Kunitzer in China

Happy New Year! February 18 is the first day of the Chinese Year. It is a huge holiday here and a lot of people take extra vacation days to travel and visit friends and family. Friday, February 16 was especially quiet at work because all my Chinese colleagues had taken vacation days.

I had to travel to Shanghai on Tuesday February 13 for business. Normally I would take the train from Suzhou to Shanghai. Being so near to the Chinese New Year, all of the train tickets were sold out and I needed to take the bus. Even if I could get train tickets, my Chinese colleagues strongly advised me to not take the train because the trains and the train stations would be extremely crowded. I have taken the bus from Suzhou to Shanghai before, so this was not a problem for me. I can now tell the taxi driver that I need to go to the North Bus Station – “Qi Che Bei Zhan”. I can buy my own bus ticket at the train station – “Shanghai”. I can get my own tickets at the subway station to get to my company’s office – “Liu Jia Zui”. And I can even say these things with the correct tones. I’m a long way off from conversational Mandarin, but at least I can get around a little easier without having to carry a taxi book all the time.

The Shanghai trip went well, but I didn’t have to take the bus or the train back. I drove a car back. (One of my colleagues has a car and he is taking a vacation to Phillipines and he needed somebody to drive his car back to Suzhou from Shanghai. I also get free use of a car for about a week.) My first time driving in China and I needed to drive through the central business district in Shanghai. Fortunately, I had to work until about 8:30pm. Fortunately, I say, because the traffic starts to die down around 7:00pm. Besides, I didn’t want to get stuck in a traffic jam with 100,000 other cars all trying get through the tunnel to cross the Huangpu River. With my Shanghai map in my lap, I was able to make my way across town and I made it to the highway back to Suzhou without any problems. I made one wrong turn, but I was able to find a new route without any problem. It actually went a lot better than I thought it would. Sure, there were a lot of other cars, mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians on the street and sure most people didn’t follow the rules of the road, but traffic moves rather slowly (at least compared to USA) and as long as I used my horn and my turn signals I was able to pick my way across Shanghai without incident. I think I was more nervous about getting lost than I was about getting into an accident. Even though the driving really wasn’t a big problem, it did require a lot of attention and I still think it is better to use public transportation than to try driving myself. But that won’t stop me from using my colleague’s car for a week!

Saturday, February 17 was Chinese New Year’s Eve. I went to downtown Suzhou because there was going to be a dragon dance. I new it was going to be kind of a crazy day because I started hearing fireworks at about 9:00am. The more the day went on, the higher the frequency of fire works. At 9:00am , I could hear fireworks about 1x per 10 seconds. By 2:00pm, it was nearly continuous at 1x per second. After 5:00pm, I could here them going off all over the city at more than 10x per second. This lasted until well past midnight. These people are crazy about fireworks here. Everybody buys them. And these aren’t just sparklers and smoke bombs either – firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, cherry bombs all the way up to class A fireworks like we would see on 4th of July in USA. The most common fireworks I saw were class A fireworks and two kinds of firecrackers. It was really amazing to see these class A fireworks exploding all over the city. People would light them in the streets, in the apartment complexes, in the city center, in parks. Everywhere I went in the city, I could see these exploding 360 degrees around me. And with so many high buildings in Suzhou, the booms would echo all around. One kind of firecracker that was quite common was about 40mm diameter (~1.5 inch) and about 150mm long (~6 inch). People would set these on the ground, light the fuse and a miniature bomb would shoot about 10 meters (~30 feet) in the air. Right when it reached the apex, this miniature bomb would explode. Most of the time. A few times I saw these go not quite as high as normal, so the mini bomb fell back to the ground before it exploded. Strangely, these people knew this happened occasionally, but they almost never watched to see where the mini bomb went. A few times I saw these things fall less than 1 meter (~3 feet) from a person before it exploded. Even more strange, nobody I saw ever flinched when this happened. The other type of firecracker is the kind that is readily available in USA in those states that allow them. These are the king that are about 6mm diameter (~¼ inch) by about 40mm long (~1.5 inch). But in China, peole will usually buy these giant coils of more than 1000 firecrackers (each coil probably weighs about 5kg (~10 pounds) and will light several coils at a time. Some people would unwind thee coils and then put the long strips to form the number 888 – this is a lucky number in China and people do this to bring good luck in the new year. I bought about 15kg (~30pounds) of these firecrackers myself for only 50RMB (~US$8.50). Good price. Great fun!

Although I just spent an hour writing a new posting, this F#$%&*# blog program took a S#$% right when I tried to post my article. So you just have to be satisfied with the pics for now because it is late and I need to go to bed so I can get up for work in the morning.

