Drive, no walk-through breakfast.

I've been eating these flat, thin cakes or pastries in the morning on the way to work. These two ladies have a portable oven that they keep going for two or three hours every morning on a particular corner. They kneed the dough, then mix in a savory mixture of some kind, then crack an egg on top of a few of them. The plain ones are .5 yuan, the ones with eggs are 1 yuan. I usually have two, so my breakfast costs about $.25. There're kindof oily (vegetable oil), so I'm going to try some of that rice stuff (I think it's called 'congee', but I'm not sure if that's Chinese) next week to get some variety.

Lookin' at the world through my - office window, on a clear day.

Today the air was especially clear so I thought I'd take a few photos of the mountains I've been swooning about. I finally found a map and am going to make an attempt this weekend.
This is last week's bike ride, I'm not sure if I stopped where the map shows or made it all the way to the highway on the left. I'll figure it out this weekend. This time I intend to head straight into the hills. (from Google Earth)
















There's allot of green out there, but so far, it's been beyond me as to how to get out there. I always end up deadending into a small river, a wall or a maze of a small neighborhood. We'll see if my sketched road map works in the morning.




This is how it looked the first four days I was here, then I had two days where the air was thick with smoke, so this was a nice break.

Good Morning

The Moon Cake Festival, or National Day, usually a week of holidays is coming up. I believe it is the first week in October. Shijia isn't taking a vacation as far as I know, I believe because they are so busy. As far as I’ve heard, the firecracker salesmen that travel around are selling stuff in preparation for that. I hear the occasional ‘pop’ of them around town but Monday morning I got a close up look.

Watch them go!

These salesmen were firing what appeared to be a mortar-type firecracker from their hands. There wasn't a permanent cylinder like a typical mortar, and there wasn't a rocket under. Either way, they were making their way up to just outside of my hotel window, hanging for a second and going off. They're loud enough to make your ears ring from that close.

All the while there was a little band playing and while the merchant appeared to be selling the fireworks, dragon costumes and other seasonal items. (I don't have Premier right now; if anyone knows an easy way to rotate a video 90degrees let me know).

Market Research Etc.

Market research with Bonnie (Chenchen) and Joy (Lulu, I think).

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week with my assistant/translator Joy, the manager of domestic sales Chenchen, and the sales managers from Ningbo and Shanghai. We toured supermarkets and department stores in each of their areas scrutinizing competitors’ cleaning products along with ours etc. It was nice getting out of Xiwu and seeing more of the country. Shanghai’s traffic is terrible, but our driver didn’t seem too flustered. I learned ‘fan si le’ meaning ‘troublesome to death’ while in the Shanghai traffic.

I’ve found they use more dry floor sweepers here than wet mops. Each company has several models with very functional differences. I’ve come up with a few ideas on differentiating our products, we currently aren’t selling well in that category, but it’s so saturated now I think I’m going to wait and create some new products for the company first. There are also some significant quality and mechanical design issues I was able to identify, but my intent is to provide direction on these to my, yet to be hired, engineer, as opposed to modeling it myself. I’ve learned that there is some kind of patent protection here, a few features on some of the dominant products were pointed out as being patented. I couldn’t figure out how they new it, there’s no patent marking like we would have, and getting the details of the patent will probably be even tougher, but it was interesting to know that in a place so known for IP theft.

I’ve yet to identify a distinctive Chineses look to the products. ID seems to still be new to this market, and it isn’t fashion-driven, such as in mobile phones which are very Chinese and there are regional favorites, but I think there is opportunity to create beautiful, desirable products in this market, just like Casabella, Target, and Oxo have done in the U.S. So, for the time being I’m more interested in creating a strong brand for Shijia than figuring out what the Chinese flair is.

