Month: July 2017

As the temps soared to 40C again, instead of being miserable sitting in air conditioning and having little to no human contact, why not spend it with an apartment broker and try to find a permanent place to live here in Suzhou?! All-in-all we looked at twelve different apartments in four different neighborhoods (Ligongdi, Xinghai Square, Dongfangzhimen, and Times Square). The apartments ranged from average to expensive and also broken-in to brand new. It is interesting as the three brand new apartments we visited had no furniture in them and for two of the three I would have some say on what type is purchased. Looking at barren apartments does make it a bit harder to get a good feel for how large or small a place is.

Out of the twelve places there are three great contenders, all within my budget. Each place is in a different neighborhood, each are differently priced (but within 1000rmb of each other), and each have a different commute to work commitment. At this point I’ve not made up my mind but I am leaning towards one unit. See if you can figure out which one and later this week when I sign a lease I’ll let you know which it is! 🙂

The descriptions of the places listed below are in the order in which they were viewed. I thought I took a lot of pictures of the first place, but either I didn’t or the camera on my phone didn’t capture the images I thought it did. (This has happened before, usually my fault when it does.) All places had central heating and air conditioning, so I will only call out some differences in that regard as needed.

If you’re just looking for pictures of the places and don’t care for the commentary, click the links below:

• Suzhou Center
• The Summit
• Harmony City

Suzhou Center
The first place is brand new and in Xinghai Square/Dongfangzhimen area. It’s located right next to the brand new W Hotel (whose opening date slipped to September from October), and is pretty close to the subway line 1 entrance. The building is called the Suzhou Center and is really nice. The unit I saw was a one bedroom, one bath with a galley-style kitchen, no current furnishings, an amazing bathroom (with a view), and a view-to-kill living room. The downside is that it’s a pretty small unit, listed at 88sqm (square meters, about 950 sq ft) but felt more like 37sqm (400 sq ft). There is no door to where the bedroom would be, but that won’t matter much as it’s just me living in the place. It would be a tight squeeze for having guests over and there is no room for a dining table. The view is amazing, did I mention that yet? The livingroom has a great view of “the big pants building” and the north part of Jinji Lake. The commute to work will be just about an hour each way and I could take either one or two busses or the subway (and transfer twice).  There’s a second unit for rent in this building for slightly less money per month, has a slightly less good view (more city, no lake), no furniture yet, and is exactly the same size. So if I choose to go with this apartment, I have two similar ones to potentially live in if my first choice is no longer available. I believe the unit with the pictures is from the 41st floor and the other unit is on the 16th floor.

Pros	Cons
New building Great views Heated flooring Built-in water filtration (tap water can be drank) Brand new furniture I get to help pick out Right next door to the W Hotel (I love those! Especially their bar, Trace Loft) Lots of storage space	Small unit, feels about 400 sq ft. Only one bedroom Would be hard to have guests over No room for dining table No room for small work desk Area will remain under construction for some time A bit far for finding food until the end of the year when the mall next door opens Just about an hour commute to work

The Summit
There were two units I looked at in this Xinghai Square neighborhood building, and while they were both good and comfortable, the one on the higher floor (28th) was a corner unit and when you look at the master bedroom with two walls of windows, you can understand why I like that unit more. The Summit is the lowest priced of the three units I’m writing about and it’s also the oldest building. That said, the unit felt really modern and nice on the inside, had a huge kitchen, and comfortable furniture. This unit is also the furthest from work (55-70 minutes each way), but where that lacks in daily productivity it gains as being about one block away from The Camel Sports Bar — one of the expat bars in Suzhou that I enjoy going to, and right next to The Camel is El Luchedor — a pretty good Mexican restaurant that keeps three different types of hot sauce on each table (score!). The master bathroom in this unit has a similar amazing view from it as the one in Suzhou Center. There is a separate guest bathroom. Plenty of storage space.

