Second trip - Day 9 - A thesis on bar-girls

Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 9:12 AM

Subject: Asia 2007 - Day 9

You have to wear a jacket and tie in China when doing the kind of work I am doing as a show of respect.  This becomes an issue for a northern person in this climate.  The issue is I am frequently perspiring, even when sitting.  It is so hot and humid, I think it is worse than New Orleans.  I have felt damp constantly since I arrived in Malaysia.

I gave my presentation to the Chinese audience this morning; an hour and forty-five minutes on principles of filtration (sounds exciting, doesn’t it!).  I gave essentially the same one in Malaysia last week, but there the audience understood what I was saying.  Here, I am speaking to about 90 individuals who at the most know a few words of English.  I have a translator, an engineer from Hong Kong whose English is excellent.  I had to include a lot of pictures and animations to get the information across, but I have no way of knowing whether they really understood the material.  I stood to the left the screen onto which the presentation was projected, the translator stood to the right.  I would speak my bit, a couple of sentences at a time, and the other would repeat my meaning (hopefully) in Mandarin.  It was like watching the audience in a slow motion tennis match, all heads looking to the left when I am speaking, and all turning in unison to the right to watch the translator.  A few had questions afterwards.  The whole thing felt very awkward.

I made plans for the evening to have dinner with Larry, and then meet Richard, the American expatriate who is in charge of engineering, for a beer afterwards.  Dinner with Larry was some very spicy noodles at a small restaurant.  These did not agree with me at all, I suspect something was not too sanitary in the mix.  Incidentally, paper napkins are never given out when dining.  You don’t get a cloth one either.  If you want paper, they will sell you a small packet.

I met Richard later and we walked to the only Irish pub in Shenzhen.  I had a Guinness which took just long enough to arrive and was quite good.  We talked over beer for probably an hour, mostly about living in China.  Richard has been in Shenzhen for 9 years and won’t go back to the US until probably next year.  He has married a Chinese woman who will return with him to the States.  We talked a lot about the Chinese language and the difficulty to learn it.  I also asked about life in China.  Richard lives, as most Chinese do, in an apartment, about 1000 square feet, with his wife, step son, and a live-in maid.  The maid, fairly common for middle and upper income Chinese, cost around 900RMB ($120) per month.  She does all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry.  I asked what he does with all his extra time.  Apparently that is a problem; there is not much else to do in Shenzhen but shop and drink.  He plays badminton (a serious competitive sport in China) 2 hours a week and hikes a bit.  Some more interesting bits from our conversation; there is no currency larger than a 100 RMB note, about $12 US.  Before credit and debit cards were allowed (very recently) you had to carry thick stacks of cash around, especially if traveling.  According to Richard, the reason the Chinese government doesn’t print larger notes is they are afraid everyone will raise their prices!  The real workings of market economics haven’t quite sunk in I guess.  Another interesting fact; you can’t buy a house or a building in China – you can only lease it from the Government for a maximum of 99 years.  I asked about the local bars and where all of the girls come from.  They are from rural areas of China primarily.  According to Richard, there are three real categories of girls in the bars (apparently he has done some research); there are professional prostitutes, there are girls looking to meet a western man, and there are girls who are mostly recent arrivals who work just hustling drinks so they can feed themselves until they find better work.  Food is pretty cheap here, so one drink, the proceeds of which she splits with the bar owner will give her enough money to buy food. 

Later, we hooked up with the others I have been traveling with for a bit, but it was a pretty early night.  In one bar, as I was talking to one of my companions, a small green lizard crawled across the wall behind us.  Nobody but us seemed to notice or care.  By the way, the bathrooms in these bars are beyond disgusting.  Enough said.

I am not feeling well at all.  I appear to have caught the same bug the others had; sore throat, chills, slight fever. Tomorrow, I travel to Shanghai.

 I am not sure if they screen travelers into the Hong Kong airport for fever from the ferries as they do for incoming flights.  If they do, I could have problems.