Legal!

I finally got my work permit this week. What a long process! So now my passport has an extra sticker in it, and I have a Residence Permit, and another small booklet, slightly larger than a passport called an Alien Employment Permit. I'm instructed to keep it with me at all times. The sticker in my passport is pretty complex, like an hundred dollar bill, with small patterns and microscopic text, the booklet is much more simple. As you can see I have a photo glued inside the front page. The use a press, like a Public Notary would use, that they stamp the edge of your photo with. Without that little set of indentations and the matching pattern on the document substrate the document isn't valid. That is one reason why I had to redo my health screening.

Mattresses

This is Mengna, my coworker and her sister at their apartment. We had dinner there before setting out on our first mattress hunting expedition.

Most Chinese sleep on hard, wooden boxes, with a thin layer of padding over the top. I'd say they are harder than a box spring under our western mattresses. They also have a woven, stretched type mattress, that is also very hard, about like a strong Army cot. There are aspects of my life in which I am willing to live by the phrase "when is Rome, do as the Romans do", but my bedding isn't one of them. Having been spoiled by my pillowtop mattress in Fayetteville I was really looking forward to moving into an apartment so I could get one again. I wanted to be able to fall into my bed without fear of being bruised and roll around as I slept w/o my arms going asleep. A coworker Mengna, somehow, very graciously volunteered to help me out. I had dinner with her and her sister at their nice, clean, simple apartment that again made me feel guilty about my pickiness in regards to my apartment. As a degreed professional her bedroom was completed with a small bed just as I described above. The first night they took me to four mattress shops and found one that had more than 1" of padding. I figured it would do, but after passing many shops that had already closed I said I'd wait until Sunday when we could go shopping again to make my decision. I have learned to lean heavily on my "accustomed to" card when trying to explain to them why I'm spending a couple of times more than they would. They showed me a very comfortable mattress that they had negotiated in Fenghua dialect down to 300 RMB. The nicer mattress I referred to was "too expensive" and not until I asked again did they tell me it was 700 RMB. I told them I thought I might be able to afford it.

Sunday we went to a few more shops then onto a large furniture mall type place a couple kms north of Fenghua. It was very nice. While it had the typical and traditional Chinese style furniture, it also had a wide variety of very trendy and designer furniture that I found appealing. The pippette barstool goes for 200 RMB w/o negotiating. Makes me wonder what I could get a container load for.... (anyone else in?)

Mengna, my accomplice, told me an idiom that translates to mean something like "if you go to 100 stores you will find what you want", so from then on I started counting down. I think we were at 86 when I finally picked one. It was in stock and my size so I was ready to buy it at 1500 RMB, a ghastly price. I prefer to hear their best price from the start, but she negotiated down to 1300, and I knew what very similar mattresses at the other stores cost so I was pretty comfortable with the deal. For some reason, I guess I was just happy to find it, I figured I'd play along for once. I took over from there and by asking for a couple add-ons that they couldn't find finally took off another 100. I didn't really care about the extra 100; I just wanted to partake in the hard line bargaining for once. This guy delivered it. That's like a chainsaw motor underneath it. These and larger three-wheeled vehicles are everywhere.

Searching, Taekwondo, wandering

(Sorry for the delay, this is about a week old. I was having trouble getting the images to upload.)

I spent the day shopping for supplies and tools in Fenghua. This isn't a 'go to Ace AND Lowe's type trip, even for the locals, you go to certain parts of town and look for stores that might have what you're looking for. As expected sometimes I get a little distracted, or should I say I go into stores where the chances of finding something on my list are pretty slim. This is an exampe of that: For the first time I went into a huge two story market not far from my house. It has everything, a huge assortment of seafood, eels, squid, stingrays, crabs etc, etc. They also bring in halves of cows and pigs and other whole animals and butcher them to order. It's kind of gross, but kind of cool. All the animals still have their heads. I would have expected this in Guangzhou, around Hong Kong, but was surprised to find it here - dogs. I went out the back entrance where there were live pens of chickens and other poultry and saw a few freshly killed dogs hung up, as well as a couple in the process of being butchered. I guess it's no worse than killing a pig, if it's done humanely, but it's still kind of revolting.

