Collision Ready!

I’ve written about this before but nothing has changed. Taxi drivers are genetically programmed to do everything they can to avoid wearing a seat belt which would save their lives in the event of a collision. The lengths they go to are incredible and this is a prime example with the belt simply looped over than hand brake lever so it looks like he’s wearing it and is safe from harm, when in fact, he’s not. Genius.

I did actually come across this in Beijing many years ago too and took this photo. I was sure I blogged about but cannot find any trace of the post.

Horrific footage of a hit and run in Fuxin, Liaoning province in northern China. Yes, the car involved is a police car which doesn’t even stop while the civilian car that captures the incident on a dash mounted camera slows down before carrying on its way. It doesn’t occur to him to check if the pedestrian is alive or to call an ambulance.

Sadly, this is the way things are in China. People often crowd round to look at some incident or other, but they’ll rarely intervene or help. I do hope this culture changes. A few minutes could make the difference between life and death.

Seen on Beijing Cream via Shanghaiist.

“I’d like to pay my bill please” I announced to one of the unoccupied assistants.

“Ah yes sir, no problem, please wait for my colleague to become free” replied the assistant, pointing toward the one staff member who was occupied with the iPhone 5 lady.

It seemed odd to me that none of the two free assistants (who were literally twiddling their thumbs) were able to help, but I waited as instructed. And waited. And waited.

It soon became clear this was going to take a while and I had the choice of being a patient customer like I would have done 15 years ago, or be a dick about the whole thing and act like a spoiled brat. Of course, I chose the latter.

“Excuse me, out of the 3 of you, is that guy the only person who can actually serve customers?” was my opening gambit.

The free assistant behind the counter looked a bit sheepish and mumbled some excuse about his computer screen not functioning properly. Then he realised how feeble that sounded because the guy serving the iPhone 5 lady wasn’t using his computer. Suddenly a bright idea came to him. He asked to swap places with the other guy and use his screen to help me pay my bill. Brilliant! I love how I am able to inspire people to have great ideas.

And that was it. One sarcastic comment was all it took to accelerate the waiting time from about 30 minutes to 3 minutes. And this is why I’ve become a bit of a nightmare customer ever since coming to China. Push and be pushy is the only way to get things done here. Or get used to spending a lot of time waiting around.

Well, this was never intended to be a political blog, and the last post was starting to get quite heated (Maggie I love you!), so let’s get back to basics, by which I mean being a spoiled expat moaning about how tough life is here in China.

You’d think that after being here for so long, certain things would bug you less because you get accustomed to them and barely notice things that irritated in the early days. Not really true. Most expats, including myself, still get “bad China days”. I had one at the weekend. Nothing went smoothly or without some kind of hiccup.

After dropping my visiting mother off at the airport, I needed to grab something to eat and there just happens to be an Ajisen Ramen noodle place at the airport. I stopped going to Ajisen years ago. The noodles are perfectly okay but the service is abysmal, but there’s not a lot of choice at Pudong Airport, so against my better judgement I grabbed a table. They forgot to give us tea, but no bother I thought, we can remind them when they take our order. Finding someone to take our order though, proved difficult. The staff have all perfected the art or walking around the restaurant looking busy and avoiding eye contact completely with all customers at all costs. You have to physically stop someone with your arm to stand any chance of getting your order taken.

And I must have been asking the wrong people, because every time I asked a waitress if we could order, she’d shout out to another colleague, saying table 5 is waiting to order. This pattern repeated itself throughout the time I was there. Ask for tea, the waitress would just shout out “tea for table 5″ and then continue to pretend to be really busy with something else. Ask someone else for some chili sauce, they’d simply shout out to nobody in particular “chili sauce, table 5″ then walk off. The possibility of doing it themselves just never crossed their minds.

There was a manager or sorts who actually had about 8 of the staff lined up and was drilling them when we walked in, so I thought maybe, just maybe, some kind of improved discipline had been implemented since my last visit. But whatever orders he was barking at them, it didn’t seem to do any good at all.

After our food came, the tea still hadn’t, despite asking several waitresses and despite the fact that I could see the big teapot sitting on the bar, literally a metre away from me. Any of the waitresses I asked could have reached over, poured us some tea and carried on whatever it was they were busy with without more than a 2 second delay. By this time, I was gasping, so I calmly got up, walked to the bar, grabbed two clean cups that were stacked close by and poured myself some tea which I brought back to the table.

There were at least 4 staff members around that bar or behind it, they all saw me pouring the tea, but didn’t bat an eyelid. Ah, I see, the tea is self service!

Those Ajisen people are pretty sly – they make you pay as soon as you order. This is genius because then, no matter what happens, you have very little bargaining power. Your food hasn’t arrived after 35 minutes? Tough luck. Whaddyagonnadoaboutit? You’ve already paid. Genius!

