Me Ol' China (week 3)

This week has been not that interesting in terms of new experiences as I have been extremely busy with work. Long long days have followed each others and I have reached the end of the week without realising that the whole week was already gone. Daily exercising has been the main pleasure this week. I got so used to the 6:30 gym sessions that I dread the idea of skipping one day and get lazy. For this reason I am keeping the schedule for weekends as well as weekdays. Another peculiarity of this week gone has been the cold and the snow. With temperatures around 15 degrees below zero and a blanket of snow that covered the capital on Monday, Beijing seemed a different city. It was nice, no special chaos in the streets and I had the opportunity of getting some memories back to my young days in my native city. I think that in every city there is someone not hundred percent up there, well no difference where I grew up. There was this guy that used to run around the streets exercising, jogging, pretending to do martial arts and all stuff like that. It was inevitable that people would have stared at him laughing… Well on Monday morning, I find out that that guy, in Beijing, would have gone unnoticed. At every red traffic light there were people warming up while waiting at -15, -20. All sort of exercises, jumping, skipping, dancing… I found it so odd! However it gave me a feeling of relief. I don't know if it has ever happened to you, but , sometimes I would feel like doing some dancing in the street or some singing just because too happy or too unhappy… This must have come from the love I had for musicals when I was a child… Dancing and singing in the rain style… It was really amusing… The main task for the week was to pay my rental and deposit fro the flat I am taking on in February. I arrived at the bank 15 minutes earlier and outside there were some ladies doing some Tai Chi and another lady making funny moves with her legs… It reminded me a bit of a Flamenco dance and a traditional Irish one… Let's say an Irish Flamenco dance but very slow. The guy, the only one out there, was doing some breathing exercises and another few ladies just looking, in a very curious way the oddest person out of the whole lot: me! It must have been my sunglasses with my wool cap, the earplugs from my mp3 player, the mouth covered by the scarf and the coat hood on top that made them wonder if I were real or just a ghost! However, I was the odd one… I was really tempted in starting singing and dancing but I am sure that the police would have intervened… So I just resigned to the idea of behaving and being watched while my ass was freezing off in the first serious snow of the year. The 15 minutes passed and I enter the bank where my banking manager, Gao Wei, was hoping not to see me… She sweats when she sees me as she panics, she is afraid of not understanding me. But this time I had a surprise for her… I learned how to say, I have to make a money transfer… "wo bin zuo jin diao" Well… more or less… actually, I think that it was more less than more… she didn't understand at all.. She asked me to sit down and try to explain what I needed. I took out my rental contract and she understood that I had to transfer some money but she couldn't read the name of the beneficiary so this would have been a problem and her recommendation was to cash the money and go directly to the owner's bank… It was 60,000 yuan all in notes of 100. This makes 600 notes to carry in my PC bag… Ok… Let's do so. While I was queuing to get the cash, Gao Wei, was being very nice and polite and she was telling me that she had been to Italy and that she really loved it but was very disappointed by people, especially men. "They told me that Italian men were handsome. They are so ugly! The only nice men I saw in Italy where Chinese". I thanked gracefully and I thought that the thought was either an indelicate translation from Chinese or, perhaps, she didn't know the meaning of the word handsome… So, trying to understand her thoughts I asked her if she found Italian women "handsome". "Handsome?" she replied. "But handsome is only for men, women can be beautiful. And, if this is what you mean, no, they are really ugly and fat!" From China with Love! Thanks Gao Wei. However, before leaving she told me that I didn't look Italian and that she would have been happy to teach me Chinese as my pronunciation was very good… I thanked her for the (false) compliments and left with my 60,000 yuan in the bag directed to the other bank. Still people dancing and warming up in the streets… Got there no problem and managed to get to the Bank of China retail banking area. Actually, make a search of Bank of China building on the net and if you can see some pictures of the interiors of this bank you will be mesmerised by the beauty of the marbles and the bamboo they have in there… Fantastic! So, I managed to get someone who spoke English that helped me to fill the form. Get the number 1092 and currently they were at 1056, plus another set of numbers… anyway, I could see in the room around 100 people waiting… 1:45 minutes later I managed to reach the counter. During the waiting time I tried to learn Chinese numbers and i think that I managed to learn a few. At least, by the time my number was called, I gained something... Money was counted 3 times in the machine in blocks of 100. Then the cashier passed the money to another assistant that counted the money manually and once back to the cashier she had to place a band around it, stamp it and sign it. Pass it back to the colleague that countersigned it and place his stamp. Total, around 7 minutes for each 100 and we were going to do this 6 times… another 42 minutes… Once this was done back to the office… 8:45 outside my bank, 12:30 in the office… lunch time!!!

This was just the start of an unforgettable business week. I think that if I should give a title to this week, it would be, Lost in Translations or if I should give a Chinese one, it would be "Ma bu ting ti" (an expression to state something endless, unstoppable).

