Second trip - Day 8 - Chicken knees and Baijo

Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 7:34 AM

Subject: Asia 2007 - Day 8

Chicken Knees and Baijo

Hotel breakfast buffets are lousy everywhere.  The Nan Hai Hotel has a buffet which serves western and Asian food.  I have to be careful in choosing what I eat, making sure to eat only fully cooked items, and avoid anything that could have been washed in the local tap water like fresh fruit.  It is still very humid.  The hotel is well air conditioned, but everything feels damp anyway.  Anything made of paper becomes limp the moment you take it outside.  I don’t know that I would want to live here for any length of time.  It rained again this morning.  It has rained everyday since I arrived in Asia.  Not all day rain, but showers that pass through.

Today I sat in on the opening speeches for the conference, and then had lunch in a local Hunan style restaurant.  Hunan food is very spicy, but this was OK. Afterwards Larry and I traveled by taxi to the far side of Shenzhen, around 25 miles, to pay a call on a local compressor manufacturer.  The compressor business is very entrepreneurial in China.  In the US there are only about a dozen manufacturers of any size, in China there are over 200. 

Taxi rides here are most unnerving.  I honestly don’t know why they bother to paint lines on the road because absolutely nobody pays any attention to them.  They don’t mind speed limits either.  I frequently see what appear to be traffic police, usually two of them on a scooter with flashing blue lights, but they don’t appear interested in enforcement.  The taxi driver on this trip crossed into the oncoming lanes more than once and often forced his way left or right when other vehicles were too close.  Chinese drivers are not afraid to use their horns in protest. Scooters, bicycles and pedestrians add to the fun.  It is not uncommon to see people crossing busy roads one lane at a time; moving across a lane when there is room and standing there with traffic passing dangerously close on each side waiting to cross another – pretty risky when the lanes are generally ignored

The plant we visited looked like it should have been condemned long ago.  It is in a 2 story concrete building that has likely never seen paint.  The offices are dark, the halls have no lights, I get the feeling I’m walking through a Soviet prison.  The shop floor is just as dismal; the floor had large holes in the concrete.  You have to watch your step carefully.  They manage to build over 3000 machines per year in this place.

We left the plant, which is in a rather poor area and walked to a nearby corner to hail a taxi – no easy task it turns out.  We finally got one after about 5 minutes.  Larry began talking to the driver, a woman.  As Larry explained it, we were in a green taxi (yes, it was green in color) and green taxis are not allowed to enter the city center and Shekou, which was our destination.  We would need to get a “red” taxi.  So our green taxi driver drove us around looking for a red taxi.  I asked Larry for an explanation of the whole ‘green – red’ thing.  With Larry you always have to guess a bit at what he means because his English is a bit lacking, so I believe it has something to do with how much the owner paid to the government, a red taxi for the lucrative city center being more expensive.  We found our red taxi after about 10 minutes.  During this ride we passed through another one of the abandoned and unused but still in the middle of the road border crossings to the economic zone, and I asked Larry for more information about them.  I have usually steered away from political discussions as they appear to make him uncomfortable, but when I asked about the crossings it must have triggered something.  He told me about how the police who manned the booths were corrupt, and if you didn’t have a visa to enter, you could “buy” one from them for $200 RMB (about $25), and if you didn’t have the money to pay the bribe, you were likely to be beaten and thrown in jail for a few days.  He continued on and on about different fees and taxes for this and that which the Chinese government collects. 

We were late joining the same group of people from the night before for dinner.  As it turns out, I was again the guest of honor (I wish they wouldn’t do that) and they started without us but kept my place at the table.  I apologized for being late.  It doesn’t seem like it was a big deal.  Dinner tonight was in a different place but the same basic setup; eight or so large round tables with last susans, a dozen people around each one, plate after plate of food, and of course beer.  The Cantonese must really love these damned chicken knees, because they have been in nearly every meal so far.  In addition, “Baijo” (pronounced buy-joe) was added to the festivities.  Baijo is a clear spirit, about 130 proof made from rice, and could serve as a pretty good de-greaser.  It does not taste good.  Baijo is used in toasting, using small shot glasses if you are lucky, and the Chinese seem to like it.  Once again I was the prime target.  It was my duty to go around toasting every table.  There were a dozen girls working the room keeping glasses filled, you literally would lower your arm after a gan-bay of Baijo and someone would be filling it instantly.  Occasionally someone would try to get me to toast everyone at the table “one by one” but I declined.  I did have to speak the following morning after all.