Nice try, New Garden Hotel. Nice try.

A precursor to this blog:

 I have been living in a hotel since I got here. I was going to have an apartment, but apparently getting a short-term (less than 4-month) apartment is almost impossible. At first I was a bit disappointed, but actually it works out pretty well. I don’t have to clean. I get clean towels daily. Oh, and free breakfast. Plus, I don’t spend much time in my room, anyway, so it’s nbd. Usually.

新怨宾馆 - New Garden Hotel

Present day:

 Living at a hotel does occasionally present me a few challenges…or you could say, forces me to be more creative. For example, laundry. The hotel has a laundry service. However, it is so expensive that I might as well just buy new clothes every week. Think I’m kidding? Think again. The laundry is priced per item, and socks and underwear both cost 10rmb per pair. I can buy a new pair of socks at the store for 5rmb (or less if I wanted a really cheap pair of socks). If I were to wash, say, a week’s worth of clothes here, it would cost me…wait for calculation…365rmb. To put that in perspective, that is over twice the amount I pay for dinner for a week. Needless to say, I will not be using the hotel laundry service. And while washing clothes by hand may be an authentic old-China experience, the experience gets old really fast. So what's left? Laundromat! Unfortunately, China doesn’t believe in coin laundry. Most laundry places are actually dry cleaners, and just as expensive. But after extensive hunting, I found a place that washes bulk laundry for a not-as-exorbitant price. Bonus: English-speaking staff.

Fancy-lobby ≠ good service

So tonight I call “Laundry Express” to find out when they can pick up my clothing. Yes, they pick-up/deliver. They tell me to leave my laundry with the hotel concierge, and say that they will pick it up tomorrow morning. Great. Now here’s where it gets fun. I go downstairs (bags of laundry in-hand) to talk to the women at the front desk. I greet her with a friendly “您好!”. Without looking up, she responds (in a sassy tone of voice), “你有事吗？” which, because of her baditude, I will translate as “do you have a problem??” I attempt to explain to her my situation, and why I’m holding bags of dirty clothes. In the middle of my explanation, she cuts me off and calls over one of the cleaning ladies who precedes to give me a form to fill out for the hotel laundry service. I reiterate that I'm not washing my clothes with the hotel, but with an outside laundry service. All I need them to do is hold the clothes until tomorrow. She laughs at me and says that they don’t do that, and that I’ll have to take my clothes to the laundry place myself. Confused, I return to my room.

I get back and call Laundry Express to “express” my quandary. The woman again reassures me that any hotel in Shanghai will hold laundry for pickup, and offers to call the hotel herself. She calls me back shortly – green light. I haul my laundry back down the stairs, but before I can get to the front desk, I am intercepted by the cleaning lady again. She starts interrogating me, and all I say is that the women from Laundry Express just called and got the okay from the front desk. She stalls me for a few more minutes before two butlers come over and explain that I’m actually right and can indeed do what I requested. They take my clothing and stash it somewhere. Mission accomplished. Yay! Before leaving to go upstairs, however, I asked if they had understood what I meant the first time. A legitimate question…my Mandarin is still a work in progress. The answer I got confirmed my suspicions. “It’s fine now.” I think I can safely say that the problem wasn’t a miscommunication. They just wanted my money. Sorry, New Garden Hotel, but you’re not taking advantage of this laowai today.


 P.S. Did I mention how badly I wanted to buy the 350rmb small washer/dryer combo I saw last week at Carrefour?

Work

Work is going really well. The last week has been rather slow, but on the bright side, I haven’t been overworked! My co-workers are great – friendly, cheerful, and understanding. Interesting points about the office atmosphere:

                -Speech level. Shouting is completely acceptable. No need to get up and go over to someone else’s desk if you can just shout from where you are. While most of the time the overall noise level is moderate, occasionally there are large bouts of coinciding elevated speech levels leading to what sounds like a small riot.

                -Efficiency. It seems to me that this is not particularly important. I could be wrong on this, but it’s my general impression. Work technically starts at 9am, but employees can often be seen wandering in or relaxing/chatting until 9:30 or later. After lunch is the same story.

                -Attire. Dress here is very casual, and I’m not complaining. Jeans and a sweater – completely acceptable. Additionally, it is very common for Chinese people to wear the same outfits for multiple days in a row. Let’s be honest…despite our opposing cultural programming, much of the clothing we wear doesn't need to be washed after one use. Why should it matter if those clothes are worn the next day? That being said, I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with wearing the same shirt and slacks for 4+ days.

                -Food. I’ve been here almost three weeks, and I’m still trying new foods almost daily for lunch. Most of them are vegetables that don’t exist back home. No point in looking up the English, either, since “asparagus lettuce” means nothing to me. We all eat together at the office cafeteria – it’s a great time to chat/work on my Mandarin. Did I mention that we get an hour and a half for lunch? This actually means an hour for badminton and half an hour for lunch. Here's what a typical meal looks like.