Transportation

We had Shijia’s driver take us in the company’s minivan to Ningbo and Shanghai. The driving in quite scary for someone used to U.S. driving habits. Cutting people off, forcing your way into traffic, weaving through traffic going 30 mph less are just the way it works. In the van was the driver, the domestic sales manager, a Shanghai sales manager, the company owner’s wife (she holds an active position in the company, I just can’t remember it) and her daughter. A little way out of Xiwu I became of a soft gurgling noise coming from behind me. I saw that the cute little daughter had become car sick and was being helped by her mom and one of the others with a bag, she must be less than two years old. What surprised me was that through the whole ordeal she didn’t make a sound, not a cry or a whine, I guessed that she could be mute, but she was fine. So now I’ve seen dogs that don’t chase cars and kids that don’t cry, at least when they’re sick – this is a strange place. Three times in the trip we hit the brakes hard enough to through the driver’s little dancing wooden Buda, and his other things on the dash against the windshield. I won’t forget my seatbelt.

At the end of the day after touring the second store in a chain that looked exactly alike, the girls turned to me and with a sly look said, “Now we can go shopping!” It wasn’t too bad, I don’t have Toni’s sizes yet, so I didn’t buy anything, but it was pretty weird being in a nice mall and seeing nothing over about $40. Some sectors are conspicuously missing, such as camping gear. I wanted to buy a new pocket knife, since I had to leave mine, but we couldn’t find one, or even a department that had anything close to it.

Cow tongue

It actually isn’t unhealthy, it’s a muscle, w/o fat, but I just don’t like the smell. Maybe a little mouth wash before they went would’ve helped. I finally fell asleep in the van on the way back, for I was suddenly in Fenghua parked on a wide sidewalk. I dragged my feet along to the others and through my hazy eyes saw over a dozen of these smooth, flesh colored, nautical looking objects on a small table in front of a restaurant. I realized they were cow tongues. I don’t mind the meat, but the outside is kind of furry and has the strongest flavor, also, it’s not dark red, it’s light colored. The soup we had, which I think they got for me, since I told them I liked noodles (you can’t go wrong with noodles, right?) was lightly flavored, and had baby bok choy, the skin off the cow tongue cut in strips, and a little bit of the meat. I couldn’t do it that night, I just wasn’t up to the challenge. All I could say, when Joy looked over at my bowl, still full of strips of tongue was, “not bad”. Still, I think I might have offended them.

I’m slowly catching on to what I like and how to get it. There are some people I just don’t like to eat with, and tofu has become a relative comfort food. Maybe I’ll sneak my camera to dinner and start snapping photos of my favorite dishes. Still, it is healthy and fresh. Twice during lunch today a fish jumped out of it’s tank onto the floor and had to be put back in. All the veggies are kept in baskets on a rack against the wall or are somehow displayed. You can point to what you want and they cook it up, only a few cooking options exist.

Injection molding

I gave myself a tour of the injection molding facilities tonight. They are quite advanced here probably having over 30 machines, all modern, and a quarter of which using robots (that’s not a cruel reference to the workers, they are custom robots used for loading and unloading parts), vertical and multi-shot machines. I was relieved to not see any children or obvious safety issues. I had dinner with a guy about my age who called himself a bum, basically he was jobless. We were both eating alone in the restaurant so I invited him to eat at my table. He had just come into town looking for work. I learned that factory workers usually make about 80 yuan/day for a 10 hour day. I know overtime exists, but I’m not sure when it starts. He was staying in a cheap hotel (barely cheaper than my own) on money he had saved while he looked. I actually tried really hard to pay, but he forced his way and paid for dinner. Quite a striking contrast to Atl where they will ask for your money, but snub a meal. These guys work hard.

My first bike ride

"So you wanna race, huh?"

Sadly, he was finished before we finished the first km, that's a cigarette in his left hand.)

