#168 China New Year

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year Holiday which is the first month of the lunar calendar. Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday in China, much like Christmas week in the U.S. Most businesses are closed and people travel home to see their families. In fact, it is described today as the largest human migration in the world as well over 100 million people are travelling in China this month.

Our Caterpillar worksite is largely abandoned because all of the construction workers have started their holiday. In China, most construction laborers are migrant workers from the countryside who come to the cities to work. They go home only once a year at Chinese New Year.

One day last week, I gave a ride to a colleague who was travelling home the next day to Harbin in Northern China. She was going to be taking a 30 hour train ride to get there. CNN has been showing photos from the train stations where most of the tickets have been sold out for some time.

Our family will also be traveling for Chinese New Year. Tomorrow morning, we leave for a 10 day trip to Vietnam. We will spend three days in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and a week at a resort at place called China Beach. Stay tuned for the next blog to be posted direct from 'Nam.

#167 Shanghai Karting

Our friend Bill organized an outing to Shanghai last Saturday to have lunch and ride go-karts at an indoor track in Pudong. We had a group of seven guys, including Bill's driver Derek. We set out late morning, stopped for a little shopping at the knock-off market, had lunch at a great burger restaurant, then a couple very fun hours of car racing at the track.

I suspect we will never see a go-kart track in the U.S. that has a full bar at trackside to quench the thirst while waiting one's turn to drive. The races definitely separated the men from the boys - our Welsh colleague, Paul was the most skillful and our English colleague Paul was the fastest, mostly due to his light weight stature. Bill and I dominated the "over 100 kilo class" and did our best to keep faster cars from passing us. This was good clean (slightly drunken) fun and I highly recommend such an afternoon adventure. The next "man outing" will be to attend the Formula 1 races in Shanghai in April.

#166 Annual Dinner

Caterpillar Suzhou recently held our first every company "Annual Dinner". This is evidently a strong tradition in China for companies to hold a large dinner party for all of the employees which includes hired entertainers as well as performances by employees and groups of employees. Typically there is lots of drinking and toasting - say "gān bēi" or "bottoms up" and literally dry your glass.

For my contribution to the entertainment, my Chinese colleague Catherine suggested that she and I memorize and recite tongue twisters in front of the audience - she in English and me in Mandarin. We both practiced hard and performed well. To explain the picture above, one of the Chinese tongue twisters that I performed was called "Bǎn Dèng hé Biǎn Dàn". Well a biǎn dàn is that double-basket device used by the Chinese to carry everything from water to bricks. I got a lot of cheap laughs by wearing the country hat and carrying the biǎn dàn in for our performance.

Below for your reference are two of the tongue twisters that we performed. Catherine did much better than I did, even though I gave her a challenging and potentially vulgar tongue twister to recite.

Bǎn dèng kuān, biǎn dàn cháng
Biǎn dàn méi yǒu bǎn dèng kuān
Bǎn dèng méi yǒu biǎn dàn cháng
Biǎn dàn xiang bǎng zài bǎn dèng shàng
Bǎn dèng bú ràng biǎn dàn bǎng zài bǎn dèng shàng
Biǎn dàn piān yào bǎng zài bǎn dèng shàng

I am not the pheasant plucker,
I'm the pheasant plucker's mate.
I am only plucking pheasants
'cause the pheasant plucker's late.

#165 New Piano

Kathleen has a new thing going - she just bought a second hand piano. She has been floating this idea for some time and even went so far as to drag us all through a piano store at the Ling Li neighborhood center a couple of weeks ago.

Juliana's viola teacher suggested that Kathleen talk to the Dulwich piano teacher because the piano teacher had an instrument to sell. It turned out to be a good deal and Kathleen took the plunge. You can see her here warming up with a couple of male assistants. She is threatening to sign herself and Joseph up for lessons after the Chinese New Year.

#164 Amusement Land

The day after New Years we took the family to the Suzhou Amuzement Land on the west side of Suzhou in an area called the "Suzhou New District" or SND. SND is actually the older of the two economic development zones in Suzhou. SIP, where we live, is the newer one.

We had heard mixed reviews about the amusement park, but were pleasantly surprised by all it had to offer. The day was sunny and a bit cold, but the cold worked to our advantage in that attendance was minimal, so we had very short waits for the rides. I have heard that the crowds at this place are horrendous in the better weather.

