I've figured out why the meat over here bothers me. It's because it doesn't take much imagination to figure out what part of the animal your meal is coming from. Whether its a funny bone, or some well-placed fat, or some feathers, or a beak, or horns, there are always some clues to help you grasp the fact that you're eating another flesh-and-blood animal.
Today was our first day of work. We caught a shuttle bus to the office outside of our hotel at 7:10 this morning which took us to the headquarters, which is located about 25 km away. We met our advisor and he explained a little about the company and its position in the Chinese market. He also asked us what we were interested in doing. There is a huge factory, 400,000 square feet, where they produce the water heaters all the way from basic sheet metal. We finished our tour by peeking into all the offices. At the call center, employees receive 4000 calls and make 5000 calls daily. He also showed us the engineering division where Diego and I will be helping out.
We still didn't have cell phones, and when one of our hosts asked us if we needed help with anything, we brought this up. She left for ten minutes and returned with two cell phones for us to use during our stay here. We were also given company laptops on which to do all our important work. The company is treating us very well. We get free lunch there every day also, which means we will have two meals provided every weekday here in Nanjing.
During the afternoon, Diego and I joined our respective engineering divisions. Neither of us had much to do this afternoon though. I think we'll need to be very proactive in finding work if we want to be useful to the company.
This blog's not very funny, I can tell. I'm sorry. I'm tired. Of China. No, not really. But China's tough. Got me on the ropes. I'm excited about the possibility of travel though. Our boss asked if we might want to take a little time off to travel. If it's possible, I would love to go to Tibet. I love big mountains, and I've read a lot about the area. It could be a little expensive, but I might not have another chance. So maybe I'll take a couple/few/eight weeks off and go to Tibet. More on this later.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Presidential Palace
Salvation, thy name is breakfast. Diego and I were immensely relieved this morning on discovering that the hotel breakfast which USC has arranged for us every morning is quite to our liking. It is huge, and offers everything two foreigners could ask for. I mean, they even had banana bread. And considering that hardly any breakfast places in America will even serve you banana bread, you should have some idea what this place is like. It is buffet-style. We were curious how much we would have to pay for lunch and dinner at this restaurant: 120 and 180 yuan, respectively, or roughly 18 and 26 dollars. That's a lot of money, especially over here. But we get breakfast for free, so we'll just load our pockets with pork fried rice and go on our merry way.
I'm pretty tired. But I want to share some pictures from the Presidential Palace, which we toured today with our guides, Cheryl and Vicky. (Those aren't their real names. We can't pronounce their real names.) Nanjing is famous for two things, as I've ascertained: most notably, as the site of the worst aggression
during the Japanese occupation of the Second World War, and secondly, as the birthplace of capitalism in China. Born in 1912, capitalism grew happily into its mid-thirties before being put to bed by Mao Tse-tung in 1949. Nanjing was the capital of China until that point, when Mao moved the capital to Beijing. Anyway, the Presidential Palace was the main government place when Nanjing was the cat's pajamas in China. No dogs allowed. Even cute cartoon dogs.
The palace was nice. Still very few foreigners though. It seems strange to see a Chinese tourist location filled with Chinese people, though I can't figure out why. It's their country. And it's huge, with tons of people. At any rate, the Presidential Palace contained one Westerner, other than Diego and myself, today.
There were ladies in rubber gloves rubbing insecticide on individual clovers in the grass. I found it a bit strange, and so did the Chinese tourists.
We got some more Chinese food after going to the Presidential Palace. All four of us shared some soup, dumplings, chicken, pork, vegetables and rice, and most of it was very delicious. I suppose I can survive here after all. We paid under 20 dollars for everything, and had plenty of food left over.
On our way back to the hotel, I talked to Cheryl and tried to learn some more Chinese. She taught me yes (shida, pronounced like a bad word, but with da at the end), no (boo) and how much is it (duosho qian. qian sounds kinda like tsien. Cheryl kept telling me to use my nose to say it, which confused me until we figured out she meant teeth.) Coupled with some basic things USC taught us before we left, I...still have absolutely no idea how to speak Chinese.
