’t want to rush right in and start driving. The organizer explained how pylons worked and how to move from the outside of a lane to the inside as you pass through corners. I’m not sure anyone was listening.
The course:
Race 1: Basically a counter clockwise track with significant hair pin turns and a slalom course through 3 flags.
Race 2: Seashell shaped course with reducing concentric circles until you reach the middle. 3 point turn around and then drive back out.
Race 3: Figure 8 course with a plate of ping pong balls in the back seat. Go to fast and get penalized for losing the balls. Go to slow and lose the race.
After the first practice round in the morning, my chariot was nowhere to be seen. I ended up have to use another JCI car for the rest of the warm-ups. At lunch the owner of the ‘race car’ told me his car would be unavailable for me to drive. I asked him why and he said 2nd gear didn’t work anymore. He said that his car was Chinese and it was not built to survive the way I drove it. Still not sure what I should have said to him at that point. I settled on “huh. Bummer dude”.
Lunch was when things started going from strange to crazy. First the dancing girls. I’m not sure who’s idea this was, but there they were. Portable stereo system and all. Sequin blouse/pant combos. And doing some sort of half cheerleading, half belly dancing routine. There’s only women who work in HR and they put this program together. How they thought it would be a good idea to hire dancing girls as entertainment escapes me. The other strange thing is that no one thought this was strange but me. I told a few people that we don’t normally have dancing girls at our work outings in Holland. They all looked at me the same way (you know the look: “what world do you live in white man”) and said something like “huh, why not?”.
To add to the ‘did I drop acid on my way to work this morning’ feeling, they also had 2 adult stuffed animal mascots walking around. I think they were both mice but I’m not sure. They never really did much, but they definitely added to the atmosphere.
After the dancing, it was time for the driving competition to fire up in earnest. This particular Saturday was a working day (this is a long story that will require a different post) so all the important people couldn’t come to driver safety until after lunch. So the VW CC and the Audi Q5 were not part of the morning training runs. What followed can only be classified as bizarre. Like twilight zone bizarre. I literally pinched myself a couple times and asked out loud ‘am I really awake. Is this really happening?”
People were ‘driving’ through the courses. Some were going painfully slow. Some were running over pylons, and some were going ‘so fast’ that they couldn’t keep the car in between the pylons. The 3 point turn around was a highlight for me. Forward. Stop. Wait. Reverse. Stop. Wait. Forward. Stop. Wait. Etc. . . “Look mom, I’m racin’”.
Needless to say I fared pretty well in the prize department. It felt a little awkward taking 3 of the 4 first place prizes. It would have been 4/4 except my driver insisted that I use his minivan for the final race through the obstacle course. The Audi Q5 beat me 44.5 to 44 seconds. This was probably good for my career as beating the general manager in his $75,000 car with my chevy venture could have been career limiting.
The day ended with one more dance from the girls and the mice, everyone filling up their radiators, and then everyone picking up the pylons and going home. I’m still not convinced this day actually happened except for all the dust busters in the apartment and the pictures on my laptop. Kinda wonder what JCI is going to be doing next month.
air pollution
So we were wrapping up dinner tonight and Nathan noticed (Nathan is the most perceptive person in our family. That includes mom and dad.) some small clouds of stuff floating around our light fixture. He asked what we all thought it was. We had never noticed this haze of particulates floating around in our apartment before. Then we noticed that we had left the window open for the last couple hours to help the clothes dry on the drying rack.
Kind of a scary feeling looking up at your ceiling and wondering how you had never noticed the thin, wispy clouds of pollution swirtling around. When we looked at the light in the living room, we could even see some there too. We weren't too sure what to think about this or what to do to 'fix' it. Our only thought was how much worse it would get once winter hit and the coal fired power plants all fired up and belched all new streams of sulfer into our air.
That was when Nathan, the perceptive, pointed out that maybe the smokey stuff wasn't pollution after all and that maybe it was just the same smoke that was coming out of our toaster. We all turned and looked at the toaster. Sure enough, there was a really black piece of bread poking out. And yes the toaster was only a few feet away from our table. And yes we should have noticed it. I guess this falls into the category of your brain's power to hold onto a theory you're convinced must be true and ignore the data around you that refutes that theory. We were all convinced it was pollution, so there was no need to look for any other reason why we would have a cloud of smoke layering our ceiling.
