BelkBlog

Tech Update, Just Add Water, Xi’an

Three topics for tonight. First, a technology update. If you go to my first post this month, you will see that we are toting a greater than average number of electronics with us, and folks probably (if they are geeks like me) wonder whether it is worth it. Second, in my 'China Today' series ;- ), what I call the "Just Add Water" school of Urban Renewal. And third, more in the pure travelogue category, the Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an. I'm going to leave my discussion of Beijing and other comments on China until I am out of the country.

First a Tech Update:

 

This one's from the Imperial telephone office in Beijing.

If you look at the beginning of this blog, we are carrying a lot of stuff. Some has been useful, some not. In the good category:
---CDMA2000 Cell Phone. Works like a charm everywhere. China Unicom has great coverage, even on the great wall, and service is consistently high quality

---Cingular Blackberry: Except for when Blackberry went down last week, this has been an amazingly useful tool. Just for email, haven't made a call yet, as have been using the Unicom cell phone

---Vista: I haven't detailed my Vista nightmares for when I first purchased my machine. It was ugly, sort of like the dreams you have when you have a fever, when you can't get close to where you need to be, and everything you try and get past has more hurdles. Like a fever dream, it seems deep in the past, and I know I'm going to experience Vista nightmares for saying this…but it's a pretty good operating system….(no lightning from the sky yet).

----Mac: My wife's new MacBook continues to be wonderful, the kid's favorite machine for watching their movies

---Digital Cameras: Wonderful. We love Canon. Zoom Browser EX works great. We take the photos, move them to my Toshiba via build in SD slot (blazes). My wife then takes her Sandisk 2GB flash drive (23 bucks on amazon), transfers the photo's to the flash drive, and copies to her Mac

What's not so hot:
---SKYPE: Seems to be blocked a bunch of places I tried it, and when I did get through, delay was too much on the receiving side, so back to the cell phone

---Slingbox: Blocked---wanted to watch LOST…

---Cingular HSDPA Card: No way to connect yet. It gets a signal, then drops off without connecting. Not sure it is provisioned right from the San Diego side.

---iPods: No time to use them, although that's probably a generational thing. Of the American teens we see around China, a goodly percentage have iPods plugged into their ears. Kind of pathetic, as it seem like it would block the experience, but again, maybe a generational thing.

Just Add Water

I've been thinking about this one a lot for the last few weeks. The best analogy I've come up with will only be applicable to folks with kids or who are about my age. There are these gelatin capsules that have compressed sponges of dinosaurs and animals in them. We had them as kids, and they still exist today. You take the gelatin capsule, usually they are about an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide, and put them in warm water. The warm water melts the gelatin, and then the sponge inside absorbs the water and rapidly grows into a dinosaur or animal three of four inches long.

That's urban development in China. If one watches their child every day, you don't see growth. When grandparents see kids every few weeks or months, the comment effusively about how quickly the kid is growing up. Not that China is a kid in any way, but the analogy holds, probably more appropriate to the Just Add Water toy. Every city we have been to, from the boonies of Guilin, to Xi'an (eight million people, up from six in 2000), to Shanghai, to Beijing the scale of development is boggling. Not just buildings, but infrastructure, new highways, new powerplants (there isn't much sun to see, as I mentioned in a previous post), the scale of communications infrastructure, as evidenced by great coverage for both CDMA2000 and GSM/GPRS systems.

I took these shots out of our hotel room in Beijing:

Before:

 

I learned after a few days that the red sign, and the small building adjacent to the big one is actually a car wash, but that another story. This would be a typical Beijing block prior to 'redevelopment'.
The following two photos are of a "Hutong", which is traditional neighborhood, some staying static, others gentrifying (we saw hutongs with three car garages!):

 

 

During:

 

This is actually in the next block from the "before" / car wash photo. We have an ongoing joke. One of the symbols of longevity in China is the bird the Crane. We, there are a lot of brass cranes in the temples and palaces, but the only other Cranes one sees around Beijing are rapidly building world class buildings and infrastructure.

After:

 

Remember, all three of these shots are from the same window of my hotel room. Not quite art shots, but this is all in one view.

