China Graduates

My recent posts on Hong Kong and China were really only pond-skipping a few impressions of changes in the last 10 years. In more reflective mode, I am struck by how little Hong Kong has changed since reunification in 1997. It's still pig ugly above the ground floor glitz and is a tiring, heaving mass of people, tourists, delivery guys, self-appointed recyclers, copy-watch vendors, tailors and potholes. Cellular antennas crudely bolted to building tops point their signals directly down into the tight, old streets or, when mounted at street level, point up at 45deg into the glass skyscrapers. The new airport is a vast improvement over the old Kai Tak "strip of fear" and the AsiaWorld Expo next door is even better than the visually awkward, downtown Convention Centre. They still do a mean Double Skin Milk desert, almost as good as the Guangdong shops. HK is more exciting than Singapore, but also more tiring, ruder, dirtier and the weather (i.e. pollution) is astonishing.

China, on the other hand, feels like it has come of age. So many things have improved and developed it's hard to relate. If you want, you can talk about the quaint anachronisms that persist such as the office worker eating lunch from the obligatory oval lunch box (rice, green veg & a couple of strips of pork) while sat on the Ronald bench outside McDonalds; there are kids in punky hairdos jaywalking across roads openly ignoring the traffic cop and his hi-viz flag. People still fly kites over the river but now they're plastic sports models, not traditional square bamboo & rice paper. Poor people scratch out a living, collecting cardboard and scrap metal at the base of Executive Condos.

But these are old images with new twists and the juxtaposition of traditional and Western is no longer even news. When I first visited in 1991, China was badly under capitalised and with a vast labour pool, really would employ 6 women with scissors to cut a lawn (I have the picture). There were spittoons everywhere, public buses needed to be pushed up hills and all cars were Government vehicles. But there was a collective hunger for better times which has blossomed into the current national pride, so much pride in fact that the sense of hurt over the disrupted Olympic Torch tour is in danger of escalating out of Beijing's comfort zone.

As a footnote, much as I enjoyed the retrospective tour (despite 3 days of wicked gastroenteritis) I am glad to be back in Singapore. It's home, it's safe and the sun is shining but modern China left a deep impression on me. China has embraced capitalism and nationalism to become a self-sufficient and bold world player. Learn Mandarin, go East.

Two great takeaway ideas from the trip: the electric scooters in NingBo and the stencil of a house fly on the urinals at Singapore's Changi airport; it just invites you to take aim and thus ensures as splash free a visit as possible. Both are winning ideas.

(Ch)internet

I had pretty high expectations on this trip for being able to remain connected and continue the e-mail, blogs and such like. Now back in Singapore, I can report it's been a very mixed bag. The Hong Kong hotel had wired Internet for £2.66 / hour, or £8 / day, but that was per computer, so 2 travelers would need to pay separately. I'm 60% confident that my Apple Airport Express wireless router would allow 2 computers to share a connection so mental note for future trips, but don't tell anyone heh?

The Guangzhou hotel was similar to HK: £2.66 / hour, £4 / day but now behind the Great Firewall of China, blogger.com was inaccessible and my GMail went AWOL as well, staying in "Maintenance Mode" until well after I left China. I haven't figured out who to blame for the GMail blackout; it might be a defensive posture when Google suddenly sees a login from an IP address within China, or just a technical burp, but the timing suggests a Chinese connection. Whatever, I'm now far less keen to recommend GMail for business use unless you have a backup as I was locked out for over 3 days.

If you are wondering, the selective Internet blocking in mainland China won't affect Olympic visitors as they plan to derestrict the IP addresses for the buildings and hotels reserved for foreign visitors for the duration of the games.

Despite the room rate being fully one third that of HK, the NingBo hotel Internet was wired and free, as in, without charge. But with all the services I needed (blogger, GMail, encrypted tunnels) not working, it was the most frustrating of times. It seems free Internet and Internet freedom are mutually exclusive.

Back in Hong Kong, working feverishly in a daily 1 hour window, everything came back online. Hong Kong advertises a free (no cost) GovWiFi network, whose phase-1 works from libraries and some of the larger Government buildings. I never found the signal and couldn't connect.

