07 - Newsletter - Issue 3

John & Chrisʼs News from China - Issue 3 Written Thursday 27th October 2011 Distributed 1st December 2011

LEFT: ENTRANCE TO OLD CHINESE TOWN TIANJIN ABOVE: CHRIS’S HUIZHOU LANGUAGE SCHOOL PHOTO WITH ONE OF HIS CLASSES

OUR APOLOGIES FOR THE LONG DELAY IN SENDING THIS NEWSLETTER OUT

We have previously extolled the virtues and cleverness of Apple since April 2008, but no longer. As a result we went and bought a Sony Vaio on arrival in China, rather than This was written on the date above, another Apple.

27th October and was just awaiting the addition of the second half of the The Apple Laptop’s system wouldn’t photos. even restore from the Apple “Time Machine” backups, and so after a Unfortunately, the Apple Laptop got m o n t h o f m e s s i n g a b o u t , I slower and slower and finally reinstalled the system from the became unusable. original disks and wished I had done so in the first place.

We have had nothing but trouble w i t h b o t h t h e 2 4 ” i M a c a n d So, we hope that you enjoy this MacBook Pro Laptop since installing THIRD issue and we’ll now need to Apple’s latest LION software in July. get really busy with the fourth one!

JOHN WITH HIS CORPORATE CLASS AT A SOFTWARE HOUSE

CHRIS WITH CAROLYN A COLLEAGUE AT A NEW SCHOOL OPENING DAY

TRIP TO TIANJIN 13TH TO 16TH SEPTEMBER 2011 Just as I had finished the last newsletter (Issue 2) we were having the Mid-Autumn holiday where everyone buys “Moon Cakes”. So, people weren’t working on Monday and we were busy planning the week, when I had a call to ask if I could go to TianJin first thing the following (Tuesday) morning. Of course I said yes, even though at that stage I didn’t know where it was!

Tianjin is 2,000 Km north and to the east of Beijing. Tianjin or Tianjin

ANOTHER HUIZHOU CLASS

SH E N Z HE N

Shenzhen’s Tallest Building which at night is phenomenal, with lights going up and down the building.

It’s near the Stock Exchange and near the hotel we next stayed in - See next month’s newsletter, issue 4!

This red square is where Shenzhen is, right next to Hong Kong

Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern Chinaʼs Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful Special Economic Zones (SEZs). It currently also holds sub-provincial administrative status, with powers slightly less than a province.

Shenzhen's modern cityscape is the result of the vibrant economy made possible by rapid foreign investment since the institution of the policy of "reform and opening" establishment of the SEZ in the late 1970s. Before this, Shenzhen was a small village.

Both Chinese and foreign nationals have invested enormous sums in the Shenzhen SEZ. More than US $30 billion in foreign investment has gone into both foreignowned and joint ventures, at first mainly in manufacturing but more recently in the service industries as well.

One of the “English Corner’s” - This one meets every Saturday. This group meet in a park next to the Library.

Shenzhen is now reputedly one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

Being southern mainland China's major financial centre, Shenzhen is home to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as well as the headquarters of numerous high-tech companies. Shenzhen is also the third busiest container port in China, after Shanghai and Hong Kong.

was created in historical times by sedimentation of various rivers entering the sea at Bohai Gulf, including the Yellow River, which entered the sea in this area at one point.

The opening of the Grand Canal of China during the Sui Dynasty prompted the development of Tianjin into a trading centre. Until 1404, Tianjin was called "Zhigu" (直沽), or "Straight Port". In that year, the Yongle Emperor renamed the city Tianjin, means "the Heavenly Ford", to indicate that the Emperor (son of heaven) forded the river at that point.

Tianjin is located to the east of Beijing and near the Bay of Bohai in the west.

It’s one of four municipalities in China that comes directly under the the Central Government. It has a total area of 11,900 square metres and a population of 10 million.

Tianjin

As the biggest coastal city and economic centre of North China, Tianjin is called the Pearl of Bohai Bay. The name of Tianjin refers to the ferry for the Tianz (emperor). After more than 600 years of evolution Tianjin has become a mixture of ancient past and modern present with Chinese and western characteristics. Tianjin has been opening up to the world and has become an International metropolis now.

We arrived on Tuesday night and found that I was sharing a room when they kept saying that we only had ONE room key. When we got to the room the penny dropped, I was sharing with a colleague who was 72. (And still working part time!). He realised that although it’s the norm to share in China he told me that he realised this was not done in the West. I said that I had never shared on any business trips. They said it happened because the client had booked all the rooms.