Another photo, here for your viewing picture first, is one we will be seeing ad infinitum in about a year, and my prediction is that none of us will get sick of it:

 

This is the main Olympic Stadium, still a work in process. The Bird's Nest design isn't quite captured by this photo, but it is an incredible piece of architecture.

Finally, the Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors. This was my second visit to the Terracotta Warriors. The first one was a one day, bang in, bang out, two hour tour and run. No time to see Xi'an and really no time to spend enough time with the clay dudes.

This time, we had our guide Michael, who was phenomenal, and time to see the city and the Warriors. Xi'an is another city that we've never heard about going through a tremendous amount of development. As I mentioned above, it's eight million people in the metro areas, and a bunch of universities (technical universities!!!), all with architectures and infrastructure that put the business buildings above to shame. The highways are new, there are new ring roads going in. Yet this city is one that that the Chinese have specified as a 'tourist city' as over 10 million tourists come a year, the anchor being the 2200 year old tome of Emperor Qin.

The city has the only complete city wall in China… a 14 Kilometer, 17 meter high, 15 meter wide affair:

 

That's the wall going off into the distance (and I just noticed the national bird, the Crane, in the background as well). This is another one that give you a sense of scale. Again, no sunlight, and this was a nice day, but I guess that's part of the deal.

 

Or (think Texas, without the attitude):

Then there are the Terracotta Warriors, the thousands of them, about an hour outside the city. I'm not going to write too much here, as it's better to Google Terracotta Warrior Xian, but they haunt your thoughts. They fill your mind. And it is just as boggling, more boggling, the second visit than the first…

 

 

 

 

 

And just so you dont' think I'm getting too maudlin here, a photo from the parking lot of the ½ star restaurant we ate at for lunch (it's ok mom, we all survived, but I would not have EVER wanted to see the kitchen). Think about this one for a while, until we are out of Beijing, and I can write about both Beijing and China…

 

An Old Lady in Guilin and How Folks Get Around

Guilin-Xian

As I said a few days ago, I have two topics to discuss. One, the Old Lady. Two, transportation.

First the old lady. In my last post, I showed some photos of the 'Li River Cruise'. Not exactly Heart of Darkness stuff (for anyone who has read Conrad or seen Apocalypse Now) but still a pretty impressive way to spend a day. Although I had a bunch of photos last time, gotta put one more here, as even my wife thought it was a good one, and she even admitted that I took it (long story, but somehow she believes that when we share the camera the good photos are hers, even the ones with me as a subject).

So, we're headed down the Li River:

This is a sunny day for the Li, as we've learned that seeing the sun is a relative term in alot of China, as even the English language approved papers talk about the beating the environment is taking.

So we land at a tourist town at end of the cruise, along with about a hundred other river boats. It's a cool town, dating back hundreds of years, lined by shop after shop which would not be out of place on Avenida Revolution in Tijuana (I'm from San Diego folks, I know of such things). Our tour guide then tells us about the "golf carts to the country". Allegedly these are electric golf carts that take you to the countryside, at considerable expense (think the rental cost of a Mercedes with Driver Newport Beach), because they don't want to pollute the countryside. It IS a golf cart of some sort, holding about ten folks but powered by a two-stroke engine, belching great clouds of smoke whenever the driver touches the accelerator. But off to the country we go.

Within about ten minutes, we are on dirt lanes, surrounded by rice paddies, small villages, and languishing water buffalos.

That's what a languishing water buffalo looks like. Soon we are on a country lane in a small village, and the guide asks us if we would like to 'see the old lady's house'. Now this area is clearly off the beaten path, but on a route populated by 'just off the boat tourists' like ourselves. So we say 'sure', my twelve year old shooting me dagger eyes.
We walk down a dirt path, swept clean, and hang a left into a doorway. Inside the doorway are seven old folks, four on one table, three on another, playing some type of indeterminate card game, with long, thin cards that look nothing like our playing cards. A small old Chinese woman (there's a surprise ;-) stands up and greets us with a big smile. Welcome to my home.

