#148 Dushu Lake

Today was a beautiful day in Suzhou with bright sunshine and temperatures in the 50's. After lunch, Kathleen left for an urgent gel nail application appointment, Juliana went to a birthday party in the neighborhood, and the boys took off to play with their friends. That left Maria and I to roll out the canoe and head for the open water.

Today's destination was Dushu Lake, the lake adjacent and just south of Jinji Lake. From our dock at Jin Shui Wan, it was nearly an hour of paddling (me paddling forward and Maria paddling backward). We took the southbound canal out of Jinji Hu, underneath three overpasses, through one bamboo barrier, and finally to the open water of Dushu Lake. Dushu is much less developed than Jinji Lake, but there is a brand new, huge Kempinski hotel that opened up recently which we hear has a golf club with a $100,000 (USD) initiation fee !

Like everything in China, there are many contrasts of the old and the new. On properties adjacent to the Kempinski golf course, there are people farming the land and living along the canals with very basic shelters and no utilities.

Maria and I brought along a snack which we tried to enjoy alongside the golf course but were attacked by some swarming bugs which are apparently driven into a frenzy by the smell of graham crackers and gummy bears. We headed back out to sea, passed by the shores of Dushu University and speculated about what geodesic dome on a pedestal in the middle of the lake could be - maybe a weather radar station ?

We ended up spending most of the afternoon in the boat and were returning near sunset. I caught this nice shot at sunset of a typical Suzhou work boat on the lake.

#147 Thksgiving Dinner

We had Thanksgiving dinner on Friday night at the home of Gary and Cari, another Caterpillar family in our neighborhood. They hosted us along with two other families for a traditional turkey day meal. The food was wonderful and we had a great time visiting. The only thing missing were the football games which I never care to watch anyway.

You can see above some pictures of the group. Cary and Gary have a new baby named Lincoln (named after Abe Lincoln) who is now about three months old. We all enjoyed holding and feeding Lincoln and handing the baby back to Gary when he got fussy.

You can also see Gary carving the turkey, Maria horsing around with Patty, and Kathleen working on her 40 minute gravy. The evening was capped by a card game of "Oh Heck" which Patty won handily. Cary and Gary are notorious for turning in early, so the party wrapped up around 10:30 PM and I took advantage of the early finish to catch up with the neighborhood poker game at the Jin Shui Wan clubhouse. I got there in time to enjoy a few hands and lose a few hundred RMB. All in all, a very good Thanksgiving.

#146 Bauma Shanghai

I went to work on Thanksgiving Day, but spent the day on a a field trip to Shanghai. Bauma is a German-run trade show held every other year in China. It was a huge show of construction equipment manufacturers and suppliers. International brands like Volvo, Hitachi, JCB, and Kobelco were all there along with hundreds of Chinese brand machines. The extensive displays included excavators, wheel loaders, motor graders, trucks, cranes, and concrete pumpers. Inside the exhibition hall there were thousands of suppliers including all of the companies that will provide components to our new factory in Suzhou.

It was my first visit to a construction equipment trade show and I was very impressed to see the size and scope of the products displayed. One conspicuously absent brand was Caterpillar. As I understand it, Cat tends to invest in a big display each year at a competing trade show called ConExpo which is held in Las Vegas. Although, I was told that we did have a display at Bauma back in 2004 just before we introduced the K-series Motor Grader in China.

We took a bus load of Caterpillar Suzhou employees to the show - about 40 people. Our motor grader team's mission today was to visit and explore all of the competitor's motor grader displays and learn everything we could about their features, designs, and target markets. You can see my colleague, Stanley, posing with one of the local construction equipment enthusiasts. We visited and studied nine different brands of Chinese motor graders. While the Chinese manufacturers used to sell exclusively in China, it is clear that they are going global. Most are producing machines that meet North American and European emissions standards and many are already exporting throughout Asia and around the world.

