Sleeping at work

When I came to Germany I was a bit surprised to see some of my colleagues taking a nap during their half hour lunch break. Sleeping during working hours (meetings and such) was usually not done, though (given a few rare exceptions that some of my colleagues will surely come to mind when they read this).

Here in Fuzhou, it is very normal to sleep a bit during the lunch break. I think I am not lying when I say that about fifty percent of my (mostly very young) colleagues close their eyes for a few minutes. But what I found out today, was that quite a few of them take the opportunity during long meetings or presentations, to close their eyes for a while. First, I saw one, and made a picture. Then, I saw another one, and I had difficulties not to start laughing loudly. Then, another one, and another one ... it was quite a funny site.

Shiqi and Mylene in Fuzhou

Finally! After approximately seven weeks (or was it seven months), Shiqi and Mylène have arrived in Fuzhou as well. I picked them up from the airport last Friday afternoon. I was wondering what Mylène would look like, and whether she would recognise me. And I was so surprised when I saw her. She changed a lot! Of course, I recognised her, but in her movements and facial expressions, she changed so much that it was hard for me to realise that this was really my daughter. Her movements were more precise, her facial expressions wiser, and the tones she made, much more diverse. It was wonderful to see them again!! The weekend went by too quickly. With a small kid to take care of, days go by even quicker than without. We played with Mylène, went shopping, had a walk in our neighbourhood, had lunch in the Fuzhou Shangrila, and talked and talked. So you can imagine, there was no time left for blogging. Some posts about the experiences of the past weeks will follow, though. I still feel I should write something about the business trip to Changchun, and about an African fellow in Fuzhou who can sing Chinese songs. But more about that later.

ADSL - but slower than 56Kb modem

This is very annoying. I have an ADSL connection running now from China Telecom, but the connection speed seems not nearly close to the 512Kb I am paying for. Downloading speed typically reaches an average of 4Kb!! This is clearly insufficient.
Also connection test websites show me that my connection speed is very low: with around 40kb higher than the actual download speed, but still very low. I wonder whether it depends on where I am downloading from. Perhaps I should check downloading from some Chinese sites to see which speed I reach there. Although, with my limited knowledge of Chinese, this is easier said than done.

Renaissance in Fuzhou (II)

Visited the art exhibition on Thursday night, as announced before. It was definitely not bad. Of course, it cannot be compared to important exhibitions you can frequently visit in Europe, but still, there were quite a lot of nice paintings. And, as it seemed, all paintings were real. I made a few pictures to give you an impression of what it looked like, until I was told I was not allowed to take pictures.
"Why not?" I aksed.
"Because taking photographs will damage the paintings" was the answer.
"But I am not using flash" I said .
"Well ... it is not allowed" was the answer.

The organisers were a bit disappointed, though. Because, as it turned out, that evening was especially arranged for our company, and most of the foreigners did not show up, or, very late. There were people invited to take pictures of the foreigners visiting this unique art exhibition in Fuzhou, but they had already left, when the first foreigners showed up. Not the publicity they had hoped for, I am afraid.
I wonder if they got many visitors at all, because the entry tickets were sold for the astronomous price of 350RMB (the equivalent of €35,-)! Good thing we were inivited.

Traffic

Next week I will apply for a Chinese drivers license. But I am not so sure that I want to actively participate in the jungle on the streets of Fuzhou, where survival of the fittest plays a bigger role than traffic rules.
The driving behaviour of the people here is unbelievable. I have been here for five weeks now, and have not gotten used to it one bit. The driving style of many people seems to indicate suicidal tendencies sometimes. And it is hard to find out whether they really cannot drive or just don't realise how dangerous their behaviour is. On more than one occasion I saw three accidents on the half hour drive from the company home.
When making a left hand turn, the usual procedure is to first start driving on the left side of the road, then to turn onto the target road (without waiting for approaching traffic), hoping that the approaching cars will brake or even stop, sometimes even driving on the left lane, before finally crossing the road and turning to left (also here, the approaching traffic from right is usually not considered). I often wonder, why not more accidents happen.
But what makes me shiver the most, is when I see a family of four (!) on a motorcycle. The driver is usually wearing a helmet, but the passengers (often very young kids, or even babies) are not!
Seeing this, it is hard to understand that traffic just is like this in many places on this planet, and sadly, Fuzhou is one of those places.