She then spends about 20 minutes giving us a tour of her home. Allegedly about a hundred years old, this house must be hundreds more. The floor, the roof, the adjoining houses, are ancient in its demeanor. The Old Lady, who we learn later is actually not that poor, as she owns a rice field and probably has income of 300 yuan a month (about $40 USD) plus the tips she gets from visits from the likes of us, warmheartedly tours us around her house. Again, spotlessly clean, it is like a time warp from another millennia. The floors are either some type of stone, or in some areas, packed dirt. The main room, where she is playing cards, has a high ceiling, like a barn. The room off to the right, has her bed, a small black and white TV, and a chair.

Heading back through the house, she shows us her backyard garden, and gives us two plastic bags with Grapefruit in them. This is sort of a ritual exchange, as now we can pay her for the fruit, and it not like we are giving her money for visiting her home. The rusty well pump, and decaying walls of her garden are in the back as well. So we walk back into her house, and she starts to explain all of the stuff we had passed through on the way to her back yard. She opens the door to the left…that's where the poultry is kept, and several healthy chickens look up at us:

She shows us the rice dryer, and the rice grinder, remember, she owns a small rice field.

This is the rice dryer, with some type of stone oven seen in the background. As she closes the door to the 'chicken room' barely seen, but spotted by my wife, is one of the more unexpected, but mind blowing things to see on a wall:

Or in close up (and it ain't Frank Sinatra, he was the other Chairman (showing my age here)):

Out of courtesy, I actually keep from shooting photos constantly, especially as we get to the front of the house, where the other folks continue to play their card game. But the Old Lady has one other mind blowing thing to show us. Off the main room of the house (the barn like entrance, dominated by the photo on the wall of her husband who died in 1995) is another doorway. She opens the door, and there is another spotless but somewhat barren room beyond the door. To the rear is a window, but to the right is a darkened area with what seemed like a raised piece of furniture covered by blankets. She got a big smile on her face and started undraping the blankets from the furniture, explaining proudly that the Coffin below the blankets was bought for her by her daughter. The clean lines of the bleached hardwood coffin in the room was clearly the prize possession in her house, and she was extremely proud that her daughter had provided her such a quality coffin for when she passed on. Her real regret, that she described to our guide, is that her son had moved to the city some times back, and had not been able to visit her in the village for over ten years.

More than her poverty, more than what we would perceive as her meager surroundings, more than her coffin in her house, it was clear, to anyone that spoke any language, that her regret was that she had not seen her son for ten years. The electric cart may have been a two-stroke engine, the village might be visited by others like us, but that twenty minutes with the old lady will be indelibly marked on my mind, my wife's and my children's.

My second topic: Transport

I'm not going to be as verbose, as I'll be running out of gas soon, but I've been trying to figure out a way to describe how people get around here. In the US, our cars are primarily a function of status and style, as opposed to any type of utilitarian functions. After ten days here, I think this holds true whether it is a work car/truck in the US, or something for personal use. However, in China, there is an amazing hierarchy of vehicles.

It starts with the bicycle. Ten years ago, my first trips to China, this bike was still dominant. Even in the secondary cities like Xian (a mere eight million people) or large towns like Guilin (600K), the bicycle is still there, but not what is was. Those on bikes are on bikes that are pure utility in form…no cool lightweight alloys, no 'technology' as we would have in the us. So it starts with the bike:

It goes from the bike like this, to the bike with some type of car on the rear, sort of like a 'pick up truck' bike:

This one above is actually doubling as a baby stroller if you look closely. Below is a more fully utilized version, by a fruit seller in the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an (another seven hundred year old story in itself):

From there, you move to the types of Rickshaws that would have been people powered a few generations ago (this one from Suzhou):

From there you would go to the motorcycles:

There are huge numbers of motorcycle variants, also with 'pickup truck' versions. This leads to what we would perceive as urban chaos, but the locals would see as daily life, but what I would term the 'dance of the future customers of orthopedic surgeons':

Which leads to this bizarre beast with the motor leading the way. I don't know what to call these things, but they are everywhere in the countryside and seem both timeless and indestructible:

I had a hard time getting a picture of one of these loch ness type creatures, as the speed differential between any car as we know it, and one of these things was vast. FLASH, we were past.

