My stay in Shanghai was mainly limited to the hotel, the ride to the hotel, the office, and back. There were a few exceptions, of course, and I’ll get to those in due time, but first I must clear out the random observations and reflections from this week.
China boasts of two great walls. There is of course the great wall built of stone, but then there is the “great firewall,” a virtual wall in the internet built by the communist party government to protect its citizens against outrageous and inflammatory sources of outside information. This “Golden Shield” effectively stands in the middle between all communication in and out of the country.
In addition to blocking various sites deemed infectious, the great firewall must also inspect traffic in order to identify subversive and otherwise offensive material so it can block that which it is not already configured to block.
And in order to do this, the great firewall must necessarily slow down traffic and in many cases simply refuse it in order to make sure that nothing untoward sneaks past its nosy software.
All that amounts to one major problem for those righteous internet users just trying to get an honest job done: the internet here is a steaming pile of slow and inconsistent connectivity. Sometimes a web site you just accessed suddenly stops responding… for a minute or two. Sometimes you can’t access something, thinking it is blocked, and then mysteriously it is back minutes or hours later. Some web sites that you might think are innocuous like wordpress blogs are completely blocked and then others, such as the blog you’re reading now, not blocked at all (at least not until I said this).
Worst of all is human communication. Skype, Lync, VOIP, etc. all fail miserably. When they aren’t failing now, it’s a renewed gamble each minute that your call will finally fail. It’s not if, it’s when. And cell calls outside of the country, what few I made, were wrought with massively obtrusive static and electronic noises which I assume is the Golden Shield doing its best to dissuade me from knocking it or its homeland.
But I digress.
I’ll say a very small bit about the office and what not, since that is my purpose here and it stands to reason that someone may find it interesting if not relevant. The office is but a 5 minute drive away, and a colleague there, Jianzhong by name but whom I’ll call X to allow me to type easier, volunteered to pick me up and drop me off every day. I was quite grateful as this meant not having to deal with taxis, which would have entailed hailing said taxis, describing my destination without using words that we both understand, determining acceptable means of payment, and wrestling once again with the whole “tip” topic.
Along the way between hotel and office during rush hours it is clear there are a lot of people trying to get around by car, motorcycle, bicycle or simply on foot, and that the general rule of the road is this: whoever does not give up in the perpetual game of chicken has the right of way. Example: at a stop light, when you’re going straight, and the light turns green, those across the intersection who want to turn left will immediately turn left in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you beat them to the punch on the get go from the stoplight – it is a mandatory game of chicken, and my driver X, being kind and respectful of others, let me down by not being aggressive enough to teach the others a lesson and give me any good traffic stories to tell my grandchildren. On the other hand, we survived a week without being hit or hitting anyone else, so I’ll call it even.
The same seems to be true of pedestrians crossing the street. In fact I’d often get dropped off on a corner near the office where I’d have to cross a busy street and I learned quickly that you don’t wait. You “frogger” yourself across the road. When there are a large number of people crossing, the first car that stops or slows down (as X often would) starts a stampede of pedestrians which continues sometimes for up to a minute or two. I’d see other vehicles inch their way slowly forward into the rush of non-vehicled street crossers and once the flow started to divert to go around the back of the intruding car, it would be free to push forward and continue on its way unimpeded until the next blockade.
Incidentally this is not too different from Bangalore except that here there is a little more order and caution involved in the participants here in Shanghai. However, it occurred to me early this week that there seems to be a general trend in both societies that people don’t wait out of courtesy whether in vehicles in traffic, people around you or especially in elevators and metros. While I had the pleasure of riding a metro only once when it was not too crowded, I have heard that you must be aggressive in your intentions there or risk being stuck inside never to get out again.
Why is this? Because in both metros and elevators there are bottlenecks through which traffic must flow. Americans, not known for their innate courtesy, seem to have accepted that if those outside the doors wait long enough for those inside to get out, the whole process just works smoother for everyone, and so we Yankees reluctantly adopt this practice of courtesy. Not so in Bangalore and Shanghai. Without fail, if I were in an elevator and the doors open at my floor, I would take a step toward exiting only to have to fight my way through the jammed bottleneck against all of the other outsiders insisting their rite of passage.
Why is this? I had a conversation later in the week with X along these lines where he pointed out that in countries like these where there are an immense number of people, the competition for resources can be very high and aggressiveness and quickness are key survival traits.
Resources in this sense are not limited to money or valuables as we capitalist pigs tend to think of them. It is anything from a spot in traffic to a position in a queue to presence in a people mover to parking spots. In fact, parking around the office was a lot like a treasure hunt. X would drive around a large radius of parking options for sometimes as long as 10 minutes until an empty spot was found.
Ok so the offices are composed of three towers forming a triangle where each tower has the same exact floor plan, paint scheme, general demeanor and even posters on the wall more or less. They are connected at the bottom by a large cafeteria. The cafeteria exits into these towers have been intelligently designed such that two of the exits are exactly the same in layout and appearance. I was warned but still failed to prevent the occurrence of exiting the cafeteria and going into the wrong building, only to not realize the fact until you admit that the people in room you enter are not the people who should be there, and the smirks on their faces are because they know you’re one of the few foolish ones who have failed to enter the correct building.
