I Love China

I like to play pool from time to time, so the other night I was enjoying a few frames with a friend but was distracted by the guy on the next table. He had a Bluetooth earpiece attached to his left ear while playing pool with an attractive  young lady. I’m wondering if someone can help me out here because I am at a bit of a loss to understand why anyone would do that. Surely if the phone rings you can either answer the phone, or if you really want to keep playing, you could put on the earpiece when a call comes in and continue playing (although it would be a bit weird in my opinion).

I should add that in the 3 hours I was there, he didn’t receive a single phone call! Are those things so ergonomic that you hardly know you’re wearing them? Are there people in England also do this? Ladies do you find this makes a man more attractive?

The longer I live in China the more I am thankful my parents made the decision all those years ago to move to England. I hear many stories of horrific experiences Chinese friends have when trying to apply for visas to travel abroad.

In the last month I’ve heard of two completely independent stories relating the the Canadian visa centre in Shanghai that I found shocking.

My friend is Canadian but his wife is Chinese and they have a young child who was born here. The list of complaints is quite long and started with the usual ones, such as being incorrectly informed of what documents needed to be presented, resulting in wasted trips back and forth. Fine if you are unemployed, more problematic if like most people you actually work.

When my friend’s wife returned to the visa office with the correct documents, they had to wait for 2 hours with the small child who understandably became restless and started crying as babies are known to do from time to time. The response to this by one of the Chinese visa centre staff was to mutter “I wish I could just slap that baby across the mouth to shut him up”!

Another friend also applied in July for a visa. She has family / friends there so the apllication was classed as “family visit”. For this the Canadian visa office demanded the following:

1. An invitation letter stating the purpose and duration of the visit (quite reasonable).
2. A list showing the number of people in inviter’s household (erm, okay).
3. A copy of the inviter’s citizenship or immigration status document (e.g. Permanent Resident Card – please copy both sides, Study Permit, Work Permit, etc.)
4. Proof of inviter’s income and financial situation in the form of independent, third-party documentation from a Canadian source which is reliable or easily verifiable (seriously??).

When my friend called the visa hotline, she was also told she needed the inviter to visit the visa office in Shanghai. Yes, in addition to providing the items listed above, they were suggesting the inviter fly from Canada to Shanghai to visit the visa office in person! My friend pointed out that this could not possibly be correct but the girl on the phone insisted this was a requirement. When my friend went to the visa office in person, she was told this was (of course) untrue and there was no need for the friend in Canada to fly over.

Throughout the whole process the visa centre staff seemed unsure of the process and constantly referred to the staff manual whenever they were asked a question.

In a word, it was a shambles and my Canadian friend wrote a strongly worded complaint letter to the consulate. Apparently one change has already been implemented as a result : people with infants no longer need to wait in line.

My friend eventually gave up on the friend visit visa and applied instead for a standard tourist visa, which is what you apply for if you know nobody there and just want to go travelling. Surprisingly, it seems easier to get a visa if you don’t know anyone there!

So both friends eventually got their visas so it has all worked out nicely. And this little story is nothing compared to the US visa application story I have lined up for you, so stay tuned!

Another fun business trip to Guangzhou. My last trip was to Shenzhen a few months ago and I ended up being delayed about 7 hours arriving at home well after midnight. I was hoping lightening wouldn’t strike twice, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

The meeting was at 9am Monday morning which meant having to travel on Sunday. The flight was at 4.30pm which meant I had to leave home around 2.30pm, so my Sunday was a right off, but I figured I’d arrive in GZ around 7pm and have a relaxing leisurely evening.

When I got to the boarding gate, the display was showing that the flight would be delayed till 1650. I looked out the window and there was no plane there so I knew that 1650 was never going to happen. We eventually boarded shortly after 5pm but as soon as the aircraft doors were securely locked, they announced we would have at least a one hour wait before we could push back. Why oh why do they always make you board and THEN tell you it’s delayed!

Coming back to Shanghai on Monday night, I had a 5.45pm flight so I figured I’d reach Shanghai around 7.30pm and be in time for dinner with a young lady of my choosing. Fortunately I didn’t make any firm commitments in that regard because the departures display showed a long list of flight delays for the usual bizarre reasons – flight delayed due to flow control. Occasionally, they would vary the reason. My favourite is flight delayed due to the plane being late!  I mean seriously, what the fxxx does that mean? Why can’t they just say the flight’s delayed but we’re not going to tell you why.