From there, we get to cars as we know it, a vast array of cars. All large, which surprises me, even in the small towns. In the cities, the size, distribution, and quantity of vehicles is more reminiscent of North America, than Europe. Both local and imported brands, as Buick seems to do better in China than the US. They are all over here, but in San Diego, a Buick would be as scarce as one of the Loch Ness vehicles.

The point is that a hundred years ago, horse drawn carriages dominated transport in the US and Europe. In China at the time, I would be that transport was dominated by People or Ox powered vehicles. In the middle of the twentieth century, at the time that the US was moving to our current car culture, China was becoming a bike culture. Now they have discovered motors. Motors of all types, from a motor on what looks like a bike (I skipped that one), to an array of moped and scooter type vehicles (skipped that one too), to the array of recognizable and strange stuff I've described above. The bike is still there, but it is a declining species. Bikes are recreation for those of us in North America, not something we would voluntarily go back to as primary transport. For the Chinese, it's the same process. If they can move faster, get places faster, get more done, be more productive by getting a motorized vehicle they can afford, they will do it, and do it by the millions and tens of millions.

As much as we in the western world might idealize photos like above, and believe that there is some type of 'loss' if people move on, I doubt the folks on the ground would feel the same way. Things move on, inexorably, and we all want to move faster. Whether that's a good thing or not is not for me to judge.

 

 

 

Guilin

Guilin , China

So we get up a 5am to Fly to Guilin. Painful on a business trip, more painful with three little kids. However the kids were great, actually got moving, even my almost twelve year old who is often immovable in the mornings.

The flight was out of the Shanghai domestic airport, clean and efficient. In case folks haven't noticed by now, I am a bit of stickler when it comes to travel. We get on the plane, a China Air Airbus, where my first anecdote cometh ;- )

We are in the middle of the plane, a row behind the exit seats. Four guys are in the row in front of us, late thirties, early forties, gold wedding rings on fingers, in the exit row. The sharply dresses flight attendant comes up and starts giving the guys the standard emergency exit row speech (" in the event of an emergency, are you wlliing to assist?, can you lift the 15 kilos of the door etc"). One guy, across the aisle starts giving his friends grief, the standard "you can't trust this guy, move him out" with lots of ensuing laughter. It's a scene I've been in myself, and a scene I've witnessed a lot. But this was in Chinese, and somehow we could understand every word. That's when I said to my wife, these are four guys going golfing, noticing the Callaway shirt on one, and the Footjoy jacket on another (did not have to be Sherlock Holmes on this one).

We pull back from the gate, and that's when the 20+ French tourists (unbathed and the reason the flight left late) started playing musical chairs. WHILE THE PLANE WAS TAXIING! The flight attendants were too polite to tell the stinky foriegners to stop, but it we were just incredulous as these people kept on moving from front to back of plane and back to front of plane, pushing past people in rows, lurching against seats, spreading their fragrance everywhere. As an aside, we actually have run into the group a few more times, their travel group is called "Arts en Vie" (art and life), and they go to the same tourist places as everyone else, at the same time as they are probably sneering at American "tourists". Sorry to write like this (actually I'm not), but when we land and the same people start trying to move back and forth past rows and rows of people including pushing my kids, that's when I draw the line. Get a grip people, and wait your turn. Chinese folks are not that great on waiting in line, but I have not seen them push children, and at least they shower.

So we get out in Guilin's modern, efficient airport, and my wife and I tried to match the golf clubs coming out to the appropriate Shanghai'ese gentleman that they belong too (yes, it was four Chinese guys on a guys golf trip). I did not even know there were golf courses here, but more on that later.

Leaving the airport, it's about a 45 minute drive to the hotel in Guilin. Guilin is a city of about 600,000, a two plus hour flight south from Shanghai. The contrast with Shanghai could not have been clearer in the five minutes it took to exit the airport. Immediately there were terraced rice paddies. Some with people in the middle, as it is planting season, and the rice was being planted as it had for hundreds or thousands of years. A few fields, obviously owned by the more affluent, had huge water buffalo helping out. No trucks, no tractors, nothing mechanized to be seen.