The 72 year old phoned the General Manager and they paid for a separate room for me. This was a 4 star hotel and so cost them a lot, it worked out at about £35! This is double what Chris and I have been paying all this time for a large double room. It was a 4 star hotel and all the rooms had their own desktop PC too, as well as free broadband.

In another hotel I saw what I thought was a young husband an wife in the lift from Beijing. I saw them again in the morning and they had travel rep.

Tianjin The Tianjin TV Tower is one of the tallest in the world

S C O OT E R M A D N E S S !

There is the driver and THREE kids on this one!

I HAVE ACTUALLY SEEN A FAMILY OF 5 ON ONE SCOOTER BUT WASN’T QUICK ENOUGH WITH MY CAMERA! MOST ARE ELECTRIC TOO! THESE PHOTOS SHOULD GIVE YOU A GOOD IDEA THOUGH! THEY EVEN DRIVE PAST POLICEMEN ON TRAFFIC DUTY LIKE THIS.

Shirts. So, it would seem that even the opposite sex has to share!

As an aside, ALL hotels here have FREE broadband in every room.

It might not sometimes be working, in which case we just swapped rooms. They even have FREE WIFI in reception. It’s a shame that the British Hotels are so greedy!

I went out with the team for a traditional Chinese meal and they kept ordering the local beer Tsingtao, amazed that I could drink a lot! It seems that most Chinese are unable to drink too much without falling over, yet I only had 3 or 4 pints!

We then met the person from the customer side who had organised it all. We had a great day looking round the area to be developed, after which they bussed us all over the city to study the architecture, which was stunning.

They flew back and booked me a flight two days later.

This meant that I had a whole day sightseeing on my own. I had a great day out and in the evening was mesmerised by all the building with stunning light displays! In fact I took a heap of videos. It will be a trip to remember for a long time to come.

CHRIS’S TEACHING JOBS Chris completed one month work teaching at the STL private language centre in Huizhou, and had given his notice to leave on account of his general unsuitability in teaching young children (some might say horrible little brats!).

However, he left on good terms with the school, who appraised his efforts and his personality, so much so that the head of the foreign teachers in all branches of STL in Guang Dong, offered him a job with proper training in their newly opened second school in Huizhou, but he declined on the basis that he really just wants to teach adults.

Then we met a Chinese girl on the metro train one night and she told us about 'English Corner' at the Shenzhen library on Saturdays. So, we went along and met a young American teacher there called Ryan, who told us about a job vacancy teaching individual adults on a 'one to one' basis in a private training centre, where he also works. We were introduced to the centre and they immediately signed up both of us with a three month contract.

Chris did his first class of two hours on Saturday 22nd teaching business English to the president of a company that imports and sells Australian wine in China. Chris said the class went really well and that the guy thought he was very good and booked several more lessons before his trip.

So Chris is now satisfied that he has at length found a job that he feels he is far better suited to, and that he can enjoy and reap some reward from, both financially and personally.

He has also been signed up a a “Big Nose Job” for the same architects / urban planners as John and as a result

we now have a free flat in a plush area overlooking Shenzhen Port!

COSTS HERE I have begun to realise that I now begrudge anything in double figures of local currency! For example the taxi from the airport to the port hotel cost them about 150 RMB or Juan (It’s called both) for a ONE hour journey.

That to me sounded expensive, but it’s only £15! An hours taxi drive in the UK would perhaps be 10 times that. We missed the last metro home last week and got a taxi that took about an hour to get back to our hotel in the north of the city. It cost 66 RNB, which is £6!

Any beer over 10 Juan is expensive - That’s £1! The last two nights of my trip to Tianjin, I obviously had to pay for my own hotel bill and I nearly fell over when it wasn’t the normal 168 RNB and was 200 RNB! It was only £3.20 more than normal yet I begrudged it! I got a discount the second night as it was a year since Ibis opened in Tianjin.

On our “holiday trip” to Shenzhen a month ago, we went into the hotel next door which I think would be 5 stars. We had three 1.25 litre jugs of beer and we paid 300 RNB PLUS a tip! This is the most expensive beer so far.

It should be said also that this is the FIRST time we have had to pay ANY tip in China. The culture of tipping is completely unknown and the staff expect to serve you to the best of their ability, as part of the price you pay! Except for that hotel of course, which must have been an international chain and one that ripped us off charging a 15% tip!

If you go to an outside street cafe/bar they charge 6 RNB for a 600 ml bottle. That’s 60 pence per pint!

Some inside bar/restaurants charge from 8 RNB to 12 RNB. The more western and plusher ones charge 16 RNB, which is only £1.60.

DRIVING Some motorways seem to have entrances straight into them. On one such entrance a BMW 4x4 came straight out, across all lanes and into outside lane at 30 mph and on his phone!

