Asia Update #4 - northeastern China

Thought I'd give some general updates on China in this write up. The sights of Beijing (Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc.) will come in the next one.

First an apology - in my last write up I said I was heading to Sungyan. Turns out I spelled it wrong - it is Shenyang. Oops. I guess I've been in too many cities in too little time. I haven't been in any one place for more than 4 or 5 days since this all started. And it looks like I won't be in any one place for longer than that until I return to California for 8 days in September.

On to the fun stuff - looking at the architecture in China, you can see a lot of new and old China at the same time. Not real old China - the traditional curved, tile roofs and such only seem to exist at historical sites and museums. But you can tell closed communist China versus capitalist China. Capitalistic China is trying to show a great face to the outside through designing spectacular showcase buildings. Examples of this would be the skyline you can see behind me in Shanghai at the riverfront in my last report.

Communist China, on the other hand, had very antiseptic looking buildings that are run down and/or in need of repair and often have a cookie cutter approach of many buildings looking the same. To the left is a shot of an apartment building from my hotel in Beijing… Lots of buildings with similar cosmetic issues to this, such as paint peeling or rust streaks below metal fixtures.

My company does work with the construction industry from time to time, so I have had the opportunity to talk with some architects and designers doing projects here. We visited one in Shenyang, and the experience was interesting. We walk into one of these older buildings to meet with him. The building wasn't overly inspiring - looked more like a 50-100 year old University in the US than an office building filled with architects. But they were working on designs for $100 million exhibition halls, conference centers, towers, etc. The country puts money into these major projects (and there are lots of them), but not into keeping up or improving the older stuff.

Money is an interesting subject when you start thinking about the differences between China and other country per capita incomes. The average income of a factory worked in China is about US$1000. It's shocking to consider that what I spend on a night in a hotel here is a month's income for a local person, yet the price I am paying is less than half what I would pay in the States. I make more in a year than the average person here makes in a lifetime. Wow, deep thoughts.

Of course, the cost of living is much less here. People can afford to survive on what they are paid. They may not be able to afford trips to the south pacific or to buy a car, but they definitely aren't starving and generally look happy, healthy, and wear clean clothes. If anything, they look happier than the average person in the States - maybe our consumerism and always wanting more is making us worse off than the simpler lifestyle that is reflected here?

This income also means that there is a very low cost of labor. It makes for some interesting methods of doing work - much less mechanization and much more hand labor. Railroad tracks are laid by hand. If you need a ditch dug in the road to bury a telephone cable, there will be 20 or so people with pick axes and shovels (no backhoe). No street cleaning machines, only lots of people with large brooms sweeping the road off. Need to have bottled water delivered to your office, a guy will bring it on a single-speed bicycle or tricycle modified to carry loads - and many of these loads looked like they would crush a bike.

There are benefits to travelers from afar with this, such as the cheaper hotel rooms and cheaper food. We had a business lunch for 8 people at a dumpling restaurant in Changchun. Sit down restuarant with lots of servers. Ordered 5 types of dumplings, a few other dishes, and a couple of soft drinks each, all very tasty. We couldn't eat all of the food served. Total for the bill for our group was under US$10.

On food, I added one or two types which I hadn't tried before during my stay. We went for Peking Duck (in Peking, of course) last night. The main course was great, but we also received a few other courses made of the different parts of the duck. The restaurant placed what looked and had the texture of a thick goose skin in front of us. I have tried everything placed in front of me, and have gotten to the point where I don't even worry about finding out what it is before trying it. First surprise was that this dish came topped with a very hot mustard sauce - I grabbed the top piece and didn't brush off some of the sauce to lower pieces as I was supposed to, and felt like I ate a whole tablespoon of wasabi. My eyes were sure watering for a while. Second surprise was when they told me what it was - duck's feet.

What follows is not for the squeamish… If you don't want to hear about toilets, I would exit this blog now...

Ok, you've been warned…

Toilets are one area which also has this old and new aspect. If you go into a new building, you get the standard toilet as you'd find in the west. But in older buildings, you get something much different. It is basically a porcelain hole in the ground. There are usually areas on the side that are slightly raised where you place your feet and then squat to do your business. It is kind of like going to the bathroom when backwoods camping, except it is a porcelain fixture and you can flush it. It does require some balance. Definitely would have been much more of a challenge to use the one on the train (I didn't) with all the bouncing around and everything.

That description definitely doesn't do it justice, so here's a picture…

I am sure most of you have experienced the American outhouse before, and know that it is a much more primitive form of our standard toilet. Well, I experienced the Chinese version today. Basically, take the porcelain away from the picture above and make everything a concrete slab with a hole in it. Not pretty, but then again I don't know of an outhouse that is.