As we approached Guilin, it started to change back again. The highway itself was brand new (three years, the new infrastructure thing again). The outer areas were not as affluent, but still spotless, and obviously a huge improvement over twenty years ago. One of the differences that stood out was that the billboards and stores all had dramatically less English writing or 'accents' than the billboards and storefronts in Shanghai, indicating that this was a "Chinese City" as opposed to international gateway.

We get to downtown Guilin, a modern, tidy urban core, beautiful parklands, a modern European promenade along the Li River which cut the city in two. Our hotel is an aging Sheraton from the mid-80's, great location, clean, excellent service.

I wrote the stuff above a few days ago, but it's been a mad scramble since. Guilin is a 'must see', but power touring is exhausting! One thing to be careful of in Guilin is that Guilin either stands for city with great places to visit, or could mean "upsell" in Chinese. EVERY place you go, there is upselling. Our tourguide, who is great, does it reflexively…"oh, you do want to see this..it's extra". You ask for tea in a restaurant…they bring the special bag for 'extra'. The'll learn at some point that it's better to probably build the extra cost into stuff for foreigners, as it's all a great value, and the 'extras' get to be a bit of a pain.

I'm going to throw in some Guilin photos here for fun, and save my commentary for tomorrow, as it's late. I'll have two stories to tell, one on the segmentation of personal/business transportation, and 'the old lady'…

Guilin View in the old days…the haze is in all the old pictures, probably more today, lots of stuff in the air…

 

Going back to my post a few days ago…Guilin of the burgeoning golf trade:

 

Old China: Comerant fishing (this was a demo for tourists, but there was the real thing on the Li river, they band the birds necks to catch big fish (the birds can't swallow the fish, as their necks are banded), when the Bird "gives it up" to the fisherman, they get a smaller fish as a reward. The river was very clear, you could see the birds doing their thing at night 4-5 feet below the surface of the river:

Doubt this has changed much in the last few centuries:

Nor this:

Nor this:

But this has!!! Billboard on the banks of the Li River:

Even this would be a sign only in the last twenty years:

But this would be now!

An this, thousands of kids all out on the streets, strolling the pedestrian mall, a scene right out of a Euro pedestrian street (would be nice to have in the US, but all we've got are basically malls). Everybody well dressed, enthisiastic, head held high. Again, don't want to sound to rosy, more for another post, but the energy was easily sensed, even in a semi-backwater tourist town (albeit one with a bunch of universities) these kids were confident.

Enough for now!

 

 

 

Shanghai-Suzhou

How to sum up the last couple of days? First and foremost, gotta say the kids have been great. After our 'hard landing' 6000 miles from home (or should I say 10,000 kilometers), jetlagged, first time in Asia. I've always subscribed to what I call the "shark school of overcoming jet lag". It's sort of a hard core jet lag cure, as like with a shark, you gotta keep moving, and also like with a shark, if you stop moving you die (metaphorically speaking). So we've kept moving, made easier by the frenetic pace of China.

My first visit to China was about ten years ago, and I've been here 6-8 times in the last ten years. My last trip to Shanghai was three years ago. All on business, I've basically seen nothing of the country but airports, hotels, and meeting rooms. What little tourism I've done here was of the fly by variety. I'm not going to bore anyone with descriptions of the cool temples, pagodas, museums, etc, but I will be putting in some photos along the way. What I'm going to try and capture is just what is going on here.

When I was in Shanghai in the late 90's, it was said that a huge percentage of the world's heavy lift cranes were in China at the time, with Shanghai being the main culprit. Three years ago, most of the 'new area', Pudong, was mainly complete, and I stayed in the 88 story high Hyatt hotel, which looks like a cross between the Empire State Building in New York and something out of a postmodern Ghostbuster's movie.

That aside, what is remarkable to me is that somewhere between my last business visit here, and my family trip this week, Shanghai has gone from Emerging to Emerged. I'm going to have a bunch to say about this (there's a surprise ;-), but first some photo Support…

Shanghai Before:

Shanghai After:

 

Shanghai Before(actually Suzhou for this pix, but let's not quibble) :

Shanghai After:

China Before:

China After (my wife took this one):

Now the next photo, you gotta think about this photo for a while…think it through. This ain't our parent's China!

