I've been in China for 25 days now and yet every day I'm still experiencing something new. Especially the food! I've taken to stopping at a different stall for breakfast every morning during my walk to the shuttle bus. I started out just having a banana and yoghurt in my apartment but now I'm trying spring onion pancakes, pork and sage dumplings (not a favourite of mine first thing in the morning!), sweet, fried sesame things and black sesame soya milk. It certainly makes for a more interesting start to the day.
On Friday night, I had my first experience with the Chinese hotpot. After work Bruce and I decided to grab something to eat together. So we caught the shuttle bus and got off at the stop in the centre of the Pudong area. We headed to Food Inn, a 4 storey food court and chose a restaurant. We went with the hotpot one, having already tried the dumpling place and the Japanese noodles. We were shown to a table and given the menu. Unfortunately this menu was all in chinese with no english translations, not even a single picture! The waitress, who had a little english, was very patient and tried to explain what the options were but in the end decided just to order for us. So we ended up with a pot of boiling water, flavoured with herbs and spices, on each of our individual hot plates and enough plates of raw food to feed half the restaurant. It was a one off payment for as much as you liked and the waitress obviously wanted us to try everything! We had plates of vegetables, mushrooms, fish, beef, mixed balls (fish, pork, dumplings, etc) as well as the watermelon and cherry tomatoes served as appetizers. We ate as much as we could and still had to send back full plates! It was all delicious and cooking the food yourself is great fun.
The weekend then became a little less cultural and a little more adrenaline fueled! On Saturday we visited the local theme park 'Happy Valley'. Where we went on some of the biggest and fastest rides in China! Now, I'm not really a theme park enthusiast but it was fantastic fun. The park was very similar to Euro Disney and Alton Towers, with a main street, a lake and then was park split into four areas, including the Wild West area! It even featured a parade at the end of the day. It was very busy with most queues for rides being about an hour. We managed to go on 5 rides, as well as stopping for lunch and even taking in a show! It was incredibly hot (there's been a record breaking heatwave with temperatures consistenly above 37 degrees, this Tuesday it was 39.5 degrees, not counting the humidity!) so after we'd been on a few rides (including the Diver coaster, which has a 90 degree drop into a pool of water!) we decided to seek out some shade and went into the OCT Theatre (Overseas Chinese Theatre). I wasn't sure what to expect as there were only a few posters outside but was told that it was like the Chinese acrobats. Turned out it was like a Cirque du Soleil show with both Chinese and foreign dance and acrobatic troupes, including trapeze artists! It was amazing and certainly nothing I expected to find in an amusement park! In the evening the big rides closed and the Beer Festival began. We'd managed to time our visit with a week long Beer Festival! Although, surprisingly (especially for a Scot) I decided to forgo the beer in favour of the iced tea. There were lots of invited artists, including a water skiing team performing on the lake, singers and a pipeband! I was astounded to see them leading the parade, 2 pipers and 3 drummers. As a piper I had brought my pipes to China and had been trying to find a local band to practice with but had had no joy. I spoke with them and found out that they were actually from Hong Kong and had been invited to perform at the beer festival for the week. They were delighted when I told them I was from Scotland and then embarrassed when I said I was also a piper and started apologising for their 'bad' playing. I assured them that it wasn't bad at all and that it was just so nice to hear pipe music and also how impressed I was that they could play aything at all in this heat, wearing kilts!
After the amusement park we all headed back into town for dinner together. It is definitely one of the things that I am going to miss, eating together. There is no such thing as an indiviual's meal in China (well not that I've experienced so far), everyone chooses what they'd most like to eat and then it's served at the same time in the centre of the table and everyone helps themselves. I wonder if I can start a new trend when I get home! I tried crab stuffed with wasabi, fried mushrooms wrapped in pork, beef and fried rice, pork and noodle soup, "good ear", a fungus that grows on trees and lots more. It was all fantastic! Although I think that getting a take out from the local Chinese restaurant at home might be ruined for me forever.
After Saturday's exertions and extreme heat I ended up with a bad headache (possibly a mild case of sun stroke) so decided to take it easy on Sunday. This involved staying inside and lounging in the air conditioning! It was great to have a day off and just chill out. I feel like everything has been none stopped since I arrived and though I've been enjoying it all, it was nice to have time to reflect. I did venture out on Sunday night for dinner and found my way to another hotpot restaurant, although as I was on my own I decided to leave the pot and go with a ready cooked plate of Singapore style noodles.
This week at work has been much busier for me. The task that I started last week is now generating many, many emails and enquiries that have to be answered. I've even had phonecalls, though the person calling was always a bit surprised when I answered in English! I've been corresponding with colleagues based all over the Asia Pacific area from Australia and New Zealand to Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka and the rest of China. It's a huge area and has given me a much better perspective of the idea of a Global Company and what that means in the day to day working of departments. The level co-ordination required to streamline the procurement departments in all of these countries is immense. I was also part of a round table discussion with Zhang, Dan Meng our overall manager. The main purpose was to introduce the BC (business control) team, a fairly new team, to him and vice versa. It started with everyone introducing themselves, stating what their role was within the department, how long they'd worked with IBM, if they'd had any previous experience and what languages they spoke. It was a great way to get to know the rest of the team better. Bruce and I also had to introduce ourselves. When I explained that I was currently taking classes in Chinese Business Studies, Dan started asking how what I had learned compared with what I was experiencing. I told him that what I had read about and learned so far all seemed to be dated and that China was much more advanced than what I had been expecting. He agreed that he'd heard this many times from foreign colleagues, but acknowledged that Shanghai was an extreme and what I had learned was likely an extreme too and that the true state (for the majority of the country) would probably fall somewhere in the middle. The team then asked specific questions regarding the work, obstacles they had come across and how they could navigate them. 2 years ago the office was only dealing with China, Japan and Korea however now they are a global department dealing with North America, Latin America and Europe, any country where IBM had an office and most of the obstacles seemed to be caused by communication problems between employees in different countries with different styles of working. Dan took the time to listen to everyone's opinions and then offered ways to help encourage good working relationships with these colleagues, how to acknowledge and compromise with another country's working style and how to explain clearly why you are asking them to provide certain data. It was a good discussion and everyone seemed much more optimistic by the end of it.
This has also been a good week on the networking front. My contact from SDI (Julie Zhou) is now back from her trip to Scotland and has invited me to meet up with her and other Scots working in Shanghai on Friday night. I've also heard back from the British Chamber of Commerce inviting me to their next networking event on Thursday 12th. At a local Shanghai golf club! So things are starting to look up, from previously not meeting any other expats at all (well apart from Bruce).
I'm heading to the local bird and insect market this weekend to check out the cricket fighting. I've been told to definitely bring my camera and prepare to be amazed!
Bye for now,
Lindsay x