Pudding and Chopsticks

I saw the Ferrari again today before I got home. It was weaving in and out of traffic, top down, driven by probably a 90′s gen kid with two people sitting in the passenger seat meant for one. If only Enzo could see what his car has become.

Base Price: 218,000USD Chinese price (safe to assume double) so about 450,00USD or about RMB3,000,000.

Side note: Knew a girl that works at a hair salon washing hair 12 hrs a day 7 days a week. Make probably RMB1500 per month. 3,000,000 / 1500 = 166.667 yrs of hair washing.

I’m sitting at Starbucks right now with no Internet because I forgot to get a new phone number before I came here. My phone number from the last city I lived in has no money on it and the only way that I can add money is to go back to that city and add money. So today I planned on getting a new number in the new city I live in but I forgot. So with not being able to surf the Internet, well, I suppose that I’ll write something.

There are some things that kinda irk me here in the PRC. Let me share a few.

1: When people speak English to me. Unless you are from an English speaking country and or speak absolutely perfect English, I will only speak Chinese to you. This came about today when I got to Starbucks. Actually whenever I got to Starbucks this happens. They always speak English to me. Listen, I haven’t spent an ass load of time studying Chinese and whatnot to have you go ahead and treat me differently. I order in Chinese, they speak in English, it’s weird.

It’s a pride thing I suppose. I’ve read other blogs on this, and I even might have written about it before. They spent time to learn English and want to use it, I have done the same and would like to use it. At least it wasn’t at a bar. I’ve had that happen. All of a sudden a hot chick is talking to you, asking you if you can teach her English. Um, I don’t speak English and am not an English teacher so go use someone else.

2: Rich people. They are everywhere in the world. Most work had to get where they are and I respect that but there are some that have rich parents and that, I can’t stand. Let me explain. In LA, Beverly Hills, etc, you expect this. Rich people live there and it’s expensive to live there. But get this. You can actually live here in China most everywhere for less than 10USD a day. Imagine living on that but having the same amount of money as the people in Beverly Hills. You not just rich you’re ridiculously rich.

Case in point, actually two cases in point. Yesterday I saw a Black Ferarri F430 Spyder. Driven by a kid. I assume a kid, he didn’t look much older than 25. Now, I could be wrong. He could of busted ass for the last whatever and bought a car that could feed a family for the next three generations, or his rich ass parents could of bought him the car because they so effing rich it’s hard to imagine.

Second case in point. Yesterday I also saw an Audi R8. This car retails for 146,00USD in the United States. In China it retails for 365,000 USD. There is a tax that is imposed by the government. Basically any sports car is going to be double the price in the States. 2.5 million RMB or so. Here is how big the wealth gap is here. The price for the American priced car, well, if you earn 30,000 a year in America that would be say, about five years of salary. I would guess the average Chinese family makes like 5,000 RMB a month. 2.5 million/5,000= about 500 months or about 41 years of salary. That’s right. There are rich people here that are rich by American and world standards but live in a country that you are well off if you make 1500USD a month. Makes you all warm in cuddly inside.

These are the latest things I’ve been thinking about. It just irks me sometimes. I bust ass and work hard and these douchers get to roll in cash and do absolutely nothing. The world’s not fair I suppose. I’m certainly not complaining about my life but come one throw a brother a couple bucks, I’ve earned it.

My current phone is a Nokia E71. It’s actually a pretty cool phone. It just lacks a cool UI and programs/applications. Thusly I am going to buy the new Iphone 4 when is comes out in Hong Kong. To the tune of 600USD.

It’s so expensive because it’s unlocked. All phones in China are because you can switch companies, get new numbers, and do pretty much whatever you want whenever you want. Which is awesome. What a specific number, ok, a new number, ok, only want to pay so much money per money, that’s ok too.

I have an Apple guy. He takes care of all the foreigners in the old city I lived in. He is priced fair, gives better service then the Apple stores in the States, and will do whatever you ask within reason.  I have to wait for the phone to come out in Hong Kong and then for him to “smuggle” some across to China. Maybe he doesn’t even have to do that. I mean the factory that makes the Iphone is only an hour away. He might have a connection there. But in any case it’s going to be probably another month. I got to keep it fresh with the bling you know. Haha.

Speaking of keeping it fresh. I need to get new number. I saw one that was something like 158088088008 or something. Chinese love 8′s. This bad boy was 90USD. 600 yuan or so. About 1/4 to 1/2 a workers wage per month. Maybe I’ll snatch it up. Surely it will give me instant face among the ladies. Yeah my number is ling ba ba ling ba ba ling ba ba ba haha. Love it.

I mean everything. You think, oh well, everyone says that, but your mistaken. Everything in China comes down to money. In fact I would suffice to say everything in the entire world comes down to money. What has sparks this little blog today. Well, a week of being subpar and a grand lighter. Let me tell you how things work here.

To come to China you need a visa. No big deal. Tourist, business, student, marriage, and um, Z. What I have done for the last year or 8 months is get a business visa. To get a legit or proper-channeled business you have to have a company say your coming here to do blah blah. To counter this you just go to Hong Kong and get one super easy and a little shady. The catch, you must leave every thirty days. So 6 months you have to leave five times. Now you can live where ever but remember you must leave every thirty days. In the past month I have moved to a new city. Which is a two hour flight from HK. So what used to take me a half-day and say, 30 USD would now take me, 200 USD with the flight. Well, that’s not good. So I had to get a new business visa that would allow me to stay for a long period of time. Here comes the kicker, I still don’t have a company here to invite me per say. So I got to do it the shady route again.