This week, however has been characterised by three major events. The Exchanges tumbling, Societè Generale scum (will give my impression about this in a separate article) and the Italian government crisis. Chinese didn't give a toss about the Italian crisis and SocGen, but the exchanges tumbling were a problem. All Chinese have shares and every time there is a new IPO, they are there subscribing. Gambling is not allowed in China and currently there is a campaign promoted by the government to clamp down on illegal gambling. So, what other alternative? Stock trading! This week there have been fantastic record figures published by the National bodies in charge of Economic Data. China has grown even more in 2007 than the previous year and all the numbers seem like extracted, randomly by a fairy tale book. All positive and all double digits ones… China is still growing… Population is growing too and this is a problem for the government but they are not going to intervene. The growth has gone beyond expectations even because of the increase wealth. Some people can afford to pay the penalty for having more than 1 child. However data published by the UN shows that infant mortality in remote areas is still too high and the government is going to do something about it and divorces have hit record highs. So, China, seems to be suffering of money related diseases… I am sure that in a few years time we will hear about Chinese obesity. So, all these positive macroeconomic data, offset by a Shanghai Exchange Sell off sparkled a bit of confusion amongst commoners. Waiters and people in the street wondering what was going on… I frankly never thought that Chinese people could have spent their time talking about shares… I found so strange to be the only one in my company and within my circle of business partners not to have a single share in portfolio and actually not caring at all about the world exchanges… I felt so odd…

A couple of evenings ago I was talking to a partner about the demographic problem in China… By 2050 1 in 3 Beijingers will be over 60. This seems to bother the government but what my partner said was "by then we will be over 80 and it wont be our problem". Another step towards westernisation, I thought… There is an aura of pessimism amongst some people in China. The pessimism is due to the fact that China cannot grow like this forever, cannot afford to keep up with this pace and cannot offer enough social guarantees to individuals and workers. The prevailing feeling is get the money out of here. I noticed in my business that colleagues are very capable, very smart, very hard workers but very pessimistic. I find rather difficult reassuring them about everything. They have the same attitude in life. "Get the cash and run" is the main mentality. They feel that after Beijing 2008 there could be a real estate crash, they feel that all these buildings coming out of nothing will be all uninhabited for the next coming years or, even worse, those building that are now 5 years old or so, will see a quick decline in their market values. I have to admit that when I was hunting for a place I saw some very nice apartments at a very cheap rate only because the buildings were old… Old meaning 5 years old… It reminds me a bit of the US attitude towards housing.

Another topic I discussed with some locals was… love and affairs in Italy. The question was very very clear "Can any woman trust an Italian man?" while one of the guys there asked if it was true that Italian men praise themselves for having affairs and make it public to everyone about this condition while women keep it secret as they are judged differently by society? Well… The answers are very obvious in both cases. And they were surprised that I confirmed what they heard. Probably because being myself Italian and admitting that you cannot trust an Italian man, this makes it unbelievable? Not sure, but I had the feeling that they wanted to hear that it wasn't true. They love Italy over here, there are more training suits and shoes and t shirts with the ITALIA logo across than American ones. Well.. I am sorry I disappointed the guys. Even Berlusconi is well known here and when a Chinese tells me that they find ridiculous that a business man like Berlusconi enters politics and tries to change it at his own advantage, I really feel like squinting my eyes and call myself Luo Liang Yong!

On Saturday I decided to go to the Forbidden City, you can see the pictures I took there in the album, and I have to admit, it was a world of its own. Fantastic! I loved it. The weather was great and not packed at all. It was the first time I experienced the north Africa or Indian like pushy people that try to sell you things and offer their tour guide services. While I was there I noticed something really special: the way Chinese girls pose! They always tend to be in the middle of the picture with they arms wide open in a "Ta-da" pose. As if they would show to the world the place where they are or as if they just appeared from nowhere in the middle of the picture… Ta-da!

I walked the way back to the apartment and went through the Hutongs. It is such an experience: the colours, the smells, the sounds, the noises. It's really like walking out of modern Beijing or the imperial one of the Forbidden City and get into a festival of colours. It doesn't give you the impression of being run down or poverty, it gives you the impression of simplicity. I find already the food sharing in the Chinese eating habits as something that makes you closer to the others you are dining with and food itself gives you an impression of simplicity but in the hutongs, the food sold in the streets, the big restaurant tables where people who don't know each other, add that sense of humanity and equality that I experienced only in some occasions in Saudi Arabia.

Except for tea, if Marco Polo had been in Beijing these days, he would have not noticed one of the most noticeable things: security guards! They are everywhere! Every building, every door, every corner… Security. I do know, now, what police and army officers look like but it has been really tough to get through all the sort of uniforms I have seen and still see around. Some of them seem real soldiers. They hold the same position for hours and hours... Unbelievable discipline.

One of the big debates these days has been about allowing pornography during the Olympics. The Olympian, a magazine sold jointly to the Friday edition of the English language China Daily newspaper, gave some hopes to Beijingers about seeing on the newsagents' racks Playboy and other pornographic material.

This seems not to be true but it has opened the debate between those who are in favour of pornography to make an official entrance in China and those that think that it is a matter of national dignity. So, in the meantime, no pornography guys and someone is already worried about the athletes sanity during the Games… Nobody seems to worry about mine!!!!

Anyway Folks, this week has gone without major events and next week will be alike. I was so so tired that I even gave a pass to the End of Year dinner, where I was meant to sing… So, catch you next week if anything interesting comes up! Cheers Me Ol' China! Oh by the way... Chinese love entertaining and being entertained! You cannot imagine how much they enjoy that. We have entertainment every single day of the week and, it was on the news this week, that a city in an internal province, has decided to exclude all sort of alcohol drinks from entertainment saving during the first 8 months of 2007, nearly 6 million dollars! The example is going to be followed by other cities, provinces and all public servant entertainment meetings with private businesses. Plus, according to the article, there has been a reduction of ailments for alcohol related problems, a reductions of off days for sickness, increase of productivity and so on...

See you folks!