I’m back in the great USA and sorta caught up with everything. Well, TV shows at least. Here’s some more reflections on China…

• Economy: Incredibly big and expanding at a phenomenal rate. Just looking at the way some businesses are run over there, it’s like everybody’s out to make mega bucks, which is not unlike business here in America.
• Work: Driving a good portion of its economy is large contingent of of foreign talent. If you have a western degree, I suspect it would be easy for you to get a job in China and live very well… even if it’s just teaching English.
• Queueing: In airports, everybody kind of just crowds the door when the gates open. It’s not a mad frantic rush or anything like that, but there just isn’t really a sense of lining up… everybody just tries to get through first. This is especially true of the traffic (see previous post).
• Airlines: Speaking of air travel, one thing you’ll notice when you fly with China Eastern arlines (and I suspect, other asian based carriers) are their flight attendants. That is, there are no one male flight attendants, and they’re all 20 somethings.
• Thanksgiving: I actually went to a Thanksgiving dinner in Shanghai with a group of Asian Americans who all spoke perfect English and all lived and worked in Shanghai (see above point about work). I also went to church there, and it was pretty interesting to see how they functioned. They have a pretty big building, have two services each Sunday, English and Chinese, and even though they are registered with the government, they appear to be growing and serving the local community well.
• Poverty: Even with a booming economy and with lots of people making lots of money, there is still lots of poverty in China. I saw a number of beggers infront of the subway stations with their face to the ground begging for money, some even begging with small children in hand. I wasn’t really sure how to respond.
• Shopping: You can’t do this at department stores, but at the local shops, nobody ever pays face value for anything. It’s like a meta-game people play over there. If you see something you like, just ask them how much it’s selling for (there are no price tags on anything). Look at it for a bit, and after a brief pause just walk away and say it’s too expensive, even though it’s already pretty cheap when converted into USD money. The shop keeper will then literally chase after you and give you a lower price. If you bargain well enough, you can usually lower the price of anything by about 75%. I think I prefer to just pay a fair price and not deal with the hassle of playing this game.
• Fast Food: Pizza Hut / KFC is bigger than Mcdonalds, but Coca-Cola seems to be more popular drink. And Pizza Hut had curry pizza! So cool! BUT, the Coca-Cola tastes a bit different, like it’s a generic brand where something is slightly off. I think they must use different water or sugar or something.
• Great Wall: I walked on the Great Wall for about 2 hours, and it was pretty amazing. It’s really an incredible feat of engineering… it’s hard to imagine how a huge stone wall could even be built on such mountainous territory.
• History: The old temples and chinese homes look pretty much exactly like in the movies (like Crouching Tiger)… hmm, I guess that makes sense. It was interesting to see and hear about all the different traditions ancient people had. Some of the buildings and sites I visted were at least 600 years old, which is hard to imagine.
• Sports: Yao Ming, he’s everywhere. NBA basketball is frequently on TV and even the local news programs will have updates on how the Houston Rockets are doing, and more specially how Yao performed in his last game.
• Environment: Breathing the air in North America is so much more refreshing. Everything just seems so much more clean here.

Below are some photos I took. You can also view them all in my photo album.