Day 3
Some things in China seem very familiar, some do not. Shanghai, where I am this week is a very large city, larger than New York, and it feels like most big cities anywhere; tall buildings, traffic, many people – all seemingly in a hurry, many interesting sights and smells. But in many ways, it is also different. The people, unlike those in New York or Chicago, rarely display emotion. Traffic situations which would anger any good American to the point of violence seem to be accepted in stride. Children are almost always well behaved. One of the strangest things is the way they dress toddlers. Once children are beyond infancy, they no longer wear diapers – even when they are not old enough to use a toilet. Instead, they wear pants that are slit in the front and back and when they need to go, they just go! Usually mom or dad will find a nearby bush, sometimes a street corner will suffice, and “junior” will take care of business.
Today was a working day starting in our Shanghai office in the morning, meeting with a Japanese customer in the afternoon, and dinner with the same customer in the evening. We spent a lot of time in Larry’s car moving through very slow and seemingly chaotic traffic. Shanghai highways, which are all elevated 3 floors above ground, could all stand to be widened. Chinese drivers could stand to learn the purpose of lane markers. At one point, Karen who was riding in back and flinching in anticipation of a pending collision every few moments or so (clearly her first trip to China) pointed out that there were only three lanes of traffic on this particular stretch of road but there were 5 cars side by side – most of which were trying to move into an adjacent, dare I call it a “lane”? Once again, I am not sure why they bother to paint those lines on the pavement at all.
Larry decided to treat us to pizza for lunch. As you might imagine, the pizza delivered from the nearby Pizza Hut (yes, the same one) while clearly a pizza in form tasted shall we say unusual. Shrimp, pineapple and some weird green stuff on one, some kind of meat, and god know what on the other. It did not taste bad, but I hesitate to call it pizza. We thanked Larry politely, what else can you do?
The meeting with the Japanese customer was interesting in that the leader on the customer’s side, Namura-san, spoke very little Chinese or English. He had an interpreter with him, who was never introduced so I don’t know his name, who spoke Japanese and Chinese only. Namura-san would speak to “the interpreter who shall remain nameless”. The interpreter would speak in Chinese to Larry, and Larry would translate for me into English. Everything I said Larry translated to Chinese for the interpreter, the interpreter would translate this into Japanese for Namura-san, and all through the meeting I was thinking back to the grade school exercise where all the kids sit in a circle and one kid whispers a phrase to the one next to him, who in turn passes the message to the next kid, and by the time the message reaches the end it bears little resemblance to the original meaning – and they were all speaking the same language!. I have no idea what was truly accomplished, but no one got offended or fell on their swords so I guess it wasn’t too bad.
We had dinner with the same group, typical Chinese style dinner in a private room with a round table. I think the fact that Karen was along and the senior person in my company’s party kept everyone on their best behavior. No Chinese liquor, endless “one by one” toasting, or anything. I fear Karen is missing out on the full experience. We got back to the hotel around 10:00 PM, tired from a long day.
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| Tonight's restaurant. You have to love the name |
Tomorrow we drive to Wuxi.
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