Pros	Cons
2 bedroom, 2 bath Huge kitchen Corner unit Great views Next to places I like to go for food and drinks (and darts!) Small desk/bar for working from home Dining table Unit feels to be about 1000 sq ft	Just over an hour commute to work likely with one or two transfers needed  Clothes washer is hidden in a closet in living room (not sure about noise) Not in love with the wallpaper Fairly small television in living room

Harmony City
Harmony City is the apartment building that has the mall below it that I really like in Times Square neighborhood. In fact, after apartment shopping today I had a late brunch at a place in the mall called Miss Pancake. It was cheap and really good! (I had a delicious omelette with french toast, potatoes, and bottomless cup of coffee for 56rmb — about $8.30.) The unit was nice, has a huge kitchen quite similar to the one at The Summit, and was also a two bedroom unit. Sadly it has only one bathroom which felt pretty tight, especially with the tub/shower combo. The dining table was a nice touch. The commute from work to Harmony City is the shortest out of all the places I looked at; about 25-30 minutes on the 156 bus and no connections or transfers needed. That bus route, however, is pretty busy the few times I was on it during rush hour. Oddly, the master bedroom does not have a closet but the guest bedroom does. This place has the least amount of built-in storage space out of all three units and is likely I’d need to buy a dresser or two for clothes.

Pros	Cons
Love the shopping mall with lots of restaurants that is on floors B-5 Short commute to work, no transfers needed Brand new furniture Big kitchen Huge TV and comfortable couch in a large living room Big dining table Unit feels to be about 1000 sq ft.	Washer/dryer is outside next to air conditioning unit Busy bus route to get to work Worst view of the units on this page (but not worst I saw on the apt hunting trip) Cramped bathroom Not a lot of storage space Odd choice of master bedroom (larger one) lacking built-in closet.

So tell me, what do you think? (Submit a comment…) Which unit of the three would you select if you were a bachelor like me and all the units are well within your allowed budget?

Eureka! It happened! I finally had a breakthrough in Chinese!

On the treadmill today at the temp housing location where I’m currently staying, I was doing my slow jog as it was another 40C degree day outside (yuck!). As I’m starting to sweat, I glanced up from my iPad which was playing House of Cards (Chapter 59, I’m still working on catching up with this season … Don’t spoil it for me!) and I saw the screen for the treadmill and actually was able to read three characters I’ve never seen before in sequence (卡， 路， 里) and figured out what they mean!

OK, while just three characters might seem trivial to some people, I’m taking this as a small victory, especially as I can read them out loud! The first two characters I learned this week during my Mandarin lessons: 卡 (kǎ; card) and 路 (lù; road). The third one I only know from how I write the first syllable of my first name: 里 (lǐ; in). (When I do write my name in Chinese it’s 里奇, which is the transliteration of “Ritchie” and spoken as Lǐqí.)

So what does “card + road + in” mean to me? Absolutely nothing! Well, nothing that is unless you take it at as a face value transliteration of a English word. (Ah, notice some of that small bit of foreshadowing now carried over from the previous paragraph?) If you say kǎlùlǐ as pinyin suggests, it is very close to the word … wait for it … calorie in English! Ah! There it is! That area of the screen on the treadmill was counting the estimated number of calories I was burning while taking that slow jog and enjoying House of Cards.

With that small, yet important [for me] accomplishment under my belt, I’m following the suggestion of one of my college professors and going to grab a beer to celebrate! 服务员， 一大杯啤酒！ （Go ahead and click on the link to get the translation, courtesy of Google Translate.)

After work I went jogging once again. It’s been ridiculously hot here in eastern China; 42C was the high for the day, and that’s without the humidity thrown into the equation. To give you an idea how crazy hot that is, we were hotter than what Las Vegas NV is forecast to be today by 2C! It’s now 50 minutes after my jog finished and I’m still sweating. The rest of the foreseeable forecast shows highs 40-42C. Thank goodness for air-conditioning and baby powder! 

Anyway, on my jog something odd struck me. With the humidity so high — the word tropical doesn’t even come close to being accurate — it’s weird not to be swatting away gnats, flys, or mosquitoes. That’s right, there are none of those annoying flying insects outside to bother you. Maybe it’s been so hot they’ve all died? Ha! That would be something. 