I'm feeling pretty beat today. A little frustrated by my inability to make progress on projects in this first month and a half. I'm doing allot of front-end work on several projects but I can't make progress beyond that stage and further develop a cohesive brand until I get at least one project beyond renderings. This afternoon I requested that Weiwei, a friend who is leaving in a few weeks, be allowed to spend a day helping me find some supplies etc that I still can't find. I walked all over Fenghua trying to find, among other things, aerosol auto-body style primer. It took an hour for me just to figure out what it was called, dictionaries don't have many of these words such as 'epoxy' though a couple of stores understood what I meant, just didn't understand the need. That's a big frustration. I ask people for something, and instead of telling you if they have it or not, or can order it, which is really all I want to know, they want to tell me how I can get around using it etc. It's tough enough explaining what I want and how I use it without explaining something that they wouldn't even understand if we both spoke the same native language. I guess everywhere I go that I have to educate people on my process etc is challenging, but to have to explain and defend it in another language to people that I just want to take my money is especially aggravating. It's definitely helping my Chinese, but it's exhausting. I found myself in the middle of a long couple of sentences chiding an especially unhelpful shop owner today and realized I was making some progress. I couldn't understand why he couldn't just order it, and stop pushing me to buy his other painting equipment when I made it perfectly clear why I wasn't going to buy the other stuff.

The weather has finally turned cool, it dropped into the 60's (frigid!) the past two nights. Everyone has on their jackets and asks me if I'm cold riding in my T-shirt and shorts. It feels great to me. There's some physiological difference between me and 'them'. I notice in Taekwondo class that wherever I've been working out there's a wet puddle and everyone else is barely breaking a sweat. The instructor tried to tell me last night that I shouldn't drink so much water in our break because it would make me sick, he must have noticed me parked by the drinking water tank. I started to pretend that I didn't understand, then realized that I needed to say as respectfully as I could 'thank you for your advice, but no thanks'. I think he's accustomed to students that don't have any other athletic experience. Just as when he pushes my legs a little further apart during stretching, tells me to run differently, I'm often tempted to say "look Zhang, this isn't my first circus, I know how to stretch ( or drink water etc)'. But I'm sure everything except my insolence would be lost in translation. Overall the class is progressing well despite the language difficulty. Allot of the silly games and exercises I only understand by watching, then understand his instructions, but I'm learning many words in the most primitive way. I hear it and the resulting action enough that I understand it's meaning, but unlike most of what I learn, I have no idea what the individual syllables mean, or who to write them. It's comforting to hear other classmates say "wo ting bu dong", which means "I hear but don't understand".

This is from the left, my Taekwondo instructor, the pingpong instructor, the gym owner, me, the roller blade instructor, and Shao (a good friend who is there all the time, but I can't figure out what he does). Quite a friendly bunch.










I found a small tool shop that had some forged carving chisels. The only problem was that they didn't have handles. It looked like the metal had been formed over a cone shaped mandrel so, while I knew I'd end up doing the handles myself I negotiated him installing the first set. It took over an hour, part of which I sat on a stool nearby and tweaked the handles and chatted with his kids and answered the usual questions. His son seemed to like me when I realized he had his arms wrapped around my calf or his chin resting on my thigh, male to male body contact isn't taboo like it is in the U.S. It's quite common to see two men wallking hand in hand, or when one arm draped over the other's shoulder while holding hands walking down the street. Actually, I see members of the same sex holding hands, though open displays of homosexuality are unheard of, more often than I see male/female couples with body contact. So, I tolerated it until he started stroking the hair on my calf, I had to shoo him a couple of times before he understood, I finally said, which he seemed to take well, 'pet the small dog - not my leg'.




























While trying to find some automotive primer I visited this fine establishment. They aren't amateurs! (Maybe I should post this on Engrish.com.

Moving

This is the Fenghua Police Station.

I thought Chenchen (our Domestic Sales Manager, you she's in the Shanghai photos) had my passport and other documents related to my work permit, but found out my passport has been here for three days and I won't get it back until Wednesday of next week. Having my passport, visa etc out of my possession like this makes me very uncomfortable, but I can't do anything about it now. I was sitting in an office with her and a girl came up to me and said in painfully articulated English, "hello, nice to meet you. Where have you been staying?". I get that all the time, "nice to meet you" as scooters drive by etc. If I hadn't been at a police station I probably would have quipped "我不认识你!"("but I don't know you.") She started mildly chiding me for not reserving my own room (the HR manager handled it) so the hotel could check my visa. I told her they had, but it didn't seem to matter to her. Oh well.

