#188 Supplier Visits

We had a road trip this week to visit two suppliers in Tiantai, a small city about four hours drive from Suzhou. This was an interesting experience for several reasons. This area of China in Zhejiang province is very scenic. There are many steep hills and terraced hillsides with some classic scenes you might see in National Geographic. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures because it was raining and I couldn't shoot through the car windows.

We stayed at a very nice hotel that consisted of eight interconnected villas that wound through a hillside garden. Supposedly there is a very famous 1500 year old temple adjacent to the hotel, but I also did not get a chance to see this.

I was traveling with six Caterpillar collegues and we were treated like royal guests by the owners of these two companies. One is the company that supplies Caterpillar with cooling system components, and the other is the seat manufacturer for our motor grader, bulldozer, and paving machines. We enjoyed to a wine-soaked dinner the first night with lots of the traditional gambei (toasting and chugging). After dinner, the seat company owner hosted us for cognac, cuban cigars, and a foot massage. Lunch the next day was much the same - more wine gambei, tons of good local food, and warm greetings all around.

In the picture above you can see a view of the hotel grounds and couple shots of Tony at work giving a motor grader presentation and touring the cooling system component factory. The final picture shows me and Frank, one of our motor grader engineers, standing with the new China-sourced MG cooling system. This cooling system project was one that we started over a year ago. It is going very well and has the potential to save Caterpillar several million dollars per year.

#187 Blog Stats

Back in February, I found an interesting feature to add to this blog page that counts the number of web page hits and gives information on the location of the people that are visiting. You can see above some of the stats compiled over the past month. There have been over 100 visitors from 23 different countries. Amazing.

I have mentioned before that I enjoy a (very) small degree of international celebrity because of this blog. A friend Michael told me this morning that his parents are visiting Suzhou this week and his father, a loyal Cazzato Blog reader, wants to meet the author ! However, a primary motivation that keeps me going on this blog is the effusive praise that I occasionally receive from my mother-in-law in Kentucky who loves the updates and compliments my writing. She is a published author and former English teacher, so her compliments carry some credibility.

#185 Teddy Roosevelt

Marco performed the role of U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt today in the Dulwich school assembly. Another custom made costume from Wedding Street made him the perfect Roosevelt. The child on Marco's right is the last picture played the bear and also had a custom costume. Kathleen said that Marco gave a stunning performance, reciting his four lines with true inspiration.

I am sad to say that I was halfway from the office to school when Kathleen texted me to say that the show was over. I was able to see Marco in his costume when I got home from work tonight and he looked great.

The show told the story of how the Teddy Bear toy got its name. Teddy Roosevelt was on a hunting expedition in Mississippi in 1902 when he had the opportunity to shoot a bear that had been cornered and worn down by his attendants. He declined to shoot the bear, declaring it unsportsmanlike. A political cartoon prompted an entrepreneur to design the "Teddy Bear" toy and create the Ideal Toy Company.

Kathleen commented that the show was interesting to in that it contained a group of kindergarten students trotting around with (toy) hunting rifles. The presence of guns and hunters in a school assembly would likely be deemed too offensive for a U.S. grade school.

#184 Water Update

We have an update on the water dispensing machine. When we got the unit home, it failed to dispense water any colder than room temperature. One week after the purchase we tried to retun the unit to the sales lady that assured us it would provide water that was "hen bing" (very cold). This week she told us that 15 degrees celcius is the best we can expect. She refused to refund our money, insisting that the unit was not broken.

A cultural note - the Chinese do not drink cold water or cold drinks in general. Drinking water is served heated during the winter and room temperature during the summer. Ice is only provided on special request. Beer is served at room temperature, though many restaurants have a limited supply of cold ones if you ask. I have been told by Chinese friends that cold water is considered unhealthy to drink, causing stomach discomfort and gastrointestinal problems. My theory is that the health angle was cooked up to convince the masses that they do not need the luxury of ice or cold drinks.

Above you can see one of many western expats who is dissatisfied with the warm water situation.