I got my Chinese driver’s license several weeks ago. Although I was quite certain that I wasn’t going to buy or lease a car, I at least wanted to have the freedom to get a car. I think it’s this possibility of freedom that had me endure the hassles it took to get my driver’s license.

On paper, the process seems quite simple – take your driver’s license from home country + two passport photos + your passport to the local police station and take a test on the computer with the assistance of a Chinese “support” person. Mr. Qi is the boss of the company drivers and he is also the guy at my company who coordinates all the paperwork and schedules the appointments at the police station. Passport: no problem. Two passport photos: no problem (I had the foresight to bring about 20 extra passport photos from USA). Driver’s license from USA: no problem. Everything else: Problems!

The first sign of problems was learning that I needed to find my own Chinese “support” person. Basically, a Chinese “support” person is a local Chinese person who had recently passed the written exam for the driver’s license. Getting this support was a problem because I didn’t know anybody that had passed the written exam, but Mr. Qi knew everybody at my company who had passed the written exam, it just wasn’t his responsibility to organize this support. Although I tried to find a support person, I showed up at Mr. Qi’s office on test day without a support person. Fortunately, he says it’s not a problem and I can just use another colleague’s support person because there were three other colleagues who would be taking the test with me. And, he said, I owed him 100RMB (US$12.50) for the fee to get my USA driver’s license translated to Chinese.

Despite the 100RMB setback, things seemed to be going quite well. We arrived at the police station an since we were all foreigners, we went straight to the front of the line. We quickly learned that this wasn’t the line to take the test, but the line to get our picture taken (so tell me why I needed to provide two passport photos) and shell out another 75RMB (US$ 9.37). We then went to the front of the next line, only to find out this wasn’t the line to take the test either, but was the line to pay for the physical exam and shell out another 60RMB (US$7.50).

I am not quite certain why it is called a physical exam because the only thing we had to do was take one of those tests that check for color blindness, the kind of test that has some red circles in the shape of a number and are surrounded by a bunch of green circles. My test showed a number 7, so I said “Seven”. My guess is the lady giving me the test can’t speak a lick of English, but still she says “Hao de” (which means “OK”) and gives my paperwork to the next lady who stamps it about twenty times. I was left with the impression that we were given the abbreviated test and perhaps there is more to this physical exam for the Chinese.

We then went to the next line (again the front) and this time we paid 300RMB (US$37.50), but this was the last line and the only thing left to do was to take the written exam. The test was administered by computer and there was only one computer designated for taking the test, so we could only take the test one by one. I drew the longest straw, so I had to go last.

“Normally” the foreigner will sit with the “support” person in front of the computer because the test is “normally” administered in Chinese and the “support” person “supports” the foreigner in translating the questions and the multiple choice answers. Things started off “normally” until the police officer decided he didn’t like the way the “support” was given. The police officer stopped the test and made the first person take the English version of the test, but still let the Chinese “support” person remain. Through a combination of bad Chinese to English translations on the test, nervousness of the “support” person, and 50% of the test questions more about license administration instead of driving skills, the first person failed the test. This means the first person gets no license. To make matters worse, the police officer decided that since the first person failed, we all failed.

We all had some choice words. Most of them were four letter words. Because we spent nearly the entire day at the police office. Because we all dropped 535RMB (US$66.87) without a refund. Because we didn’t get to take the test the “normal” way. Because the police officer arbitrarily (and, I believe, capriciously) failed us all. Because Mr. Qi didn’t do anything to prepare us for this. Because we are all better drivers than the Chinese. Because even if the Chinese pass the test the Chinese don’t follow the rules of the road anyway. Because we still didn’t have a driver’s license. Not that it we would really need or use our Chinese driver’s license, it was just the principle that others got it the “normal” way and we should too.

Some weeks later, Mr. Qi worked out a deal with the police department. Three police officers came to my company along with three computers for taking the test. This was unprecedented for the police to take such action. So unprecedented that a local newspaper reporter came to write a story about the good relationship between my company and the police department and how well my company and the police station were working together to make things just a little more convenient for us foreigners. The reporter even interviewed one of my colleagues about how my company prepared us to take such a test. Naturally, my colleague replied that since training materials are only available in Chinese, we worked with a translator for several weeks to study and learn and review. He said it was a great effort of my company to provide such a service and that he felt fully prepared to take the exam.

Things finally returned to “normal”. The reporter soon left. The two higher ranking police officers soon left. Mr. Qi and the low ranking police officer soon went outside to smoke cigarettes. And the rest of us took the test with the “support” person at our side. I got a 94% - the way it is “normally” done.