You're not what they call a vegetarian, are you? Oh good

Before anything, I must thank Vidya for buying me a Kindle. My new e-book reader has been great so far and I think it'll be indispensable once I make the move to China since English books are hard to get. I read Half the Sky, which is about one of the few things I strongly believe in, women's rights. If you're looking for a great eye-opening book, this is the book to read. If you aren't moved after reading the book, then you have no soul.

I was in China for 5 days with our CFO to talk to the other half of our joint-venture. I met my Chinese counterparts once, in Spain, but didn't get a chance to talk to them in depth so it was nice to spend a little more time with them. Our marketing office is located in Wuhan, which is the 4th largest city in China (10 million or so) and our factory is located in Jingmen, which is about 200 kilometers away. No one will mistake Wuhan for Shanghai but it's still an important city. The city is considered the capital of Central China and has a ton of factories, including unfortunately for me, China's largest iron factory. I spent a bulk of my time in Jingmen at our factory so didn't really get a chance to explore Wuhan or look for apartments.

There is a huge power shortage in the Hubei province, so companies have been asked to cut back on their power consumption. This meant that pretty much everywhere I went didn't have heating. This wouldn't have been bad a few months ago but it's about 30 degrees in Wuhan/Jingmen so I was always freezing. Everywhere I went, I saw people wearing coats and gloves in their office...our office made an exception for us since we were guests so they turned on heating in the conference room, but it didn't really do a good job of keeping us warm. My hotel room barely got up to 60 degrees even with the heating cranked up...instead of my usual bed clothes, I wore a sweater, wrapped myself up in the hotel bathrobe and burrowed myself into my bed.

Wuhan will be challenging especially since it doesn't have many expats...a bulk of the few expats are French nationals. The biggest challenge will be learning the language...our plant only has one English speaking person while our marketing office has 1 person who is fluent and another who can speak decent English. Also, since Wuhan doesn't have as many expats, it didn't feel compelled to put all the signs in English. In fact, a lot of the English I recognized were the brand-names of American and European stores...if the sign didn't say Wal-Mart, I would have had no idea a building was a grocery store. It was also interesting to talk to my counterparts, I would look at them, speak in English and wait for someone to translate into Chinese. As you can imagine, this made simple conversations drag on forever. I kind of fumbled on who to look at while I talk, do I look at the person I'm addressing, do I look at my translator? Also, when they were talking in Chinese, they'd crack a joke and start laughing...there would be a solid 20 second delay until my translator stopped laughing and would translate for me...by the time I started laughing (or pretended to think the joke was funny) the Chinese guys would already be serious and waiting to move onto the next topic.

While I knew language would be an issue, spending a few days in Wuhan made me realize I'm going to face a lot of other issues once I make the move and I need to work on a few things or get some upgrades.

Stronger Tongue - I loved the food in Wuhan, it was delicious and probably the best Chinese food I've ever had even if you include the Shanghai feast from 2004 where I nearly threw up from eating so much thanks to Jon's uncle and aunt. However, as with any authentic Chinese food, there were tons of bones in everything I ate. This becomes a big problem with fish, which is the best part of Wuhan food. As like most Americans, I tend to eat fillets of fish meat or I expect the restaurant to debone my fish for me. Sadly, in Wuhan, you're just served a whole fish and need to fend for yourself. Now, the best way to eat fish is to stick pieces of it into your mouth, suck the meat off the bones and then transfer the bones to one side of your cheek while chomping down the meat on the other side and then spitting out the bones. I tried that, which resulted in me choking on small fish bones when I messed up or trying to spit bones onto my plate but just spitting it onto my shirt instead...I'll stick with my methodology of using my chopsticks or fingers to get my bones out of my mouth. It takes a lot to disgust your Chinese hosts, but I'm pretty sure I accomplished just that.