Or this one:

And before getting back to commentary, I just had to add this one:

I asked my two girls to compare London and Shanghai. London was pulled out of the blue, as I wanted them to compare Shanghai to another city. Some choice quotes: "Shanghai is newer", "Shanghai has much more modern buildings", "London's buildings are so small". To them, Shanghai is just another major city, it's not part of the 'emerging world'. I know I was staying in the 'good part of town', but in three days here it all feels more like a European Capital than China. I know there are terrible parts of town, but hey, there are terrible parts of town in LA, or London. I know that they are probably reading my posts (even before I post them), and that our conversations in our Van are probably taped, but hey, I doubt the tens of thousands of people we have seen or driven past in the last three days really care. They are prospering, they have money, and they can skip the rice dish at their meals.

A couple of other data points. The newspapers, although they are the English language papers and probably get cut more slack, have critical articles. The last two days have talked about the terrible shape of China's major rivers. There have been numerous articles on a crackdown on pirated DVD's, and a headline article on how an HIV drug developed in China has promise, touting the Patent protection that the company developing the drug has obtained globally. I've been saying for years that the minute that Chinese Companies IPR (intellectual property) gets to 50.1% of a given product area, the Chinese will move from knockoff's to being the staunchest global defender of Intellectual Property Rights! Another interesting point here is that the knockoff DVD's and watches are now shunted off to the alleyways, and I think they will be gone completely at some point. Interestingly, the scale of high-end brands in Shanghai is vast. Basically, for the folks who have moved up the economic scale, buying a 'knockoff' or copy doesn't cut it anymore, they want the 'real thing', even with the vast margins made by the 'brands'.

Tourism. Let me start this one with a Hong Kong example. When I went to Hong Kong for the first time in the mid-90's, almost all the tourists were foreigners. In the last few years, when I would do my harborside runs on the Hong Kong Waterfront, the vast majority of tourists snapping photo's of the harbor were Chinese. In Shanghai,t he degree of Chinese tourism of the Chinese New York City is vast. Mass tourism by definition implies a great deal of disposable income, and the hordes of tourists moving about Shanghai on their Chinese made buses or Chinese made vans or cars are a testament to that change.

Breakfast. This might sound like something off topic, but bear with me. Breakfast in an Asian business hotel was always the most international meal. Butter from Switzerland, yogurt from France, Cheese from Holland, Jam from France, Oranges from the US etc. It was the U.N. at a meal. Now, it's all Chinese. The butter is Chinese, as is the yogurt, jam, etc.

Brands: Take this to the next level. The major global brands are still 'aspirational', as described above. However, I think we are only starting to see the beginning of Chinese brands that will not only dominate their local market, but ultimately globalize. There is a brand (don't remember the name, there were a lot of Chinese characters ) that seems to be a cross between Nike and Reebok. Beautiful stores, looks like high end merchandise. Along Nanjing road, as pedestrian shopping street that is right out of many European city cores, there are bunches of local brand stores, not selling knock off's, not selling 'cheap', but high end branding, high end merchandising. When you start to combine the cost structure of Chinese companies, plus a domestic market that will scale rapidly, I think this dynamic, like a lot of other ones at work in China, is relatively unstoppable. Probably not this decade, but after the Olympics, after 2010, it's inevitable.

Suzhou: We did a day trip to the City of Suzhou, about two hours out of Shanghai. I had never heard of it, but it is a city of over six million people! Great pagoda's, temples, gardens. A silk factory that was actually pretty cool. If anybody out here has done a winery tour, a silk factory tour is sort of like a winery tour with worms. The point of Suzhou in relation to the comments above is that thy dynamic was identical. Not an "international city" like Shanghai, but the Armani store was going in, the City's infrastructure was brand new and functional, the tourist infrastructure was world class. What we saw happening in Shanghai is not an anomaly.

I could go on here, and I will another day. Again, I all is not perfect her, to say the least, as this country still has a lot of issues, and still has Mao on most of their currency. But the fact is the transformation of Shanghai is one of the more boggling things I've seen in my life. This is a happening place, and if it means that folks on the edges of the bell curve can't say or do certain things, it also means that a vast number of folks between those edges have a chance to have the type of life that their parents or grandparents couldn't even conceive of.

