#90 Coldstone & Kites

It was a gorgeous day in Suzhou today with bright sunshine, blue skies, 75 degress, and a pleasant breeze. In the afternoon, the four kids and I left Kathleen to prepare the house for a party tonight. We rode our bikes to Hu Bin Xin Tian Di or "Rainbo Walk" to check out the new Coldstone Creamery.

Marco rode his new bike all the way - about 3 miles - and Maria is now riding the trailer bike. This arrangement provides for the first opportunity ever to take all four kids on a bike ride accompanied only by myself.

The ice cream at the Coldstone Creamery was delicious - just like in the U.S. U.S. prices as well. They were doing a grand opening promotion where if you could yell "Loving Cold Stone" at higher than 120 decibels, you received a free ice cream. All four kids and I included qualified for a second ice cream by exceeding 120 dB.

Finally, we bought a kite and flew it along with the other frolickers at the water front. Besides having to shoo off the Chinese paparazzi who wanted to photograph the kids, it was fun.

#89 Appliance Delivery

Here is a good impromptu shot I took in front of our house this Sunday. Four guys making a refrigerator delivery. That is our house in Jin Shui Wan in the background. I am not sure where they were going or how far they had already carried that thing - but this was definitely not your average Best Buy delivery crew.

#88 Marco's New Bike

Marco got himself a new bike today. The little green bike that he has been riding was a hand-me-down from our friends in Torrance, the Scholler family, 8 years ago. Marco had outgrown it and was yearning for a new bike as nice as the other kids now have.

We had a special outing today. Just Marco and I went to the Giant bicycle store in downtown Suzhou and Marco picked out a slick blue number with a bell. Actually, he first picked a yellow bicycle, but our driver, Michael, convinced Marco that yellow is a "girl's color". Marco heeded the warning and switched his choice to blue.

There was an awkward moment when I told Kathleen that we bought the same model and sized bike for Marco as Joseph has. Joseph overheard the conversation and seemed surprised and dismayed that Marco (2 years his junior) has the same sized bicycle.

#87 Olympic Torch

Today the olympic torch passed through Suzhou. We made an effort to ride our bikes to the torch route, but were ultimately unsuccessful, missing the torch runner by a good 40 minutes.

As we left our compound, we joined our neighbors Scott, Avery, and Owen, who were also biking to see the torch. Along the way we saw thousands of people. As we were working our way through the crowd, we saw one of our neighbors, Monica, who told us the torch had already passed and the event was over.

We then diverted to our favorite lunch spot at Xindu Guan Qian - Mr. Pizza. Surprisingly it was uncrowded, even with the millions of torch fans in SIP today. We had some nice cold sodas then biked back home. I snapped this clever shot of Kathleen and Maria as I pedaled next to them in heavy traffic. Maria is waving the flag of Communist China as we happen to whiz past a Cat excavator in the background.

#86 Dulwich Int'l Day

Immediately after my morning job fair in Changzhou, I met the family at Dulwich College (Juliana and Joseph's school) for the first annual "International Day". As with all things that Dulwich sponsors, it was a festive, creative, and well orchestrated event. Each nationality with children at Dulwich was invited to set up a booth and display items that shared the food, culture, and history of their home nation. Represented were Korea, Japan, Austrailia, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Malaysia, Indonesia, and of course the U.S.A.

I learned that the Koreans are the largest contingent at Dulwich followed by the Americans. The whole American delegation sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch of the event. The Dulwich headmaster noted that "baseball is a splendid game, but not quite so lovely as cricket."

The Indonesians did some sultry belly dancing and were gracious enough to pose with my buddy Bill at the end of their performance. Not surprisingly the Indonesian women attracted a significantly larger throng of spectators than the American entertainment.

#85 China Job Fair

I volunteered this Saturday to attend a job fair in Chengzhou to help find new recruits for Caterpillar. We still have over 400 people to hire this year and are desperately seeking experienced candidates.

Like most experiences in China, the job fair was quite different from those I have attended in the U.S. For example, at a U.S. job fair, each employer sets up a display with fancy graphics showing off their products and their company. At this event, the only graphics were generic text posters printed by the sponsor with descriptions of the company and the job titles being filled.

Like the U.S. job fairs, it was very crowded, but rather than approaching and handing us their resumes, the attendees gathered outside our booth and stared. They were reluctant to approach the desk where we were standing and very reluctant to approach me - the only Westerner in the building. The people were shy and seemed to recoil a bit when I invited them to step forward. Eventually, one brave soul would approach the bench and ask a question. Once a conversation started, the other 10 people lurking behind him would lean in close and listen to every word. It reminded me of the old E.F. Hutton commercials in the 70's.

Another curious observation was the casual dress of the attendees. Many, if not most people, wore jeans. Some wore shorts and one even filled out an application in a tank top undershirt !

