Chinese Box

Does anyone want to publish an interview I did while in Egypt?

I just found out my old magazine, which is still somewhat existant, isn't using the last story I did for them due to a problem with photo quality. I know people who publish magazines occasionally read this blog, so if any of you have any interest in a short interview with a Chinese accountant at a textile company in the China-Egypt special economic zone near Suez, I'd be happy to send it to you. 

The interview touches on a number of interesting topics, such as worker relations between the Egyptians and the Chinese, comparative wages in China and Egypt, working conditions, the reasons the Chinese have for investing, and the general strain of Chinese working abroad. The photo quality isn't that bad (ok for internet, I think fine for print if its a bit smaller). I could add an introduction about the zone, and my general experiences in Egypt if wanted.

If I get no reply in a week or two I'll just publish it here.

(money would be appreciated, but not necessary, I mostly just want publicity for what I thought was a good interview).

Weekend trip to Chengde

I'm slightly behind on my work because I spent the weekend in Chengde trying to get used to the nasty combination of high altitude and pollution (I'm getting slightly concerned about my lungs). The temples in the city put to shame all other temple's in the country though and should be on anyone's itinerary if they've got a free weekend in the Beijing area. The trip ended on a high note with my girlfriend dragging me to get a foot massage, and then realizing in the midst of our conversations with the people working there that the place doubled as a brothel.

 Anyways, I'm working on my weekly "How China Works" column now, and it should probably be up tomorrow.

Bad days

I left my grandmother's funeral in Seattle today for a week of catching up with people in California, only to find out my childhood dog died yesterday.

I want to write later about the Japanese push in to the infrastructure market, and the upcoming Xinhua news channel, but right now I'm not going to do anything.

Going to America

Going to America for family reasons, so posting might be sparse for the next week. Though i will try to keep shaking my cane at what Chinese news I can find on the interwebs.

The adventures of a new flat

For those of us who do not have the money to rent an upper class apartment in Beijing, moving is always a tense affair. You are without a doubt in for surprises, some pleasant, some not so much. Our last flat, while it looked fantastic at first, had attributes of a Potemkin village, with among other things, a fake drain. Our housing managers were also borderline mafia types. Who just up and took our fridge half way through the year. Our first flat in China had a vampire. Or at least that's the only explanation we could come up with a wardrobe with chains wrapped around it and no less than THREE locks on the chains.

 The flat we moved into on Saturday has so far turned out pretty good. The management has been very friendly about fixing the numerous small problems scattered around the flat. The design makes far more sense than where we used to live, and there are enough windows that you don't need to use lamps during the day (a perpetual problem at our other flat). There are a few curiosities though.

First of all, we seem to have entered a vortex of old grannies. When we first went with the landlord to see the flat, the place was packed with people: the two people moving out, me, my girlfriend, the agent, the manager, the landlord, and then two random old ladies who just followed us in there. The ladies stood around, chatted about the flat, poked things, used the bathroom. You know, whatever. The elevator can barely be used without having to stop for some old lady who is going from the second floor to the third, and every afternoon there's a flock of them in the courtyard (like 20!)

Then there's this thing:

which I think is a combination of a flower vase and a mobius strip.

Last, we were under the initial impression that our next door neighbor was dead. As her dogs were barking non-stop the day we moved in, as though they hadn't been fed in days. They smelled as though they hadn't been washed in weeks, and there was a nice pile of trash outside her house, which included, among other things, a christmas tree. The dogs have since started smelling better and barking less, but we're going to have to talk to her about the trash.

All in all though this is our best flat yet.

Interesting sort-of fact of the day

According to a seemingly trustworthy building manager in the building I just moved into (more about that later) you shouldn't trust any housing agency whose name begins with the character 中. I'm not sure whether the similarity of names is coincidental or an attribute of eternal truth, but from my experience its proved pretty right on.

I hate Chinese internet

I'm having serious problems accessing my blog. I'm going to try to do more blogging through secondhand channels, but (if you haven't already noticed) things might be a little slower for a bit.

I'm working out some conceptual issues, and then I think I'm going to get myself a real domain. More on that later, after I see whether this post publishes.

Starstruck

I get star struck occasionally when I have big interviews coming up. Wish me luck with Jim Rogers (and read it when it comes out in September!).

The perils of an old flat in China

So I'm finally done with all the moving, but I had one remaining surprise waiting for me. The managers of my old flat were demanding RMB 2000 for repairs and payment of fees (out of my RMB 2600 deposit). I spent 3 hours arguing with them before they agreed to give me back RMB 1600... I still feel I might have been cheated.

The biggest problem we had was that we were living in a really bad flat. We were only paying RMB 2600 a month for it at first (up 200 RMB for the olympics), but the kitchen sink was half broken and the bathroom was barely working (using hot water made a sound like a jackhammer). There were also brown spots on the wall, and the paint chipping off. This was all true as soon as we moved in, and now that we were moving out they wanted us to pay 1200 RMB so they could get it fixed. This was about 2 hrs of the 3. 

The fees were a bit of a mess, they called "someone" who said we hadn't paid our water bill in 2 years (we had only lived there for a year and half, but lets forget about that). Every 2 months we got a bill posted to our door, for what I thought was water and gas, but she was telling me it was only the gas bill, and for the water bill you had to go somewhere special to pay it, but most people paid it at the end of their time living at the flat (this is such complete nonsense I could barely handle it). The charge to us was 600 RMB for 2 years. I thought it completely possible that we had unknowingly only paid the gas bill, so I forked over 500 for that, but now I'm not so sure. Our current agents said the water bill is posted on the door, and then you go to the bank to pay it, which is exactly what we did.

Anyways, the moral of the story:

Keep all receipts relating to your flat.

Keep a meticulous record of everything broken in the flat

Call your landlord regularly to complain about broken things

Don't rent from an agent if at all possible.

A bad flat might cost you more in the end. (though I guess this only cost me an extra 50 RMB a month or so, but three hours of haggling is exhausting)

The Perils of a New Flat in China

So I just moved into a new flat, full hundred dollars more rent than my previous one (500$ instead of 400$, plus a one time 500$ agent fee). It looked fantastic when we first saw it, but with 4 days to make closer inspection we've found a number of completely baffling faults in it:

1. The handle to the kitchen door extends past the door jam, making it impossible to close.

2. The shower is pointing directly at a wooden door, which now has massive water damage (it can only be partially covered by a shower curtain.

3. There is a socket, and a drain for a washing machine on one of the balconies, but the drain only goes down about 3 feet and then stops... completely... It is a fake drain.

4. No one can hear anything you say on a cell phone in the flat, despite you being able to hear what they say, and the phone saying you are receiving full service.

There is also the baffling, though in no way harmful, fact that the steam from the bathroom ventilates onto one of the closed in balconies.

I've met a few architects in China, who regularly complain that working in China is just a long process of sending back subpar materials. The process of changing flats has just been eye-opening in the baffling amount of things that one wouldn't imagine being a problem in any other flat.

Someone has been by 4 times to get the internet running, hopefully they'll be successful by tomorrow, and I can start posting from my nice new home office.