And yes, that is a Yak in the picture. They were super cool. I could have bought a yak hat, but I got all dutch and could justify the cash. I'm still kicking myself for that one.
Friday, February 25, 2011
pictures
And yes, that is a Yak in the picture. They were super cool. I could have bought a yak hat, but I got all dutch and could justify the cash. I'm still kicking myself for that one.
Spring festival in harbin-tiger park and ice palace and shangra la ice bar
We went to Harbin for a weekend with a couple friends. harbin is a city 3 hours north of Changchun. I know, its hard to imagine that you could drive 3 hours north from where we are, but you can. Which is funny in that everyone has someone else who is worse off than them. It's cold in Changchun. It's true. But everyone in Changchun that we told we were going to Harbin all said the same thing, "boy its cold up there'. Really, its cold THERE. Does it really matter after -30C. Felt like splitting hairs to me.
So Harbin is famous for the international ice festival. They bring in artists from all over the world and they build a park out of ice. It turns out if the temp never rises above negative ridiculous numbers, ice doesn't melt. So they build the park in December and then they take it down in March. It was pretty amazing. although the most amazing part to me was that they were charging Disney prices to get in and the place was packed. Luckily for me I'm white and i don't speak chinese. So when I told the lady that all my kids were under 1.2 meters, she didn't know how to tell me I was on crack so my kids all got in for 1/2 price ($30). I figured since I was bringing 6 people, my family was still $60 more than a normal chinese family with one grown child. A nice rationalization I know, but it worked. It was also fun to watch my daughter (who is taller than her mother at this point) try to get under the 1.2 meter stick at the entrance. Again: white with no language skills. Priceless.
The park was amazing. Hopefully the pictures give some sense of it. The lights in the castle were amazing. And the 40 foot bottle of beer brought an instant tear to every man's eye instantly. We spent 4 hours in the park and had a great time. Although Dee just about got thrown out of the pak for elbowing a bunch of chinese folks trying to cut in line. Turns out cutting in line is allowed and probably even encouraged in China. This is true at KFC, the airport, driving, and skiing. If you're dumb enough to leave enough space for them to sqeeze in, shame on you.
After the ice park, we went to the Shangrala ice bar. Pretty cool little restaurant that has everything built out of ice except the floor. Walls, ceiling, chairs, piano, bar, bar stools, ice chest filled with ice. All made out of ice. I could only afford 1 beer and 1 hot chocolate for the family at $6 a drink, but it was totally worth it.
We also went to the tiger park. 200 Siberian tigers all just mulling about waiting for their next meal. Its amazing. And the Chinese aren't so squeamish about making nature look all nice and cozy. They're pretty good capitalists. For only $7, I was able to feed a live chicken (tied to the end of a very long stick) to a group of about 6 tigers. Turns out in the age old battle between Siberian tigers and chickens, the underdog chicken has not fared very well and this day was no different.
Although I have a new respect for the chicken intelligence. There was a dude in front of me who bought the chicken and the chicken squawked like crazy (chicken speak for 'dude, what are you doing. Can't you see there's frickin hungry tigers out here. Pull me the heck back to your side of that fence') And the tigers all pounced on him instantly. So my chicken starts squawking and realizes this squawking thing didn’t work out so great for Joe and he goes completely possum on me. I hang him over the fence and the tigers just stare at him with hungry curiosity. Then one of them does a little test and chomps down on the fellah with his jaws. The chicken went from playing dead to being dead without so much as a peep. Although his little stunt probably bought him about 3 more seconds of life. You gotta cheer the guy for making an effort.
As a side note, as a man you wonder if I lived back in the day when you might run into a tiger on his turf, I probably wouldn't survive, but I would give him a good fight. That whole fight or flight thing would kick in and I would give him a run for his money. I have now seen this animal at work. Now if I ever find myself in this situation, I'll just sit down and let the tiger do his work. They are unbelievably strong. And fast. And big.