This is so different than when I was recently in the Galapagos Islands. The humidity was at the same level and at times it felt nealy as hot. But man, the flys and mosquitoes at the Galapagos were loving me as a food source. It was so bad on the first day, even using bug spray, I was certain the trip was going to be a miserable one. Fortunately, though, the Galapagos are so diverse that even the insects are different or just missing from certain islands. Phew! 

While I have killed a few mosquitoes since arriving, maybe six at the most, it sure is nice not to have them around! Bees and wasps aslo seem to be missing, though I’m sure they’re just hiding. I’ve seen butterflys, a few spiders, and hear tons of crickets. 

So for this oddity I am very thankful as it’s helping me enjoy my time in China that much more! Now only if Karl the Fog, San Francisco’s unofficial “mascot” that rolls in off the ocean every summer afternoon and drops the temps to 18-24C, could get his travel visa approved and visit us for a while. If only!

It turns out I’m not so up-to-speed on traditions or customs here in China. Sometimes I observe things and think “Hmm. Ok, that’s kind of cool.” and other times my response is a bit different. Tonight I’m writing about the cool reaction. 

Since I began working a few weeks ago, each day, shortly after 1pm, I’ve noticed what has to be just a normal custom in China: taking a 10-20 minute nap at your workstation. As I walk through the office I see colleagues with their arms crossed and foreheads resting there upon or, sometimes, leaning back in their chairs in a slight recline with a towel over their eyes. This is a tradition I find to be rather neat! As I’m going about my tasks I do my best to not disturb anyone so they can get a few winks in any be productive once they wake. It’s similar to the siesta in Mexico, except you do not go home and take your nap at work instead.

I’ve also noticed all the developers on my team wear slippers or sandals while in the office. Though I’ve not seen it happen, I’m assuming they wear a different pair of shoes to the office then switch to “indoor footwear” once arriving at their desks. I know in Japanese culture it is normal not to wear shoes inside one’s house, but I’m not sure about the office. Maybe this is a similar custom?

The Chinese have really surprised me in how friendly everyone is and how they have such a civilized society. With that in mind, there are a few things, however, that I notice that seem out of place.

The “law” of massive objects. In most places I’ve been, pedestrians have the right of way when in a crosswalk and the signal is in their favor. Here the only rule that seems to matter is how large of a vehicle you’re in: Trucks & busses, then cars, then ebike/motorcycles, then bicycles, and finally pedestrians is the pecking order for right of way. Oh, and that red light at the intersection? It seems to mostly be a suggestion, especially if you’re a car or ebike turning right.

Not clearing tables. I’m not referring to fast casual style restaurants and above that have dedicated waitstaff (服务员，fúwù yuán) but rather more casual places like Starbucks or Burger King. It is common place to leave your mess on the tables when you’re done instead of bringing your tray and trash to the proper location leaving a clean spot for someone else to sit down at and enjoy.

Driving. Hear me now, I will never get behind the wheel here in China unless it’s on a go-kart track! The rules of the road here are so confusing I’d likely get in a wreck as quick as Lingling from that episode of Drawn Together! I find it’s amazing that so far I’ve only seen one minor fender bender and nothing more! People cut one another off, tailgate, and lane split for what must certainly be peverse enjoyment. But I can’t condem these driving habbits as they seem to work for the locals!

If you know me as of late, you know that I really do enjoy playing softball. It’s one of the things I’m going to miss the most by not living in the States. Though I only played a a few seasons while living in San Francisco, I made a lot of good friends through the softball league, especially those on my team: The San Francisco Bombshells.

Our team this year did really well. In fact, we won our division and earned a berth to a national tournament which is being held in Portland, Oregon, this year! The tournament is in early September and I’m hoping I can somehow make it — especially since I’ve never been part of a team that earned the berth before! There’s an outside chance I might be working in Seattle for a few weeks around the time of the tournament, so fingers crossed! (Portland is an easy three hour train ride or drive down I-5 from Seattle.)

Such tournaments can be expensive to attend: Entry fees, plane tickets, hotel rooms/lodging, and rental cars all add up to a pretty penny. My team did a great job of fundraising during the softball season selling jello shots and cups for beer busts ($10 / cup for endless beer during a three hour period at a bar), but we’re having one more fundraising event: A big raffle with various prizes, including a grand prize of $500!

