Blog Break

I'll be on holiday in Shanghai from December 20-25, then Beijing from December 25-31, then back to Shanghai (for NYE) from December 31 - January 2, so I should have lots of fun and interesting stories and pictures to share when I get back. Happy holidays to all!

26 Dead Baby Pigs

It's been quite an exciting and eventful weekend - I was on 2 different boats, saw a wedding, heard a live jazz band, heard a live marching band, and saw 26 dead baby pigs (with heads on) paraded around a room.

Thursday night I went to a jazz boat cruise hosted by Saffron Cruises. The boat left the Aberdeen harbor about an hour late due to some customers not showing up, and even after we left we had to stop at the famously-overpriced tourist trap that is the Aberdeen Jumbo Floating Restaurant to pickup a few more customers. But once we got going all was well - the booze and food flowed freely, the weather wasn't too cold, and the live jazz band featuring Allen Youngblood was pretty good as well. We stopped at 2 different points during the cruise to steady the boat so the band could play, and the evening was also nice because it wasn't too crowded on the boat - there were probably about 15 customers in total. Here's a dark picture of Allen Youngblood and his band:

Friday I woke up late and met one of my most important vendors at the border crossing in China. He took me out to a nice lunch and then we went to his factory for a short tour. Afterwards he took us to a spa in Shenzhen (the website is all in Chinese but you can get the idea from the pics) that a friend of mine had recommended to me. I've been to 2 other similar type massage places in Shenzhen, but this was by far the best one (I will make a full post later on about spas in Shenzhen, but for now I'll make it short and sweet). I chose to have the aromatherapy massage, and was brought to a computer screen where I could view the available massage therapists - their picture, name, age, height, weight, and specialty (i.e. very strong, etc.). So I chose a massage therapist that seemed to have nice statistics, and I was not disappointed. I made it back to HK by about 9pm.

Friday night I went to an outdoor bar in Central for a birthday celebration - it was a nice, relaxing atmosphere, and unlike most bars in HK, there was plenty of space to move around (although we were sat down at a table), which I also appreciated. We also hit up a few more bars in Central before calling it a night.

Saturday afternoon I lounged around and did some shopping, and then Saturday night I went to the wedding of the son of one of my other most important vendors, which was held at a Chinese restuarant just a short 5 minute walk from my apartment. When I got into the room I had to sign my name on 2 big sheets of paper - my signature was the only one not in Chinese. Then we sat down and had some cocktails while the 10 or so mahjong games finished up. Eventually the bride and groom were introduced, a few speeches and toasts were made, and finally the food was served. The food service started with a procession of waiters, each holding a platter of a baby pig (with its head on display) and walking around the room to show everyone. My colleague said that the baby pig was a traditional wedding meal because it represents the virginity of the bride. Whatever the symbolism, the pig was delicious. This was then followed by numerous other courses - tofu, shrimp, noodles, shrimp balls, and then finally dessert (pastries and oranges). The event was over by about 11:30pm, at which time I went home and called it a night. This was definitely a fun experience, and was also my first traditional Chinese wedding.

Sunday morning I took the ferry from HK to Zhuhai, which is a Chinese city connected to Macau. The boat trip (in the first class cabin) was uneventful, except for the fact that on the TV in the front of the room, they showed a video of a monkey and bulldog (real lives ones) putting on some sort of show. It reminded me a bit of the movie Milo and Otis, except with a monkey and a bulldog instead of a cat and a pug. The monkey even lit off some fireworks! But really nothing about China (or going to China) ever surprises me anymore, I feel like I've seen all sort of weird and sketchy things, so I'm kind of immune now.

Anyways, in Zhuhai I attended the Zhuhai A1 Grand Prix, which was my first time at a motorsports event. It was quite entertaining, and VERY LOUD! There were lots of Chinese race fans there:

They had a few races on during the day, and before the main race of the day they had some lively performances:

And then they started the race:

Overall it was a fun day. After the race we caught a taxi back to the border crossing and got something to eat before our ferry left. I managed to use my Mandarin language skills a bit during ordering dinner, but eventually had to be helped by some other customers to clarify which kind of sauce I wanted for my rice.

