Category Archives: China

One to rule them all: Starbucks in China

Posted by expatlingo in China and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Starbucks in Forbidden City mock-up

Feet and fingers aching from Beijing’s winter air, I once went in search of the Forbidden City’s much-maligned Starbucks. As a former “friends don’t let friends go to Starbucks” anti-corporate Seattle-dweller, I’d read all the tut-tutting over the cultural inappropriateness of the coffee chain’s location within China’s former Imperial Palace.

After a 2003 conference in Beijing, I took a few extra days to see the sights. In the heart of the city, I wandered solo through huge, impersonal expanses of crushed ice and snow. Entering the Forbidden City, I passed through an unending series of unheated squares, palaces, gardens and halls until my bones ached with cold. I needed something hot. I wanted a coffee. I remembered the newspaper articles about the out-of-place Starbucks and started looking for it. It was not in any of the obvious places I had already passed through. I started circling through side halls and garden corners.

I could not find it. Despite the hand-wringing over its location being an ugly mark on historic China, I could not find it.

With red cheeks and a running nose I called it quits and ducked into one of the many shops selling pots of instant noodles. It was warm-ish inside and the walls were lined with rows of Big Gulp-sized buckets of noodles. I chose the “red” flavor and a woman peeled back the top and filled it with hot water. Carrying it to a long communal table, I sat on a metal stool and waited for the boiling water to soften the noodles and shards of dehydrated carrots. It was filling and warming, but a soft chair, newspaper and hot coffee would have been nice.

After seven years in operation, the Forbidden City Starbucks branch closed in 2007 because of a disagreement with the landlord over branding. Despite leaving the Forbidden City, Starbucks has only kept expanding throughout China and there are currently over 3,000 branches in “greater China,” that is including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Starbucks, unlike KFC or McDonald’s, tries to blend into the local area. For example, in Hangzhou last autumn I saw what is probably the most beautiful Starbucks in the world. Tucked away among the gardens and other tea houses, it’s a rather lovely sight:

Hangzhou Starbucks

Starbucks in Hangzhou, China

Hangzhou Starbucks signage

Starbucks sign “星巴克咖啡” (xīng bā kè kā fēi)

Starbucks is ever-keen to suit its products to the local market. Looking at the current seasonal offerings in China, one might wonder whether Starbucks is changing China or China is changing Starbucks:

Starbucks Dragonboat Dumplings

Dragonboat Dumplings (screen shot from Starbucks China website)

Red Bean Green Tea Frappuccino

Red Bean Green Tea Frappuccino (screen shot from Starbucks China website)

In Seattle, with its wealth of coffee shops, I’m still more likely to visit small stores like Herkimer or Fuel, but there have been many times in China, Macau and Hong Kong, when a soft chair and a Starbucks coffee have been exactly what I wanted. And from the growth figures, it’s exactly what many Chinese want too.

Merry Christmas Zhuhai Style

Posted by expatlingo in China and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

This Christmas I finally have a public forum to share the “slightly off” decorations that punctuated my first expat holiday abroad back in 2005. All of these photos are from Zhuhai, China.

You may ask yourself:

  • “Why all the white rabbits?”
  • “Why is Santa drinking with a lion?”
  • “Why are elephants, giraffes and brown bears holding holiday wreaths?”

Don’t think too hard and simply let the holiday joy wash over you!

Zhuhai Christmas decoractions (2005)

Zhuhai Chrstmas 2005

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And if that isn’t enough China-based holiday cheer, take a gander at this older post describing my first encounter with pole dancing: Chinese Christmas Party and the American Prude.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing a better future for America in Lam Tsuen

Posted by expatlingo in America, China, Hong Kong and tagged with , , , , , , , ,
Wishes in Lam Tsuen

Rolled-up wishes in Lam Tsuen.

It is a dark hour in America. Like everyone, I read the news about the Newtown killings with a heavy heart and wet eyes.

This morning I headed for the “Wishing Tree” in Lam Tsuen for a bit of fresh air and peace. I had my youngest child for company. My older child — who is roughly the same age as most of Friday’s victims — was at school.

Hongkongers visit the tree with their hopes for good fortune and good health. Someone with an ill grandmother might visit the tree to seek her recovery by having a wish for her wellness written on sheets of paper. They’d then tie the rolled-up papers to an orange and toss it up into the branches of the tree. If the wish catches on one of the tree’s branches, it is said to be sure to come true.