While most the prizes will benefit those who live in the SF Bay Area more than those who don’t, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add a shameless plug on here for anyone who wants to buy a raffle ticket or even donate some money! The tickets are being sold for $5, a pack of 5 for $20, and a set of 15 for $50. 

If you’re interested in helping my team out, send me an email (me@expatrichie.com) and I’ll reply back with my Venmo and PayPal account information. (If you don’t have a Venmo or PayPal account, shame on you! Sign up and join the all the cool kids; www.venmo.com is the better of the two and either one has a website you can use or apps to download for your phone.)

Thanks for listening to this shameless plug and … GO […pause…] BOMBSHELLS!

One of the reasons people say Mandarin is a tough language is due to the tones. There are five of them and with out getting into too much detail, a word like “ma” in English has five different meanings in Mandarin due to the various tones: mā, má, mǎ, mà, and ma. One of those is “mom” and another means “horse” and another indicates you just asked a question; the remaining two are a mystery to me!

Anyway, yesterday during work I sent out a message on the WeChat group for the running club asking if anyone wanted to run after work. Well, I thought that’s what I asked. A few co-workers started to chuckle as I mixed up the Chinese characters for one of the “ma”s and asked if anyone wants to run a horse marathon! Oops! Maybe that’s why there were only two of us who went running. Or it could’ve been the high temp that hit 102F with a heat index of 117F… needless to say it was a tough 5.5km and I was still sweating 90 minutes after finishing AND after taking a cold shower. And I learned a new lesson in Mandarin: Mind your “ma”!

我爱你妈妈！

Work and Mandarin lessons are keeping me pretty busy during the week. As I guessed, daily updates to the blog are getting more difficult to pull off. With that said, it’s time for a mid-week update!

So … I figured it out! Well, sorry of. Somehow I managed to install the ICBC China app on my phone and could login! But it wasn’t easy; it was another adventure, this time with a happy ending.

Don’t even ask how I was able to install an app that is available only to those who have bought a cellphone from a Chinese provider, but I got it done. And after it was installed it was time to log in to my account. 

Let’s play a game for  a moment: Close your eyes right now and picture trying to create and then log into your account for any app. No, really… Close your eyes and picture how that might be done. Now change all the English you’re picturing to Chinese. Near impossible, right?

Thankfully I came up with an great idea: Since I have two phones I could use Google Translate & the cell phone camera to “live translate” the banking phone app on my other phone! If you’re not familiar with this feature of Google Translate, basically you can use the app in camera mode and point it at printed material like a menu or book and it will attempt to translate from one language into another. (Yeah, I know but only because I found out about it tonight… You can do it all with only one phone by taking a screenshot and sending that screenshot to Google Translate…I digress.)

The process was slow but in the end I was able to navigate enough to create my account, set new password, and pass the 2FA (two-factor authentication) challenge. It only took about two hours to get done. Uggh. But, I was able to get logged in and see my balance. Yay!

Then, after I called this process a qualified success, I decided to do a few other things around the apartment. While I was folding laundry an idea came too me: Maybe I can now log into the English language version of the ICBC website. Previously this was tried but never successfully as an error kept being displayed saying my account is broken and I should go to the ICBC branch and speak with someone. This time things were different! Apparently logging in on the mobile phone app triggers something behind the scene and the website became unblocked  and allowed me to login. Boooh yeah! Much easier than navigating the Chinese language phone app. 

Next banking related tasks:

1. Figure out how to checking my balance via WeChat (if possible)
2. Determine how to move money from this bank account to my account in the USA so I can pay some bills from back home

Both will be daunting for sure!

Hello, Shanghai! 

Today is my first trip to Shanghai with the main reason being an evening poker match at a coworker’s place. I didn’t have much else going on today, so why not!