After about 2 hours of manning the booth, we had maybe 10 people we considered good prospects who we would pursue with call backs. Not too bad for a morning's work. As for my ongoing China education, it was a priceless experience.

#84 San Shan Island

I (Juliana) just can back from a trip to San Shan island with my school class. There were about 40 kids that went. We left on a Wednesday morning from my school Dulwich and returned on Friday with lots to tell.

To get there, we were on the school bus for about an hour and a half. When we got to the harbor on Taihu Lake, we rode speed boats and to the island - about a 15 minute ride.

San Shan, meaning "three mountains" in Chinese, is on a big lake called Taihu. We enjoyed ourselves with hiking, making homemade bread, bon fires, picking fruit and finding ancient stone tools that were over 9000 years old.

We had a great time!

#83 Great Wall M-thon

Hello friends. We have now been in China for nearly a full academic year, and I am finally taking a turn at my first blog entry. Tony has done such a great job of narrating our adventures for the year; I don't know that I can measure up to his humor and his way with words. But I did recently take on an adventure that warranted my own description and interpretation. On May 17th I participated in the Beijing Great Wall Half Marathon. Seven fellow expat wives and I signed on to participate together. Most of us were doing the half marathon, but two brave souls signed on for the full. The marathon takes place on a portion of the Wall accessible from a small city, I think called "Huan Yuan". It is in a more remote area, and as such was a rare opportunity to see a portion of the Wall that not many people get the chance to see. To access the start of the run, we had to take a 2 1/2 bus ride from the center of Beijing.

The course for the Great Wall Half Marathon is challenging to say the last. It begins with a 5K portion that follows an uphill route to simply get to the entrance of the Great Wall. Once on the wall, there is another 5K of going up and down many, many, MANY stairs. The stairs are all different heights and depths, so it is difficult at this point to really maintain a rhythm. Most people as far as I could see were pretty much hiking this part. The scenery for the Wall portion is truly beautiful as by this point you have reached a pretty high elevation and have some nice mountainous views. After completing these back to back grueling segments, the remainder of the run takes you through a trail with some paved roads and some rolling hills. Many of the villagers come out to watch the runners, give "high 5's" and chant "jaio, jaio" which means "come on". It was neat to see their support, especially the children who come and watch with a lot of enthusiasm.

So, I finished and didn't fall of the Wall, which were my two main goals for the event. Our training group had read that to estimate your finish time for this event, you take your "typical" half-marathon finish time and add 50% to it. That turned out to be just about right for me, as I came in in about three hours and 10 minutes.

After the run we treated ourselves to a stay at a very nice hotel in downtown Beijing that had a free happy hour from 6:00 - 9:00, and a free breakfast buffet the next day - both of which exactly hit the spot. It was an incredible experience - to see the Great Wall in such a unique fashion, to tackle something physically challenging, but most of all to share the experience with some women who have gotten to be good friends. I can't say I'll do it again, maybe next year is the mens' turn, but it will always be a great memory.

#82 China Earthquake

We have received many emails and phone calls of concern from our friends and family in the U.S. about the central China earthquake. First of all, we are all fine and suffered no ill effects in Suzhou from the earthquake. In fact, there is no one is Suzhou that I know who even felt a tremor.

On the other hand, many cities and towns in Sichuan province to the south and west of here are an absolute disaster. According to the Chinese Xinhua news agency, there are 60,000 dead and 350,000 injured from the 7.8 magnitude quake that hit on May-12th.

The pictures above from the Xinhua news service are just a couple examples of the damage done. The first is an aerial picture of Yingxiu city and second a rescue effort in Guizhou province.

I would encourage each of you to please punch up the International Red Cross and make a donation to the relief effort. The Chinese are welcoming international efforts to help and the American Red Cross is working with its partners to assist those affected by this disaster. You can do as we did and make an online contribution to the effort at the Red Cross.

#81 Piao Piao

Joseph has gotten into a game called "Piao Piao" that was introduced to the neighborhood by a Korean friend named Jeremy. It is reminiscent of tiddly winks, but with "keepsies" rules where you gamble ownership of your gamepieces with your opponent. There are metal and cardboard versions of the Piao Piao gamepieces, the metal ones producing the louder and more annoying sound when repeatedly bounced off the sidewalk, floor, or coffee table.

Lately, as we walk around the neighborhood we see small packs of 2-5 kids huddled around a pile of Piao Piaos, whiling away their spare time. We are told that Piao Piaos are also played during recess at school, though the headmaster has banned playing Piao Piao for "keepsies" on school property !