A local HK telco, PCCW, has WiFi-enabled phone booths that provide access to their subscription and Pre-Pay services, but as a visitor, I might as well use the hotel rather than sit on a kerb.

I held out some hope for 3G cellular data and popped into a 3 shop, the retail front of the local 3G telco. They had the same Huawei 3G data modem that I have in Singapore, and their hardware is not networked locked like mine, but they don't do the 3G data tariff on a PAYG basis.

Throughout all of this, Google defaulted to a Chinese language interface. Everything is in the same place on the page and the search results are still English but it slows you down a tad. Geographic language selection is a sound technical choice, but I should learn how to force revert to .com or at least English at the .com.hk domain.

After 10 days of this, it was looking pretty grim leaving me in the mood to be pleasantly surprised when the Hong Kong airport offered free WiFi Internet with nothing blocked so I blogged and e-mailed and talked to my machine at home until the gate boarding queue for the plane was down the last 3 people. Finally.

Chinese Electric Dreams

Touchdown in NingBo, Zhejiang province and straight off I liked the place because the of blue skies; Hong Kong and Guangzhou were under a permanent grey-on-grey sky, polluted pall quite different from 10 years ago. It's literally dismal [from the Latin dies = day, and mali = bad, hence "bad day"]. Guangdong is called the Factory of the World but you don't even need to see a factory to appreciate the industrial activity.

NingBo, twinned with Nottingham, is an ancient Chinese port city, south of Shanghai and is now an economic zone with sprawling factories (chemical, plastics) over the river delta. Hence the visit. It's also the site of the world's longest road bridge that just opened this week.

Our hotel had a decidedly local character; the lobby, lobby cafe and lobby bar were all smoking areas, a stark contrast to Hong Kong where smokers have to do the outside-the-door huddle. The bar, actually a Cigar Bar, offered a happy hour (between 5pm and 8pm?) and a live 5-piece guitar band with 2 gals on vocals, one with a flute. And it really was a cigar bar; I got dizzy just poking my head through the door but by compensation, the Japanese restaurant was really good and the expat business community seems well served; there's even river-side condos.

Downtown remains non-industrial with some historic sights, pagodas and the like. Our hotel was next to the TianFeng Tower (pagoda) but I didn't have the 5 yuan (30p) entrance fee. There's a confluence of 2 rivers, forming a third so there's a 3-rivers theme, and a bull fighting theme, captured in a large bronze ox sculpture outside the No. 2 NingBo dept. store.

The most remarkable sight was not bovine but the omnipresent 50W electric scooters. The city has banned all motorbikes from the downtown apparently to cut down on dangerous driving but these scooters can do 25mph, perhaps 30 downhill. They are nearly silent, apart from the crappy bicycle-style caliper brakes and I would question the effectiveness of the policy's aims as these things weave around the roads, cycle lanes and pavements.

They certainly are a hit here and I'm amazed this is the first place to mandate their use. One problem, they are nearly silent so you won't be bothered by any tinny 2-stroke clatter just before they run into you on the pavement. Caveat pedes.

Above all, the Roof

Planes: check. Over-priced cafes: check. Big swoopy roof: check. The BaiYun GuangZhou airport (built 4 years ago replacing the old BaiYun airport) ticks all the right boxes with a modern spec and obligatory flowing roof over a vast space. China has plans to build 800 new or upgraded airports in the next few years, a figure that is hard to understand even when you know how big the country is.

The draconian, post-911, post-shoe-bomber, post-liquid-plot security regime is in force here causing a micro drama at an overloaded and anxious security checkpoint. It's hard enough trying to explain the complex rules about carry-on items to educated business travelers but when it's applied to elderly, working-class Chinese with their vast armfuls of bags, it can degenerate into farce. In this case, an old chap ended up clutching his possessions to his chest, pressing himself defensively against the X-ray machine as all 6 security staff tried to explain what he needed to do while trying to avoid a stampede from an audibly restless and growing queue.