Getting there

Based on where I’m staying in Suzhou, getting to Shanghai is a bit of a process that involves three separate train systems:

1. Suzhou subway to Suzhou rail station
2. Bullet train from Suzhou rail station to Shanghai Hongqiao rail station (and airport)
3. Shanghai subway from Hongqiao to final location

First, I hopped on the Suzhou subway to get from Moon Bay (月亮湾) to the Suzhou Rail Station (苏州火车站). Getting a ticket for the Suzhou subway is easy: You walk into the station and find one of the automated touchscreen kiosks. There’s an option for English, so no struggling with learning the Chinese characters of where you want to go. Put your money in the machine after selecting where you want to go and grab your ticket then walk to the security check. If you have a bag, place it on the conveyor belt so it can be scanned. Closed bottles of liquids are OK to bring on the subway but for open ones you may need to prove it’s not a dangerous item by taking a sip or using your fantastic Mandarin skills to explain what the liquid is; I just leave the liquids at home, unless I bought a bottle of wine or six… Once past security, tap your ticket at the gate, walk through, and make your way down to the subway platform.

Riding the subway is easy as almost all sinage is in both Chinese and English and there’s an LED display indicating which stop you’re at and where the next one is. There are also announcements in Mandarin and English. For getting to the rail station I opted to change from Line 2 to Line 4 to cut about 15 minutes off the trip. Both lines stop at the Rail Station, however, so I could’ve just stayed on Line 2 all they way.

Once at the Suzhou Rail Station (苏州火车站), I needed to pick up my train ticket from the ticket office that was prepurchased using the CTrip phone app. (It’s in English and accepts credit cards!) I went to the North Ticket Office which is outside and to the left of the security check point. That’s very important to know as when I first attempted to find the ticket office I passed through security and was completely lost! (Good thing I gave myself a a full hour to navigate the rail station before my train left…) 

After waiting in line for a bit, it was my turn at the ticket counter. I handed the clerk my passport and my phone which displayed the “ticket pickup information” from the CTrip app. The clerk handed both those back along with my ticket. Time to walk through security again.

The train station is pretty massive with many platform, restaurants, seating areas and signs. Sadly most of these signs, including the depatures board, are in Chinese. It took me a while to figure out that my train departure wasn’t listed on the departure board because I was there a bit too early. Phew, nervous energy gone. Twenty minutes later my departure gate was announced and so I went to the waiting area. A little bit later it was time to scan the ticket and walk down to the platform where I somehow needed to find carriage 15 before the train arrived. (Carriage spots are not marked on the platform…)

The train arrived and I took my seat in the first class car. Hey now, that ticket upgrade was an extra $0.80! So why not 🙂 Seating in first class is 2×2 vs 3×3, very similar to a USA-based airline flying a domestic route. There’s also more legroom in first. But don’t expect beverage or meal service. (Maybe on longer routes those items are offered, but not for this short hop.)

The train was very quiet and fast. Max speed was 244kph (about 150mph) on this trip. There was only one stop between Suzhou and Shanghai Hangqiao (上海虹桥) station and the entire train ride was less than 30 minutes including the one stop.

Shanghai Hangqiao rail station also connects to the Hangqiao airport (SHA) via one stop on the subway. Sadly that airport doesn’t have many international flights. The main international airport for Shanghai is the Pudong Airport (PVG) on the eastside of Shanghai. Anyway, I queued up for buying a ticket for the subway, entered the security line, and found my way to Subway Line 10 as that route will take me within a couple of blocks where I’m meeting my coworker and a number of her friends.

The trip to Shanghai was pretty easy, but a bit long. I left my place at 10:45am and made it to the Hongqiao rail station (ostensibly the westside of Shanghai) by 1:30pm. It took another 45 minutes or so to get to the Shanghai Library subway stop.

Thoughts

Traveling by train is pretty easy and far less boring — and cheaper — than taking a taxi. Not sure about the intercity or long distance bus routes as I’ll likely avoid those. 

While staring out the train windows I got my first glimpses of the Shanghai skyline, including the building that looks like a bottle opener and the completely massive Shanghai Tower.

With this huge metropolis less than two hours away (now that I know how to navigate the Suzhou Rail station), I’ll likely spend some weekends here taking it all in: the shopping, the nightlife, the food, the museums, and the people!