We eventually took off at 8.15pm and I got home at 11.30pm, my Monday evening irretrievably lost. I suppose if I look on the bright side, I no longer travel anywhere near as much as I used to or else this would be a weekly occurance.

Well now the world cup is over, I guess I can focus on what this blog was originally intended. I have noticed I’ve lost a few (well almost all) my readers when the topics were related only to football, so hopefully I can get some of them back now.

I’m not a smoker, but I’m not one of those that makes a face and waves my hand in front of my face if someone lights up next to me. Well, I wasn’t that type of person, but I may have turned in to one of them. Many restaurants are now smoke free which is great, perhaps I’ve started to get used to it now, so I was a bit surprised to find myself a bit irritated when I was eating in a local restaurant the other night.

I guess it didn’t help that our tables were less than an inch apart. The guy was eating with his girlfriend, but much to my annoyance, he smoked CONTINUOUSLY, both before the food arrived AND during the meal. He literally had his cigarette in his left hand and a spoon in his right, and alternately took a drag from his cigarette followed by a mouthful of food from his right hand. As I said, I don’t mind a bit of smoke but I had hoped he would have at least short breaks in between cigarettes. I’m starting to see why it’s a GOOD thing that cigarettes in England cost a fortune. I doubt this guy would be as prolific if cigarettes here weren’t 5 RMB (about 70 cents) a packet.

His non-smoking girlfriend didn’t seem at all bothered by this even though she was eating too. Perhaps I’m just grumpy after the disappointment of the World Cup.

I often go out of my way to help people, that’s just the kind of guy I am. And during the Expo, I have noticed an increase in the number of foreigners looking lost on the streets of Shanghai. Only a couple of days ago there was a couple near my apartment complex trying to figure out where the subway station was on their map. I pointed them in the right direction and they were very appreciative. Then yesterday as I was popping out to lunch, there were two western women looking closely at a map, clearly lost.

“Are you lost?” I asked.

There was no response from either. Perhaps they didn’t hear me.

“ARE YOU LOST?” I tried again.

Without taking her eyes off the map, one of the women raised her hand to wave me away and at the same time said rather abruptly “no!”

She didn’t say “no thanks, we’re fine” or “no, we’ll work it out but thanks anyway”. She just said “NO”.

I was so shocked by this response I didn’t know what to do. I am guessing they just got so many “helpful” Chinese people approaching them they just assumed I wanted something from them.

With hindsight what I should have done was replied “you want buy DVD, watch, bag? I give you very good friend price, OKAY?”

British retailer M&S opened their first store in Shanghai (their first on the Chinese mainland) in October 2008. There were problems with the stock or rather, the lack of stock, as many customers found only empty shelves when they went to visit. There was also the tragic death of a customer who fell from the 4th floor escalator (still not clear how that happened). The main man in charge was fired and they got someone else in to run things, and for a while things were better.

I made a quick visit at the weekend to see what new goodies they had in stock and found that most products were in stock, although there was a very obvious category that was completely missing : crisps (or what American readers call potato chips). Not a complete disaster. I picked up some tinned soup, some Ploughmans pickle, 2 boxes of cereal and some frozen pasta which was nearing the “best before” date and I guess that’s why they were offering them on a buy one, get one free promotion.

When I went to pay, just to be sure, I asked the guy on the till if the pasta was two for one, or what’s known in the industry as BOGOF (buy one, get one free). I was a bit taken aback by the shockingly rude response:

“Well, if it says buy one get one free, then it is.”

Half way through pricing up all my shopping he was called away and replaced by another guy. Phew, what a relief, I thought. I’m sure this replacement guy is a fully qualified cashier and trained in the art of customer service. The first guy must have been a shelf stacker temporarily filling in while the real cashier was on a break or something.

The last time I bought stuff at M&S they made a mistake on the till which is not a big issue, except they had already swiped my credit card and so it took a lot of untangling to credit back the difference they had overcharged me. To avoid the same thing happening again, when the cashier had finished adding everything up and asked me for the 387 RMB, I asked if he could print out the itemised receipt first so I could check it.

“No, you have to pay first then you get to see the receipt. The receipt only comes out after your payment is processed.”

Really? I had my doubts, but anyway explained what had happened last time and the time and hassle involved in correcting the mistake AFTER I had already paid.

The guy practically rolled his eyes and within 2 seconds he had printed out the receipt and slammed it on the desk. I could not believe the cheek of the guy, to blatantly lie and tell me it’s not possible to print a receipt and then two seconds later print one off just to prove he was lying through his teeth, without feeling the slightest bit of embarrassment.

