On Christmas day, I woke up and looked out onto the bay on which Nick’s family lives, Stanley Bay. There were people swimming, windsurfing, and sailing while a warm breeze came off the ocean. Although it was the first time I had spent Christmas away from my family, I felt alright. There were no presents, not a trace of holiday cheer, but I felt relaxed and at home nonetheless.
Around noon we headed to the top of the mountain that dominates Hong Kong Island. This area is known as The Peak, and we were going to visit some family friends of the Kent’s for a Christmas lunch. The family was extremely nice for welcoming me on such short notice, and the meal was very good. The family had a daughter who had just started attending Yale, and had been a classmate of Nick’s when they were in grade school. Two maids worked at their house, and they prepared the meal and served it to us. I was intimidated by the whole aspect of having maids…but two? It was really an eye opener as to the type of lifestyle many people lead in Hong Kong.
Shortly after arriving, I realized that my entry into Hong Kong had just voided my Chinese Visa, and that to re-enter in China I would have to get it renewed or get a new Visa. I went to the Chinese consulate, and the place was absolutely swamped. I waited for 4 hours in the consulate, even taking a nap on the floor. Finally it was my turn and I filed my request…it would take until the 30th to be ready. My CCTV show on Hainan Island was supposed to start shooting on the 1st. It would be tight.
On the 26th a massive earthquake hit Taiwan, and severed several of the fiber-optic cables that connect East Asia to Europe and America. The internet stopped working for two days, and after that, we were only able to access Google (search links didn’t work), and for some reason, Facebook. This caused severe problems throughout the region, causing international bank accounts to be inaccessible, online transactions to be impossible, and online communications to be unusable.
I was able to explore much of Hong Kong over then next few days as well as meet up with Anne Cheng, Betty Hu, Remus Wong, Wesley Yu, and Jiyoung Byun, all former classmates of mine at Choate. I went to some of the club and bar districts with them and discovered how expensive the nightlife was compared to Beijing.
With Nick and his father, I was able to take quite a few nature walks along the back side of Honk Kong Island (the opposite side of the famous skyline). The difference between the two sides is staggering…high rises and office towers on one side, and forests, beaches, and small secluded fishing villages on the other.
On the 29th I met up with Ned Gallagher, Director of Athletics at Choate. He was starting his sabbatical, taking a world tour. His stop after Hong Kong: Australia, then onto Singapore, India, Egypt, and Spain. We talked about my experience so far and about old and new times at Choate. After a nice lunch at a sushi restaurant, we bid each other good luck.
That day I was supposed to pick up my new Visa from the consulate, but I was unable to withdraw any money to pay for it (pay by cash only) because the banks were still affected by the earthquake. I would have to wait until Tuesday (Monday was New Years, a public holiday). I called CCTV and told them about my situation. They said that Tuesday would be too late and that they would find a new “husband” for Terry.
Now free from that commitment, I had the opportunity to spend more time in Hong Kong with my friends. Nick left on the 3rd, and I went to stay with Wesley. I was able to meet many members of Wesley’s immediate and extended family, including a cousin who is studying at Imperial College in London as an Environmental Engineer. At some of his family meals, I was able to try Shark Fin soup, which was very good. I don’t think that I would eat it by choice, though, after I saw a TV program that explained how the fin is acquired and the rest of the shark disposed of.
I had been in contact with Cummins Guangzhou, and had scheduled a start date of January 7th.
The day before I left for Guangzhou, I took at trip to Sai Kung. It is a medium sized fishing town, its harbor filled with fishing boats and junks. Along the side of the water front, several small fishing boats were tied, selling fresh fish and shellfish. The customer would point to the fish he or she wanted and the boatman or woman would take it out of the water, scale it and filet it while it was still alive, and then send it to the customer in a net on the end of a pole. The customer would then put money in the net and the boatman or woman would take it and return change if necessary in the net. All along the waterfront were seafood restaurants, with tanks of their seafood on display outside.
My trip back to the mainland was uneventful and my new Visa worked without a hitch.
