I have lived in China for five years, now.  Back when I began my decade of wandering, at the beginning of the millennium, I had just had sold my eighteenth century estate, which I owned, restored and turned into an art inn, before that concept had even been coined.  Since I moved to China, I have seen countless old buildings that could be really cool, if they were restored and made into nice contemporary living spaces.  However, the vast majority of Chinese people and, apparently, the state, topped off by a new rich class, prefer a flashy new apartment with a high price tag to restoration of something old.  We say vast majority because, finally, after living here for five years, I have discovered an old section of the city where people are taking old several story houses and redoing them: some tastefully and to original character; others bastardized .  All the same, we are actually going to set up our gallery, there.

More generally, however, much of the old city of Guangzhou, which is mostly old, is getting a facelift, especially, in areas that will be seen by many visitors when driving or walking around the city during the upcoming Asian Games, next November.  Indeed, I believe that the stimulus package, much of which was directed to infrastructure, and the extremely loose credit stance of Chinese banks, this past year, combined with the desire to put up a good front for the coming games.

Mind you, it is not a real restoration of the town but, merely, a face list, and extremely facial, at that.  Old buildings, including the old up to ten story boxy cement and tile apartment blocks, as well as the early 20^th century buildings with sloped tiled roofs, are getting face lifts on the faces facing major streets, avenues, and raised highways; if you go around to the rear of the building or go inside, you will find that nothing has changed.  In addition, just about every major street has been dug up and put back together more nicely, over the past year, and is continuing.  Subway lines that were supposed to have been done several years ago have finally bee completed, and bus islands are being built on an avenue near one of the stadium complexes, downtown, which, itself is dotted with cranes busily rebuilding the athletic event complex.  In other areas, ground that had been broken but was long awaiting construction to start has suddenly spring tall buildings that are already nearing completion within the several months sine I had been to those parts of town [Guangzhou is a town of 10 million people and covers at least 10 square miles or more, in my rough estimate].  Other areas that used to have cute but dilapidated older structures have been completely razed and new buildings are already going up.

    

Westerners see pictures of China, they usually are shown the tall buildings that have sprung up in major cities, mostly over the past two decades or less.  However, most of China, even most of the interiors of those picture postcard skyscraper cities, are old smaller buildings, mostly in great need of repair.  It is a shame, to someone, like me, who appreciates the art of older buildings and who has restored a two hundred year old country estate to its original glory, to see such great old structures go to waste or become lost forever.  It is shameful, in my opinion, to see the kind of face lift that is now on-going: saving face for those places likely to be seen by visitors, leaving the rest to continue to rot.  Looking at what has been done, on its face, it will probably last no longer than a few years, at most.

        

We have China telecom service for our land-line phone and DSL.  I also have a mobile internet card for my computer for a PC card modem.  The mobile internet was transferred from China Unicom, a mobile phone provider, to China Telecom about a year or so ago, in a government reshuffling of the telephone business, in China.

When we added ADSL, about two years ago, we were required to pay a year’s service, upfront.  Six months or so into that contract, Ayu noticed that China Telecom had also been charging one of my bank accounts for the ADSL.  She called and went visiting China Telecom for several weeks before they refunded the money, which took several more weeks.  Over the ensuing year plus, Ayu has discovered repeated events of overcharging my account for services, and it always takes repeated visits and phone calls, in order to get it straightened out.

Indeed, part of the overcharging and other problems has been problems with charging, not charging, or overcharging my bank account for my mobile internet service.  Then, about two months ago, I reprogrammed my computer, and I lost the software for the PC card.  After repeated misleads by China Telecom, we were not able to get new software.  Part of the problem has been that they have moved on to 3G, and the card did not support that. So, we asked, what can we do to get 3G card, and more quickly and efficiently solve the problem.  After several misleads by China Telecom, on that, we just went to the computer center and bought a new 3G card.

While that should have solved the problem, it turned out that there was an ongoing problem with charging the SIM card from my bank account.  Remember, now, that China Telecom has been deducting charges for telephone service, internet service and mobile internet service for over a year.  For several weeks, Ayu has been spending several phone calls a day trying to get the SIM card charged, but the telephone company keeps telling her that they cannot charge my bank account for the SIM charges because the name in the account differs from the name on my bank account.  This is not even a new problem.  Even though China Telecom had been deducting money from that bank account, they said they could not refund money to that account because of the name difference, never mind that they also have my passport number on the accounts.  The problem in name is simply that the Bank stamp on my account puts my middle name last.  All tolled, it has been about a month and a half of this nonsense. The problem is still not resolved, including two phone calls from different people at China Telecom, today.  And the easiest thing to do, in my mind, is just to go back to the computer center, tomorrow, and buy a new SIM card, not registered to anyone, with one year’s service built in.

Anyone who thinks that China will rule the business and financial world has, obviously, never been to China.

        

When I first moved to China, I would go to Shamian Island, which is the island that foreign traders were confined to, in the 1800's, in Guangzhou.  The architecture is very Western; it has cafés and restaurants; and it is very peaceful and pretty.  It has a nice feeling, and, although it is small and separated by small bridges from the rest of the city, it feels like you are in a different world.

