Life in Shanghai Begins!

Frustrations aside, we are now enjoying the adventure of life in Shanghai.  This week was a good one; we found an apartment, got a bank account, got cell phones, I got a "real job" and we found a way to once again communicate with all of you!!!! 

Earlier this week Catharine attended an international expat women's group where she was able to meet people and more importantly make contacts to help get things done.  She also got a list of places to eat, things to do, and places to buy things.  We also visited a couple of international grocery stores where if you are willing to pay for it you can get what you need.  For example I saw a 22 lbs frozen turkey for $100, quite a shock compared to the US.

Life here is getting easier and although we will be living in the hotel for some time to come, we are more comfortable in getting around, buying things and finding restaurants.  Strange as it may seem, we still have not really had Chinese food except in the cafeteria at work.  If the cafeteria is any indication, then we will not be eating much Chinese food.  Most of the lunch menu is unrecognizable.  I decided to be adventurous so I tried the meat and came to find out that chicken feet, bones and fat make up most of the dish.  Oh well, now I stick to noodles and rice, that works for me.

But the best news of the week came from one of Tommy's friends, he told us about a way to access this site and facebook even though the government does not let you access it directly.  I now hope that I will be able to get skype to work also. 

We are in the process of putting an offer on an apartment about a 15 minute drive from the office and within walking distance of some friends and many shops.  It is a large place with plenty of room for visitors.  It has 4 bedrooms and baths and two stories.  But the best advantage is that it is on the first floor which will make life with dogs much easier.  It will be nice to have a place of our own and settle in.

Finally having a bank account here is a god send.  We are now able to access local money and have less worries about money issues.  Which meant that we had a great day yesterday shopping, shopping, and more shopping!

Yet another interesting governmental issue is that in order to get a residency permit, you need to have a health examination.  So Thursday I went for my exam and it was much more thorough than I thought.  I had a chest X-ray, Blood drawn, EKG, ultra sound, and extensive checkup.  Why or what they will do with the info I have no idea nor does anyone else that I asked.  The consensus is that it is one more way for the government to get money from the foreigners and employ people.  But for us, it is just one more thing that we have to do. Speaking of governmental issues, one more came up when I decided that I need to travel to France next week.  Well it seems that until the results of the health exam are known and we have successfully applied for our residence permit, I cannot get a visa which will allow me multiple entries into and out of the country, so for now it looks like I will have to do things from here.  Just one more thing!!!

And maybe most importantly, I finally have a real reason to be here.  It started the day I got here when I met the newly appointed head of the advanced development section for YanFeng-Visteon my new employer.  Now this was the job for which I had applied and was looking forward to doing for the next two years, so now what??  Well it appeared that nobody really knew how I would fit into the organization, or at least not until Thursday afternoon when we had an all engineering management meeting.  At this meeting I met the head of YanFeng-Visteon (YFV) engineering (a very energetic enthusiastic women who is also a member of the board of directors).. I had met her on previous visits and she was very glad to have me supporting her business.  And after her presentation and subsequent discussion, it was clear that my job is to create a vision for advance at YFV, convince the board to fund it and then deliver it to make YFV global leaders in advanced technology development.  WOW, be careful what you wish for!

Chinese New Years Celebration

Well this past Friday marked the end of the official Chinese New Years celebrations here in Shanghai.  The festivities ended with the celebration of the Lantern.  As can be seen in the picture below, even Google participated in the conscienceness awareness of this festival. 

As I understand, on the last day of the new years celebration people used to line the streets with their lanterns.  Of course these were functional lanterns not the lanterns depicted here; but since this custom is not practiced anymore, it is celebrated with the display of the decorative lanterns as shown here.  These lanterns can be seen in nearly every street this time of year.  The end of the celebration was also marked by extensive use of fireworks.  We saw fireworks being shot off everywhere even though there is really no room for them.  They were launched from courtyards and in front of apartment buildings.  These lasted far into the night which made sleeping interesting.  We enjoyed the celebrations and are now living in the year of the Rabbit.



First Days

One of the issues that many people warned us about was the high air pollution in Shanghai; fortunately at least so far, this has not been a problem.  We really have seen no evidence of this and in talking with a number of people it is not high on the issue list.  But the air pollution issue that we have noticed first hand is that there are a lot of smokers here and very little effort has been made to separate them from the rest of us.  We didn’t consider this because in Michigan and most of the world, this is no longer an issue. 

The weather here has been unseasonably cold and we even saw a couple of snow flakes yesterday.  The interesting thing is that none of the buildings in Shanghai are insulated, merely poured concrete and steel.  So when the weather is this cold the heating systems cannot keep up and many of the engineers at work were wearing their coats while working at their desks.  I understand that this is typical for this time of year.  Yesterday we went to an “international supermarket” and it was so cold that I thought the cans on the shelves would freeze.  The size of this supermarket surprised us as it was no bigger than a seven eleven.  However, the prices were much bigger, often 2 to 3 times the price of goods in the US.  The biggest price increase that I noticed was on milk, now this was a surprise because I would have thought that this was not an imported item.  Come to find out that the Chinese have avoided all dairy products throughout history and even today it is not a main staple in their diets.  Needless to say then is the fact that beef is also not common, instead most all meat is chicken and pork.  Even bread was not common; instead rice and noodles often replace the need for bread.  They often eat rice at all three meals and is therefore a main ingredient in any meal.  I got a nice surprise today when I had a typical Chinese meal (pork noodles and fruit) at the office that cost me less than $2. We are still having difficulty with meals as it is not easy to find restaurants with English menus.  There is a street about 10 minutes by taxi from our hotel that has about 10 English speaking restaurants on it so we normally take a taxi over for dinner.  I am sure that this difficulty will change as we get more accustomed to the area and the language. 