Lam Tsuen Wishing Tree

Approaching the tree this morning, it was not filled with oranges and red slips of paper. Instead its limbs were propped up with crutches. The tree itself has been burdened with too many wishes and is now in a “recovery period.” Wishers now either throw their hopes into a nearby artificial tree or tie them to purpose-built wooden racks.

We arrived earlier than the wish-scribes so I simply viewed the tree, thought about the 20 first graders and 6 adults who were killed on Friday, and watched my son innocently and happily wander around the village.

Tin Hau Temple

My son peeping into the Tin Hau Temple in Fang Ma Po Village, Lam Tsuen.

I also pondered a relevant and sadly similar story out of Mainland China last week. Here is the print edition headline from the article in Saturday’s South China Morning Post:

“Knifeman injures 23 in Henan school attack.”

Emphasis on “knife” and “injures” (in contrast to “gun” and “kills”) is mine. An on-line version of the story with a slightly different headline can be found here.

*****

I dream of a brighter, less violent future for America.

I wish for better care for the mentally ill.

I hope for serious gun control in America.

Revisiting Old Expat Haunts: Returning to Zhuhai 珠海

Posted by expatlingo in China, expat life and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Zhuhai (with thanks to my mom who took this picture in 2005)

The last time my feet touched Zhuhai, China was in 2009. That day, I stepped onto a ferry bound for Hong Kong and then onto England with wet eyes and a gloomy heart.

Last Saturday I stepped back off that same ferry and re-entered Zhuhai to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with old friends. For someone who likes to play nostalgia mind-games, it was a special treat. Many things remain identical to the day we left:

  • A cluster of half-constructed, concrete luxury villa skeletons still stand half-completed and occupied by a few squatters.
  • Lover’s Road remains as well-kept and greenly lush as ever. During my morning run along the seaside, I could trick myself into believing we’d never left.
  • Motorcycle taxi drivers still smoke, chat and wait for fares at the corner of Jiu Ba Jie and Lian’An Lu.
  • The aggressively hard Chinese-style foot massage is still a slice of heaven.

But newness has also crept in:

  • Where once there was only sea, there is now a growing man-made island that will one day connect Zhuhai and Macau with Hong Kong by a 50 kilometer bridge.
  • Eerily, our former house has been converted into an office. The entrance area where my daughter learned to walk and put on shoes, now holds a reception desk and is lit by fluorescent tube lighting.
  • A new Carrefour meant that our Thanksgiving hosts could buy the turkeys and a wide selection of exotic cheese right in Zhuhai, rather than crossing the border to Macau or traveling to Guangzhou.
  • The foot massage ladies might still guess my nationality wrong (Russian? Really?) but now shamelessly ask for tips.

It was a delight to re-trace old steps and especially to drink wine with wonderful friends. But I didn’t feel homesick for Zhuhai anymore. Seeing the place “in-the-flesh,” I realized that I’ve moved on. And so has Zhuhai. It can no longer be the static place of my memory ready to be dredged up during a comforting day-dreamy reminiscence.

And so, arriving by ferry back in Hong Kong late on Sunday evening, I felt at peace. I am happy to call this vibrant, efficient, international Chinese city my home (for now…).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mormons and Communists: old men who have influenced my life

Posted by expatlingo in America, China and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Communist Party of China’s 18th Congress just wrapped and its new leaders have been anointed. As the New York Times says, “The line-up is stocked with conservatives and older officials.”

Gandering at their faces today, I kept having the nagging feeling that I’d seen this sort of older, all male, aggressively conservative photo-spread before.

And then it hit me: the Mormon Church’s leadership hierarchy.

I grew up in very Mormon Utah and, until the age of 9 or so, was raised Mormon. So, I spent formative years looking at church leadership photo-spreads like this:

Current leadership of the Mormon Church. (Photo source)

There is much in common between the two groups: The stiffly tidy haircuts. The conservative dark suits, white shirts and ties. The advanced age. The over-whelming maleness. The representation of a single ethnic group. Even the selection process for both groups is highly secretive and done behind closed doors.