Construction work Chinese style

When I am looking at construction sites here in China, I ask myself sometimes how it is possible that new buildings arise so quickly. The working methods and equipment certainly do not seem to be very efficient. And many workers are hanging around more than they are actually doing something.

In our neighbourhood, I can observe it from up close these days. For some reason, supposedly because of upcoming changes of regulations, many Chinese are digging basements underneath their houses here. This is done only shortly after the houses had been finished (makes me wonder why they did not include basements from the beginning). Our neighbours are also doing this. Their gigantic house is now standing on a few concrete poles only, surrounded by a huge pit.

Observing the work in progress, I started to get some understanding of how the Chinese build so quickly. It is because they build almost non stop, seven days per week, from the early morning until late at night, with a seemingly endless workforce supply. It's not the efficiency but the quantity that does the trick.

Our neighbourhood

I took the opportunity of the weekend and the wonderful weather to make a stroll through our neighbourhood. Here are some pictures to give you an impression of what it looks like.
I think we will be able to live very comfortably here, and I am sure Mylène will also like the quite surroundings with lots of beautiful walk ways.

Note the interesting signs, that teach the residents about appropriate behaviour ;-)

Moved into the house

Yesterday, I checked out of the Lakeside hotel and moved to the house! All the necessary renovations had been completed, and from tomorrow on I will have a car, so there was no reason to stay in the hotel much longer.

It felt good immediately to finally be in 'my own' place again, although the night was not so comfortable as I had hoped: I was attacked by a few persistent musquitos which were obviously starving.

Because of the renovations, the house was pretty dirty, so yesterday and today, two cleaning ladies have been busy to make the house shiny again.
The only thing that still had to be done, was changing the curtains. The old ones were not removed during renovation, so they were dirty and heavily damaged. To my surprise, at around five o'clock this afternoon (Sunday!!) three guys appeared with a few huge bags, containing the new curtains. Right now, they are busy hanging them. So with a bit of luck, by the end of this weekend, the house is ready to be enjoyed :-)

Renaissance in Fuzhou

Today, I received an invitation to visit an exhibition of Italian Renaissance paintings, which will be held here in Fuzhou. On display are 49 original works by masters like Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raffael, from Galleria Bellini in Florence. At first, I could not believe it, because who would be able to get such priceless pieces of art to a "provincial town" like Fuzhou. But I was told that the exhibition was organised by the real estate giant "Rong-qiao Group Ltd." (who also owns the compounde we live in) in collaboration with the Chinese and Italian governments. The exhibition is one of the most important activities during the "2006 China-Italy Year".

An unexpected pleasure! And as the exhibition is held in walking distance from our house, it will be very convenient to visit. As I wrote before, I start to get the impression that Fuzhou really is a city of art.

The office

Some people have asked me what the office and the surrounding look like here. So, today I made a few snapshots with my mobile phone to give you an impression.

As you can see, it's not very fancy. But ... we do have airconditioning, which is something you cannot do without here, especially during the warm months. Here in Fuzhou, this means from the beginning of April until the end of November, as I have been told.

The baracks we occupy, are located on the grounds of the factory of our partners, the South Eest Motor Corporation (SEM). The big building houses the cantina, the design department and some other administration departments of SEM. Also, our presidents office is located here. The factory produces cars of the peculiar brand SouEast (DongNan in Chinese) and, since recently, the Mitsubishi Galant. The factory grounds are part of an industrial park, about 30 km from Fuzhou, in which many of the SEM suppliers set up production facilities as well, for logistics purposes.

The idea is to move to the office buildings of our future plant, as soon as it's ready. It will be built in the vicinity of SEM, which means around 40 minutes of commuting every morning and every evening, which is about the same as I was used to in Germany.