I noticed, even on my first outing, that there were photographers taking photos of girls or couples, dressed in wedding attire.  Moreover, since there were many such girls dotted around the island being photographed, I naturally assumed that it was just a good place to do catalog photo shoots for wedding attire.  The first time that I saw it, I even got a phone number from one of the girls.  However, I couldn't have been more wrong about what it actually was all about.

As it turns out, wedding photographs are much more important than the wedding, itself.  In the West, we, too, like to take photos at our weddings, but that is not the case, in China.  The photos are actually staged and taken many months, or even years, in advance of the actual wedding event.  As I have witnessed this phenomenon repeatedly and in more than just Shamian, I have come to also realize that even the wedding attire are just props.  The wedding photo studios actually provide the dresses and tuxedos as part of the photo album package.  In fact, sometimes I have noticed that the bride is wearing jeans under her dress.  Often, in certain locations, you can see many brides and grooms around, just waiting until it is their turn for their "wedding photo" shots.  To me, as a Westerner, it is a very peculiar phenomenon.

I have been told, in addition, by friends that, at the wedding, some photos might also be taken, but it is these staged photos that are the ones that end up on walls, tables or desks, in the end.

We have included some photos from both Shamian Island, in Guangzhou, and outside a castle near jetty, in Qingdao, where it is also popular to have wedding photos taken.

 

        

We have done a recent comment on Chinese art, mostly the teapot art market on our Leona Craig Blog.  We believe that art is the best investment, in China.
You can read the article at:
http://blog.leonacraig.com/ ...<< MORE >>

In the U.S., I would see windows of tall buildings being washed, many time in my life.  There, a catwalk-like platform is lowered along the face of the building: it has railings to give safety and security, and the window washers can even clip belts to the rails.

In China, even today, many things that we would expect to see done by machinery, in the U.S., are done, manually, in China.  Event though China markets itself to the world asd a modern country, that is simply marketing and PR.  Others might have you believe that China has underpaid workers in poor conditions.  That is too far to the other side.  Although there are many cases of poor work conditions, that would not be true of many people in many different types of jobs.

The simple truth is that: (1) China does not, yet, have a lot of capital assets, especially, if you look at things on a per capita basis; (3) China does not have access to all of the latest technology, especially given its record od turning a blind eye and hands in pockets.  China does, on the other hand, have a huge pool of labor, most of whom are trying, still, to move beyond the agrarian society that China had been, in still is, overall.  In that regard, they try to make up for the lack of worker productivity, i.e., output per person, by having an abundance of worker capital.

That said, with window washing for even tall buildings, in China, window washers rappel down the side of the buildings, mountaineering style, buckets and brushes, hanging from their rope belts.  Someone on the top of the building passes down a hose for rinsing.  You can see a group of them cleaning the windows of a building that we can see from our office.



I have also seen crude block and tackle, using 3 tall stout logs lashed together at the top to make a tripod to lift incredibly heavy things into place.  I've seen hoards of men using jackhammers where we would use heavy machinery, and I have seen hundreds of men using shovels, not even good snow shovels, to clear major highways of snow because there are not enough snowplows around.

© 2009 Red Hill Capital Corporation, Delaware, USA; all worldwide rights reserved!

        

Banking is always a major affair, in China.  It can take between 1 and 3 hours to wait for your number to come up and get your transaction done, even if it is something as simple making a deposit.  Like all money transactions, in China, a transaction at a bank involves much hand-stamped paperwork.

Today, after spending twenty minutes waiting (I have begun to take VIP numbers, lately, to shorten my wait...no one questions it because they think that the foreigner just did not know what he was doing), it took over an hour to complete my wire transfer transaction from ...<< MORE >>

One interesting thing that is part of every hotel that I have stayed in, in China, is that you can't leave the lights on when you go out.  In every place that I have stayed, there is a key card for the door, and once you are inside the room, there is a box with a small slot to put the key card, just inside the door.  The purpose is that the room's electricity will not come on until you put the card into the slot.  Then, when you leave the room and take your key card out of the ...<< MORE >>

I come from a relatively humble background, and our table manners may not have been the best when I was growing up.  People talked with food in their mouths at the table.  They may have been guilty of smacking their lips, while eating.  That was one extreme.  Since then, I have also rubbed elbows with high society, and I ran an internationally-recognized country inn and cooking school with alumni of the famed Four Seasons Hotel's kitchens.  In those latter situations, it was required that I not deviate, even a little, from very proper formal decorum.

Although my experiences and friends come from ...<< MORE >>

In the U.S., if we want to challenge someone or say that they are afraid, we call them chicken.  However, you do not want to make the mistake of calling someone, especially a female, chicken, in China.  While some people will not understand why you would call them chicken to say that they are fearful, if they are a female, they could become really offended because the common Chinese slang expression for hooker is "ji nui", which, literally, means, chicken girl. ...<< MORE >>

In China, the major material used to build scaffolding for buildings is, believe it or not, bamboo.  I have seen it used on buildings over twenty stories high, and making bamboo scaffolding is an art.  However, recently, I saw scaffolding that had ripped away from a building of about 10 stories and had, not only fallen on the buildings, in front of it, but also created havoc on the street, which was blocked off by police for half a block, and about ten police cars had shown up.