Both groups also seem to have a thing for ridiculous over-sized show-chairs:

Then Vice President Xi Jinping in an oversized chair. (Photo source)

The Mormon Church’s First Presidency sitting in oversized chairs. (Photo source)

And both of these groups of old, “chosen” men (and their predecessors) have shaped my own life in small ways.

To the Mormons, I give credit for:

  • The small flash of deviance I feel when ordering a glass of wine or a cup of coffee when visiting Utah.
  • My verbal tick of still occasionally substituting “heck” for “hell.”
  • The song, “Pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked, and walked and walked….” that I sing to my daughter when she starts whining about being tired.

To the Communist Party of China, I give credit for:

  • The small flash of deviance I feel when looking at Facebook in Mainland China.
  • My love of simplified Chinese characters to the horror of many Hongkongers.
  • The regular flashbacks I have of China’s National Anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” which I heard played three times per day when I lived behind a secondary school in Zhuhai.

What about you? What groups of old, mono-ethnic men have shaped your life in surprising ways?

“Low Expectations:” Your Guide to Successful Relocation to China

Posted by expatlingo in China, expat life and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

People often wonder how I happily lived in Mainland China for 3.5 years. What about the pollution/censorship/unsafe food/spitting/high road casualties, they ask?

The key is strategically low(ered) expectations.

With my personally tried and tested three-step plan, you too can successfully relocate to China.

First, spend two months traveling around India as a cheap-living, grubby backpacker. An exotic, but difficult adventure in India will serve to positively color your impressions of China. For example, after India, I was very grateful for the small things that China has to offer, such as:

A fought for auto-rickshaw ride.

  • Taxi drivers who automatically use the meter without first requiring several minutes of haggling, bickering, and swearing (certain border crossings excepted).
  • Males who will not stare at you and shout, “Hey, madam want to have sex?” because you are wearing Capri pants that reveal your ankles.
  • Food that will not require you to spend the wee hours of the night vomiting on your hands and knees into a communal squat toilet.

(A hedging aside: I have heartily enjoyed my many travels to India for work and leisure. I appreciate the diverse culture, tasty variety of food, and rich and complex history of the Sub-Continent. Despite this, it can be a soul-crushingly hard place to be a young woman traveler on a budget. My subsequent business travel with proper contacts and hotels made later trips to India much more pleasant.)

Second, ensure that you are given the initial “look-see” tour of your new Chinese city by someone who has little grasp of life outside of China. I recommend a delightful, fluent English speaker named “Sailing Ko.” Highlights of his tour include:

Photo source: JinKou

  • A massive, concrete sporting facility featuring an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with pensioners and a giant room of tightly, packed ping-pong tables.
  • A “spa” dwarfed by a vaulted, marble foyer and filled with beautiful young women ready to provide company for the day/evening/night.
  • A grocery store with amazing international products such as tinned tuna, Green Giant canned corn, and Campbell’s oxtail soup.

After this tour, when some soon-to-be fellow expats invite you to a party filled with very drunk Brits singing offensive words to the historic American Negro Spiritual “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” you will be grateful to have found them because at least they know where you can buy cheese.

Third, hire a real estate broker who will only show you over-priced apartments with the following key features:

  • Tiny kitchen with a patina of ten years grease on every surface
  • Blue-tinted windows throughout
  • Gaudy Louis XIV-esque golden chandeliers
  • Non-stop, renovation-related jack-hammering in the apartment above

You will be all the more delighted when you are forced to use your own ingenuity to find an “acceptable” apartment that is both more pleasant and cheaper than anything the agent turned up. Magically, an apartment in a building with this elevator becomes “acceptable:”

After following these three steps, you will soon happily find yourself in China:

  • Laughing over the immigration-required physical exam, including a “streaming” chest x-ray in a room with a rat.
  • Running along the seashore despite the heavy, brown “haze” that can be smelled as well as seen.
  • Singing an off-key duet in front of 200 people at a company Christmas party.

And you will miss it all once you are gone.

(This post is my “love letter” to Zhuhai where I will be returning to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends this weekend. I can hardly believe it will be our 5th Thanksgiving spent in Zhuhai. Every word of this post is true.)

冰水人: The loud American wants ice

Posted by expatlingo in China and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One can tell from his business casual clothes and over-confident stride, that he’s an American. The hotel’s welcome banner explains his presence in China: a conference of international suppliers for some Chinese brand.