As I mentioned before the police say I have to move to Fenghua, which I don't mind at all. Friday night I went with the Chenchen, Hu Hui (the GM's wife who also works in domestic sales) and her small daughter to look at another apartment. It is right in the middle of Fenghua and is the most expensive place I've seen so far. It's twice as big as I can use, two bedrooms, an office, kitchen/dining room, laundry room, living room, the first bathtub I've seen since I got here and a sun room which would more accurately called 'laundry drying room' - I'm buying a dryer. It comes with all the furniture and appliances I need including two standard Chinese beds, basically a box spring with a thin quilt over the top and a straw mat of some sort that is usually discolored where it was been slept on - I'll be buying a mattress too (I feel like the princess from the fairy tale that had the pea under the stack of mattresses, or I'm probably seen that way). A middle aged couple lives there and are moving out now that I'm moving in. I think they own it and I couldn't figure out what the story was. It seemed I was the only one concerned with it. It is a whole 12,ooo RMB/year. It'll be available Sunday night. The outside of the building is stained from oxidation from the window grates (used for plants, drying and security on the floors) so it looks pretty bad. I've learned that the looks of the outside of the building and the inside rarely are consistant. Some buildings look great on the outside and are very bad inside inside. The woodwork etc isn't exactly my taste, maybe I should say 'dated' looking, but I'll just have to let that go.

I'll post some photos after I move in.

Machete required

I made another attempt for the peak. It gets bigger looking the closer I get, it is really a huge rock face, I'm guessing at least two pitches (at least 180'), but I'll have to figure it out. There's enough growing on it that I'm thinking I could probably top rope it.

I took the same new road out of town. I like being able to get out of town so fast. The constant attention is really tiring sometimes. I don't get the really annoying "hell, nice to meet you" heckling in Xiwu very often anymore, but even friendly, but constant attention in your face can wear you out. It's strange, sometimes it feels like all the eyes somehow tires me. So, since Xiwu is mostly around the East/West highway, anything perpendicular gets you out of town pretty fast.

As I mentioned before, the road heads through rice patties, which have canals and ditches snaking around each square. I'm guessing that this is the source of the snails that are so easy to get along with all the other shellfish around here. These snails are about the size of a ping pong ball (funny how references change).

There's the bridge over a large canal that is a favorite fishing spot. I've never seen a fish larger than 5" come out of it, but still it can be pretty fun watching the line bob. They don't use one big bobber like we do, they use a string of small floats about the size of a bb gun's pellet. You can barely see the string sinking down in this photo. Any night you can see a few powerful lights shining down on the water watching their strings. The lights will mostly die out if I pass the bridge twice during a run, but it's also a nice place to stop since no one pays very much attention to me.

Last time I came out to the lake I saw a small road heading up the hill towards a small radio tower at what looks like a quarter the elevation of the peak. I ducked down every alley until I found a small one that dead ended into a small gate but had a foot trail going around the side of the house. I found myself going through random grave plots and on the small road. It was the first time I'd run on a hill so it was fun seeing the valley fall away. I passed a scooter parked at the base of an especially steep section and soon passed the owner. I waited for him at the end of the road, the tower seemed to only have a single track trail to it. He was working on a large project building terraces. I wish I had returned earlier, I saw the signs of drilling holes for dynamite and heard the boom of it later in the afternoon. I headed up several old road beds that didn't seem to go anywhere before deciding to just get on the ridge and stomp my own trail. I took this photo of the town at the base of the dam just before I ducked into the dense brush.

I was guessing that level ground would make progress easier, but it was very, very dense. I think it had been cut within 5 years, so there was that painful mix of brush, small trees, and dead trees on the ground covered with brush. I spent about two hours pushing through the stuff. I spotted this caterpillar about four inches from my nose, as was most the other brush.

I started this hike intending to mostly run, but decided next time I would wear pants and carry a machete. I still haven't found one, I'll post photos of the heavy bladed knives they use here. They don't have them at every corner hardware store like in the U.S.

Woe is me, or my leg. It wasn't deeper than a thorn, but it sure didn't feel good getting covered in it. I felt like was doing an adventure race.