I hauled this huge bike box all of the way around the world, I figured it's about time to use it. I rode towards the ocean today. It wasn't bad. I think I went about 50 miles, but I haven't recalibrated my computer for the new big tires, so it ready

about 47. I was surprised to see the streets already full of traffic first thing this morning at 6 when I got up. I needed to get my bike fixed up anyway and I prefer to leave my place very well organized to make it more obvious if anyone goes through my stuff or if anything is missing, so I didn't end up leaving until about 8:15. I don't have a map yet, a small book and school supply store in Xiwu says they will have me one tonight. I studied the one website I've found that has the roads in this area and set out. I've heard it is 40k to the ocean, and I could barely see it when I turned around. I didn't want to push my luck too much and I wanted to continue beyond Xiwu to Fenghua when I got back anyway. I stopped at a small market at a T-junction I guessed correctly that I could identify later and ate some bananas and huge grapes. There was a huge tail wind on the way out and headwind on the way back, but I was able to keep up with most scooters and some buses when I wanted. I drafted a couple trucks and buses quite a long way. There's usua

lly a few heads hanging out of the buses studying me as they go by. The traffic is scary for the cars. I would see people passing with oncoming traffic, and a motorcycle pass between the two cars going the opposite directions. A few times I veered off of the back of the car I was drafting assuming there was an immanent head-on collision, only to see them miss each other. I think I'm going to do some weekend long touring style rides into the mountains southwest and to along the coast. I came to the conclusion that chasing cars isn't intrinsic to dogs, they don't even blink we I and other vehicles go by – not even one did. I don't get it why U.S. dogs are so aggressive, maybe the dogs here are still in-grained with the communist ideals and they understand that the land (they would be pro

tecting in the U.S.) belongs to everyone.

There are a many duck farms (they look kinda like chicken houses but come with a pond, I realized what a few actually were when I heard the quacking of thousands of ducks as I rode by), lime

farms, the ubiqitous rice patties, and some other plant that looks like what I know in the U.S. as the inedible wetland plant 'elephant ear'. The overwhelming smell in the countryside is that of feces, from many sources. I passed many three-sided outhouses right on the edge of the road, put there, I assume, to fertalize the fields. Xu Laoshi told us the farmers actually fight over the contents of reservoirs that contain the product of public restrooms etc. The small plots' soil is black and rich looking, still it's pretty gross to see kids peeing in the middle of the wide sidewalks here.

The local accent is especially pronounced (is that a

pun?) in the small towns I rode through, I also heard a little of some local dialect that was utterly incomprehensible. I started referring to Chinese as 'putong hua' instead of 'zhongwen'. The first is specifically the common language aka 'hanyu', or the Han's language, the latter is just Chinese. One feature I noticed was the use of 's' vs. 'sh' or 'z'. These sounds are used allot - I'll being fussing over a word, trying to look it up and everything and it will suddenly occur to me it's something I use all of the time.

The mountains are really big! Google earth shows the mountains south of here topping out around 1800' but I'm guessing they're close to 3k'. I'm going to have to figure out the best approach to some lookouts I spotted. It looks like there are some temples
along the ridges near the ocean.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to press my case to live in Fenghua. It's quite large with many modern restaurants, high rise buildings, shopping centers etc. So far I've found one 'real' restaurant in this town, most are just little cubbyhole type places that kinda scare me, but I think they're safe. It's where my coworkers take me. I don't mind small towns, but unless I'm missing something I think living in Fenghua will be worth the 8km commute. This is a panorama from a bridge in Fenghua.

Starting work at Shijia

My new boss, Mr. Wang was in Shanghai for the day, so I only spent a few hours at the office that afternoon meeting most of the surprisingly small office staff for a company having over 600 employees. I was taken to my temporary hotel home (I'll post a picture later). My room is tiny, costing 50yuan/day, but has a western toilet, a nice view etc. I'm moving into a larger room tonight, it will cost 65/night. The town is small indeed. I hear "lao wai" and "wai guo" (kinda like "white honky" literally "old foreigner" and "foreigner" few times walking to work every day.

I was pretty frustrated my first whole day of work, I was expecting to get right to work, but didn't get to meet Mr. Wang until late yesterday afternoon. We had a large meeting about me from 4-6. It dispelled my concerns after sitting idle all day, I hate to be bored.