He enters the restaurant eager for breakfast, calls over a waiter and says the following:

“Two eggs over-easy, well done bacon, and a bing shui.”

“Bing shui” (冰水) or ice-cold water has become an important piece of his vocabulary in China where he can never seem to get any goddamn ice water. He gives his American-centric order so cockily and with such Mid-Western intonation that one wonders if he thinks he’s at a Denny’s diner in Ohio. Why he assumes the waiter knows “eggs over-easy” in English but not “ice water” remains unclear.

The waiter promptly returns with a glass of cold water. “Bing Shui Man” gives it a look and says in a gruff, loud, artificially slow way:

“Water with ice in it. I want ice in my water.”

The waiter quickly, and with utmost tact, brings him a glass of cold water with lots of ice. Since typical Chinese never drink cold ice water, which is considered highly unhealthy, one can almost read his thoughts as he sets down the condensation-coated glass in front of the loud American:

“It’s your funeral, buddy.”

Ten “Mainland Moments” in Hangzhou

Posted by expatlingo in China, travel and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunset over undeniably beautiful West Lake, Hangzhou.

My heart was happy to touch down in Mainland China after three and a half years away. My lungs recoiled. And my mind fully confirmed that Hong Kong is on another planet from “The Motherland.”

Hangzhou itself surpassed my expectations. West Lake and the surrounding gardens are truly gorgeous. Exactly what you imagine “romantic,” “exotic,” “foreign” China is like: tall golden-spired pagodas, green willow trees hanging over lotus-ringed ponds, pavilions used as informal stages by Chinese classical musicians, charming tea houses, and elaborately carved wooden pleasure boats.

Unbelievably, none of it was marred by garbage cans in the shape of penguins or speakers in the shape of mushrooms blaring tinny music.

The main draw-backs were the matching-capped tour groups whose leaders amplified their talks by microphone, and the non-stop, over-the-top attention my two children drew. My one-year-old son — so long as no one tried to pick him up — took to it like Miss America, waving to everyone. My five-year-old daughter adopted a duck-and-weave approach to avoid the many hands reaching to stroke her hair and clouds of camera phones seeking to take her picture.

Good and bad, here are ten things that marked our week in Hangzhou and made the Mainland feel temporarily “like home” again:

  1. Gawking at young women in hot pants with black nylons and half-boot/half-sandal-shoes and young men with big, coiffed hair. The fashions are like no other and a world apart from the understated black framed glasses and Converse sneakers that the youth of Hong Kong wear.
  2. The pleasure of reading simplified characters. Hey, look! That sign says they sell Hangzhou-produced, specialty products!
  3. Playing “stupid” as needed. Voice says: “Wo ting bu dong.” Internal dialogue says: “Yes I understand that you are asking what country I am from and if I like Hangzhou, but I have already had this conversation many, many times today and am pretending that I don’t understand. Though why you’d guess that I’m French is beyond me.”
  4. Opaque, brown air. A politically savvy meteorologist might charitably call it “haze”:
  5. Non-stop construction. Looking at the city, rather than West Lake, one can see a forest of cranes. As in every Chinese city.
  6. Non-stop honking and “catch-as-catch-can” style of driving. ”I drive a BMW so of course I can use the road shoulder to pass at-will” or “this one-way street is a trifling inconvenience to be ignored.”
  7. “Living out loud.” Tai chi is commonly practiced in public places, but the wide assortment of other public pursuits is astounding: swinging giant poles around within inches of a crowded walkway, ballroom dancing, group “jazz-style” dancing, and this flamboyant singing and dancing duo:
  8. Surprising English world choices. The glittery fashion clothing store called “Slavery” or the banner welcoming the “Mock Survey Consultants” to a local hotel.
  9. The Great Firewall of China. Sigh. At least I could access the New York Times for the first four days of the trip. Then it was gone. Of course I immediately sought to find out why: ah yes the story of Wen Jiabao’s family wealth.
  10. Knock-offs. SPR Coffee: the chain vaguely like Starbucks. The same dark green in the logo. And the same lighting pendants of any Starbucks circa 1998. With prices as high as the “real thing” and with the real thing now on almost every corner, I see the sun setting on the SPR empire.