On the ferry ride back to Zhuhai, the played the same monkey and bulldog movie!

This week: HK today, China tomorrow, HK Wednesday, fly to Shanghai on Thursday (for the start of my 2-week holiday to Shanghai and Beijing)!

David the Boss

As mostly everyone knows by now, I came to Hong Kong as a Logistics Manager, and 4 months later I became the boss of the office (General Manager). While I was the Logistics Manager, everyone (co-workers and vendors) treated me very nicely, always helping me with whatever was needed, whether it was translating Chinese into English, carrying my luggage during trips to China, making sure I was safe, and on and on - I kind of felt like they were babying me. Also the door was always held open for me so I could walk through first. I was kind of uncomfortable with all of this treatment, as I just wanted to be treated like everyone else - I didn't want to be treated in a special manner just because I was an expat.

Once I became the General Manager of the office, things changed. Now I was being treated even better than before - every decision that had to be made was my decision, and people made sure that they always held the door for me and let me walk through first, even if I insisted that they go first. When at a restaurant I was always asked for what my choice of food was, when before the food was just ordered and I ate whatever was there. I became increasingly aware that no matter how hard I tried to be treated just like everyone else, it was nearly impossible - everyone was treating me extremely well.

Now I'm not complaining about this - I'm just making a cultural observation here. In the USA you wouldn't catch me dead carrying my boss's briefcase (he didn't have one, but if he did I wouldn't hold it for him). Here in Hong Kong, where hierarchy is very important, it's very common for the subordinates to carry the boss's briefcase when traveling.

And now it's gotten to the point where I expect to go first in everything - first to walk through doors, first to get on elevators and escalators, first to start eating, and so on. And I now do these things anyways because they're expected from me (cuz I'm the boss), and I'm sick of trying to tell my co-workers to go first. So I've just accepted this position, even though I don't quite feel so comfortable with it.

I know I shouldn't be complaining about being treated well, but the problem is that now I expect it, so I may unwittingly do something that might be considered rude (i.e. walking in front of someone when in line, etc.), but it's only because it's how I've now been conditioned to act. Does this make sense to anyone or have I lost it?

Returning the Favor

At lunch with my colleagues a few days ago, I learned that it is a very common practice in Hong Kong for adults to give a certain percentage of their salary to their parents each month. Basically the idea is that the parents have taken care of the child for 18-22 years, and therefore after they are done with schooling and are earning a salary, it is then their responsibility to take care of their parents (financially) when possible. It's like paying them back for helping to raise them. The figure my colleagues gave me was that usually the money given to the parents is around 20% of their salary (paid on a monthly basis).

So for example, an employee who earns HK$20,000 per month (US$2,500 - this is an average HK salary in my industry) would probably give around HK$2,000 (US$250) each month to their parents. Not a bad deal for the parents, eh? Hong Kong doesn't have social security like in the USA, but they have something similar that pays people a bit less (relatively speaking) than what people in the USA get each month after retirement.

The interesting thing is that my co-worker said that if she forgets to give her parents money one month, her mom is not afraid of calling her and asking where the money is! So I guess some parents need this money. Then when I asked my co-worker (who has 2 teenage children) if she expected her children to give her a monthly allowance when they get older, she said "no". The reason for this is that basically this system is kind of an old, traditional thing and that people growing up in today's day and age would not do this sort of thing. I'll have to ask around to some of my other local HK friends and see what their views are on this.

I guess this is all part of the fact that family bonds here are much closer than in the western cultures (the group comes before the individual in asian societies). I think it's kind of nice that the children take care of the parents when they can. I know that in many peoples' families in the west, children also take on financial and other responsibilities for their parents, but usually this only happens when the parents are much older and cannot care for themselves anymore.