So, it turns out we're just a group of knuckle draggers. China may still have a pollution problem, but its also got a problem with at least one family of dim witted foreigners.
Kind of a scary feeling looking up at your ceiling and wondering how you had never noticed the thin, wispy clouds of pollution swirtling around. When we looked at the light in the living room, we could even see some there too. We weren't too sure what to think about this or what to do to 'fix' it. Our only thought was how much worse it would get once winter hit and the coal fired power plants all fired up and belched all new streams of sulfer into our air.
That was when Nathan, the perceptive, pointed out that maybe the smokey stuff wasn't pollution after all and that maybe it was just the same smoke that was coming out of our toaster. We all turned and looked at the toaster. Sure enough, there was a really black piece of bread poking out. And yes the toaster was only a few feet away from our table. And yes we should have noticed it. I guess this falls into the category of your brain's power to hold onto a theory you're convinced must be true and ignore the data around you that refutes that theory. We were all convinced it was pollution, so there was no need to look for any other reason why we would have a cloud of smoke layering our ceiling.
So, it turns out we're just a group of knuckle draggers. China may still have a pollution problem, but its also got a problem with at least one family of dim witted foreigners.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
corn pops
Our shipment of goods came a week ago. And with it came some luxuries from the US. Spices, gravy, flavored oatmeal, and cereal. So it was with much anticipation that I fired up my first bowl of corn pops in several months. It was an unopened box that we had bought only a few months before. It was going to be fresh. We had bought bags of milk just a few days earlier so I knew these would be good and cold. Nothing could go wrong with this delightful little moment of American nestalgia (can you be nestalgic after 3 months?)
Of course I wouldn't be taking the time to write this down if things had gone as planned. Turns out they make all kinds of different flavored milk here in China. They're usually pretty subtle (I've had grape milk and wheat milk and they weren't bad). Turns out this morning I got the citrus fruit flavored milk. When you take a nice big bite of sweet corn pops with super tart milk, your taste buds get a little twisted around. I still had to finish the bowl, but it was tough getting through it.
I've decided to grow from this experience and always start with small bites until I'm 100% certain what's about to assault my taste buds.
Of course I wouldn't be taking the time to write this down if things had gone as planned. Turns out they make all kinds of different flavored milk here in China. They're usually pretty subtle (I've had grape milk and wheat milk and they weren't bad). Turns out this morning I got the citrus fruit flavored milk. When you take a nice big bite of sweet corn pops with super tart milk, your taste buds get a little twisted around. I still had to finish the bowl, but it was tough getting through it.
I've decided to grow from this experience and always start with small bites until I'm 100% certain what's about to assault my taste buds.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
I've fallen behind on the blog
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So much happens every day, that if you go a couple days without an update, you feel like you need to set aside 2 hours to cover everything. So I don't have 2 hours, but I figured I could try and bite off little bites here and there when I can.
So I had to go on a work trip saturday morning to a molding trial in Ningbo. I really have no idea where this is as I've just been going where people tell me to. I think it might be near shanghai.
We've been working late every night trying to get some tools running properly. but we still get to go out for dinner. We must be near the sea because last nights dinner was a collection of fish that I had to choose from before we sat down. I pointed at a few things and I'm pretty sure none of them ended up on our table (except for the crab, which was tasty but hard to get at without tools).
At one point I pointed at a doughnut looking thing and I was told I didn't want that b/c it was fried ice cream. I reassured them that was exactly what I wanted. Turns out fried ice cream is whisker different in china. they get the fried part right, but the ice cream (if there ever was any) by the time it gets to your table is just a trace residue of some creamy stuff. still tasty, just not quite the beltline bar.
You should also be leery of any presentation that begins, 'you need to try this, its a local specialty'. this usually means it tastes really bad but they keep serving it because it's 'special'. Ended up having to suck the head off a fish due to my lack of preparedness for the 'must try, local specialty' appeal.