So I’m going back next time with more money. $15 gets you a pheasant. $50 gets you a sheep. $100 gets you a goat and for $200 you can send a full on Bull out there to fend for himself (for a little while) Epic.
So Harbin is famous for the international ice festival. They bring in artists from all over the world and they build a park out of ice. It turns out if the temp never rises above negative ridiculous numbers, ice doesn't melt. So they build the park in December and then they take it down in March. It was pretty amazing. although the most amazing part to me was that they were charging Disney prices to get in and the place was packed. Luckily for me I'm white and i don't speak chinese. So when I told the lady that all my kids were under 1.2 meters, she didn't know how to tell me I was on crack so my kids all got in for 1/2 price ($30). I figured since I was bringing 6 people, my family was still $60 more than a normal chinese family with one grown child. A nice rationalization I know, but it worked. It was also fun to watch my daughter (who is taller than her mother at this point) try to get under the 1.2 meter stick at the entrance. Again: white with no language skills. Priceless.
The park was amazing. Hopefully the pictures give some sense of it. The lights in the castle were amazing. And the 40 foot bottle of beer brought an instant tear to every man's eye instantly. We spent 4 hours in the park and had a great time. Although Dee just about got thrown out of the pak for elbowing a bunch of chinese folks trying to cut in line. Turns out cutting in line is allowed and probably even encouraged in China. This is true at KFC, the airport, driving, and skiing. If you're dumb enough to leave enough space for them to sqeeze in, shame on you.
After the ice park, we went to the Shangrala ice bar. Pretty cool little restaurant that has everything built out of ice except the floor. Walls, ceiling, chairs, piano, bar, bar stools, ice chest filled with ice. All made out of ice. I could only afford 1 beer and 1 hot chocolate for the family at $6 a drink, but it was totally worth it.
We also went to the tiger park. 200 Siberian tigers all just mulling about waiting for their next meal. Its amazing. And the Chinese aren't so squeamish about making nature look all nice and cozy. They're pretty good capitalists. For only $7, I was able to feed a live chicken (tied to the end of a very long stick) to a group of about 6 tigers. Turns out in the age old battle between Siberian tigers and chickens, the underdog chicken has not fared very well and this day was no different.
Although I have a new respect for the chicken intelligence. There was a dude in front of me who bought the chicken and the chicken squawked like crazy (chicken speak for 'dude, what are you doing. Can't you see there's frickin hungry tigers out here. Pull me the heck back to your side of that fence') And the tigers all pounced on him instantly. So my chicken starts squawking and realizes this squawking thing didn’t work out so great for Joe and he goes completely possum on me. I hang him over the fence and the tigers just stare at him with hungry curiosity. Then one of them does a little test and chomps down on the fellah with his jaws. The chicken went from playing dead to being dead without so much as a peep. Although his little stunt probably bought him about 3 more seconds of life. You gotta cheer the guy for making an effort.
As a side note, as a man you wonder if I lived back in the day when you might run into a tiger on his turf, I probably wouldn't survive, but I would give him a good fight. That whole fight or flight thing would kick in and I would give him a run for his money. I have now seen this animal at work. Now if I ever find myself in this situation, I'll just sit down and let the tiger do his work. They are unbelievably strong. And fast. And big.
So I’m going back next time with more money. $15 gets you a pheasant. $50 gets you a sheep. $100 gets you a goat and for $200 you can send a full on Bull out there to fend for himself (for a little while) Epic.