So basically, if you’re in a hurry, or if poor service winds you up and stresses you out like it does me, don’t EVER go to Ajisen in China. I know they have branches in many countries – Singapore, the US, Hong Kong and of course Japan and I am sure the service is better in any of those places. But not China.

So that was just the beginning of my bad China day. Part two coming up next!

Real Estate Trading Centre in Shanghai – Sell, Sell, Sell!

I imagine everyone has had quite enough of sunny beach posts, so it’s time to get back to what I do best – report on the weird and wonderful world that is life in China!

The government is forever playing a cat and mouse game to try and control the property market in China. Prices have been spiraling upwards as wealthy Chinese buy up property as a way of storing their wealth. It is not uncommon for people to have 20 or so properties. Shanghainese landlords love to boast about how many properties they own as I found out when I was looking for a place to rent.

Similar scenes at the Nanjing Municipal Real Estate Trading Centre

And it’s these multi-property owners that the government wants to penalise with its measures like the newly introduced sales tax on second properties. Basically, profit on sales of second properties will soon be liable for a 20% tax. This has had an interesting impact on the market as people scramble to dump their properties before the tax takes effect. But a surprising side effect is the rise in divorces. Why? Because couples with say, two properties are getting divorced, so that they can put one property in each of their names, to avoid the sales tax. They can then sell one property as a sole property, before getting remarried. Genius!

This phenomenon happened a few years earlier too, when the government introduced a rule that meant you needed to pay a higher down payment on additional property purchases. So while you might pay a 30% deposit for a first property, 50% would be required on a second property and 100% on a third property purchase. So some couples were getting divorced so that they could buy a second property but only pay 30% down payment instead of having to pay a 50% deposit on a joint second property.

Who says romance is dead!

Today is the last day of the year of the dragon. It was a beautiful day with rare blue skies, possibly helped by factories closing down for the new year holidays as many workers make the annual trip back to their home towns to spend the week with family.

In the wake of recent pollution issues, the government has urged citizens to go easy on the traditional firework celebrations that will start at midnight tonight and continue for 2 weeks. I don’t hold out much hope though. Telling the Chinese not to let off fireworks is like telling a dog not to bark. Or telling Americans to give up guns!

But let’s not dwell on that. If you’ve never been lucky enough to be in Shanghai for the lunar new year, it really is an amazing spectacle to see the entire city letting off fireworks for a good 20-30 minutes continuously.

Happy lunar new year dear readers and best wishes for the year of the snake!

Lack of personal space – it’s a common complaint of foreigners in China, and a valid one. I was waiting for my flight back from Beijing the other day and chose a quiet part of the airport to sit and read my newspaper (oops, I mean work on my client presentation). There were literally hundreds of empty seats all around and then guess what happened? Two guys (pictured) decided the best place to come and have a loud discussion was RIGHT NEXT TO ME!

It reminds me of an amusing thing I saw on urinal etiquette a while ago (see how I skillfully managed to slot in a urine reference to days in a row!). You know how it works guys – if there are 3 urinals you never take the middle one. If there’s a guy on the far left, you leave a buffer and take the one on the far right.

So back to the airport. Can someone PLEASE explain this to me? I was furious and eventually stood up and moved to another seat. Luckily, they didn’t follow.

The other day on the subway, I watched in shock as two middle aged women repeatedly tried to run through the barriers without paying, by trying to follow closely behind a fare paying passenger. But each time they were too slow and the barriers closed before they could get past. It was quite comical. And I think they were caught out because it’s rare for stations in Shanghai to use barriers. Turnstiles are more common and with those it’s easy to simply duck and walk under them.

I’m glad I found this video to share with you so you can see just how rampant fare dodging is in this city!

This is actually from a few months ago but I thought it was worthy of a mention nonetheless. Young girls aged 4 and 5 were spotted in striking provocative sexy poses in skimpy bikinis at the Wuhan Automobile Exhibition. If you’ve visited a car show before, you’ll know that it’s common to use fully grown models but employing children is somewhat unusual. And disturbing!

This kind of thing would never be allowed to happen in the UK or the United States. Or would it!

Sir Isaac Newton may have discovered gravity, but it’s the Chinese that have discovered how to defy it! I may have mentioned before I once had an idea for a book entitled “The Things People Get On The Back Of Their Bikes”. Not the most catchy title, might need some work, but this is the sort of thing that would go in the book.

I do not understand how the bike’s front wheel stays on the ground. Those are 18 litre bottles of water, most of them full. If the guys sneezes, he’s surely going to be staring at the grey, polluted skies within 2 seconds!

I should add that I was late for work but still doubled back to take this photo on my extremely slow iPhone 4, for you dear readers, so you’d better show some appreciation. And when I say show your appreciation, I of course mean send me money for an iPhone 5!