We're off to Guilin tomorrow, and I think Guilin will show us a different side of China, but we'll have to wait and see!

 

 

Landing in Chunking

So, we took off out of SFO right on time. I had my usual trepidation about flying United that only frequent United flyers understand. However, the person who checked us in at SFO was wonderful, the first flight attendant we spoke with told us about her travels through China and Asia in the early '70's (a much different experience than we will be having), the flight was on time, and the airplane clean. That being said, there was ONE member of the flight crew that was an example of the species known as Attendicus Horribilus Unitedus (an "AHU" to condense to a three-letter acronym).

There is a reason that humans are NOT allowed to cry "fire" in a crowded theater. We are not too far out of the caves, and we are a social species. We have the ability to infect one another with happiness (a comedy show), fear (a scary movie), or as the AHU's of the world have perfected, how to make 300+ people extremely tense. In my view, the AHU is the worst type of person in ANY service industry I've ever experienced, as they have the ability to infect an entire airplane and make everyone miserable. On this flight however, it was a wonderful flight crew, and I actually think it made the AHU upset (stretched plastic surgery skin and all) that she could not ruin everyone's flight. Sometimes I think that United should just herd all the AHU's together and make them fly Southwest Airlines for a week. Seeing that you can have completely full, fast turn flights WITHOUT making it obvious that you hate your customers (an AHU requirement, and a behavioral trait that Southwest would not allow in an employee), would probably cause many of the AHU's to have an aneurism and/or hopefully find a new career.

So, the flight was a bit late due to massive headwinds. I thought we were flying to Shanghai, but it was only on arrival that I learned that we landed in the city of Chunking by accident. Two of my kids woke from a deep sleep to have the continental breakfast before landing. So we land in what we thought was Shanghai's amazing huge airport (but was really Chunking). We are on the taxiway to the gate when Daughter Number Three suddenly, without warning, does the full "chunking" all over her clothes. It was apparent that the strawberries did not agree with her. The flight crew was great helping my wife get the little one cleaned up (thankfully the AHU was towards the rear of the plan, probably pulling the wings off a fly), and we got off the plane.

Next stop is getting through health quarantine, no problem, because everyone is jetlagged, but healthy. We're in line for customs next, very efficient, almost Singapore-like, when Daughter Number One suddenly starts saying that the back of her head hurts, and starts looking ghostly pale. Great. So, I'm handing our passports to the customs agent, my wife and three daughters are with me, and suddenly, oldest daughter goes "chunking" all over the front of the Customs booth. YUCK! Somehow, they let us through, which was nice of them, 'cuz it really must have been the strawberries. Or maybe my genetics, as I remember getting nauseous when jetlagged as a kid as well.

So we drive into the city from the Airport, no problem, driving past the Shanghai skyline with ever more examples of amazing architecture. In a strange coincidence, I took a picture several years ago, during one of my last trips to Shanghai of what I thought was just an amazing summary of the types of changes that China is undergoing. The photo was of a billboard of a Johnny Walker/BMW Golf Tournament. You gotta think through the ramifications of a golf tournament in China, let alone a Golf tournament sponsored by a luxury car company. It's a story I've told to tons of folks over the years. And along the way was one hotel with lots of Courtesy BMW's and signs for the BMW Golf Open 2007! Just like my photo from years ago. I guess it is somewhat less incongruous now than several years ago, as one drives down Shanghai streets past stores from a litany of global luxury brands (Hermes, Jaguar, Rolex, Ferragamo, Cartier). In the ten years I have been coming to China the transition has been tremendously fast, and if the energy in Shanghai is any leading indicator, seems to have no signs of abating.

 

Goin’ Travelling 1983 vs 2007

I'm in a SFO airport hotel with my wife and kids, the night before embarking on "Leg 1" of our 'round the world' journey. So, after the "beta" posts below, I finally get to write my first "real" blog post. And I've been thinking a lot about it.