Bedtime. Work tomorrow.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Beginning
Dude, China's all up in my face.
I've been here for one day and I'm hopelessly overwhelmed. I was doing pretty good for the whole plane journey, even though one of our flights was delayed and we were given some weird Chinese food as a compensation/punishment. (It was very weird. They gave us a goopy brown egg wrapped in plastic, and these super-enriched fake bread things which probably provided my body with enough preservatives to stick around until the sun explodes.) The sights and sounds of this city are not overwhelming. True, the smog makes it difficult to see the tops of buildings, and the drivers must navigate with only one hand, as the other is reserved always for honking. But what has amazed me and my friend Diego are the smells. It seems impossible to escape the lurking smell of feces on the streets of Nanjing. It's worst in the underground tunnels which lead pedestrians between subways and sidewalks, where the smell seems to have no source, but seeps from the walls where it has made its home for decades and into the nostrils of every passerby. It's a hard smell to describe, and I fear it may be even harder to accept.
Worse still is the addition of cooking smells to the mix. There are many fast food restaurants in the underground tunnels, and when the odor of barbecued duck meets the stench of stale human decay, it takes a strong stomach indeed to bear it. It was evidence enough that the two extremes of the digestive system should remain extremely far apart. I had a meal in the underground, and neither I nor Diego enjoyed it much. The tastes were just so foreign, as if they had discovered a spice which had never made it over to America. I suspect the real cause of the pervading sense of foreign taste may have been due to the water used to prepare the meal, because even the rice didn't taste like rice I'd eaten before.
Naturally, the difficulties of today have only strengthened my resolve to understand and embrace this place. During the first flight, I sat next to another Westerner whom I quickly learned had lived and worked in Beijing for the past several months. She seemed determined to tell me something about myself, so I settled down and listened as she told me the four stages my trip would assume. First would be the honeymoon, which occurs during the first day or two after arriving, during which I would fall in love with all things Chinese. Check. Second, disaster would strike! I would grow homesick and sad, and angry at the Chinese for not embracing my Western way of life. And thirdly would come something else, I don't know, the Rapture or something, where I learn that to live in China, I had to live as the Chinese lived and respect their ways, not trying to impose my way of life on their culture....Did I say there were four steps? Damn, if only there were a way to go back and fix my mistake, but alas...don't want to.
Anyway, the point is that I don't like to be told who I am by strange women with gaudy jewelry, so I've decided I'm just going to skip to the last step (which would be the third...or fourth?...) I realize the foolishness of trying to embrace a culture while living in a five-star hotel which provides every accommodation to its patrons, but I'm going to try nonetheless.
It was comforting, in a horrifying kind of way, to find Wal-Mart over here. We went inside and stocked up on cheap merchandise, probably made in China. We were afforded a special opportunity, as one of the workers made a point to try to sell us specific products, one after another, with breathtaking testimonials and demonstrations. We ended up buying something other than her recommendation every time, but I appreciated her effort. It takes a strong person to remain cheerful while wearing a Wal-Mart uniform.
Our hosts have been really amazing, picking us up from the airport and helping us find our way around this huge city. We would both be lost and dead and penniless and dead without them. This evening we went on a long walk and ended up in Nanjing University, where both our hosts attend school. It was really nice to be on a college campus again, no matter how far away from home. Diego and I asked a lot of questions about how they did things, and received a lot of interesting answers. We popped our heads in on a concert of Chinese folk music, which really interested me. I want to buy a Chinese instrument here and learn how to play it.
There's much more I could write, but my minutes of consciousness as I write right now are as limited as yours while you try to read this nonsense, so I better hang it up for the night. This city is special, and offers us a special opportunity. Walking around today, I must have seen at least five thousand faces, and no more than five of them were of Western origin. We're foreigners in a foreign land, and I'm eager to learn how to be a local.