“Lord of the Flies” in mid-air, or: “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em”

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The rainy, typhoon season causes havoc to the airplane schedules of southern China. This is a story from one such typhoon season. The informant, who happens to be married to me, vouches for its authenticity.

The China Southern Airlines evening flight bound for Zhuhai started easily enough with a business-as-usual safety demonstration and meal service. The flight was chock full of business people headed from the factories and migrant labor force of greater-Shanghai to the factories and migrant labor force of Guangdong Province.

As the plane made its way south, turbulence increased and fasten seatbelt signs flickered on. The plane circled Zhuhai Airport for some time before being re-directed to Guangzhou. Annoyed, but still reasonable, passengers drank an extra beer and dosed off dreaming of golf.

After circling Guangzhou the plane was okayed for return to Zhuhai. Rows of businessmen with dyed black hair sighed with relief and jumped up to relieve themselves before landing. By this point, turbulence had caused a few misses and the WC’s floor and lower walls were sticky and fragrant with urine.

Nearing the anticipated landing in Zhuhai, the weather kicked up again, causing more disgusting bathroom misses and (to the utter annoyance of all passengers) the plane being sent back to Guangzhou.

This is the point when the thin line between civilization and savagery broke down.

Seatbelt signs were ignored and toilets became shockingly unusable.

The “no smoking” rules were unilaterally voided by passengers and most of the plane lit-up as if on cue.

Flight attendants, powerless to stop the plane-wide anarchy, did their best to maintain a professional air in the face of complete mid-air mutiny.

Pretentious Property Developers

Posted by expatlingo in China, Hong Kong, Macau and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The magnetism of old(-ish) Hong Kong money and new Mainland China money has fueled the construction of pompous residential real estate developments across China’s Pearl River Delta. I’m sure many of the residents of these complexes are quite normal and don’t actually act as though they live on the sets of Dynasty or Dallas, but the promotional materials reek from the pretension of the tasteless developers.

For example, in Macau the new “One Grantai” (大潭山壹號), set near the casino-dominated Cotai Strip, prominently features the following pretentious (and yet strangely meaningless) quote on its website:

“A Majestic Kingdom with a token of luxury and superiority.”

In Hong Kong’s New Territories “Providence Bay” (天賦海灣) seeks to convince potential buyers of its relaxed, but exclusive, sea-side feeling with a series of photographs of white people on luxury yachts:

Sadly, while the development is on the Tolo Harbor, there is no marina at Providence Bay. But that doesn’t stop the grasping developers from describing their low-rise condo development as having the:

“Communal atmosphere of the coastal regions of southern France.”

Finally, the most pompous of them all, “The Beverly Hills“ (比華利山別墅) of Hong Kong, provides the following nauseating copyright:

“When it comes to choosing a perfect home, the rich and powerful never settle for less.

“The Beverly Hills is majestically situated on the most exclusive stretch of Tai Po coastline, a crown jewel shining on a crystal aquamarine sea. Nestled in an infinity of sky and sea, its noble bearing invites admiration from those who appreciate only the finest things in life.”

Such quotes are interspersed with photographs of faux royalty, including a bridal couple in a gilded carriage, mounted guards, and this chummy group of Oxbridge-esque, privileged youth:

For potential buyers with a greater interest in Eastern-style auspiciousness, “The Bev’s” property developers pull out a full-frontal Feng Shui assault:

“The exceptional location of The Beverly Hills endows it with superb Feng Shui. … Mountains beyond mountains and water appearing to float above water compose an enfolding Tai Chi pattern resembling a ‘treasure box’. .. The Beverly Hills is a residential gem commended by many leading Feng Shui masters.”

But don’t assume this is exclusively a “China-thing,” as most of these developers probably got their original ideas from the pretentious residential developments of America. Think Donald Trump or great swaths of Southern California. Even my own childhood neighborhood in desert-dry, “salt-of-the-earth” Utah was named “Somerset Farm” after the rolling green countryside of southwest England. Tacky property developers lurk the world-over, waiting for little local spikes in wealth to sell to.

Have a favorite bit of nauseating real estate copy? Please share.

(Sources for respective photographs and quotes: One Grantai, Providence Bay, and The Beverly Hills promotional websites.)