This is the third time in my life I've done a significant trip. The first was with my folks and sister in 1966, when I was three going on four years old, an eight week to Europe adventure. I remember very little of it, castles in Portugal, getting upset when my folks would not buy me a sword after the bullfight in Madrid. I've always been a bit upset since that my folks wasted a trip like that on me when I was so young. Gives me more than a hint of what my four year old daughter will be experiencing…

The second trip was in 1983, after graduating from UCSD. Eight weeks with a buddy, an amazing time, at that point, truly a trip of a lifetime. Touring, carousing, drinking, all on less than $40 bucks a day for food , lodging and entertainment!!! Even that trip is a bit different with perspective. I was just out of school, 20 years old, and my parents let me go off solo. Now that my oldest daughter is almost twelve, the concept of letting somebody under thirty go off on their own for eight weeks seems inconceivable!

Jeff's Europe Trip 1983: No cell phones, no computers, no affordable phone calls. "Connectivity" as we now know it did not exist. It was basically me, a duffel bag (no wheels), a point and shoot 35MM camera, and a few rolls of film. I think the only other 'electrical device' that I had with me was a Norelco electric razor!!! I had a personal "blog", called a diary. The only time in my live I'd ever kept a diary, I probably kept notes for about half the trip and haven't seen it since.

Skip twenty-four years forward to the trip that my wife, three daughters, and I are leaving for tomorrow. The entire trip is infused with technology. For me, it's been a lot of fun, frustration, and hurling abusive language at my computer to get ready for the trip. Being an exec at a Fortune 500, you get accustomed to having an IT department sort everything out. However, for my trip, I wanted to go "solo"---and embarked on an path that had me hopefully in a miniscule way catch up to all the stuff that the teens and twenty somethings have been doing on line for years!

So, the Tech Side of Jeff's trip 2007 (i.e. the Belk's tech arsenal):

• Purchase of Toshiba U205 Laptop---Great Machine. Has Vista Home Premium on it. I'm going to be charitable at this point, and NOT relay what it's like to be at the edge of the Vista upgrade cycle
• Bought a black MacBook for my wife. Like our other home Macs, this has been a pleasure, and has kept my wife (nicely of course) snickering and "I told you so'ing" as I've been fighting with having to upgrade my home wireless network because Vista would not support older Linksys routers, or hours with Toshiba tech support because Vista would lose the Toshiba's DVD drive…oops I started…enough of that for now
• Canon S3IS Digital Camera (prosumer, just below their SLR's) great camera
• Canon S600 (pocket camera for me)
• Canon S500 (for my daughters)
• Canon Elura compact DV camera (see a brand preference trend here?)
• Two Unlocked Cell Phones (buying prepaid SIM's overseas is about 1/10^th the cost of roaming charges
• One Blackberry (3G with QC chip) on Cingular's International Plan (great deal $69.95 a month for int'l Blackberry service)
• Cingular HSDPA Card (with QC Chip of course), on Cingular's $139/month international plan…Hopefully not too painful, although some of the roaming costs look, shall we say "consumer challenged", especially since I am paying the freight and not my employer.
• One Wireless Enabled PSP with lots of games and movies (for middle daughter)
• Three iPods (30gig iPod (don't know which gen), 6GB iPod Mini, 4GB iPod Nano
• Assorted headphones, adaptors, extra battery for Toshiba, AV cables, USB cables
• Bag of extra SD cards (1GB high speed), two 2GB jump drives for backups
• Then there is the other side of connectivity---the tools of the trip:
  • Family Website –my wife is working that one
  • Blog---this, my first blog
  • Skype in and Skype out accounts
  • Yahoo messenger with Voice
  • Slingbox drivers to run our Slingbox from around the world
  • Microsoft Student with Encarta for the kids

And my wife is going through the same transition…learning iWeb, learning Squarespace. Not pretty for her either, but her use of language is more circumspect than mine.

So that's all for now. Hopefully this stuff all works, hopefully I don't bounce my computer and make all my tribulations for naught. Hopefully no bad guys decide to feast on our luggage or electronics while we are in hotels (more worried about Europe than Asia). Hopefully my wife, kids, and I will still like one another after months in hotel rooms, and almost two months near the equator nearing summer. Hopefully United Airlines behaves (since I've been 1K or premier exec since 1994 this is more than an idle fear). Hopefully everybody stays healthy. To quote our recently departed Kurt Vonnegut…so it goes…