One rude cashier I would call a blip, two out of two tells me there’s a bit of a problem brewing. I do hope the management gets its act together as I truly want M&S to succeed in China, if only for selfish reasons.

Now, where’s that M&S email address ….

It’s currently restaurant week in Shanghai and I decided to try the JW Marriott Grill, taking advantage of the 250 rmb promotion to try somewhere new.

On arrival, I announced to the receptionist that I had a reservation through the restaurant week website. She looked very confused and ran off to find someone else. Eventually and to my relief, she came back with someone who knew what I was talking about and we were seated. We were promptly given a drinks list but there was no sign of the fixed price menu. Eventually, after ordering some wine, I asked the waiter what we would be getting for the 250 set and he verbally ran through the menu : a rare tune nicoise salad to start, steak with asparagus as the main and then a panacotta dessert. There were no alternative options, so I am not sure what you would do if you didn’t eat meat, but I’m not that fussy (who doesn’t enjoy a good steak) so I gave him the nod and we were all set.

There were only about 8 tables and about 20 waiting staff but everyone seemed to be in a constant state of panic and many of the junior waiters were literally running back and forth which was very distracting for diners as well as making it hard to relax and enjoy the meal. I was quite surprised that in a 5 star hotel there was no manger to keep things organised.

The salad was very well prepared – a very contemporary lightly seared tuna Nicoise sprinkled with freshly ground sea salt. It wasn’t very big but I’m not a big eater so it’s not an issue.

Then came the steaks. It had occured to me that we were not asked how we wanted them cooked and I suppose I should have mentioned this but I assumed they knew what they were doing (maybe they prepared it at the table and asked you at that point). Sadly, this wasn’t the case and my heart sank when the steaks arrived. As I cut in to the meat, I realised it was quite well done and no true steak afficiondo would eat something that well cooked. What a pity because it was a quality cut of meat.

The dessert was lovely. A trio of panacotta, berries soaked in alcohol and some kind of crumble. All these descriptions are my own, since as I have already mentioned, there was no menu available to read through. I did enjoy the dessert, although the panacotta tasted suspiciously like a passion fruit mousse.

Another minor irritation : every table had an oil lamp on it. Ours had gone out and not once did anyone think to relight it until I eventually asked one of the waitresses to do so. It went out again a few minutes later and I gave up on it.

All in all then, the meal wasn’t bad, but the service was well below what I was expecting for a 5 star global brand like Marriott. The staff were very polite and enthusiastic, but just seemed to have no training whatsoever as well as no senior supervision. With the drinks, the bill came to just under 700 rmb, which is far below what it would have been without the restaurant week promotional price so it wasn’t a total disaster, but I’d be quite unhappy if it was a normal evening at normal prices.

For more on restaurant week, check out Beverly’s post about M1NT’s 250 rmb dinner. Seems like a much better deal!

No, this post is NOT about British Airways cabin crew who are on strike because they aren’t happy that the airline is making cutbacks as business suffers because of the recession. But while I’m on the topic, taking strike action basically means the airline loses even more money and has to make even more cutbacks. It’s not that complicated to understand, and yet British Airways staff seem to think it’s outrageous that instead of 15 crew members on long haul flights, they now have to make do with 14. Honestly I don’t know how they are expected to cope with all those blankets and peanuts that need to be handed out during the flight and only 14 of them to do it!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I just had a few minutes before a client meeting so I popped in to Costa Coffee to grab a cappuccino for me and a latte for my colleague. The girl who took my order was experienced and competent but then she went to make the coffee and another girl took over the till. I could tell instantly this was going to be painful just from her look.

I had asked for a fapiao (receipt) which needs to have my company name printed on it.  She asked me if it was for 74 rmb and I explained I just had two coffees so the total was just 50 rmb. I didn’t have a card so I handed the mentally challenged assistant another receipt which I had obtained at the weekend and asked her to copy the company name from there. I went to sit down and after a few minutes she brought over the receipt as well as the older one I had given her to copy.

Although my Chinese reading is not what it should be, I instantly noticed the company name was incorrect simply because it had about 4 characters too few. I mean seriously, how hard can it be to copy letter for letter a company name! So I walked back to the cash till and pointed out the mistake. She seemed confused and bewildered in the way that people like her often do, but I felt confident she could rectify the error fairly easily, so I left her to it and returned to my seat.