Audi in the driveway
Small story. Coming home from work yesterday, I got stuck behind a car in our ‘driveway’. (Our apartment complex has a single lane one-way ring road that runs around it). The car was an Audi sedan which means it most likely is an official’s car. (officials are allowed a $55k allowance for cars. Concidentally the Audi is priced at $54.9. That's not a joke and you see quite a few Audis around) The driver of the Audi parked in front of his apartment and started unpacking luggage. This is not uncommon to happen for a short bit, but he decided he was going to take his time helping his 25 year old son. He got everything out of the car, helped his son carry it to the apartment, slowly walked back to his car . . . so there is a lineup of 20 cars waiting for him and they are all honking away. The son seems to be a bit embarrassed as he waves apologetically to the waiting cars. The driver, completely oblivious to the crowd of cars, meanders about making sure he hasn't forgotten anything. The message was pretty clear: I’m important. You are not. You can wait until I am ready to move my car which I will do in my own sweet time. It just felt like somebody was missing a little accountability in their life.
FJC Chinese New Year party.
So the Chinese have a different calendar so their new year starts at a different time each year compared to the western calendar. This year the New Year began on February 3. It is now officially the year of the rabbit. Not sure what that means, but it’s very important.
So being a new year, JCI needed to get all 3000 employees together and celebrate the passing of 2010 (the year of the tiger by the way). The best way to do this is to go to an auditorium on Sunday morning and have a pep rally. I couldn’t talk my wife into going with me (I know, hard to believe) so I had to hit it solo. The event started with me getting whisked into a back room when I arrived at the stadium. The attendant didn’t know me so I’m not sure how she knew I was a VIP and needed to be sequestered. I have some suspicions of racial profiling as I think she was treating me differently based on the color of my skin.
After my 15 minutes in the VIP room with the other 4 white people at the event and the Chinese leadership, I got escorted to my seat in the auditorium. I don’t know when I’m going to stop being surprised by the Chinese parties, but it hasn’t happened yet. First the sound system was cranked up to about 110 decibels. I plugged my ears for the first 5 minutes waiting for someone to realize that making the video voice over sound like a jet engine and making everyone’s ear drum’s bleed was not in anyone’s best interest. That moment never came. I unplugged my ears and just let them bleed.
So as you can imagine there was singing and dancing and lip syncing. There was a great musical collage that included a rendition of MJ’s ‘beat it’ including the little wrist waving and hip thrusting that should be a part of every New Year’s work party. There was also the salsa dancing, break dancing, and robot dancing. As a side note, it turns out that almost all Chinese folks are bad dancers. (Pot calling the kettle black of course, but I’m still allowed to make observations) Everyone on stage looks like they are following a set of rules and trying to make sure they are in line with everyone else (which they are not). This leads to a very mechanical looking dance with ‘hand on hip, now extend forward, kick hip to side, now turn, next . . .’
So it goes for 2 hours and my senses are completely overloaded and my nerves are frazzled. There were some good and bad performances but the whole thing had a real rah rah pep rally feel to it which made for a great ending with the choir singing the company song (I didn’t know we had a company song) and the confetti cannons firing away. The best part for me was on the way out. I realized that I am always evaluating Chinese culture and these odd little events from an American perspective (which leads me to the conclusion that everything in China is very odd). The German who was sitting next to me at the event was evaluating it from a German perspective. He was perfectly ok with the odd performances and the deafening noise levels. He just couldn’t understand all the rah rah. ‘If we ever tried to have an event like this in Germany, the whole world would think WWIII was going to start next week’. Yeah, I guess the Germans aren’t allowed to beat their chests and run around on stage with German flags talking about how great they are. I guess we all have our cultural baggage.
So being a new year, JCI needed to get all 3000 employees together and celebrate the passing of 2010 (the year of the tiger by the way). The best way to do this is to go to an auditorium on Sunday morning and have a pep rally. I couldn’t talk my wife into going with me (I know, hard to believe) so I had to hit it solo. The event started with me getting whisked into a back room when I arrived at the stadium. The attendant didn’t know me so I’m not sure how she knew I was a VIP and needed to be sequestered. I have some suspicions of racial profiling as I think she was treating me differently based on the color of my skin.