I was pleased to see my huge new office. It has a glass wall and a nice view of the city and mountains on the other end. I feel privileged having my own office, I think only 3 others in the building do.

I will have a secretary, and an engineer working for me. I'll be working closely with the domestic sales manager (sorry no names). It's pretty tough remembering all the names. My primary job objective is to increase domestic sales. I was surprised to see many of the products I had purchased in the U.S. came from this company. I knew Shijia made Quickie, but I didn't know we(not them anymore) also make Oxo, and several other high quality American brands. I'm going to Ningbo Monday to meet with the sales group there and do some market research, then to Shangai Tuesday and Wednesday to meet with the sales group there. My deliverable is one new product every month, including finished CAD geometry, ROI etc and approval from all the managers - quite an undertaking. I told I would need an engineer if I was going to be tooling ready within a month. It's still going to be tough to stay innovative with that schedule even with help. We will be buying a rapid prototyping machine and I will be responsible for running. This is quite an expensive machine, something that Marshalltown has talked about for a while, but never bought one, so this is pretty exciting. I was glad to be able to surprise them with my expertise in this area. I told them I would not be working on Saturdays. I wasn't sure about that, when they're under pressure to get an order in, most of the office personnel do production work for a few hours after dinner. I'm sticking to 40 hours as well as I can. This country is full of cheap workers, good example of why working smarter, not longer is the only thing that's going to get me ahead.

Safely arrived.

Okay, this is my first blog posting ever, so I hope I write appropriately.

I just arrived in Xiwu, Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, PR China on Wednesday 9/13/06. A few friends suggested that I start a MySpace profile and blog to help stay in touch with everyone back in the U.S. so here goes.

After a very sad good-bye I left Toni in Fayetteville with hopes of seeing her again in December. Other than a short running layover in Chicago I did the 14.5 hour flight to PVG. Per my Ningbo based headhunter's advice I took a cab to the Shanghai bus station, then a 3.5 hour bus ride to Ningbo. I arrived in Ningbo around midnight local time after 30 nearly sleepless hours. Lesson learned, when Toni arrives we'll stay in Shanghai the first day, then fly or take a train to Ningbo. I usually make a point of traveling very lightly, but this time I couldn't do much w/o some help since I had my bike in a large box, a large suitcase, my laptop and backpack.


Despite the tiring trip, I woke up about 5 AM and continued to read Toni's Victoria Holt book she sent with me. I decided I needed to get past the romance novel looking cover and give the author a shot, besides, what else was I to do on the long flight. I can't remember the title. I'm enjoying it now. Being submerged in Chinese makes me long for good English.

This is the hotel I stayed in my first night in Ningbo. It was pretty nice, and cost a whole 180 RMB (about $32). The bed is on a balcony, stairs lead up just off the left of the photo.

The next morning I went and had breakfast at a restaurant just down from my hotel, then my headhunter, Sophia, came in two hours later and we ate again. At first sight I thought the restaurant was a pet store from all the fist tanks on two walls. Instead of a menu we went through a door on the send of a wall of tanks to see more tanks, an open freezer of frozen fish, tubs of snails, a few Styrofoam cooler of live octopuses, frogs the size of my fist in onion bags, and the usual fish and crustaceans. I told her I'd try anything she liked so we had snails, a basket of fried spiny shrimp-like creatures, a flounder, some kind of greens, and a melon similar to cucumber. I could only stomach a few snails, but the flounder was pretty good. I'm learning to really like vegetables.

We went cell phone shopping but I was told to wait until I got to Fenghua or Xiwu to buy the sim card. I have yet to comprehend how the cell phone system works here. Everyone has one, so any mistakes I make can't be too expensive before I catch them, hopefully. I was picked up by Shijia's driver who was accompanied by Renfen, the HR manager, who, like Sophia is in her mid 20's. I was surprised to see the car was a new Toyota Camry. We used a section of T1 cable to tie the trunk down over my oversized bike box.