It took a while but eventually she brought over a new receipt and also gave me what I thought was my older receipt which I had given to her to copy. But no, what she had given me was the newly corrected receipt and the receipt with too few characters in the company name. I rushed back and asked her where was my original receipt and I had a mild panic attack when I saw the look of horror on her face. She dived in to the rubbish bin and eventually pulled out a torn, screwed up piece of paper – my receipt. I prayed it was not a big amount, and thankfully it was only 300 rmb.

I knew throwing a tantrum would have been pointless so I simply grabbed the torn receipt and walked away. I’d gone in with a 300 rmb receipt and come out with a 50 rmb receipt, a net loss of 250 rmb in receipt terms. Not a productive afternoon.

I honestly do not know how people like this can find jobs. In the space of the 5 minutes I was there, she’d made 3 mistakes and done not one single thing correctly.

You may or may not be familiar with Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya. They have many outlets in north America and China, selling mainly chicken and beef rice sets in a fast food format. I don’t go often, it’s not the pinnacle of fine dining but now and then, when I need a rest from 10 course lunches at one of the many Bund establishments, I slum it and head to Yoshinoya.

It’s lunch time so there’s a fairly long line. The woman in front of me has ordered food that comes to 27 and passes 30 rmb to the cashier. Now this is one of my pet peeves coming up right here. In England if it came to 9 pounds and 1 penny the cashier might ask if you happen to have a penny so she can give you back one pound change from 10. But here they take it to extremes for the simple reason that many establishments cannot seem to get the hang of preparing small change in advance. So the cashier pulls a funny face and asks the customer if she has 2 rmb coins so that she can give her a 5 rmb note back rather than use up precious coins. So the customer opens her back and rummages around for 5 minutes trying to scrape together a couple of 1 rmb coins while the queue gets longer behind me.

From experience I can guarantee you the cashier had 3 rmb but wanted to conserve the coins and therefore decided it was better to try and squeeze a few more coins from the customer.

Meanwhile, the customer in the next line had ordered his meal and took out a 100 rmb note to pay. The cashier looked at him and asked if he had anything smaller. The customer replied that he didn’t and even opened his wallet to show the cashier. Then to my surprise the cashier asked if he could pay by credit card instead! But it gets better. The customer indicated he did not possess a credit card and asked if any of the other cashiers had some change? To my horror and amazement, rather than ask his colleague if she had some change, the cashier said to the customer “I don’t know, you are welcome to try” and then waved him off. The shell shocked customer just walked over to the end of the next line and queued up again. If I was the customer I’d have taken off the silly hat the cashier was wearing and forced it down his throat.

I often feel I could make a fortune as a consultant to places like this, giving them advice on how to improve service and efficiency and ultimately drive profits. The only thing that’s stopping me is I don’t know if they’d be interested.

The irony is, there’s a huge ICBC bank branch right opposite this restaurant!

Travelling around Asia during the lunar new year when millions of Chinese are also travelling has had its ups and downs. Okay, it’s mostly downs. But it’s also quite amusing.

My mother was freaked out on the flight to Singapore which was almost completely full of mainland Chinese on a package tour. She pushed open the door to go to the toilet only to find someone already in there and of course, they didn’t bother (or didn’t know how) to lock the door. So she tried the next one along and it was exactly the same: door unlocked and someone inside going to the toilet!

Then on the way back from Singapore, she pushed open the toilet door and there was a guy inside the toilet reading a newspaper. I couldn’t control my laughter when she returned to her seat, shaking her head with a disapproving look on her face.

On the same flight, as we were taxiing to the runway and seconds from taking off, one woman decided it was the perfect time to go for a stroll and I watched in shock and amusement as the flight attendant came running down the aisle shouting at the woman to get back to her seat.

And of course, the man in the seat in front of mine decided to recline his seat as far back as it would go just before we took off. On a bad day I would have just used a firm arm to push the seat back to the upright position forcibly, but I was with mum and on my best behaviour, so I just let that one go.

Ah the joys of lunar new year travel … actually, it wasn’t all bad. When we arrived at Singapore airport to fly back to Hong Kong, there was a massive line to check in and my heart sank when I realised we would be lining up for hours. Then something weird happened. One of the security officers made an announcement for any English speakers to come forward. Almost everyone stayed where they were and I was led to a separate area to be taken through the security questions and then ushered to a check in counter and was checked in withing 3 minutes while the huge line was still there. I have no idea why. Perhaps there were only a small number of  security officers who could speak Chinese.

I was flying with United by the way and was surprised when boarding at HK airport to find an additional security check at the boarding gate. Is this normal procedure for American carriers? I had a bottle of water (that I had taken from the airside lounge) taken away from me which was a bit disappointing.