I noticed a washout, or gully, like I had used on the previous hike heading straight down the hill towards the small town. I continued along the ridge, but the progress was so slow I finally retreated down this. It was very steep, which have me some nice views of the valley, but none of the bluffs were too difficult to down climb around.

I almost grabbed this when I stumbled - I'm glad I didn't.

They don't seem to have grave yards here in the rural areas, just random groups of graves. I was trying to control my descent when I spotted this next to the trail. As you drive down the highway, where there has been allot of earth moved, a hillside cut out etc, it is pretty common to see coffins that have been cut in half, or are sticking out of the hillside.

I was suddenly in an open bamboo grove, then back on the edge of the small town, totally unnoticed. Usually in the small towns I've basically got a small crowd following me, and the overwhelming thought in my head is getting out of there as opposed to looking at the town. I enjoyed the peace for a minute and took a few photos of the ubiquitous clay roofs. Stacks of spare roof tiles are stacked wherever they fit, in this case along the wall of the alley. You can see how they construct the roof too. Notice the solar water heater, they're very common too.

Brick construction is structural here. Check out the straw hats, pretty cool looking huh? The country folks don't wear the stereotypical pointed cone hats here.

I took a photo of this guy after trying out his finishing trowel. They aren't as strong as the ones' from Marshalltown, but are still solid. Of special interest to me (as an ID) is how these tools seem to all be scaled down just a little for their smaller hands.

I saw this old man loading some more scraps onto his bicycle and leaning into it to get it started again as I came into town. I don't feel so tough.


( Sorry about the weird formatting. I'm going to have to strart writing my own html code. It seems impossible to control where the photos fit in with the text and the spacing.)

Key Trivia

I'll send something from China (that you won't find at Wal-Mart) to whoever can tell me how this key/lock works inside. I don't know how the lock knows which key to use. As you can see, the key resembles a military style dogtag, but with two layers and something inside. The outside of the handle spins freely until the two slots line up. Then you insert the dogtag like key. The key is .095" thick, 2.554" long and 1.427" wide. If you use the correct key you can engage the ouside of the handle and turn the knob to open the door. I stayed in another room at the hotel before and when I changed rooms I quickly compared the two. If it wasn't for the number stamped into one side I probably couldn't tell them apart. The locaton of the little bump seemed to be in the same location, though I didn't verify that it is exactly the same. The sheet metal is thin, but I can't get a good measurement. There is something inside, but I don't know what it is. It weighs to much and doesn't sound like it's hollow when flicked. At one time I thought it had some weak magnetism, but I'm not sure now. Feel free to post comments and questions, I changed the comments settings so you should be able to post w/o having a username/password.

Last night while eating dinner I got a call from our HR manager saying that I was going to move out that night. She said that a policeman had told her it wasn't safe for me to stay there. That's all I know. I don't have any reason to form any conspiracy theories, but I haven't seen have any evidence of the danger so I'll just have to take their word for it. Either way, it looks like this is fast-tracking my efforts to move to Fenghua. I've been told that the GM's wife is looking for an apartment for me today and I will probably move into it tonight. I hope it is nice. I have two friends who have helped me with this so far, but I don't want to live in the apartments I've seen. It's not easy telling them you want a nicer place, and you'd be willing to pay three or four times as much when they have never seen a place like that, but the places I've seen would just take a little too much adjusting. I'll have to post some photos so I don't seem like such a snob.

help with photos

Can anyone recommend their favorite methods of posting photos. It's probably because of my location, but uploading to photobucket is being pretty problematic. It takes forever, then errors out. I've reduced the size of the photos, but it doesn't seem to do much good...

Clean water

On 9/22/06 I finally found my way out of town (not an easy task) through the rice patties on a brand new road towards a V between two ridges, where a the roofs of a small town are visible, and I could see on the map was a lake of some size. I also wanted to scout an approach to the big rock faces I can see from my office window. The road actually starts within 200 yards of my office and is immediately very much out of town. Xiwu is mostly situated East/West, this goes South. It's a new, modern concrete road that isn't completely open to traffic yet, it is probably raised 6' above the ground level of the rice patties. I stopped for a minute and studied the Chinese trowels they were using, much lighter than the ones Marshalltown made. As far as I can tell, there is one real road going in and out of the small town, so the trick to getting through is to look for indications of motor traffic on the concrete. There are small, progressively smaller roads everywhere, but they often dead end into a canal, a closed gate etc. I headed straight through town towards the lake hoping to get into the mountains. I stopped where the main road ended, at the base of the earth dam to see this wood carver. The boss wasn't there, but one of his apprentices was there the first time I cam through. You can see him sharpening the chain saw. The wood must have been some kind of sassafras, but there might have been some eucalyptus mixed in, my nose was confused.