Stronger Fingers - You'd think for all the time I spend on my Blackberry, I could grasp just about anything with my fingers. I'm pretty good with chopsticks, at least I think I am but using chopsticks isn't as simple as it is at home where the Chinese restaurants have boneless chicken. Having bones in your meal makes life that much more miserable...in fact now that I think about it, I think the only reason why I ordered pork and rice everyday when I lived in Hong Kong is because it didn't have bones. I had to confront my weakness again when I ate meat this week...I don't have a problem grasping onto a piece of meat and gnawing at it like a wolf but I clearly had a disconnect between the amount of force it takes to bit off meat and the amount of energy to hold onto my meat while I do this. While eating crab legs, I managed to knock half a bowl of soup into my lap. Fortunately, not everyone saw me do this and I thought I got lucky, unfortunately, the soup broth didn't dry fast enough and at the end of dinner, I think some people thought I peed my pants. Kind of veering off topic, why do people feel compelled to use utensils for everything? This isn't just an Asian thing either, but a European thing as well. Eating crab legs and lobster with chopsticks is ridiculous but so is eating a sandwich or pizza with fork and knife like the British do. Yes, I realize using your fingers is messier, but here is some news, we have things called napkins.

Stronger Liver - Remember in college and during work orientation, they always warn you not to drink too much with your co-workers and sometimes even suggest you order a soda & tonic so it looks like you're drinking? Perhaps my experiences have been the exception but I still don't know when not drinking would have helped in me. In fact, I've always established more rapport with my bosses and others when we're all drinking. While investment banking is known for its drinking culture, working in China is taking it to the next level. I was berated my counterparts on the first night for ordering a large beer that "only" had 8% alcohol. To make up for it, they asked the waitress to make sure my next beer was 11%. On night 2, they insisted we only drink our beers by taking shots of it...so for several hours over dinner, we were yelling gumbay and taking shots of beer. To make it a classier affair, on our last night, we ordered wine...I love wine, so I thought this was would be a nice reprieve. Unfortunately, our host insisted we only take shots of the red wine...I can't figure out if it's because he wanted to keep our drinking game going or he realized the Chinese wine is terrible and taking shots of it is the best way to go.

One of my biggest concerns before I visited Wuhan was the air polution. Wuhan wasn't nearly as bad as I thought but that's not to say the city is super clean either. For one thing, everyone here smokes, it's not as bad as it was 6 years ago when people were smoking on buses, etc. but you can't help but cough if you're not used to the smell of smoke. Also, our ibuprofen block is right next to a huge chemical section...I've never worked for the EPA but I'm fairly positive a dark gray cloud shouldn't hang over the factory and the air shouldn't smell sweet. Plus, it's not very comforting to look outside your office and see this every morning...



For the last one year, I've known that I'm moving to a Communist Country. You hear about it and know the restrictions but it doesn't hit you until you actually get there. Although I studied in Hong Kong, I wasn't as affected since the city has separate rules from Mainland China. When I turned on my computer, I went to Facebook, only to find it blocked...then I went to my blog and realized that was blocked too! On my 2nd morning there, I heard the news about Google threatening to leave China, which would really suck for me. While all these things were surprising, I wasn't completely thrown off guard since you do hear about this stuff. It really hit me that I was in a Communist country when our driver dropped us off for dinner and then joined us at the table. Talk about equality! If a driver in India tried that, he'd be beaten and then fired on the spot.

One last observation...everyone always comments about how China is pulling ahead of India because of their infrastructure, etc. While the Chinese do have better facilities than Indians, I feel like it's going to waste. They build all sorts of Western amenities but I don't think people are really interested in changing their ways. On paper, Chinese bathrooms are much nicer than Indian ones, but at Wuhan airport, the floors by the urinals were soaked since the men couldn't aim. There were trashcans everywhere throughout the city, but I still saw people throwing trash on the ground and the few instances I saw people using the trashcans is when girls were hawking into them. Stay classy China...

Oh, to close it out...while eating lunch, a woman came up to me and asked my translator if I was a billboard model. Then she proceeded to tell me that I should marry a local girl and have several babies because our kids would be gorgeous. While I'm a sucker for compliments, I'm pretty sure my mom is probably crying as her worst nightmare is starting to play out.

As always, pictures are on Facebook.