Bottom row: dumplings (with pork and cabbage), Xiangsu duck and baiyejie (it's made out of beans, that's all I know), tofu with peas, tomato and egg.

Top row: soup with white carrot, vinegar (for the dumplings), cabbage, beef and potatoes in some sort of curry.

7 second version: Enjoying work, making friends, and still eating weird new foods.
 

Street Food and Matthew 25:40

(Tuesday, February 7, 2012)

Street food is great. Picture this. A little stand with a grill and a tent over it in case of rain. A table covered in skewers of assorted meats and vegetables. Everything from cauliflower to squid to chicken hearts. And then of course a bunch of things which I can only chance a guess about what they could possibly be. Choose the skewers you want, and they grill them for you. La jiao? (Hot pepper?) Yes please. A delicious (not to mention cheap) way to eat on the run.

Lots of things here can be bought on the street. I decided to buy some apples from a street vendor a few days ago…I probably paid way too much. I bargained a little, but not very well. It did make me feel better, though, when I saw apples in the grocery store for twice as much. Speaking of bargaining, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I know that if I don’t bargain, I’m probably getting ripped off (especially as a laowai). Yet at the same time, I’m a little hesitant to be as aggressive as I “should” be. These people are poor and often uneducated. They struggle to make a living, working long days. If I haggle with them so that I can save 2RMB that I don’t really need, what kind of a statement am I making? That my wants are more important than their most basic needs? Frugality meets morality. What does it mean to be responsible with my money while still being generous and loving the poor and needy? For example, tonight I bought a sweet Beijing Olympics mug (actually an answer to prayer – I really needed a mug) and paid 12RMB ($2) for it. If I had tried harder, I probably could have gotten it for 9. But 3RMB means three bowls of rice. And for all I know, the man I met on the street has a wife and child. That’s dinner.

 

Lord, teach me to have compassion.

Always Ask

(Sunday, February 5, 2012)

I learned something important yesterday. When in doubt, always ask. Now this might not work 100% of the time, but it’s definitely better than not asking.  You see it all started with a leisurely Saturday afternoon walk in People’s Square. I was taking photos (as usual), when a group of close-to-my-age Chinese students approached me. They asked me to take their picture. But of course! We got to talking afterwards (probably because they were fascinated by my blue eyes) and before I knew it, we were on our way to a tea house that they had invited me to. 

Now here’s where my bad judgment comes into play. Maybe it was the overload of 5 different people talking to me simultaneously in Chinese and English. Maybe it was me trying not to get hit by bikes/cars/buses/rickshaws as we crossed the street. At any rate, I didn’t think to ask. (Yes – there’s the key word).  You’re probably dying to know at this point what I should have been asking. I’ll tell you. The price of said tea house event. I must have assumed that it wouldn’t be too bad, and (according to Chinese custom) they would be planning to pay for me since they invited me out. We get to the tea house, and begin this ornate tea ceremony. We were briefly shown a sort of “menu” with some prices listed on it for various things. It didn’t seem exorbitant, but not something I would do on any regular basis. We sipped tea, talked, and laughed for over an hour, at which point things calmed down a bit. If anyone wanted, they could buy a container of tea to take with them. I wasn’t especially interested, knowing I could likely buy great tea elsewhere, at a better value. A few members of our group chose containers they wanted, and a couple minutes later we were brought the bill. After seeing the menu, and knowing how many pots of tea were made, I’m expecting to pay maybe 100RMB-150RMB (about $16-$24). Pricey, but worth the experience. 

I was wrong. My jaw must have hit the floor when one of the members of our group told me we were splitting the bill evenly (with their purchases included) and I owe 660RMB. At this point, I’m hoping this is some kind of joke. For a minute I think I might even be getting scammed by these people. But no, they start dishing out their share too. I have a grand total of 200RMB in my wallet, enough to easily buy dinner for 4 nights. Not enough for tea. I have no choice, I guess I’ll have to use my ATM card and draw enough cash to cover this unexpected expense. We run downstairs to the ATM, where my card decides not to work. Another ATM machine and still nothing. 

We return to the room where everyone is waiting to go, and embarrassed, I have to explain that I don’t have enough cash and my ATM card refuses to work. Fortunately, they all pitch in and cover it (after I fork out the 200 bucks I had in my wallet). We get to the metro station and say our goodbyes and take some pictures together. They must have had some deep pockets, because this whole thing was no big deal to them. $100 for a tin of tea? Sure, why not? At the end of the day, though, I had a good time and have now experienced a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. 

Always ask.