#145 Shanghai Soccer

Juliana spent the day in Shanghai with her traveling soccer team. They went to play a tournament at their sister school, Dulwich College Shanghai. Juliana got up very early on this Saturday to catch a 5:30 AM school bus with her teammates. Her team did not have a banner day on the field, but it sounds like they had a fun time hanging out together and seeing a bit of Shanghai. The Dulwich Suzhou boys did a bit better making it to the tournament finals. One of the highlights according to Juliana was a stop at Starbucks to have a Frappachino.

#144 Post Off. & Lunch

Today's post-church activities included a visit to a Suzhou post office and eating at a local noodle shop for lunch.

On Friday, my Chinese lesson included learning the words for "read newspaper". During that lesson, I asked my Chinese teacher whether it was possible to get a subscription for home delivery of one of the daily English language Chinese newspapers. She told me that you can buy a subscription at any post office. So today we asked our driver Michael to help us subscribe to the "Shanghai Daily" at the Suzhou Post Office. Early indication is that this was a success. I paid for a year subscription for 700 RMB (~$100). The subscription is scheduled start on January 1st - apparently you can only get home delivery to start on the first of the year. Whether it starts showing up in January remains to be seen, but I am hopeful that soon I will again be able to read the newspaper as I eat my morning oatmeal each day.

We then asked Michael to suggest a fast and cheap lunch spot. He took us to the nearby noodle shop called Lu Chang Xing, which turned out to be an excellent cultural experience, if not a culinary dream for all of the kids. Maria and Marco loved it and so did I. The soups were very flavorful and there is a good challenge to eating soup with chopsticks. The restaurant would certainly not have passed any U.S. health department inspection for cleanliness, but the entire meal cost only $7 U.S. for seven people. Kathleen, Joseph, and Juliana, however, were not impressed.

#143 Guys in Shanghai

My friend Bill arranged a guys' day trip to Shanghai this Saturday. Five of us including Bill, Stanley, Paul and Dave (a visitor from Aurora, Illinois) hired a van for the day and went to lunch then shopping. Dave's objective for the day was to bring home some good knock-off merchandise for his family in the U.S.

We started off by enjoying a fantastic Brazilian barbeque lunch at Latina's in Xin Tian Di. A Brazilian BBQ includes a buffet and unlimited meat of all kinds that is brought direct from the BBQ on skewers. The servers slice servings directly onto your plate. Stanley, our Brazilian colleague sitting front and right, eats frequently at Latina and knows the manager well. That is the manager you see serving skewered beef. He took very good care of us.

After strolling the surrounding streets and a nearby park, our next stop was the Hongqiao Pearl Market. Kathleen is a frequent shopper at Hongqiao, but this was my first time. I bought a new backpack, suitcase, wristwatch, sunglasses, and a couple China travel books. I also picked up two Mahjong sets to ship back to a colleague in Decatur whose wife has joined a Mahjong club. Mahjong is a Chinese board game that seems to be a cross between dominos and poker. You see older Chinese folks playing Mahjong all of the time at tea houses and in parks. I am intriqued to hear that there are Mahjong clubs springing up in the midwestern U.S.

This is probably only the second time in a year that we have gotten a group of friends together to out in downtown Shanghai. It takes some logistics and planning, but was well worth the effort as we all had a very good time.

#142 Island Hopping

We took another canoe trip to "Island A" this weekend, this time with Juliana and a friend and colleague of mine from Atlanta. The paddle out there today was a little rougher than any prior trips because there were wind and waves on the lake. Each broadside wave sent Juliana into a bit of a lurch which made us fear a capsize several times today.

Nonetheless, we made it to the island intact and did some exploring this time on the west side. The west side has the tall pagoda-looking structure that I have been very curious about. The tall pagoda looks nice from the shore and looks particularly beautiful when lit up at night. Well, close up, it is still interesting, but not nearly as nice as you would expect.

You can see in the picture above that the lobby is a bare concrete shell with puddles of water on the floor. Every floor of the seven story building looked the same, but we did very much enjoy the view from the top floor balcony. The grounds are beautifully maintained, with even a mechanically powered waterfall adjacent to the tall building. It provided beautiful views of the island and all of Jinji Lake. We could see our housing compound, the old Cat office, David's hotel, and all of the island below us. Very nice.