We regularly see whole families of 4 and 5 on their scooters without crash hats and the driver on his mobile phone! I have collected various photos but was too slow getting the ones with 4 and 5 on a scooter.

They have thousands of electric scooters and you have to be careful as you cannot hear them. I think many cars must be hybrid too as many are silent as well The car transporters stack cars two abreast and are rather wide! See photos - I think there are 12 cars on this one!

We talk about middle lane road hogs on English motorways, well, here they hog every lane at all sorts of speeds.

The solution is to weave in and out and undertake, constantly changing lanes. They don’t bother

P H OTO S O F S H E N Z H E N

flashing or hooting, they a more sophisticated driving style, just get past! They even but he was still weaving in and out! undertake Police cars!

In the towns they hoot all the time even when I nteresting Information about it’s obvious they can’t g e t t h r o u g h . B u t , China surprisingly, we have only seen one accident where a scooter driver was sat in the middle ( E x t r a c t e d f r o m of a crossroads.

The police came and went, yet the driver continued to sit there. It seems that this is the norm here, even with no injury!

The only person I have seen flashing their lights was the taxi driver in Guangzhou last week and people DID move out of his way. Perhaps the capital city has

SUNDRY PHOTOS IN SHENZHEN

A d i f f e re n t “ E n g l i s h Corner”, this one is every Sunday afternoon and h a s a p p a re n t l y b e e n going 20 years without anyone organising it!

A Metro Car - Notice how wide they are as they had a clean sheet of paper 20 years ago when planning it all.

was a statement of several pages China Daily o f from the Office of the State Council.

Wednesday 7th Another interesting paragraph goes September 2011) on to state that China made C h i n a h a s a l a r g e important contributions to the population yet a weak stable development of the world economic base. It has to economy. Since it’s entry into the feed close to 20 percent WTO in 2001, China has imported of the world’s population goods worth nearly $750 billion with 7.9% of the world’s every year and created more than 14 farmland and 6.5% of million jobs for those exporting the world’s fresh water. countries and regions. Over the past What has been achieved decade, foreign funded companies in i n i t ’ s s o c i a l a n d china have remitted a total of $261.7 economic development billion of profits with an annual must meet the need of increase of 30%. China’s annual 1.3 billion people, which non-financial overseas investment p r e s e n t s a g r e a t grew from less than $1 billion in challenge to China. 2000 to $59 billion in 2010, thus China’s per capita GDP boosting the economic development in 2010 was about in the recipient countries. In 2009, $ 4 , 4 0 0 , r a n k i n g overseas China-invested companies a r o u n d t h e 1 0 0 t h paid taxes worth $10.6 billion and employed 439,000 local people. place in the world.

China has contributed more than The whole article was 10% to world economic growth every YES! It DOES rain and hard. This is entitled “China sticks year in recent years. In 1997, when the first umbrella John has bought in to p e a c e f u l the Asian financial crisis caused a his life! development” and dramatic devaluation of currencies

in countries and regions close to it, Since then the temperature has China succeeded in keeping the risen again slightly and sometimes it RMB exchange rate basically stable. does get a bit “muggy”!

Finally of note was their overseas aid programme worth $33 billion to 161 countries.

OUR LOCAL BAR IN HUIZHOU

FOOD They have all manner of takeaways in China, but NOT English ones!

We did have a Sunday Roast many weeks back organised at a Ukrainian's restaurant - It was great.

Ti a n j i n w i t h re a l l y modern buildings.

Our local restaurant bar in Huizhou was outside and overlooks a massive swimming pool, so gave us rather a holiday feel to it all!

The beer and food was very cheap and as is usual with us, we had found it and few people knew about it, even those living opposite!

It's so easy to walk round the corner TRIP TO RED FLOWER LAKE and eat out in all kinds of cheap bars/restaurants.

Even the posh AND THE PAGODA restaurants serving more western Before leaving Huizhou to move to style food are not that expensive.

Shenzhen, we had two separate days In 9 weeks we have never had a out visiting the so called Red Flower takeaway and never eaten in, even Lake, above the city, which is after getting our own flat. For actually a huge reservoir, but looks example, lunch in a reasonable perfectly natural and is a very restaurant, with soup and main enjoyable but rather long, scenic courses to share, with a beer walk (long being the operative word yesterday was £3.20 each! Breakfast here!). in a western style, posher restaurant today cost £6.00 each. They also On the second visit we 'climbed' the h a v e P i z z a H u t , K F C a n d mountain up to the Pagoda on the The Pagoda is a McDonalds. Pizza Hut actually have summit. contemporary structure in the some great dishes. In the UK I wouldn't go in any of these! In fact traditional style, but none the less it was 8 years since I last went in amazing, and the views from the upper most level over Huizhou and any of them until I got here. the surrounding countryside were absolutely spectacular!