Breakfast at the hotel was also interesting. They had cocoa crispies. Come on. Or at least they looked like cocoa crispies. Problem is, since no one in china eats cereal, it could very well have been last years box. It was a bit chewey. It also turns out that there was a cold milk dispenser and a hot milk dispenser. This is an important point to be aware of before shoving a giant spoonful of old gooey cocao crispies in your mouth. I had such high hopes for that bite.
Finally, the pictures are from a clothing store that was on our way back to the hotel from dinner. I love the one t-shirt. They started at the top with such promise. Very. They got it right. Then haughty. I think they were going for naughty, but I'm not sure. They the wheels start to come off the spelling wagon and they start making up words. By the time you get to the bottom, they've given up any pretense of spelling an english word and are just happy to be stringing random letters together. You gotta know they were thinking people wouldn't know the difference anyway. why waste our time looking for a vowel.
Finally, finally. People do a lot of standing for their jobs here. All the security guards stand. The hostesses all stand. They never move. They just stand there all day. I'm not sure why this shocks me so much, but you see folks there for hours just smiling and happy to help. Or not. either way is fine. I have a job. I get to stand still all day and get paid. Life is good. Just seems odd to me.
Anyway, enough for now. Try again tomorrow. Peace out.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
weekend with the family
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Friday night we went to another wedding reception as a family. Two more JCI engineers getting married to each other. I guess that's what happens when you have a bunch of 25 year old co-eds working together every day. The reception was cool and the kids were a big hit (as they always are wherever they go). Kind of funny that whenever they have a ceremony, they expect the most senior people in the crowd to make toasts. In this case Wim Jacobs (my boss) was the most senior, so he got asked to step up and make a toast. A little funny to see a guy get blindsided by a toast request in front of 100 people in a foreign country where you can't speak the language. He handled it well. "Are you serious you want me to give a toast? Are you really serious?" The best was when he said they would be very happy together and then everyone laughed after the translation. The translator sitting next to us said the translator for Wim said he was encouraging them to have a baby as soon as possible. Which is what I've always suspected about using a translator in meetings. Pretty cool tradition with trying to toast each other by drinking wine with your arm wrapping around the other persons neck. Hard to describe, so just check out the video. Saturday was a trip to the soccer field down the street (2 miles). We snuck through a crack in the fence and played a little 3 on 3. We didn't want to play on a full field, so we had to drag the goal from the sideline onto the middle of the field. This was a bit heavier than we anticipated. So when we got it into place we had to flip it 90 degrees to get it right side up. When we did, Nathan held onto the cross bar and it flipped him up in the air until his head stopped his momentum by hitting the cross bar. Then came the unfortunate ending where he rotated, let go of the bar, and fell 6 feet onto his back. It was a funniest videos kind of moment except he wasn't laughing. We had a good game though and that makes all the pain go away. On Sunday, I took my bike to the grocery store. Turns out sunday is shopping day in china. Also turns out when 8 million people all go shopping at the same time, the stores get a whisker busy. Being busy, however, did not keep me from a couple of impulse buys. I came across a bag of cereal while I was buying my oatmeal. The picture on the bag looked exactly like corn flakes. I thought it was worth the risk to see what was inside that bag. The chinese have learned the power of marketing. I bought a giant bag of babyfood that actually looked like, well, baby food because it had a sweet picture on the outside. Hope springs eternal. This afternoon we went to church for the first time. We met some of the usual gang and went out for dinner afterwards. The kids didn't much care for any of the food. It might have been the bowl of blood pudding, cow stomach, and cow tendons. Not sure. There was a new guy at church. Phillipe. He's from Mexico as well. Kind of funny the number of Mexicans we're meeting in Changchun. He invited us to a "Mexican independence' party on 9/16. Not sure what a Mexican independence party looks like in China, but we're definitely going. He also said he would be willing to play soccer next week after church. Our kids will get their eyes opened seeing mexican men play soccer instead of their dad. We also got our slingbox working this weekend. Just in time to watch some quality UM football. (not so great watching MSU beat up on the broncos of WMU) Pretty amazing that we only had 5 channels when we lived on Francis. Now we have 1000 american channels now that we live in china. I'm not sure what to do with 6 ESPN's, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.Thursday, September 2, 2010
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weekend at Changbai mountain
Wrote this entry in word 5 days ago. Just getting around to posting it:
So our first weekend in China as a family. . . Where to even start.