Seoul Train

I spent last weekend on a quick holiday to Seoul. One of my friends was interested in going there, so we got a group of 4 together and decided to go just a few weeks ago. The only thing I really wanted to do was see the DMZ (demilitarization zone) between the border of North and South Korea. For some reason I've always had a fascination with North Korea (and in general other countries on George W's "axis of evil").

The DMZ tour was pretty good - we got to see some of the famous things like the tunnel the North Koreans dug that was discovered by the South Koreans in 1978. We also went to an observatory where we could actually see into North Korea. Our tour guide was a South Korean woman and while she gave some background on the many things that North Korea uses as propoganda to oppress their people, she was giving us some South Korean propoganda as well. For instance, when asked why the tunnel was so small (in height) she said that the North Koreans were shorter than the South Koreans because they are malnourished. While that might very well be true, I highly doubt there have ever been any studies done on the height of North Koreans as compared with South Koreans. And on and on it went like that. I would have liked to have gone to Panmunjon, which is the actual place where South Korean and US military stand facing the North Koreans at the actually border, but unfortunately tours are only given during weekdays, and we were only there for Saturday and Sunday.

Other highlights of Seoul included some interesting palaces, and some really great food. The traditional South Korean dish is called kimchi, which is basically cabbage with some spices on it. And the drink of choice is called soju, which is similar to rice wine. We ate a lot of street food - enough to make Anthony Bourdain jealous.

We also went to a show called Nanta, which is where the actors use cooking to perform and make rhythms (in a similar way to Blue Man Group). We got tickets to the show a few hours before the performance started, and we were given front row seats. Part of the show involved choosing some audience members to help out on stage, and they decided to pick me. I got to eat some soup alongside another audience member, who was a Japanese woman. The basic idea was that the cooks had made the soup and wanted to know if it was good. The Japanese woman next to me kept saying , "Oishi desu, oishi desu" which is Japanese for "it's delicious, it's delicious". The whole show was based around throwing a wedding, and lucky for me I got to be the groom, so at the end of the show the large slide projector in the back of the stage showed a picture of me and my Japanese bride smiling. Supposedly they're going to email me a picture of this, which I hope they do because it was absolutely amazing to see my grinning face on the huge screen of this show. Good times.

We also spent a lot of time shopping, which isn't usually my thing, but I happened to have travelled with some people who have good fashion sense, so they helped me pick out some good things for me and for some gifts.

Overall we liked Seoul - friendly people, good food, pretty easy to get around and use the subway, and best of all they had numerous Dunkin' Donuts stores - quite a treat for me!

Learn English...the Japanese Way!

One of my favorite websites - Asian Offbeat - often has the most interesting and unique stories about weird stuff going on in Asia. I've seen these before on YouTube, but today they posted 2 wickedly hilarious Japanese videos that are actually used for teaching English. Are you havin' a laugh? Is he havin' a laugh?

Oh yeah, and I changed the name of my blog to something a bit more interesting.

The Office & Improv Everywhere

The funny thing about this whole Writers Guild of America strike thing is that it doesn't affect me in the least. The shows we get over here in HK are from previous seasons anyways, so we never get any new shows, whether they're on in the USA or not. That being said, my favorite improv group, Improv Everywhere, has taken it upon themselves to produce a couple of mockumentaries of the mockumentary that is The Office (my favorite TV show). Check it out.

On Cue

As if on cue, a few days after my post about Christmas in Hong Kong, Penelope Trunk writes about Christmas in the workplace and in society in general - she's gotta have pretty thick skin, as I've read the comments both on her blog and on her blog on Yahoo Finance, and most of them are brutal. Although, you have to think that if all those people are writing comments (good or bad), at least they're actually reading her column. It's kind of like the part of the Howard Stern movie where the TV executives are talking about why so many people listen to Howard Stern - mostly to hear what he will say next. So even though they may not like what's being said, they still want to know what's being said.

