Tag and I were met at the airport by Jacky, my fellow Mitsui trainee for the first 2 months I was in Japan. We were greeted with a Buick "Shanghai" minivan, and I was delighted to see that they drive on the right side of the road! I even saw a few Buick Enclaves, and it made me excited to be reunited with Clifford (my big red car)!
Not all of the cars in China are cool though... check out these crazy turquoise taxis!!
Tianjin is known for gouza (dumplings), so the first meal we had was entirely of a variety of dumplings. I never know what I'm going to find inside one of those babies, but pork, beef, or veggies, they were all delicious! I think it's better than actually seeing the food!
Most food in China is quite tasty, as long as you don't see any faces or ask what it is!! On Tuesday they served us a giant pot of boiling sakana (fish) to share. I took my portion and was not too happy to realize that the bones were still in it. The Chinese guy next to me decided whatever he didn't want to swallow (bones, etc.), he would just spit out directly on the tablecloth in front of him!! While eating my fish, I glanced at the pot and thought I saw an eyeball. Sure enough, they must have just dumped a couple of whole fish in the boiling pot. Upon closer inspection, other people had fins and tails and a giant head on their plates! I guess I should consider myself lucky that I only found a few bones. Jellyfish was also served with every meal, but I declined to eat it. I've has enough of boiled rubber bands for awhile!
Things are cheap here. A nice lunch for five was less than $30 total. My room service dinner was less than $4. I got a massage at the hotel spa for less than $50. (Although Jacky recommended I go to a local massage establishment since they were less than $3 there, but I declined.)
The massage was a little wacky. They made me take a shower beforehand (not a bad idea since no one knows what deodorant is here either). Talk about a full-body massage... it even included my breasts and buttocks! This may have been weird before I started bathing naked in public, but by now this wasn't so shocking to me.
So far everyone I've come across has terrible English. (Shame on me for not even attempting to learn a few words in Chinese before I left!) The extent is "hello?" and "OK?", which made the massage quite interesting. And I wasn't sure what I was really going to get for my room service dinner because it took 3 people to take my order of "fried rice with shrimp". I bizarre thing to me was that the menu was in Chinese, Japanese, and English, so that's how I knew what to order! Eating in restaurants in person is so much easier because I can point to the menu.
In general, I don't like the attitudes of the Chinese people. They are rude to each other... cutting people off in traffic, nearly running pedestrians over even when they have the right of way and are even in the crosswalk, blowing smoke in my face, pushing on to elevators before people have a chance to get off, and answering their cell phones (all with loud obnoxious rings) in the middle of meetings. It seems that no one has heard of "silent mode" or the concept of "letting it go to voicemail"!
I had forgotten about the terrible air quality in China since my last trip in January. There is smog everywhere because of major air pollution. I can only imagine how much worse the situation is going to get as the country keeps on expanding, selling more cars, etc. Some people on their bicycles even have nets over their entire head. I don't know if it's to protect from the bugs, smog, dust, or what?! Out my 6th floor hotel window I can barely see one block. Oddly enough morning and night have the worst visibility. I guess the sun tries to poke through during the day.
The smoking doesn't help the air pollution either. Everyone smokes everywhere, which means even I reek like an ashtray when alone in my smokey hotel room. Meeting rooms, offices, elevators, restaurants, cars, there is no non-smoking area that I've seen!
Construction is rampant since this is a growing city, but unlike Japan or US, you will never find a orange barrel or construction barricade. There are just piles of construction material in the middle of the highways (yes, seriously), and workers walking all over the road as if there is no traffic. I watched one guy stand on a pallet and then have a forklift raise him to the second level of a building under construction. Also, no hard hats or other protection equipment... what happened to the Safety First motto?!
Tag keeps making fun of me because it's not sunny, yet I always have my sunglasses on outside. The one time I decided not to wear them, I got a face full of dust and grime that I was trying to blink out of my eyes for the next 20 minutes. So I've decided to just be an American diva and not take anymore chances with the wind!
You can't drink the tap water in China, so I am back to brushing my teeth with bottled water. Also, the Chinese prefer everything hot or room temperature, so couple that with the "no ice policy" and I had to say good-bye to cold water for 5 days.
The internet through the hotel is highly regulated, and I couldn't access a lot of the sites I normally would, including facebook, blogspot, or google. I was accessing some things through my mobile phone, but Tag told me his personal cell phone bill was $2000 last month because he used the internet a few times to email his wife when he was here!! That's insane!! So I stopped that activity in order to same Mitsui some coin.
Check out this carrier car! I was so impressed by it's efficiency, carrying 10 pick up trucks at once. Then Tag noticed that there is also a police car in front of it, so maybe there is an overloading issue!!
Here's another full load. You see this kind of stuff all over the streets of China. They are big into the recycling business. I thought it was just garbage they were hauling around, but it's actually cardboard to be recycled into paper. Most overseas containers bound for the US come back to China filled with cardboard or plastic bottles. I had no idea!!
Tag has been in China for over 7 weeks in the past 6 months, and he's never seen a blue sky or the sun due to pollution!! So when we woke up on Wednesday to clear skies I had to take a picture of it! It was like a miracle after all of my complaining!!
More to come as we move to Boading for the second half of our trip!
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