After my 15 minutes in the VIP room with the other 4 white people at the event and the Chinese leadership, I got escorted to my seat in the auditorium. I don’t know when I’m going to stop being surprised by the Chinese parties, but it hasn’t happened yet. First the sound system was cranked up to about 110 decibels. I plugged my ears for the first 5 minutes waiting for someone to realize that making the video voice over sound like a jet engine and making everyone’s ear drum’s bleed was not in anyone’s best interest. That moment never came. I unplugged my ears and just let them bleed.
So as you can imagine there was singing and dancing and lip syncing. There was a great musical collage that included a rendition of MJ’s ‘beat it’ including the little wrist waving and hip thrusting that should be a part of every New Year’s work party. There was also the salsa dancing, break dancing, and robot dancing. As a side note, it turns out that almost all Chinese folks are bad dancers. (Pot calling the kettle black of course, but I’m still allowed to make observations) Everyone on stage looks like they are following a set of rules and trying to make sure they are in line with everyone else (which they are not). This leads to a very mechanical looking dance with ‘hand on hip, now extend forward, kick hip to side, now turn, next . . .’
So it goes for 2 hours and my senses are completely overloaded and my nerves are frazzled. There were some good and bad performances but the whole thing had a real rah rah pep rally feel to it which made for a great ending with the choir singing the company song (I didn’t know we had a company song) and the confetti cannons firing away. The best part for me was on the way out. I realized that I am always evaluating Chinese culture and these odd little events from an American perspective (which leads me to the conclusion that everything in China is very odd). The German who was sitting next to me at the event was evaluating it from a German perspective. He was perfectly ok with the odd performances and the deafening noise levels. He just couldn’t understand all the rah rah. ‘If we ever tried to have an event like this in Germany, the whole world would think WWIII was going to start next week’. Yeah, I guess the Germans aren’t allowed to beat their chests and run around on stage with German flags talking about how great they are. I guess we all have our cultural baggage.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
New years eve at the German restaurant/fireworks display
So the Chinese invented the firework thing right. And they only really have one national holiday to cover Christmas, thanksgiving, 4th of July, veterans day, memorial day, MLK day . . . You get the idea. So when they celebrate the new year, they don’t really consider pacing themselves.
Dee and I went out to dinner with the kids at a German restaurant where the expats were celebrating the new year in one of the few restaurants that were open during the holiday. After dinner we enjoyed a nice cup of coffee outside in -25 degree weather to watch the Germans light off some fireworks. They did a nice job for Germans.
Then we went home and watched the fireworks from our apartment (18th floor). We spent two hours just going from window to window amazed at how an entire city skyline could be lit up in 360 degrees around the apartment for 2 hours straight. It was literally non-stop noise and lights. We took some pictures, but they were all horrible. In order to appreciate it, I think you just need to be here. So next year whenever Chinese new year is, folks are welcome to come stay for the night and watch a city try to blow itself up.
Other:
So the last thing you want to hear your son say when he walks out of your bathroom is 'boy did I have quite the pee shiver'. At that point you are only left to wonder how far up the walls the mess is . . .
Dee and I went out to dinner with the kids at a German restaurant where the expats were celebrating the new year in one of the few restaurants that were open during the holiday. After dinner we enjoyed a nice cup of coffee outside in -25 degree weather to watch the Germans light off some fireworks. They did a nice job for Germans.
Then we went home and watched the fireworks from our apartment (18th floor). We spent two hours just going from window to window amazed at how an entire city skyline could be lit up in 360 degrees around the apartment for 2 hours straight. It was literally non-stop noise and lights. We took some pictures, but they were all horrible. In order to appreciate it, I think you just need to be here. So next year whenever Chinese new year is, folks are welcome to come stay for the night and watch a city try to blow itself up.
Other:
So the last thing you want to hear your son say when he walks out of your bathroom is 'boy did I have quite the pee shiver'. At that point you are only left to wonder how far up the walls the mess is . . .
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