The seemingly endless climb up innumerable flights of steps was THE WEATHER good for us,as physical exercise is not a word in our current On Monday 19th September the vocabulary, or has been for enough temperatures were still hot and time. sticky and about 34º C outside. We had the air-conditioning on all the time and inside it was around 22º C THE LANGUAGE despite being being set at 16º C. Then in the afternoon we had a far as learning thunderstorm and all of a sudden A s ‘Putonghau’ (Mandarin Chinese), we the temperatures dropped 8º C and for the first night so far, we had all only know a few words yet and to be the windows open all night long and honest it’s not really a lingo I think I the temperatures inside and outside would care to learn much of, as I was 24º C, with no air-con! How don’t like the sounds in it, but we’ll no doubt eventually learn enough to strange to get such a sudden drop. get us by.

The only drawback was some people in the corridor or lift lobby making a We’re in the city of Shenzhen in lot of noise talking loudly at about 7 South China, just across the border am and we had a late night at the from Hong Kong and in the province of Guangdong, or Kwang Tong, bar, as it's Chris's day off. which was anglicised to Canton hence Cantonese. However, as in Valencia, we’re not going to bother

Tianjin With really modern buildings.

At night they all look stunning

Tianjin The old and the new!

One of the Business Lunches with the client.

The Lazy Susan was motorised!

with lesser provincial languages. We’ll have enough to cope getting by with the Putonghau!

THE METRO IN SHENZHEN During a brief 3 day holiday” in Shenzhen four weeks ago, we had purchased travel cards for the metro, but Chris lost his and John gave Chris his and enquired f he could get a concession fare, being over 60.

The lady in the booth called for backup and so a another lady with limited English came along to help.

The gist of it is that on every station there is a guard at a special entrance called “Free passage” and anyone over 60 can go through this gate by showing their ID card. In my case it is sufficient to show my passport. A couple of times it has been queried, so once I point out my date of birth, I am waved through. As we use the metro almost every day travelling huge distances, my free passage is worth it’s weight in gold!

Window of the World in Shenzhen

Having said that Chris has only put 100 RNB on in all this time, which is about £10. Every day we travel about 18 stops going to places and 18 stops returning, so you can see how cheap their transport system is!

THE MOVE TO SHENZHEN AND OUR APARTMENT On Wednesday 19th October we moved into a huge duplex apartment located in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, which we'll be sharing with several others. And as of Tuesday 18th we have also both, landed jobs teaching one on one in a private training centre. John’s first class was on Thursday 20th in the evening at a company premises. More in the next newsletter.

The same day as Chris was helped to move in by a Chinese friend with his car, with the mountain of stuff we had already and what we have collected, John had to go on another 'big nose' job to Guangzhou, the capital of the Guang Dong Province. He got back at 11:30 pm, just about catching the last Metro. They were taken by car, but had to get a train back, which John noted was quietly doing 160 to 165 km per hour (160 kph = 100 mph) Chris had to meet John at our new local Metro station, as John wasn’t sure where exactly the apartment was, as it was about 4 weeks since we saw it for the first time.

Sweet & Sour Fish Really nicely prepared ...

And, VERY tasty!

Window of the World in Shenzhen

See this You Tube link to see the apartment.

In the middle of all this, Chris landed his job teaching the President of a Chinese wine company English to help specifically with his forthcoming trip to Australia and his negotiations there. Chris has now done three lessons and is thoroughly enjoying it.

John has now done two classes of 15 a a software house in Shenzhen and is also happy, as it’s something new and exciting.

We are quite staggered by the infrastructure here, in terms of the modern buildings, many lit up at night. See YouTube video here.

We are also impressed by the clean and modern metros all of which are air-conditioned, including the stations. See photo to see how wide these trains are. The trains are also very wide - see photo.

They have a modern fleet of planes, but some of the buses are a bit tired. The intercity buses have reclining seats, air-conditioning and a video. They take a video of all passengers before setting off. We were told this is in case of any problems, but we are also told that there is little crime!

What is most impressive is that all transport is run at reasonable prices.

Over-ground Metro Station Near our Longhau Hotel

R E D F L OW E R LAKE ABOVE HUIZHOU

Office

FINALLY We hope you have enjoyed this, our third newsletter from China, but remember that if you want to unsubscribe, we will not be offended!

Private Road & Gardens Roof Garden And, at a nearby restaurant

Our Bedroom

Lounge Our Master Bedroom & Balcony Lounge

O U R S H A R E D FLAT IN SHENZHEN