I Love China

WoAi enjoying a 99 Flake and a bit of shopping in the London sunshine.

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I’m only in London for a week and the weather has been fantastic - 32 degrees, blue skies and sunshine.  I haven’t felt the sun burning my skin like this since I was in Thailand in February. The only problem is, this kind of temperature is rare in the UK, so most people in England including my parents, don’t have air conditioning which makes the nights pretty hot and sticky.

WoAi left holding baby Caitlin at Bicester outlet shopping mall, Oxfordshire.

I have to say, coming back in this glorious weather makes me wonder why I am still living in Shanghai after 13 years away from my family. The air is clear and it’s nice and peaceful.  Listening to kids playing outside brings back memories. The sound of kids playing isn’t actually much different in China but the difference is that in China, the sound is usually drowned out by other sounds like construction, cars honking their horns and adults shouting in to mobile phones.

Tate (aged 4) with his younger sister Caitlin (8 months), photographed by their uncle WoAi.

Apart from the peace and quiet, hanging out with the family has been really nice. The kids are growing so quickly I feel I’m missing it all. And my parents are getting older and I’m not getting much quality time with them these days. But what can you do.

Caitlin models for her uncle WoAi.

I’ve tried my best to keep the shopping down to a minimum, although my bank called me on day two to say that I’d spent 1,000 pounds in two days and they wanted to check that the purchases were genuine. That’s another problem living away from home.  I only get a week or two a year to get everything I need, so I often overcompensate and buy more than I need. I still have 6 bottles of Molton Brown shower gel back in Shanghai from a few trips ago!

Altogether then, it’s been a great week. Just one more day to go before I head back to Shanghai. I know I’m going to feel down for a few days, missing London, but it never lasts. A few good nights out will sort that out!

I’m in the first class lounge at Pudong airport waiting to board for London. No I don’t travel first class but I do have access thanks to Priority Pass which my bank, ICBC gives me for being such an important customer. It’s a pretty big benefit as I get access to first class lounges in hundreds of airports all around the world.

By now the whole world (except maybe my American friend John!) knows Michael Jackson is no longer with us. A quiet drink last night with a few friends at Cuvee wine bar turned in to an all night Michael Jackson tribute as they played pretty much his entire back catalogue from the days of the Jackson Five to more recent hits. It was like taking a trip down memory lane. Every song triggers different memories for different people. Some songs I’d completely forgotten about.

Say what you like about his weirdness and his troubles, he was a true musical genius and made some amazing music that I’ve been enjoying (and will continue enjoying) my entire life.  His last album (Invincible) might have been a flop, but I’m guessing his new album is going to rival Thriller in terms of sales.

MJ, thank you for the music.

It’s been a pretty hard few weeks with the apartment move, the housewarming, throwing up in Jean Georges, visitors and the usual Shanghai partying. I’m exhausted.

Tuesday @ Glamour Bar, Park Hyatt and Bar Rouge (pictured)

Wednesday @ Velvet Lounge

Thursday @ Fat Olive, Laris (pictured) and Bar Rouge.

So tomorrow morning I’m off to London for some much needed fresh non-humid air, Wimbledon tennis on the TV all day and most importantly some quality time with my family who I miss a lot. Oh, and NO PARTYING which believe or not I am really looking forward to.

I read with interest in The Guardian that British bank RBS was the worst performing bank in the annual bankers survey of 1000 banks, losing 59 billion dollars last year. HSBC did relatively well, coming 6th with a profit of 9 billion dollars. What has this got to do with China I hear you ask.  Well, the number one most profitable bank was China’s Industrial and Commercial Bank (ICBC) which I happen to bank with. And what was second? China’s China Construction Bank. Actually with Bank Of China in 4th place, Spanish bank Santander is the only non-Chinese bank in the top 4.

Further proof that China is well on its way to world domination!

Chinese car manufacturer Geely has recently launched the Geely GE, which looks remarkably similar to the Rolls Royce Phantom which costs around 250,000 pounds. It’s been reported in various media like The Telegraph, but I have to take my hat off to Ride Lust who get WoAi’s prestigeous prize for most hilarious headline caption!

The funniest thing about the car though is that unlike the genuine Rolls Royce Phantom, the designers (I use the term loosely) of the Geely GE decided to put just one throne-like, centre-mounted seat in the rear, so it’s a bizarre 2 + 1 arrangement. Any miniscule incling I might have had for this car just went out the window. I like to ride in the back with at least 2 of my honeyz, with Tommy riding up front. I’m not going to buy a car where I have to sit back there alone.

If you’re interested in more, The Telegraph did a photo gallery from the Shanghai 2009 Auto Show of several Chinese knock off cars and a very amusing Bentley logo ripoff. Enjoy!

I actually think there’s a huge polarisation in service level in China. It can be extremely good or extremely bad. There’s very little middle ground. Last night, after work, I popped over to hypermarket Century Lianhua to pick up a DVD player to bring to my mum in London (the British players struggle to play the pirated DVDs!).

While I was there, I wanted to get some wine glasses too as I only have 5 at home. At my housewarming I had to use a combination of wine glasses, champagne flutes and ordinary tumblers. I managed to find some on the shelf that were almost identical to my existing wine glasses so I thought I would take 6 of them, but obviously I couldn’t just take them loose off the shelf, as they’d all break before I got home. I needed them to be boxed, so I went up to one of the many middle aged female Shanghainese staff and asked if they has some boxed glasses. Her reply surprised me a bit:

“Oh, we have a stock take tomorrow and we’ve already counted the glasses. Maybe you can come back two days later” she said, hoping that would be the end of it.