Joseph seems to win at Piao Piao as often as I win at poker, which is rarely. He has already burned through a stash of Piao Piaos including the reserves that he bought last weekend in Shanghai with his allowance. Kathleen has purchased some Piao Piaos for Joseph's cousin Brennan who we will see in North Carolina in July. Joseph is already angling to use Brennan's Piao Piao to "win back" his lost gamepieces.

#80 First Pile

Today was a major event in the construction of our new Caterpillar China factory - the driving of the first pile. Piles form the foundation of our factory floor which is required to carry heavy loads due to the weight of our machines. Pilings are concrete tubes which are driven deep into the ground to support the floor. We will have 6000 piles supporting the floor of our factory and another 4000 supporting the roads and test track outside. All of our employees signed their name on the first pile before it was driven 100 feet into the ground.

In the pictures above you can see me signing the first pile as well as many of my colleagues doing the same. The next picture show the pile of piles waiting to be driven into the ground. The remaining pictures show the Caterpillar property and the pile driving machine. We have had quite a lot of rain in the past week, so the site is quite wet and muddy.

As I said, this is a major milestone for our project. It represents the first start of construction of the factory building. By October of this year we expect to start installing our process equipment in the factory. We will manufacture our first pilot machines in March of 2009. I can tell you that this is an exciting time for Caterpillar in China and an exciting moment for me and all of our employees.

#79 Maria's Birthday

Today was Maria's 4th birthday - a day that Maria has been talking about for about six months. The pink cake and the desire for a bicycle have been discussed in great detail throughout that time. At long last the day arrived for Maria.

Maria had a little cup cake party at school and a dinner party at home. Maria's friend Gabriella and Gabriella's family came over for dinner, pink cake, and presents. Maria got some great gifts including a Madeline doll from Grandma. Grandma came through with a couple toys - according to Maria, a welcome improvement over the Christmas dresses.

Maria was very excited to get a new bicycle although Kathleen and I are nostalgic to note that the last Cazzato child has outgrown the two seat tricycle that was salvaged from the trash in Torrance, CA in 2000.

#78 Bike to New McDs

We had a new McDonalds open up in Suzhou Industrial Park recently. On Sunday, three of the kids and I rode our bikes to it. I was very proud of the kids - round trip from our house it was an 11 mile ride and they rode the whole with little dawdling or complaint. As we passed the five mile mark I was starting to worry that we didn't know exactly where it was or how far. It would have been a different story if we had to turn around before reaching our planned destination.

This is the first drive thru McDonalds in Suzhou and so far, like many things in SIP, it wasn't too busy. We snapped some pictures with Ronald McDonald, got three ice creame cones for less than a buck, then made our way back to Jin Shui Wan.

#77 May Day

We had another Chinese holiday last week. The Cat office was closed on Thursday and Friday to celebrate international labor day. We scheduled a two day, two night visit to Shanghai with the dual purpose of doing some sightseeing and taking Marco to have his arm cast removed.

International Labor Day or May Day is an international holiday that celebrates the advent of the eight hour work day which advocated 8hrs for work, 8 hrs for recreation, and 8 hrs for rest. I heard somewhere that this movement started in Chicago in the meatpacking industry. However, the U.S. is not part of the May celebration - we celebrate labor day in September of course.

As you can guess, we were not the only folks in China who had the idea of spending the May Day holiday in Shanghai. According a news web site, the Chinese rail service arranged for an extra 110 trains per day to carry 720,000 passengers into and out of Shanghai over the long weekend. We personally saw 500,000 of these folks in the subway station below the Peoples Square in downtown Shanghai.


Our primary activity was a visit to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. We visited a few of the display rooms and watched an IMAX movie call "Forces of Nature." The museum was great, albeit incredibly crowded. Maria enjoyed the dancing Fanuc robots and we saw a Chinese family who enjoyed the place so much, they had to take a nap in the hallway. These folks were sacked !



We did some shopping in a large "copy market" adjacent to the museum. You can see us shopping for ties, game boy cartridges, and as usual, more handbags. Joseph enjoyed the shopping and guy behind him seemed to be a nice guy despite what his T-shirt says.





We did some walking around the old town of Shanghai looking for a McDonalds. Along the way we saw two men on the sidewalk scraping the covering off of wires to reclaim the copper - commodity prices are up in China. Next we saw a corner shop selling ducks. The first pictures shows dozens of ducks hanging from the rafters with their throats cut. The next picture is the line of customers at the duck shop waiting for their chance to buy some "yā ròu" (duck meat).



Next, a couple pictures of the happy family, first at "Yu Yuan", the center of old Shanghai, then with the Blue Ren cartoon character for the 2010 Shanghai International Exposition. And finally a picture of Marco at the Shanghai United Family Hospital with the orthepedist getting his cast taken off. Marco was rewarded with a Nintendo Game Boy for being such a a well mannered and happy invalid for three weeks.