Yesterday we had a great adventure; we went to a typical market with stalls of vendors selling everything from electronics to leather belts and handbags (fakes of course).  Since we needed a couple of things, I thought this would be a great place to get the best prices.  The interesting thing about these places is that you really have to barter for the best price and although I like this, Catharine had a very hard time with this concept and with the people saying “hey lady want a handbag”.  But in spite of her embarrassment, Catharine allowed me to continue and I ended up with a belt that started at $120 and finally cost me $15.  We also found out that copyright laws are non-existent here in China.  New release DVDs go for about $1 each and software is also very cheap, I got all a great deal on Rosetta Stones Chinese language software.  The rest of the adventure was equally exciting; we decided to try to get back to the hotel via the subway instead of taking a taxi.  We were able to figure out the subway fairly easily and after getting confused only one time, we found our way to the hotel.  Unfortunately it was very cold yesterday so we took a taxi from the underground station to the hotel and Catharine reminded me that it took about ½ hour longer than the taxi and saved us only $2; but the adventure was great. We were so exhausted from our adventure that we decided to take a nap and did not wake up until we had missed dinner.  So ended my “man of leisure” status and today I started work.

Work looks like it will pick up where I left off 2 years ago as very little has progressed in the intervening time.  It appears that I will be a sort of a consultant for the advanced and core engineering departments.  I will have two bosses and will need to please them both.  I will also have to figure out what the status of the group is without upsetting the team and help them create a vision and the plans for the next couple of years.  This could be interesting but not particularly exciting.  But at this stage in life I will settle for interesting.

We thought the writing on the attached picture was interesting and typical Englisese.

Out with the Old, in with the New

  Unlike many cities in China with long and varied histories, Shanghai's history is quite short. The British opened a concession in Shanghai after the first Opium War (circa 1842) and ignited Shanghai's evolution. Once a small fishing village on the edge of the muddy Huang Pu River, it has become one of the world's most modern and sophisticated cities.  So what happened to "Old Shanghai" ?  When Catharine, Allison and I first visited Shanghai in 1986, it looked quite different than it does today.  More like this:

As a matter of fact, when I visited Shanghai only 5 years ago, there were still many areas of Shanghai that still looked like this. 

When the government set-out to transform Shanghai into the "New York City of China", they were faced with a dilemma; how to make the peaceful transition.  So, since China is still a communistic country the people's homes actually belonged to the government, so in simple terms, the government could do whatever they wanted as it was their property.  Fortunately the ruling party decided to compensate the "Owners" for their property before tearing it down to build the skyscrapers you see in today's skyline.  But who are the "Owners".  The original owner before the revolution, or the current occupants.  Since it was difficult, nie impossible, to trace the original owners, the inhabitants were termed the "Owners" and compensated for their houses.  Although this compensation was quite generous, it generally was not enough for the "owners" to buy even a 1 room apartment in the new building.  But then again, most of the "owners" would not want to live in a "new, foreign city", so many decided to move to locations where they could continue the lifestyle they had come to know, which meant a move to a location outside the city.  Thus the city has been a very modern and progressive city which is now the center for trade and commerce. 





Housing in Shanghai

At first glance, you would think that housing in Shanghai should be the easy part of the transition.  Well, in checking into the options, I thought it would be nice to live in downtown Shanghai near the night life, social activities and great restaurants.  As most assumptions go, this one was not to come to fruition.  Initial investigations showed that a 1 to 2 bedroom apartment in downtown would cost around $1,000,000 US dollars; (Yes US DOLLARS!!).  And here I thought this was a developing country!  I guess my comparison to New York City was more appropriate than I thought.

The nice thing about the city is that it is really all new and has a lot of parks and a great metro system.  So we are planning to locate on the outskirts of the city near the metro line so that we can access the city when we want to.  Also I do not want to be too far from the office so that I don't have to spend all my free time commuting.  Fortunately my friend in Shanghai has lined up an English speaking real estate agent to show us around next Saturday and Sunday.  She has already been in contact with us and assures us that we will find a nice place near the city..  This will be a great help  in adjusting to Shanghai. 

Amazing Support

I want to take a moment to thank all of you that have made this opportunity possible.  We have really felt your support with every decision we have made.  Every time we have faced a seemly insurmountable obstacle, one of you has stepped up to help us handle it.  From taking care of the dogs to taking over our responsibilities on committees to helping take care of house to providing a wonderful send off, you have been there for us.  But most of all, we appreciate you enthusiasm, support, wishes, and prayers.  We hope that you will continue to email and skype us as the adventure continues. 

We are interested in exploring the various religions and cultures of the local people but we also hope that we will be able to continue our christian worship.  I assume the most common religion will be Buddhist and it will be interesting to learn more about this very popular religion.  I hope to see gatherings like the one below on special religious holidays.



The car guy carless?

Today's topic deals with the fact that me, the car guy, will be carless for two years.  Now at first glance this seems tragic but when you evaluate the situation, I have to agree that this is the only option.  You see there are 1.3 billion people in China, 24 million of which are in the shanghai area. In adddition, there are 450 million bicycles in China and over 100 million cars, this makes for very crowded roads.  This coupled with the fact that Shanghai has just installed a metro system which rivals that of New York City's and the fact that a taxi from one end of Shanghai to the other costs only approx $2; means that having a car is really not a good option.  I will have a car and driver to get me to and from work and I am sure we will work out the best way to get around at other times.  As you can see from the picture below, this will be a truely unique experience.