Chinese Weddings

So today one of our most important vendors walked into my office and handed me an invitation to his son's wedding (to be held in less than 2 weeks). The vendor doesn't speak a lick of English, and I've never even met his son, or anyone else in his family, but weddings are always fun, right? It's a traditional Chinese wedding, but I was only invited to the banquet (thank goodness!), and not to the other activities throughout the day (the morning game rituals, the pictures, the tea ceremony, or the actual wedding ceremony itself).

The actual invitation itself was very interesting - it was a gold envelope with a nice invitation inside (printed in both English and Chinese). The interesting part was the additional small red envelope that contained a HK$10 note. I asked my colleague why the invitation included money, and he said that in anticipation of the financial gift that I will be giving to the bridge and groom, it is tradition for them to give a little something back to me in appreciation of my gift. Awww, how thoughtful!

I also asked him (and another friend of mine who knows these sorts of things) what is an appropriate amount of money to give, and they both said that for my colleague it would be appropriate to give around HK$500, and for me it would be appropriate to give HK$1200. Why is more expected of me? Well because I'm the boss of this office, and because I get paid more, that means I'm expected to give more. The envelope I will present to the bride and groom must be red, and it's a good idea to give red currency notes (the HK$100 bill is red, and the HK1,000 bill is orangish/reddish). Red is considered to be good luck and a strong color than can drive away evil spirits.

I'm also told that there will be a mahjong game held before the wedding reception, but unfortunately I don't know how to play, so I will not be participating (if only I'd paid more attention when my mom was playing all those years!). So yeah, I'm sure I'll have an interesting post to display after the wedding ceremony.

In other news - my fellow Bostonian friend living in HK just got engaged - so I'll have another wedding to attend next year somewhere in Asia. Congrats Laura & Paul!

Movie Review: Lust, Caution

SPOILER ALERT! - I talk about the ending of this movie here - so turn away if you don't want to know what happens in the end.

Last night I finally saw a movie I'd been wanting to see for a while, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. Set in the era when the Japanese were occupying China in 1942, it basically tells the story of a group of Chinese revolutionary students who use one of their members to seduce a high-ranking official with the hopes of killing him.

This movie has had a lot of buzz in Hong Kong not only because of it's famous director Ang Lee (of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame), but mostly because of its graphic sex scenes. I would have to agree that the sex scenes in the movie were probably the most graphic sex scenes I've seen in any mainstream movie, ever. So it makes sense that this would be a bit controversial in Hong Kong (and Asia in general) because of the general sense of censorship in Hong Kong.

For example, in my apartment on my TV package I currently have 6 different HBO channels that I pay extra money for. However, I've seen movies on these channels that I've seen in the USA, and for some reason they dub over or take out completely swears and any potentially graphic violence or sex/nude scene. That's right people - I can safely say that I have not heard any (English) swears on any movie that I've watched on any of my 6 HBO channels since I arrived in HK nearly 7 months ago. Weird, eh?

But back to my short review of Lust, Caution - as my movie companion agreed, the movie was pretty good and entertaining and all, and the sex scenes were pretty good (if that's your sort of thing), but really nothing happened in the movie. Basically the whole time this group of students was trying to kill this guy, and in the end they fail. That's it - the whole 2.5 hours detailed the girl seducing this guy, and then she and her plotters all die at the end. Visually, they did a good job depicting the time period and it was kinda cool for me because the whole movie they spoke Mandarin and Shanghainese so I got to try and pick out some Mandarin words (there were English subtitles).

So yes I would recommend seeing this movie because it's controversial and visually stunning, but just don't expect a complicated plotline, because it just isn't there. Watching this movie is kind of like the opposite of watching the movie Wild Things for the first time.

(Side note for those not in HK - movie theater seats here in HK are like airline seats - you choose the ones you want when making the booking (online or in person). So no need to arrive early - your pre-chosen seats will be waiting for you!)