May 2011 - Day 4 - Never flip a fish

May 2011 – Day 4

The jet lag pattern from previous trips is repeating itself nicely.   I was in bed by 10:00 last night and at 3:30 AM I was wide awake, unable to get back to sleep.   I spend a couple of hours catching up on work and flipping through the 40 or so TV channels – not much to watch.  They have HBO which was playing “Chuckie’s Revenge” – not sure how anyone could sit through that.  Today we drive to Suzhou about 90 minutes by car inland.

A couple of new things I learned today:

1.       NEVER flip over a fish!  I had dinner with Stan, Larry and Stewart, another coworker – a German who lives in China, speaks decent English and Mandarin, has a wife who is native Chinese and has a good grasp on Chinese culture.  Among other things we were served a whole steamed fish; a medium sized one, some sort of snapper I think, laying on its side on a platter in the center of the table.  We all used our chop sticks to remove pieces of the flesh which included an annoying amount of very small, very sharp needle-like bones.  As you might imagine, after a while the top-side of the fish is pretty well cleaned off and the meat on the underside is inaccessible with the skeleton in the way.  So what does one do?  Naturally, I try to flip the fish over to expose the other side.  “No” shouted Stewart and Larry in unison!  I gave them a sideways glance and asked what was wrong.  Stewart explained that Chinese fishermen have a strong superstition about flipping over a fish – something to the effect of if you flip over a fish, your boat will flip over.  This superstition has made its way into the rest of the culture.  Rather than turn the fish over, you are supposed to remove the skeleton to expose the rest of the meat, which the waiter soon did with admirable precision leaving only the complete head, the meat, and the remainder of the gum-piercing, intestine-perforating smaller bones.  Anyone for a case of peritonitis?

2.       When passing in a car, don’t wait until you have fully passed before moving to the other lane.  In drivers ed, we were taught to advance at least 2 car lengths when passing before moving back over to the other lane.  A pretty common sense approach I always thought.  In China, nearly everyone starts to move back over before the pass is even completed, even when there is plenty of open road ahead, at times coming dangerously close, and the strange thing is no one seems to get upset over this.  I find it hard to believe that everyone would not do this consistently without some reason behind it, but if there is a higher purpose to this maneuver, it escapes me.

Suzhou has a massive Ferris wheel at an amusement park on the lake shore, close to my hotel.  It displays a light show on it's sides at night – pretty cool. 



Suzhou near the hotel



Day 5 preview – Larry tries to get me killed.