I've been here for one day and I'm hopelessly overwhelmed. I was doing pretty good for the whole plane journey, even though one of our flights was delayed and we were given some weird Chinese food as a compensation/punishment. (It was very weird. They gave us a goopy brown egg wrapped in plastic, and these super-enriched fake bread things which probably provided my body with enough preservatives to stick around until the sun explodes.) The sights and sounds of this city are not overwhelming. True, the smog makes it difficult to see the tops of buildings, and the drivers must navigate with only one hand, as the other is reserved always for honking. But what has amazed me and my friend Diego are the smells. It seems impossible to escape the lurking smell of feces on the streets of Nanjing. It's worst in the underground tunnels which lead pedestrians between subways and sidewalks, where the smell seems to have no source, but seeps from the walls where it has made its home for decades and into the nostrils of every passerby. It's a hard smell to describe, and I fear it may be even harder to accept.
Worse still is the addition of cooking smells to the mix. There are many fast food restaurants in the underground tunnels, and when the odor of barbecued duck meets the stench of stale human decay, it takes a strong stomach indeed to bear it. It was evidence enough that the two extremes of the digestive system should remain extremely far apart. I had a meal in the underground, and neither I nor Diego enjoyed it much. The tastes were just so foreign, as if they had discovered a spice which had never made it over to America. I suspect the real cause of the pervading sense of foreign taste may have been due to the water used to prepare the meal, because even the rice didn't taste like rice I'd eaten before.
Naturally, the difficulties of today have only strengthened my resolve to understand and embrace this place. During the first flight, I sat next to another Westerner whom I quickly learned had lived and worked in Beijing for the past several months. She seemed determined to tell me something about myself, so I settled down and listened as she told me the four stages my trip would assume. First would be the honeymoon, which occurs during the first day or two after arriving, during which I would fall in love with all things Chinese. Check. Second, disaster would strike! I would grow homesick and sad, and angry at the Chinese for not embracing my Western way of life. And thirdly would come something else, I don't know, the Rapture or something, where I learn that to live in China, I had to live as the Chinese lived and respect their ways, not trying to impose my way of life on their culture....Did I say there were four steps? Damn, if only there were a way to go back and fix my mistake, but alas...don't want to.
Anyway, the point is that I don't like to be told who I am by strange women with gaudy jewelry, so I've decided I'm just going to skip to the last step (which would be the third...or fourth?...) I realize the foolishness of trying to embrace a culture while living in a five-star hotel which provides every accommodation to its patrons, but I'm going to try nonetheless.
It was comforting, in a horrifying kind of way, to find Wal-Mart over here. We went inside and stocked up on cheap merchandise, probably made in China. We were afforded a special opportunity, as one of the workers made a point to try to sell us specific products, one after another, with breathtaking testimonials and demonstrations. We ended up buying something other than her recommendation every time, but I appreciated her effort. It takes a strong person to remain cheerful while wearing a Wal-Mart uniform.
Our hosts have been really amazing, picking us up from the airport and helping us find our way around this huge city. We would both be lost and dead and penniless and dead without them. This evening we went on a long walk and ended up in Nanjing University, where both our hosts attend school. It was really nice to be on a college campus again, no matter how far away from home. Diego and I asked a lot of questions about how they did things, and received a lot of interesting answers. We popped our heads in on a concert of Chinese folk music, which really interested me. I want to buy a Chinese instrument here and learn how to play it.
There's much more I could write, but my minutes of consciousness as I write right now are as limited as yours while you try to read this nonsense, so I better hang it up for the night. This city is special, and offers us a special opportunity. Walking around today, I must have seen at least five thousand faces, and no more than five of them were of Western origin. We're foreigners in a foreign land, and I'm eager to learn how to be a local.
Interim
Between March 21 and the end of school, I did some stuff. I joined the football team for awhile, but I quit because they weren't my style, you know, always winning and whatnot. I got accepted to the Global Fellows program which sends USC kids to China (for free!) to work in internships for Chinese companies, and I'll be working with a water heater company during the summer (aka now). Then I took some finals and drove home in my rusty old car and it didn't explode, which is always a notable achievement.
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