I was really happy to see the very clean, clear lake spread out in front of me. Everyone I asked said their is no road in the long valley upstream from the lake and I didn't see any sign of agriculture, just swaying bamboos, but it looks like it would be a peaceful place to camp. I rode across the dam and then around a road that lead to some kind of small resort. There were a bunch of small SUV's parked outside, very much a fashion statement, there were no roads in the area that, though rough, I couldn't ride my beefed up road bike on. They had a muddy pond off the edge of the lake they were all fishing in. They had a tub with a particularly large goldfish, it barely fit in the tub (I've learned some carp is actually pretty good if they cook it right). Anyway, this goldfish was as bigger than my upper arm (actually not that big of an arm).

The roads are often lined by some kind of woven fence-like walls. It looks like they just use small bamboo and weave it in with the thick bamboo grove. I saw these next to trails that probably get one person every few days, so I'm not really sure what the purpose is, it doesn't look like a security measure. I stepped through the gate on this one into a new grove. These were the size of a typical cane pole we'd use in the U.S.

I found the most promising looking trail heading East up the valley hopefully to the peaks I was longing to climb. The trail was a few feet wide, but probably had never been touched by an ATV. It was a strange feeling being in a forest, a place that is usually very familiar but now not knowing what all but three plants were: bamboo, sassafras, and stinging nettles.

I eventually locked my bike to a tree in one of the aforementioned groves and took of in my sandals. Eventually the all of the trails I went up appeared to have been just created for land surveying. It looked like the cutting was just done to clear a line; I'm guessing for a general topographical survey of the area. I saw a few foreign objects hanging in small trees at what seemed like logical locations to turn, but never saw any pins. Basically, the trails were horrible. If a trail is really steep in Arkansas, it's usually been made for horses, or is a natural washout. These were neither, no horse could make it up these, and toppled, small trees blocked forward progress that was often basically a scramble. I took this photo looking down at the lake just before I decided to turn around.

On the way back to my bike I checked out this single-track trail that headed through waist deep grass into a bamboo grove (is it a grove, a stand or what?). These are really enchanting places. They sway in the wind and make a really nice sound (I've got to work on my adjectives). It's also usually very clear under them. These are not you cane pole sized bamboo trees. These are the kind they use for scaffolding on the sides of skyscrapers (literally). I'm not going to guess how tall they are, but they're much wider than my clown sized Teva's.

I walked up a small trail until I happed upon a small hut that I didn't dare get too close too. The place gave me a strange feeling, it was so peaceful, but unfamiliar, maybe I've just seen too many kungfu scenes were some dudes come swinging through the trees. It kind of reminded me of The House of the Flying Daggers (nice imagery).

I took my time a little more on the way back, I stopped at the wood carver's again. I was impressed by the quality of the work, and their carving tools, so while I played with their carving tools on a log from their pile they took turns on my bike all the while puffing away on their cigarettes. They all squatted around for a while marveling about the gears, thin tires, flicking the frame and passing it around to see how light it was. They often speak the local dialect that almost reminds me of Italian. I can't understand a word of it.

This stream serves as the towns’ refrigerator, cold bath tub, source for water etc. They stored trashcan sized bundles of what looked like celery in it, but I think it was from the plant I described earlier as looking like what I know to be the inedible elephant ear plant.

Here's the local beekeeper. A week later a scooter stopped next to me on the road and I was able to gather through his heavy local accent that he was wondering why I hadn't stopped by his store in town yet. It's definitely plan on it.

There is a strange compound of concrete, western styled houses, all surrounded by a tall concrete wall. It appears to be totally abandoned and was probably never inhabited. While the wall and strong gates exist, you don't really have to search for an open gate or opening in the wall. I'm curious to know the story. I was able to look down on it the next weekend. If there's any interest I'll post that photo too. Maybe it was intended to be some kind of resort....