I was picked up by two guys named Ryan and Long He at the train station. They took me to get dinner and then to buy some items for my apartment. I had to buy sheets, a quilt, and a pillow, as well as some toilet paper, shampoo, and a tower. The apartment turned out to be literally across the street from the office, and it was in great shape. Later in the evening, Sunny, the head of the Guangzhou Office, came by to see me.
The next day I came into the office to meet the 30 employees. They all seemed very nice. The office itself was built only a couple of years ago, and had a very modern feel. I was given my own cubicle and started to figure out what had to be done with the employees’ English.
Before I could formally start working, however, I had to go to a hospital to get a physical examination done. The hospital was located on an Island in between the main city of Guangzhou, and the district of Pan Yu where I was living and where the office is located. At the hospital, I had to go through a very complex process just to get a physical check-up. First, I was made to register at a registration window where I had to fill out a contact information form. I was then given a plastic card with a barcode (much like one you might use to open a room at a hotel) and a slip of paper. I found the “body inspection” building and went in to register. I then had to return to the main building where I originally registered to pay the bill. Following that, I returned to the “inspection” building and gave them the receipt for my payment. After that they took a sample of my blood and then had me go to a series of stations where doctors checked my vision, my circulation, my blood pressure, my throat, my lungs (they took some x-rays without providing me with a lead apron!), as well as my height and weight. The only problem I ran into was that I couldn’t read some of the colorblindness cards at the vision station, but I told them I already knew of my condition. They said my results would be ready in a couple of days and I headed home.
To test the English proficiency of the employees, I developed a series of tests for them, including ones that tried their speaking, reading, writing, and listening abilities. For the speaking test, I had them describe the country they would visit if they had an all-expenses-paid-for trip to anywhere, and why they wanted to go there. The most popular choices were Canada, America, Japan, and France. For the reading segment, I had everyone choose from an Easy, Medium, or Hard passage according to what they thought they could do. The Easy was two basic sentences, the medium was a short paragraph with some dialogue, and the hard was some literature with multiple-word metaphors. They read the passage and tried to answer the questions I made for it. Only one member of the staff could understand the metaphors. For listening, I read a paragraph out of one of the Cummins annual letters and asked a series of questions about it. For the writing segment, I asked everyone to write a paragraph (somewhere between 100-200 words) discussing “The effect of banning motorcycles from the downtown area in Guangzhou and how it affects you personally. Express approval/disapproval, and also talk about problems it causes/fixes.” I got some very telling results from that. On top of the tests, I also interviewed them and got a sense of their English experience and aspirations.
The employees were all very busy so it was difficult to test them all effectively. Also, many of them must go out of the office for part or all of the day. I got all 30 of them done in about 5 days. After that, I organized them into different levels based on test results and my own thoughts on their interviews.
My first weekend in Guangzhou, I was introduced to the city on Saturday by Mini Zhao, the Human Resources director at Cummins Guangzhou. She took me to the major shopping areas as well as Sun Yat Sen University. Her husband works at Guangzhou TV, and I got to meet him as well. In the evening, I was invited back to her mother-in-law’s house for dinner. There, we picked up Mini’s daughter, Yoyo, who is 5 years old. The three of us then went to the Pearl River, which winds through Guangzhou, and took a walk along its banks. I was able to practice my Mandarin with Yoyo, who is learning it as well.
On Sunday, I went out with a fellow named Tom from the office. We were on a mission to see how hard it would be for me, as a foreigner, to get a second-hand motorcycle. He brought along his best friend who is a motorcycle engineer. We went to a district about 20 minutes by bus from Pan Yu that had dozens of second-hand and new motorcycle dealers. We eventually found out that there were many steps I would have to complete to finally get one. First of all I would have to register in the city as a temporary resident (which I think I am supposed to do anyway), and then I have to obtain a license (this is the hard part) by either passing the license test and waiting a month, or figuring out how to go to another city and buy one. Then I would actually have to buy the bike, which would cost about 5,000 yuan. The motorcycles in China are all capped at 150cc’s which means they usually cannot surpass 90 km/h on the road. There are no Harley type ‘choppers’ on the roads. All the bikes are extremely utilitarian, and can be seen being used for carrying passengers and various goods. I am still interested in getting one, but it may be too difficult to obtain a license. I might have to settle for a bicycle.
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