At least they didn't insist you take your shoes off; leaving Heathrow recently I ended up standing in bare feet, wearing a shirt, boxers and trousers, walking through the metal induction loop (which didn't go off) but the security chappie didn't like the look of the passport and boarding pass in my hand and gave them a suspicious, rough bend just to be sure. I felt like checking with lost & found to see if someone had handed in my dignity.

Back in Guangzhou, it's no liquids and everything, coats & all bags, goes through the machine but you have to be quick to retrieve it before somebody else grabs it. Total confusion, not enough space for all the dressing and undressing, capricious rules. Game one to the terrorists.

Heroic Litter Collection

China's road manners haven't changed much; the roads here in Guangdong are much improved with the previously isolated stretches of highway now linked up. The animals, bicycles and farm tractors are elsewhere and this alone accounts for most of the improvement but they can still clog a 4 lane highway with 3 vehicles with their lane discipline. In England, the outer lane is lane-#1, then lane-#2 towards the centre. The Chinese highways, driving on the right but same principle, are signed as:

Lane-#1: Slow (Max 80kmph, Min 60kmph)
Lane-#2: Fast (Max 100/110, Min 80)
Lane-#3: Car lane (100/110, 80)

So you get cars in lane-#3 doing 80, trucks in lane-#2 doing 100, and cars undertaking both of these in lane-#1 doing 120. And that's without such wild cards as people who can't drive, Public Safety (police) cars doing whatever they want, people on the phone, undertaking on the hard shoulder and trucks on the hard shoulder reversing to get back to a missed exit.

England has a single speed limit (not even a weather dependent one which I think is an excellent idea) and a Keep Left rule. It does't work as people still hog lanes but at least it's simple. Hong Kong has inherited the English rules but this Chinese system is over-engineered and even less effective.

On a plus point, while paying road tolls are little fun, the toll booth ladies return change and ticket then wave the vehicle away with a firm hand/arm gesture, almost Japanese like. It's an uncommon courtesy, having little practical benefit, but further evidence of China's high aspirations filtering down to everyday work and behavior.

Incredibly, while all this freestyle driving is going on, there are guys picking up litter on the hard shoulder using a hi-vis jacket as protection; such selfless heroism is rare and in time of conflict one could form these men into a fearless fighting force, the only rival to disgruntled US postal workers.

Little Hearts Everywhere

Going to China from Hong Kong has always been pretty easy. Our route was best served by a boat from the Kowloon Ferry Terminal for a 2 hour cruise up the coast. It's a medium sized catamaran, non-smoking with some straight-to-VCD Chinese movie on screens at the front. The Chinese port is the same building as years ago but everyone seems more ... at attention. Smart uniforms, no loitering, efficient customs (better than Chep Lok Kap airport) and they even had a beagle sniffer dog. I'm thinking Olympic effect but it's early days.

The hotel was really nice with boiling hot tap water and a huge staff:guest ratio. Reception was staffed by Fiona, Sean and Jack. Later at dinner, the server was Wendy, assisted by Trainee Wong, leaving me to conclude that front-line staff with some English use solely Western names, while others are mono-syllabic Chinese surnames. It doesn't much matter to the Chinese, they will just called out "xiao jie" (little girl) to summon a waitress of whatever linguistic ability; the name tags are strictly for foreigers.

The in-room information pack listed Internet access at RMB40 (£2.60) for one hour, and a fairly reasonable RMB60 (£4) for a whole day. The system had to be retro-fitted onto the older hotel infrastructure by using ADSL over the extension wiring which I thought was neat and perhaps ensures greater accountability than wireless. Strangely, they also listed the prices for many of the room's fixtures and fittings, such as net curtains, bath towel, bath robe, kettle and shoe basket (RMB70 £4.60). I can only presume this is charged for missing items so it was reassuring they didn't give a price for the mini safe.

What is also striking are the nannying warnings. Hong Kong ferry terminal kept repeating annoucements about slippy floors (never seemed an issue 10 years ago). The hotel bathroom had the same warning above the toilet (literally: little heart ground wet). The dinner table warned not to let children run around as it can be dangerous. Did Asia suddenly get lawyered up and litigous? Prohibition signs are found in all countries but petty warning signs are pernicious and self-defensive. It's a bad sign.