So a group of JCI folks were going to go down to Changbai mountain for the weekend. I assumed we would not join since we just landed in China a few days ago, but Dee felt like a little weekend getaway might be a good distraction from day to day life. Even though it was a 5 hour bus ride starting at 5:40 am on Saturday, we decided to give it a shot.
Turns out nothing is ever as it seems in China. The 5 hour bus ride turned out to be a 9 hour bus ride. That’s a lot of time to be sitting in a bus 3 days after spending 24 hours in planes. We at least got to get out of the bus when the bus had to drive over a river bridge made of 4x6 planks of wood. It was good to stretch our legs (and not wonder if we would be dropping to our certain deaths).
It also turned out that we were going to make a 2 hour stop for anyone who wanted to go white water rafting (or drifting as they call it here). Since no one told us this ahead of time, we had no swimsuits and decided to pass on the drifting. So we sat and waited downriver for the handful of drifters on our bus to make it to the landing. We passed the time skipping stones until Jonathan let a rock fly into the back of the boat catcher guy. Turns out Chinese guys get just as mad as anyone else when some little kid chucks a rock in their back.
After we collected everybody we headed to dinner (12 hours after our trip began). The meal was already prepared and on the table when we arrived. I would like to say what was on the table but I could only identify 3-4 items. There was rice of course and a potato and chicken dish. Then there was fried little fish (think Chinese goldfish) that Dee liked and tofu that she didn’t. Some seaweed dish. Some candied pears on ice (we think). A pile of grey goo. A plate of bean sprouts and a giant bowl of tomato soup. The kids ate the rice.
After dinner we went to our deluxe accommodations down the street. It turns out that deluxe accommodations in rural china takes on a slightly different meaning. The boys and I shared a room with 4 single beds and Dee and Emily shared a room with one queen bed. When we were all settled in, we played the game ‘if you could improve one thing at this hotel what would it be’ game. We started with having a room key. Then we thought mattresses would be a nice touch. Nathan thought the walls could use some paint instead of being all white. Jonathan thought the water stains under the radiator could get cleaned up. Dee thought maybe having toilet paper would b e a nice touch. Emily really stretched and thought a western toilet would be great. No one mentioned wanting a shower. Not sure if this was an oversight or the thought of what that shower might look like in this particular hotel scared the thought out of our heads. Then we all giggled thinking about yesterday when we were debating whether we should bring our swimsuits in case the hotel had a pool. Our expectations might have been a bit high on that one.
When it was time to say goodnight, my wife informed me that she expected a little more out of me in celebrating her 40th birthday. Ouch. That’s not something I thought about in my 12 hours of time on a bus with nothing to think about. Huh. You’d think that would have crossed my mind. Not sure when this failure begins to fade. I’m hoping by birthday 41. Or by the time I doing some serious celebration make-up work.
After waking up at 5 am to catch a breakfast of rice soup (ta mi zhou) which no one seemed to care for (in our family anyway), we were off to the mountain. This involved another hour busride. At the main entrance, we had to wait for our tickets which gave the other Chinese tourists a chance to take photographs with our kids. This is a strange feeling having people treat your kids like superstars and/or circus animals but the experience was pretty consistent the whole time we were at the mountain. I don’t think it will be hard for the boys to meet Chinese girls (of any age).
Once we were in the park, we got to get on another bus to take us from the entrance to the foot of the volcanoe where we would climb 1200 steps to get to the top . If we were lucky, we would be able to see the lake in the mouth of the volcano. We were lucky for about 7 seconds. The guide told us we had to be back at the bus in 1 hour. I think I might have sworn to myself at this point. “We’ve been traveling in a bus for approximately 15 hours to this point and we have one hour to climb these steps, take a picture, and then come back to get back on the bus. Really?”