I could see that there were some boxed glasses high up on the top shelf, so I decided if she wasn’t willing to help me, I would try to get them myself.  Immediately the woman came over and said “you can’t take those, they’ve already been counted, look see there’s a slip of paper stuck to the boxes with a number on it”.

I wasn’t really that bothered about getting the glasses but their attitude really made me go in to arsehole battle mode.

“So let me get this clear” I started. “You’re telling me that if I try to buy something in this store, you’re going to try to prevent me from doing so? It’s inconvenient for you to sell them to me because you’ve already done the stock check HOURS before you close and instead you’d rather inconvenience ME by getting me to come back here AGAIN in two days time? If you can’t sell anything why are you even standing here, why don’t you just close the shop and go home instead of chatting with the other staff?”.

I think the staff started to sense that I wasn’t going to just walk away quietly, defeated. And perhaps deep down they also sensed they were perhaps not exactly on solid ground here. One of the few middle aged female staff (quite a few of them had gathered round by this time) said to another “maybe you’d better try and get them for him”.

So eventually I was handed one box of six glasses. There was a piece of paper on another one of the boxes with number written on it.  It said something like 18. All they had to do was subtract 6 from that number with a pen, cross out the 18 and write 12. And for THAT, they wanted me to come back two days later!

It just goes to prove once again that in China, you have to really put your foot down, challenge everything and everyone and not take no for an answer. Or you could just accept everything and inconvenience yourself so they don’t have to actually do any work. Take your pick. I know which choice I’m taking.

Apart from the housewarming photos, I’m aware I’ve yet to post pictures of my new apartment, quite simply because I haven’t taken the photos yet. But on a lazy, raining Sunday, I did manage to drag myself off the sofa for two minutes to take a few pictures out the window so you can see the view from my living room.

To the left, The Westin and Bund Centre, Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao and the International Finance Centre, Shanghai’s tallest building.

And to the right, a more older, traditional part of Shanghai, the famous Yu Gardens.

I was walking by the Bund in Shanghai one day when I spotted none other than New Jack City star and director, Mario Van Peebles walking along with his wife and kid, followed everywhere they went by a huge crowd of Chinese people. It was obvious to me (though perhaps not to him) that they had no idea who he was and were only following him because they were fascinated by this black man and his kid. I went up to say hi and asked if I could have a photo and he was happy to oblige. In return, I pointed him in the right direction for a cash point (ATM) machine. I think he was running low on cash.

Oh, I should perhaps mention this was in 1999, exactly ten years ago (I know Shopgirl is going to have a field day with my old glasses!). But even in 2009, if he were to return, he’d still get big stares, although it is slightly easier to find an ATM these days. That’s progress for you!

The ability for the Chinese to copy stuff is truly impressive. Everyone knows about the fake Rolex watches and the fake Gucci and LV handbags, but here are a couple of more interesting examples I have come across recently.

I’ve just ordered a pair of Wii controllers from Taobao. They cost a fortune in the UK and even here the genuine ones cost around 200 rmb, but I picked up an identical copy plus the Wii Nunchuck for about 140 rmb. I’ve tried them. They look identical but more importantly, they work perfectly!

Separated at birth!

Most people will be familiar with the ubiquitous WD40. It has hundreds of uses and probably every household in the UK will have a can lying around somewhere. It prevents rust (by displacing moisture, the WD stands for “Water Displacement”), eliminates squeaks on doors, loosens bolts that are screwed on too tight etc etc.  So I was amused to spot a Chinese version, AD50 at a friend’s apartment the other day. I am not sure what the AD stands for but the 50 clearly gives the user the perception that it’s a significant improvement on “40″.

Chilling out after dinner at WoAi’s mini house warming.

Exactly a week after moving to my new apartment I had a few friends over for a sort of soft opening house warming. By that I mean it wasn’t a full blown house warming, as I’m just not ready to entertain more than ten people at the moment (so apologies if you didn’t get invited, your turn will come!

WoAi’s Spanish tortilla, a simple to make snack with half a dozen or more eggs, onions and potatoes.

I made four 1.5 litre pitchers of Sangria using rum, sugar, oranges, limes and lemons, with a dash of orange juice and of course, red wine. It was going down VERY quickly and I had to make an extra few batches on the fly to satisfy the thirsty guests. It eventually ran out (no more rum) so we then moved on to red wine, white wine and sparkling Cava and Prosecco. In total we had 12 bottles of wine (including the wine in the Sangria) and 2 bottles of white rum, a few cans of beer for Dingle and a couple of glasses of whisky between 12 of us.

After a substantial amount of drinking, everyone got up for a bit of a boogie.

Baltic Ninja (aka Nick) shows us a few Night Fever moves.

Dingle and H working it.

After all that hi energy dancing, Dingle and H recharge their batteries.

It doesn’t take a mathematics PhD to work out that that was a lot of alcohol for an evening and I was suffering the next morning.  Foolishly I had planned a brunch appointment at the swanky Jean Georges restaurant at 1.30pm. I’m not the type to cancel an engagement once I have committed to it so I stumbled out of bed at around 12.30pm and made my way to Jean Georges. That was a big mistake. It’s a very posh establishment and I spent most of the time trying hard not to throw up, but I was fighting a losing battle and I eventually threw up in the wash room all over the floor and my jeans. I sheepishly slipped 100 rmb in to the toilet attendant’s hand when I left and gave her my profuse apologies for the mess. Brunch cost 500 rmb and I did not touch a single bit of the food. Never again!