I ship the passport off to a company in Shanghai who then somehow gets me a visa and ships it back to the tune of 1000USD.

When it comes to money, Chinese are the smartest in the world. Let me elaborate. The cost of the visa from Hong Kong: 300 USD. Every month to leave and come back, 33 x 6 = 198. x2 = 996USD. To get a year long visa where you don’t have to leave: 1000USD. Hrmm. Seems a little interesting.

I just deposited the cash in the specified account. I hope to god they send me my passport back. Don’t think that it will be a problem. They seem the least shady of what I’ve been told. At least I didn’t have a random dude roll in and pick up my passport and magically have it back a week later. You laugh but I’ve heard stories.

Well, back to whatever I was doing.

Peace.

*Edit: I forgot to mention that I needed my passport to deposit money in someone’s account. Of course to get my passport I needed to deposit it. Interesting. Well, I told them what was going on and they said, well, you don’t have your passport then you have to give us your name and passport number, and pay us 50 yuan…. Like I said, everything comes down to money and with money you can do anything.

The Chinese business culture is an interesting animal to say the least. I’ve been at a business here, but not directly involved in the business itself, which is good because I get to watch what Chinese workers do. One story is as follows.

At this business they make widgets. Well let’s just call them widgets. For the past few years these widgets suck. And suck pretty bad. So we are here to make the widgets better. These was a recent restructuring at this factory because of one guy. This one guy was going behind backs and trying to make a play to get more power, sabotage another guy and / or, accomplish a bunch of of things we don’t know about. In America we would take care of the situation by firing his ass. But they won’t for some reason. Not sure why, maybe labor laws or some other reason no one knows about.

So here are the latest few things to happen.

They created a department and made him the head of it. Basically removing him from the rest of the manufacturing. Thus he can’t eff anything up. Along with moving him they repositioned a bunch of other positions in the factory. To replace him and optimize what they could.

What did he do, well, he told everyone that it was his idea to restructure the factory and move everyone around. Wow. That’s some brass balls. Really. I mean, it wasn’t your idea but you go ahead and take credit for it anyway. Nice dude. Everyone one knows it wasn’t your idea, so you look like a douche.

Number two. The widgets require detailed drawings that they make the things that make the widgets with. Multiple departments have these. The dude has these, the old department that he used to run before going to his new department had these. So now we need them for something, but guess what. That’s right, no one has them. They looked on all the computers and can’t find them. The guess right now is that he deleted them and is holding them for something. He probably also went and deleted them from all the other computers and what not. Why, well, I guess it might be leverage. Not sure. Brass ball score now at 2.

Number three. He has since announced that he will be back at his old position in no time. Are you going to use the drawings to leverage your way back. Nice try. Brass ball score 3.

Summary. I think that every business around the world is the same. People want power, respect, money, etc. They will do just about anything to get it. However coming from a western perspective I think that it’s too obvious what they do here. I see right through it. Funny how things go missing when we need them. Widget makers that your had for years are suddenly gone just before we have to make a widget so now we have to make a new widget maker. Thus pay the workers more money. All kinds of things. How can this happen, well maybe it has to do with firing people. As far as I can understand they can’t just fire someone.

It comes down to this. In the West we are goal focus in the job that we have. We will stay 10 minutes to finish, sacrifice some things for the job. Here not going to happen. It’s all for me. I don’t work for the factory I work for me. Only for me and I line up at 4:40pm to punch out at 5. I don’t stay a minute late nor do I give anything to the factory.

Well to each their own.

Green Beans! Now just to find a truck load of cheese and somehow crash the two together. hmm..

Old tower looking thing.

Driving at night in the rain.

Ditto on the rain.

Walking down the street.

1.21 gigawatts.

The night started at a all you can eat and drink hot pot with the cheapest beer ever and then ended in a small little Japanese bar with me kicking ass and taking names on this dice game thingy.

Awesome, 8 P off brand all you can throw back off brand beer. My super fav..

Hot Pot.

Chicken.

Various parts.

Beef.

Bar

Lovely bar tenders.

Here in China it’s not that easy to obtain a coffee. In fact they are expensive compared to the coffee makers in the States. I usually have to drink instant crap. Unless of course I want to go to Starbucks and pay for super expensive awesome coffee. Lately I have been drinking tea. I bought me some Green tea and by golly, it works better then coffee. In fact these Chinese people are on to something. Anyhoo here are some photos.

So this is what happens when you roll out to dinner with a few Chinese guys.

We asked someone we knew if they knew where to get some Sichuan style food. They did, since they are also from Sichuan we knew it was going to be good.

We arrived at the restaurant. It was a nice medium sized place. Took a table and began looking at the menu. Since I, nor my friend can read much Chinese we just let the locals do the ordering. To our dismay, or my dismay they also ordered Chinese white lightning. Awesome. We proceeded to eat, drink, eat, and drink. I had to drink the hard stuff while my buddy couldn’t. Next time I drive so that I can’t drink.. Lucky.

Some photographs to peer upon.

Chicken feet parts.
Beef stuff I think.

Fish

Green beans

Mushrooms

Pig Lungs

Egg plant