So the steps were a great moment of Chinese safety precautions. There were old stone steps that were being augmented with wooden steps. We were hiking up the wooden steps. They were in the middle of building the wooden steps. Apparently hiking next to drilling, cutting, and welding soldiers is not unusual in china. Neither is walking across balance beam wide boards spanning open spaces in the steps. OSHA would go nuts in china.
Once we were at the top, the picture taking of the kids really fired up in earnest. The wind was whipping over the top, but it was pretty cool. The thousand or so Chinese folks were all mulling about. My JCI colleague informed us that on a clear day you can see the N Korean soldiers on the other side of the lake. “I’m sorry” I said. “Soldiers? N Korea?”. Apparently this volcano was the border. OK.
This little curiousity was bumping around in my brain when we were suddenly getting herded back to the steps. I asked what was going on and they said that we actually had accidentally crossed into NK when we went right at the top of the steps instead of left and the two angry men were NK soldiers trying to get 300 or so Chinese folks herded back into their country. My mind began to race a little bit. I was guessing that the NK soldiers might be more sensitive to the Chinese tourist than they would be to the American family. I decided not to test this theory.
When we got back to the steps, all the Chinese were getting their pictures taken next to the sign that said, ‘danger. You’re on the border with NK. Don’t turn right’ with a rope blocking the way. Everybody thought this was good fun. I asked why no one bothered to translate this sign for the Americans. The JCI folks said they hadn’t noticed it on the way up. I think I would have noticed and I’m not a super observant guy.
After the Volcano came a bus ride to a river view. Then a bus ride to a different bus ride to go for a 1 mile boardwalk walk along a canyon. Then a bus ride back to base camp. Then a 7 hour bus ride back home interrupted by an hour for us to go souvenir shopping at a store that sold roots for $200 each. Apparently you can make a nice tea with these roots. We didn’t buy one, but some others did.
By my count, we spent about 24 hours on buses this weekend and about 3 hours in changbai mountain. That seemed like a bit of a tough travel to sightseeing ratio, but none of the Chinese seemed to mind. They were all cool with it. Not sure that I have the patience to be a Chinese guy.
So our first weekend in China as a family. . . Where to even start.
So a group of JCI folks were going to go down to Changbai mountain for the weekend. I assumed we would not join since we just landed in China a few days ago, but Dee felt like a little weekend getaway might be a good distraction from day to day life. Even though it was a 5 hour bus ride starting at 5:40 am on Saturday, we decided to give it a shot.
Turns out nothing is ever as it seems in China. The 5 hour bus ride turned out to be a 9 hour bus ride. That’s a lot of time to be sitting in a bus 3 days after spending 24 hours in planes. We at least got to get out of the bus when the bus had to drive over a river bridge made of 4x6 planks of wood. It was good to stretch our legs (and not wonder if we would be dropping to our certain deaths).
It also turned out that we were going to make a 2 hour stop for anyone who wanted to go white water rafting (or drifting as they call it here). Since no one told us this ahead of time, we had no swimsuits and decided to pass on the drifting. So we sat and waited downriver for the handful of drifters on our bus to make it to the landing. We passed the time skipping stones until Jonathan let a rock fly into the back of the boat catcher guy. Turns out Chinese guys get just as mad as anyone else when some little kid chucks a rock in their back.
After we collected everybody we headed to dinner (12 hours after our trip began). The meal was already prepared and on the table when we arrived. I would like to say what was on the table but I could only identify 3-4 items. There was rice of course and a potato and chicken dish. Then there was fried little fish (think Chinese goldfish) that Dee liked and tofu that she didn’t. Some seaweed dish. Some candied pears on ice (we think). A pile of grey goo. A plate of bean sprouts and a giant bowl of tomato soup. The kids ate the rice.