They have a decent hanging, looping roller coaster that looked well maintained. There are some quality spin-you-around and make-you-sick rides, as well as a few rides for the little kids like the merry go round and small ferris wheel. The bumper cars were a big hit, but was one of the many rides that Maria was too small to ride. Above you can see Maria after being tossed out of the queue for the swinging chair ride. All in all, Amusement Land is a far cry from Six Flags but many notches above a carnival.

One observation was that there were remarkably few children at the park. Most patrons were twentysomething in small groups of pairs. Most were using their cell phones to take pictures of themselves while on the rides. We ourselves took many good pictures which I have posted at snapfish.

#163 NYE 10K

Kathleen and I participated in a New Years Eve 10K race organized by our next door neighbor, Roni, an accomplished runner from Finland. The race started inside our housing compound and proceeded west through SIP to Li Gong Di and back. The course would be flat and fast, except that again this year there was a 40 mph headwind ... in both directions !

There was quite a good turnout - about half foreigners and half local Chinese. The Jin Shui Wan maintenance crew found the whole scene to be a most curious affair (top picture).

The winners circle included three Americans, two Chinese, and two Finns. I finished well into the latter half of the pack but count myself in the top 1% percent of my peer group since most of the men in the neighborhood stayed at work that afternoon. Kathleen also did well, finishing in about an hour despite the blustery conditions.

#162 Bike Repairs

The boys have been enjoying the total freedom of our gated China neighborhood. They are free to leave the house unaccompanied by an adult and play outside with their friends. A favorite activity is to ride bikes and they seem to enjoy riding on sidewalks, over curbs, down stairs, and on top of the sodded roof of the Jin Shui Wan clubhouse.

All of this abuse has taken its toll on their relatively new bikes, so a recent errand during the holidays was to take the bikes in for needed repairs. We loaded them in the Caterpillar van and took them to the Giant bicycle store in downtown Suzhou. This bike shop was great. Normal procedure at a U.S. bike shop would be to drop off the bike, be told "don't call us, we'll call you," and then pay through the nose after they got around to finishing. Not here

We were greeted immediately by two repairmen who were shortly after joined by a third who went to work fixing three broken brake handles, one bad shifter, four flat tires, and a chronically unseated chain. They worked for about 30 minutes and charged my less than $10 for their trouble. My favorite repair shop ever.

#161 The iClub

Kathleen recently started going to a yoga class at a new health club nearby in SIP. Some months ago, I wrote a blog entry that whined about my current gym, the Powerhouse, which allows me to workout in the early morning (6:00 AM) but refuses to turn on the lights or the air conditioning. After visiting this new place, called the "iClub", Kathleen suggested that I check it out.

It is indeed much nicer and cleaner than the Powerhouse and even has a pool. But China is a different place and there seems to be no demand for a gym to open early in the morning before work. Both the Powerhouse and the iClub had their opening time set at 7:00 AM. People in China do not by any means subscribe to the "early to bed, early to rise" philosophy of the great Benjamin Franklin.

I made an appointment with the club manager and asked him if he would be willing to open the club at 6:00 rather than 7:00 to win mine and Kathleen's buisiness and probably a few more clients who want to work out and still go to work on time. He refused a couple of times, but after prodding from me, Kathleen, and Kathleen's yoga instructor, he agreed to open the doors at 6:15AM.

I have been going to the iClub now for several weeks and it is quite a superior workout experience. I would certainly recommend it strongly over the smelly, hot, dark, and dirty Powerhouse Suzhou. Nonetheless, since I started going about a month ago, I have yet to see another patron besides myself at the gym during the early morning shift. Strange place this China.

#160 Má Jiàng

During our New Years' time off, we pulled out our recently purchased Mah Jiang game and taught ourselves how to play. Juliana, Joseph, Maria, and I had a go at it and found it very enjoyable. Mah Jiang is a bit of a widespread obsession in China. There are Mah Jiang parlors and clubs and In good weather, you see foursomes playing Mah Jiang in parks, alleyways, and along sidewalks in the city. The Chinese also play for money, though the kids and I did not get this sophisticated. One Chinese associate told me that her aunt makes a modest living playing Mah Jiang full time for money. I was surprised when a colleague in the U.S. asked me to send him two Mah Jiang sets for his wife and her friend who had joined a Mah Jiang club in Decatur.

Mah Jiang is much like Gin Rummy, but with domino-like tiles rather than playing cards. There are four suits of tiles and the objective is to make sets or "kongs" or 3, 4, or 5 matching tiles. There are also wildcard tiles and nuances of player order and scoring.

As a game, on a scale of one to ten, with one being "Chutes and Ladders" and ten being "Texas Hold 'Em", I give Mah Jiang a four.