It is amazing that someone spent the money to build these buildings and develop this island, but never quite finished and never got any kinds of sightseeing or catering activity going to exploit the location. It would be a beautiful setting for a weekend excursion, tourist site, wedding reception, business meeting, or big holiday dinner. But it is in no shape for any of those things and there does not seem to be any kind of boats operating to take people there.

#141 Weekend

Above are a few random pictures from our average weekend in Suzhou. On Saturday we rented a van to have and extra day of car time to shop and run some errands. I took the boys out for some shopping in downtown Suzhou and for a haircut. Marco got a bit of a bum haircut because my Chinese language vocabulary lacks the skills necessary to say "short on the sides, but not too short". Marco got a standard issue Marine haircut from a Chinese hair stylist with a ponytail. When the guy finished, Marco burst into tears and couldn't recover. I don't think it looks that bad, in fact I think he looks quite handsome in the picture above. Kathleen disagreed and did little to comfort Marco upon his return home.

Before the haircuts, Joseph and did some shopping at the downtown electronics store called U-Town. We bought a new pair of headphones for my iPod and then did some window shopping.

Final activity for the weekend was a puppet show presented by the Cazzato children for our Sunday night after-dinner entertainment. The tongue depressor puppets danced and sang to a Millie Cyrus CD for some extended play dance tunes.

#140 Joseph's B-day

Following close on the heels of Halloween was Joseph's eighth birthday party. Joseph invited five friends to the house for games, pizza, and cake. Among the international guest list were Ido from Israel, Zak from the U.K., Owen and Avery from the U.S., and Jeremy from Korea. Juliana's friend Cori also got to join the party and of course, Joseph's siblings were also part of the fun.

The highlight activity was a scavenger hunt where the boys were split into two teams and challenged to collect as many things as possible from a list of random items such as a paper clip, golf tee, Chinese newspaper, and a chopstick. They were sent out into the neighborhood to knock on doors and gather their items. The boys really got into the competition and Joseph's team won by a single point.

Best gift of the day went to the skateboard given by Mom, but a close second was the Chinese traditional red envelope with cash from his buddy Owen. Joseph loves cash.

Kathleen is shown enjoying a quiet moment alone after the conclusion of the festivities.

#139 Kids' Halloween

These are the fun years with kids and Halloween. Our children were very excited about Halloween and looking forward to it for many weeks. You can see the line of Cazzato kids with a detective, mummy, ladybug, and Dash from the Incredibles.

Joseph chose to be a mummy and you can see him being mummified by Kathleen who is doing a spot-on V.P. candidate Sarah Palin. Kathleen went to her hair salon with a Newsweek cover picture of Palin and asked her stylist to replicate the hairdoo. Joseph, the neurotic, obsessive, Ralph-family child wanted to be the mummy, but could not tolerate any imperfections in his mummy-wrap and ended up coming home in tears after one block of trick-or-treating because his underwear was showing through the linens. Kathleen had to cut off all of the mummy-wrap and send him back out in an black cape.

All in all, Halloween was a roaring success in the Jin Shui Wan compound. Every house ran out of candy by 7:30 PM because guests from all over town are coming to this neighborhood for trick-or-treating.

#138 Office Halloween

Friday was Halloween and our general manager, Duane, encouraged everyone to come to work in costume. As you might guess, Halloween is mostly a U.S. holiday with little or no following in China. There was some extended debate during the GM's staff meeting about whether it made sense to make a work day event out of a holiday unknown to the Chinese staff. Duane insisted that it would be fun and people would follow along if the expat managers lead by example.

With the big boss' encouragement, many people came to work in costumes and I must admit that he was quite right. The local employees seemed to love seeing the managers in costume and at least a dozen of them also came to work in costumes. Some people also brought extra masks, wigs, and make-up to share and people eagerly borrowed items to put together impromptu costumes. The excitment was so great, at times it was impossible to hold a telephone conversation in the office because of all of the laughter, gasps, and exclamations about the various costumes.

I wore a silly afro wig that I took from the kids toybox on my way to work, and that alone generate repeated bouts of uproarious laughter. Pictured above are all of the costumed employees including some close-ups of Duane, Lucy, and Stanley.