Other than that the office spaces are nice, modern and seem comfortable to those used to temperatures of 25-26 C. 77-79 F might not seem too difficult to endure but you must realize that for the last few years I’ve worked in my basement office where the temperature hovers between 69 and 72 F with an AC vent that blows down on my head. I’ve become acclimated to arctic conditions and so Bangalore was tantamount to torture and Shanghai was merely uncomfortable to the likes of Scott. (Who on numerous occasions has said to Megan, his wife, "Wouldn't it be cool to do a vacation where we were able to walk on Antarctica? Or visit Siberia? How many of your friends can say they've done those things???")
As for the people I was there to meet and work with, they are awesomely friendly and were I stationed in this area I’d be happy to continue working with them (once I reset my internal thermostat).
China boasts of two great walls. There is of course the great wall built of stone, but then there is the “great firewall,” a virtual wall in the internet built by the communist party government to protect its citizens against outrageous and inflammatory sources of outside information. This “Golden Shield” effectively stands in the middle between all communication in and out of the country.
 |
| This is what the Great Wall looks like. Cool, right? |
And in order to do this, the great firewall must necessarily slow down traffic and in many cases simply refuse it in order to make sure that nothing untoward sneaks past its nosy software.
All that amounts to one major problem for those righteous internet users just trying to get an honest job done: the internet here is a steaming pile of slow and inconsistent connectivity. Sometimes a web site you just accessed suddenly stops responding… for a minute or two. Sometimes you can’t access something, thinking it is blocked, and then mysteriously it is back minutes or hours later. Some web sites that you might think are innocuous like wordpress blogs are completely blocked and then others, such as the blog you’re reading now, not blocked at all (at least not until I said this).
 |
| This is what the Golden Shield looks like. |
But I digress.
I’ll say a very small bit about the office and what not, since that is my purpose here and it stands to reason that someone may find it interesting if not relevant. The office is but a 5 minute drive away, and a colleague there, Jianzhong by name but whom I’ll call X to allow me to type easier, volunteered to pick me up and drop me off every day. I was quite grateful as this meant not having to deal with taxis, which would have entailed hailing said taxis, describing my destination without using words that we both understand, determining acceptable means of payment, and wrestling once again with the whole “tip” topic.
Along the way between hotel and office during rush hours it is clear there are a lot of people trying to get around by car, motorcycle, bicycle or simply on foot, and that the general rule of the road is this: whoever does not give up in the perpetual game of chicken has the right of way. Example: at a stop light, when you’re going straight, and the light turns green, those across the intersection who want to turn left will immediately turn left in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you beat them to the punch on the get go from the stoplight – it is a mandatory game of chicken, and my driver X, being kind and respectful of others, let me down by not being aggressive enough to teach the others a lesson and give me any good traffic stories to tell my grandchildren. On the other hand, we survived a week without being hit or hitting anyone else, so I’ll call it even.
The same seems to be true of pedestrians crossing the street. In fact I’d often get dropped off on a corner near the office where I’d have to cross a busy street and I learned quickly that you don’t wait. You “frogger” yourself across the road. When there are a large number of people crossing, the first car that stops or slows down (as X often would) starts a stampede of pedestrians which continues sometimes for up to a minute or two. I’d see other vehicles inch their way slowly forward into the rush of non-vehicled street crossers and once the flow started to divert to go around the back of the intruding car, it would be free to push forward and continue on its way unimpeded until the next blockade.
 |
| I think that thing next to the red shirt guy is a robot. |
Why is this? Because in both metros and elevators there are bottlenecks through which traffic must flow. Americans, not known for their innate courtesy, seem to have accepted that if those outside the doors wait long enough for those inside to get out, the whole process just works smoother for everyone, and so we Yankees reluctantly adopt this practice of courtesy. Not so in Bangalore and Shanghai. Without fail, if I were in an elevator and the doors open at my floor, I would take a step toward exiting only to have to fight my way through the jammed bottleneck against all of the other outsiders insisting their rite of passage.
Why is this? I had a conversation later in the week with X along these lines where he pointed out that in countries like these where there are an immense number of people, the competition for resources can be very high and aggressiveness and quickness are key survival traits.
Resources in this sense are not limited to money or valuables as we capitalist pigs tend to think of them. It is anything from a spot in traffic to a position in a queue to presence in a people mover to parking spots. In fact, parking around the office was a lot like a treasure hunt. X would drive around a large radius of parking options for sometimes as long as 10 minutes until an empty spot was found.
Ok so the offices are composed of three towers forming a triangle where each tower has the same exact floor plan, paint scheme, general demeanor and even posters on the wall more or less. They are connected at the bottom by a large cafeteria. The cafeteria exits into these towers have been intelligently designed such that two of the exits are exactly the same in layout and appearance. I was warned but still failed to prevent the occurrence of exiting the cafeteria and going into the wrong building, only to not realize the fact until you admit that the people in room you enter are not the people who should be there, and the smirks on their faces are because they know you’re one of the few foolish ones who have failed to enter the correct building.
Other than that the office spaces are nice, modern and seem comfortable to those used to temperatures of 25-26 C. 77-79 F might not seem too difficult to endure but you must realize that for the last few years I’ve worked in my basement office where the temperature hovers between 69 and 72 F with an AC vent that blows down on my head. I’ve become acclimated to arctic conditions and so Bangalore was tantamount to torture and Shanghai was merely uncomfortable to the likes of Scott. (Who on numerous occasions has said to Megan, his wife, "Wouldn't it be cool to do a vacation where we were able to walk on Antarctica? Or visit Siberia? How many of your friends can say they've done those things???")
As for the people I was there to meet and work with, they are awesomely friendly and were I stationed in this area I’d be happy to continue working with them (once I reset my internal thermostat).
No comments:
Post a Comment