After dinner we went to our deluxe accommodations down the street. It turns out that deluxe accommodations in rural china takes on a slightly different meaning. The boys and I shared a room with 4 single beds and Dee and Emily shared a room with one queen bed. When we were all settled in, we played the game ‘if you could improve one thing at this hotel what would it be’ game. We started with having a room key. Then we thought mattresses would be a nice touch. Nathan thought the walls could use some paint instead of being all white. Jonathan thought the water stains under the radiator could get cleaned up. Dee thought maybe having toilet paper would b e a nice touch. Emily really stretched and thought a western toilet would be great. No one mentioned wanting a shower. Not sure if this was an oversight or the thought of what that shower might look like in this particular hotel scared the thought out of our heads. Then we all giggled thinking about yesterday when we were debating whether we should bring our swimsuits in case the hotel had a pool. Our expectations might have been a bit high on that one.
When it was time to say goodnight, my wife informed me that she expected a little more out of me in celebrating her 40th birthday. Ouch. That’s not something I thought about in my 12 hours of time on a bus with nothing to think about. Huh. You’d think that would have crossed my mind. Not sure when this failure begins to fade. I’m hoping by birthday 41. Or by the time I doing some serious celebration make-up work.
After waking up at 5 am to catch a breakfast of rice soup (ta mi zhou) which no one seemed to care for (in our family anyway), we were off to the mountain. This involved another hour busride. At the main entrance, we had to wait for our tickets which gave the other Chinese tourists a chance to take photographs with our kids. This is a strange feeling having people treat your kids like superstars and/or circus animals but the experience was pretty consistent the whole time we were at the mountain. I don’t think it will be hard for the boys to meet Chinese girls (of any age).
Once we were in the park, we got to get on another bus to take us from the entrance to the foot of the volcanoe where we would climb 1200 steps to get to the top . If we were lucky, we would be able to see the lake in the mouth of the volcano. We were lucky for about 7 seconds. The guide told us we had to be back at the bus in 1 hour. I think I might have sworn to myself at this point. “We’ve been traveling in a bus for approximately 15 hours to this point and we have one hour to climb these steps, take a picture, and then come back to get back on the bus. Really?”
So the steps were a great moment of Chinese safety precautions. There were old stone steps that were being augmented with wooden steps. We were hiking up the wooden steps. They were in the middle of building the wooden steps. Apparently hiking next to drilling, cutting, and welding soldiers is not unusual in china. Neither is walking across balance beam wide boards spanning open spaces in the steps. OSHA would go nuts in china.
Once we were at the top, the picture taking of the kids really fired up in earnest. The wind was whipping over the top, but it was pretty cool. The thousand or so Chinese folks were all mulling about. My JCI colleague informed us that on a clear day you can see the N Korean soldiers on the other side of the lake. “I’m sorry” I said. “Soldiers? N Korea?”. Apparently this volcano was the border. OK.
This little curiousity was bumping around in my brain when we were suddenly getting herded back to the steps. I asked what was going on and they said that we actually had accidentally crossed into NK when we went right at the top of the steps instead of left and the two angry men were NK soldiers trying to get 300 or so Chinese folks herded back into their country. My mind began to race a little bit. I was guessing that the NK soldiers might be more sensitive to the Chinese tourist than they would be to the American family. I decided not to test this theory.
When we got back to the steps, all the Chinese were getting their pictures taken next to the sign that said, ‘danger. You’re on the border with NK. Don’t turn right’ with a rope blocking the way. Everybody thought this was good fun. I asked why no one bothered to translate this sign for the Americans. The JCI folks said they hadn’t noticed it on the way up. I think I would have noticed and I’m not a super observant guy.
After the Volcano came a bus ride to a river view. Then a bus ride to a different bus ride to go for a 1 mile boardwalk walk along a canyon. Then a bus ride back to base camp. Then a 7 hour bus ride back home interrupted by an hour for us to go souvenir shopping at a store that sold roots for $200 each. Apparently you can make a nice tea with these roots. We didn’t buy one, but some others did.
By my count, we spent about 24 hours on buses this weekend and about 3 hours in changbai mountain. That seemed like a bit of a tough travel to sightseeing ratio, but none of the Chinese seemed to mind. They were all cool with it. Not sure that I have the patience to be a Chinese guy.
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