#183 Xinjiang Cuisine

We had a glorious couple days of sunny weather this weekend. It had rained in Suzhou for over three weeks, so the sunshine was a welcome change. Today was a fairly typical Sunday in that we went to church, ran a couple of errands, and went out to a local restaurant for lunch.

Today's task was shopping to replace two failed appliance-type items. Our water cooler died this week and those speakers that we bought back in blog entry #33 also stopped working. We have found this to be a normal part of living in China - appliances do not last. We are on our third coffee maker, third toaster, second vacuum cleaner, second water dispenser, and second pair of stereo speakers. You can see a couple shots of Kathleen negotiating price and navigating the checkout counter with the help of Nash, our driver.

Lunch today was at a Xinjiang restaurant called the "Beijiang Restaurant" in Suzhou. Xinjiang is the large, northwestern-most province of China, home of the Uyghur (pronounced "eye-grr") people. It borders all of the "stans" in Asia - Khazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The region is home to a mix of ethnic Uyghur and Chinese people with a significant Muslim influence. There has been conflict between the native Uyghurs and the Chinese as there is a desire on the part of some to be independent from China. The name Xinjiang means "new frontier".

The Xinjiang cuisine seems to be more meat and potatos than Chinese food. Lamb, beef, and pork are big items, and I am told that horse meat is also common. Unfortunately, I did not see any horse meat on the menu today. We had some good roast lamb-on-a-stick and spicy lamb "fingers" - like chicken fingers. The food was quite good (Joseph disagrees - he ate only white rice).

#182 Book Week

This week was book week at Dulwich College. Each day, a different parent went to each classroom and read books to the classes. Today was the culmination when each child got to dress up as a favorite book character for the day.

Marco went as Curious George, Joseph as Thing 2 (his buddy Owen was Thing 1), and Juliana was the Wicked Witch of the West. All of the costumes were bought at a costume shop on "Wedding Street" in Suzhou. For $10-20 you can have a custom made copy of any item.

Our driver, Nash, bought Juliana the bamboo broom for $1.50 last night on his way home. The broom fits the costume perfectly, but it actually is the type of hand made broom that every street sweeper in Suzhou and maintenance person in our neighborhood uses to clean streets and rake leaves.

Maria was planning to go to school as Angelina Ballerina, but to her dismay (and Kathleen's too), Maria came down with a stomach bug on Wednesday and had to stay home from school on book day. So sad.

#181 Emory U. Visit

Today we hosted 13 visitors to Suzhou from the Emory University MBA school in Atlanta. Their ringleader for this visit, Jean, is a caterpillar colleague who is on a leave of absence from Cat to get her MBA. She is a Northwestern alum like Kathleen and I. Jean and I worked together a couple of years ago on the recruiting recruting team for Caterpillar at Northwestern.

Jean and her classmates are spending their spring break in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing. Sunday was their free day which they spent having a look at downtown Suzhou and our new factory. We had a delicious Chinese banquet for lunch at the Pine and Crane Restaurant near Shi Quan Jie which the group thoroughly enjoyed. Kathleen and the kids joined the group for lunch. Afterwards we all stopped at the Cazzato house to tour a typical Suzhou expat villa.

Next we went to the Caterpillar factory and had a look at the progress toward finishing the building and completing installation of the manufacturing equipment. We had a tour through the (cold and dark) factory and got a close up look at things like the spray paint area and welding robots. The students were very enthusiastic to see the factory and asked a lot of good questions. One of the students, Carlos, is part of a family that owns a construction business in his home town in Chile, South America. He was so excited to see a Caterpillar factory because his family owns many pieces of Cat equipment

Juliana, Joseph, and Joseph's friend Owen also came along for the tour. I was particularly proud of Juliana because she participated fully in the tour, seemed very interested, and asked several excellent questions about the topics we were discussing. And she was not the least bit shy to speak up and ask a question in front of this group of 13 strangers.

All in all, it was a good opportunity for all of us to share our experience with a group of bright, young business students, and also fun to see our own lifes through the prism of a group of first time visitors to China. I found myself noticing that all of us living here have come a long way in our ability to navigate, communicate, and appreciate our home in China.