Update from China

[Capstone]

I have almost finished up my first week of living the life of a Chinese vampire (working from China but during US Central time business hours) and so far it has been brutal. I feel like I am uber jetlagged at the moment but I guess that will pass after another week of working the same hours. It is 4:15 am here and I have about 2.5 more hours before I call it a workday. Other than that though everything is going great. I have my secure connectivity all setup and so I have no fear of conducting online banking, ect – I connect to my company's network back in the US via a secure VPN connection and then can connect to 1 of my 3 workstations back in the US via a remote desktop connection. So I actually do all of my web surfing, etc via one of my machines back in the US.   

Between Chinese New Years and starting back to work my wife and I were able to squeeze in a bit of traveling last week. We spent a couple of days in Chengdu located in Sichuan Province followed by a couple of days up North in Harbin and then a quick overnight shopping excursion to Hong Kong. I really enjoyed Chengdu and hope to make another return visit before returning to the US in May. I really love spicy food and I was sure able to get my fill while we were there – in fact it was bar none the best food that I have eaten anywhere in China to date. We then flew up to Harbin for a few days so that my wife could see the snow – something that she has only done once before. It was damn cold up there too! Good beer though. Then we made a quick run down to Hong Kong for a day of shopping & Cantonese cuisine.

The day before we flew to Chengdu we took a day trip to my mother in law’s hometown in order to have a second wedding banquet for the relatives who could not make it to the wedding banquet that we had last summer. I had a great time meeting many new relatives for the first time and also got more than a bit tipsy from all of the toasts that occurred – the Hennessy was a flowing that day!!  There were probably about 100 guests at this banquet but it did not cost me a dime as one of my wife's Aunt & Uncle flipped the bill but then we reciprocated by letting them keep all of the red envelopes of money that we received so they actually ended up making a small profit in the end.

Here are a few observations that I have experienced over the past 3 weeks:

English Corners 
English corners are nothing more than a designated place where people who want to improve their English skills gather once a week and practice speaking English to one another. They are usually held in parks, outside of churches, common areas at universities, etc. The topics that are discussed are basically anything and everything that you could ever think of. Most cities in China have at least one English Corner on a weekly basis with the larger cities having several. I attended my first English Corner last weekend and had a very good time. Xiamen has 4 English corners and the one that I attended is supposed to be the largest. Now the reason that I mention English Corners at all is because I think that they would be great opportunities/places to meet women in China. The people who attend them tend to be either university students or professionals who are looking to improve their English skills for work – so the women are more than likely going to be educated and speak at least some English. Many of the girls that I encountered spoke almost perfect English and everyone was very friendly towards me – in fact I had somewhat of a celebrity status because everyone was anxious to have a chance to interact with a native English speaker. In my opinion, anyone thinking of visiting China with the idea of possibly meeting women would be doing themselves a favor by checking out one of these English Corners.

Real Estate
The real estate market is booming all over China right now but anyone who can't see that there is a huge bubble would have to be blind. Speculators have caused home prices to skyrocket, which has shut out many people from buying a home in the cities. Here in Xiamen, there are entire new apartment buildings which are virtually empty while new buildings are going up right beside them – speculators have bought up all the units in the buildings with absolutely no intent of ever living in them and there just aren't enough renters to come close to filling them up. The bubble is definitely going to burst in time. Prior to this trip my wife and I had discussed possibly buying a small apartment here that we could use during our visits but I am definitely going to wait and catch the real estate market during an inevitable downturn and then think about buying a place then.


All in all I have been having a great time and if I can just get used to living the vampire lifestyle I am sure that the next 2 months will be much of the same.

[Jeff S]

Thanks for the update Cap - always good to hear from travelers while they're "over there."

Gotta figure out how to do that VPN thing to get around the Chinese internet overregulation.

[robert angel]

Capstone,

It's been almost two weeks since you made your trip post, but I wanted to say that I feel it's an excellent post, that it is interesting, informative and entertaining. I always enjoy your posts, but this one was above your 'par', covering a lot of ground.
 
I hadn't hears of English Corners', but that's a very interesting phenomenon that I hope to experience one day and will share the info with others.

I'd heard about the Chinese Govt's heavy handed control over the internet and found your method of securing and opening up connectivity interesting. I assume that like Israel, you don't want to leave a laptop in your hotel room with information on the hard drive--that corporate espionage by the Govt. is a real concern there as well.

That second wedding banquet sounded splendid and was very memorable I'm sure.

Thanks for sharing the info--I'm sure a lot of other people enjoyed it as well.

[Cardboard]

Great idea on the VPN!  I'm considering a new life out in China myself, and didn't think of setting my home desktop up as a VPN while I'm gone.  You seem to be enjoying your stay over there and I am very glad to hear it.  I can't wait to get the kinks worked out in preparation here before I can start my journey.

[Capstone]

Big Brother isn't the main reason that I wanted to establish a secure VPN connection for my internet activities rather it is identity theft that I am most concerned about. In order to go about my normal lifestyle of paying bills, work, etc., I wanted to make sure that everything that I pass over the internet is well encrypted. Internet censorship here isn't really too bad - there are only a handful of sites that I can not access without going through my VPN connection and I couldn't care less if someone in the Chinese government is actually keeping tabs on my internet activities as I do not try to access information on politically sensitive subjects such as Tibet, etc. But so far everything has been going great.

[evoltnvii]

nice setup with the secure vpn what kind of bandwith are you able to get over there?

[Capstone]

nice setup with the secure vpn what kind of bandwith are you able to get over there?

The internet package that I have advertises 5Mb download speeds but every time that I have clocked it, it has been closer to 4Mb - but for less than $5 a month I won't complain .

On a side note, I pay 7rmb ($1US) per 50MB of data that I use with my smartphone.

[evoltnvii]

nothing to complain about there

[robert angel]

It's ironic that in the USA, what I pay for cable TV, high speed internet, a landline and cell phones each month is more than most people make in a month in Asia and Latin America.