ChuckDoherty.com

I am back in the good old US of A, and writing this from the kitchen of a lovely suite at The Meritage Resort in Napa, California.  My friend Bill did some business with the resort a while back and was able to arrange for the normally pricey suite at an amazingly low rate.    The resort is beautiful, as is the surrounding area, and – aside from home, but that comes Monday – I could not think of a place I would rather be right now.

Last night, Tom, Bill and I went to a wonderful restaurant for Martinis, and converted the visit into dinner as well. The meal was astonishing, the wine Bill chose was great, and the Martinis did their magic well. Afterward we went to a nearby wine bar where, if I recall, everything was very blurry.

Well, the fat lady has sung and my phase of the project is over.  Tomorrow morning I plan to do a bit of last minute shopping and head to the airport to board a flight to San Francisco. When I arrive there I will meet with my longtime friend Bill Anderson and the two of us will drive an hour north to Napa where we will meet Tom Mainelli, another longtime friend, for a weekend of wine drinking and general carring-on.  Think Sideways without the helmet beating.  Hopefully.

This trip was a once-in-a-lifetime opportuinity, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to visit here.  Everyone we dealt with has been wonderfully hospitible and generous, and went out of their way to make us feel welcome.

If there was one overall impression I will take away from this trip, it would have to be that we should all learn how to say “Do you want fries with that?” in Chinese, if we don’t watch our step.  The Chinese are hard working, smart, industrious, and above all, plentiful.  That which they do not acomplish with quality they more than make up for in quantity.  And make no mistake about it, this country is on the move.  In another 20 years, China will be the dominant player in the world economy.  Sure, they will make some egregious mis-steps along the way, but there is plenty of roon for Mulligans when you have 1.4 billion people. 

More tomorrow.

This trip is almost over.  This is the last day in the office, although there is plenty more work that I wish I had time to accomplish while here.  It remains to see if I am going to come back here in a few weeks, but it is likely.

Tomorrow afternoon at four PM I board a plane and go back in time, arriving in San Fransisco five hours before I left.

It is 13 hours ahead of EST here, but I stayed up long enough last night to watch the swearing-in at the inauguration and to listen to President Obama’s acceptance speech.  I was honestly moved and inspired by what he had to say, and I feel as though the country has turned a corner and is headed in a very positive direction after years of being led astray.  

A few parts of speech really resonated with me.

[W]e reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

A reasoned view at last.  We are not threatened by super-beings; we are faced with challenges that pale compared to those faced by our forefathers.  The outgoing administration has seized upon the brutal act of 19 savages in 2001 as justification for tossing aside much of what made America great. But there is only so long that people accept the fear of terrorism as justification for everything from invading another country to eavesdropping on the private conversations of American citizens without a warrant. The country finally said “enough,” and sent those like the near-Tourrettic Guiliani back to the shadows once again.

It is also time to relegate the very idea of “torture” back to where it belongs, and where it was in our national Zeitgeist just a decade ago; rightfully viewed as the actions of frightened and feckless people from a dark time long ago. It is not a tactic that should have been considered for a moment by the leaders of a land like ours, no matter the threat.  We are not that week of a nation, and no threat is that great. Yet our previous leaders, lacking both personal bravery and moral integrety, showed that they were willing to stoop to even this loathsome practice to puff their matted, chickenhawk feathers.

We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.

Pinch me.  Finally, a leader who is not intimidadated by knowledge. One who actually appoints scientists, not political yes-men to scientific posts within the administration. Someone who gets it.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.

For the first time, as a (very) non-believer, I also feel included.  For far too long, a belief in some variety of sky-wizard has been held up as not only desirable, but mandatory for acceptance as a citizen.  In fact, while he was Vice-President, George H.W. Bush had this to say about atheists; “I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

First of all, GHWB and his spawn can bite my shiny metal non-believing ass. They can also take a chomp out of the combined asses of the millions of other US citizens who do not delude themselves with hokum and superstition. A leader who reaches out to include everyone in the country, as Obama has, is refreshing to say the least.

And in a wonderful moment of made-for-TV Schadenfreude, the despicable Dick Cheney arrived at his swearing-out in a wheelchair, his spine likely reverting back to its natural consistancy now that his daily buffet of nurishing orphan livers has lost funding.  Within a week, all that will remain of him will be a rusty set of pacemaker batteries in an oily puddle.

It was a wonderful event, and If there were a God, I’d say God Bless.

I am perplexed why the citizens of China, a country with more high-rise buildings than I have seen anywhere, lack the most basic instincts in elevator operation.

Whenever an elevator door opens, those on the outiside start piling in with no regard whatsoever to those on the inside who are trying to file out. People basically walk straight toward one another, bumping and fumbling, even though pausing for a few seconds to allow people to exit would speed up the process for everyone. It is as though the entire concept of waiting a moment is lost upon them, even if there are clear benefits to doing so.

Once inside, elevator riders typically select their floor and immediately start jabbing at the door-close button as though each push will add a bit more speed to the elevator’s motion.

If the US and China are ever forced to duke it out, our most viable line of defense may prove to be equipment made by Otis.

For the most part, Beijing is as cosmopolitan a city as any in the west, but there are a few oddities that make you realize you are no longer in Kansas. Without belaboring the obvious, here are a few of the lesser ones.

Internet access is generally pretty open, except for some sites which are blocked altogether (including any deemed “indecent”, a wide brush indeed) and others such as CNN, which has just a few articles blocked.  I don’t know what exactly caused them to be censored since I can’t see them, but I can say tell you that the official kibosh was on CNN’s Political Ticker Blog today.  Some weeks ago, the New York Times website was blocked completely for a few days, then appeared again with no explanation given.

You often see young security guards and soldiers standing watch over what looks like an empty building or field, stationed there for hours on end in their long green coats. With 1.4 billion people, there is certainly enough available manpower to handle these assignments. 

Cartoon images of Chinese people, drawn by Chinese people, do not look Chinese at all. Not even slightly.

I am used to clothing being sized differently outside of the US, but here the sizing is WAY off from what you would expect.  Case in point; I bought some “XL” underwear (the gray ones, below) but these Barbie-shorts are unwearable by anyone with any meat on their bones. As you can see, they are significantly smaller than the mediums of a similar style (striped) that I purchased in London over the summer. 

It would be a different matter if I were comparing a pair of “generous fit” shorts from a WalMart in the American Midwest to a pair of the same size here, but this was case of comparing the local XL to European Medium, which runs small to begin with. Perhaps one could infer there is some sort of below-the-waist overcompensation taking place here, but I am not suggesting that at all.  I’m just sayin’… 

There is no shortage at all of native English speakers in this town, yet there is a curious opposition on the part of the Chinese to proofread anything they print in English, even large and expensive signs.   I am currently looking at the business card of the “Carry on Present Watch Business” that proudly proclaims;

Wholesale to retail every variety high inside low Tile quartz clock. Machinery voluntarily watch,  fashonable jewelery watch, electuon watch.

People hawk up phelm with impunity, and often expell it with little regard to where it’s going.  This morning, an old man waiting for the elevator at the hotel summoned up a prize-winning lung oyster and plopped it into a sand-filled ashtray.  A day earlier in the lobby I heard what sounded like a dumptruck driving down a gravel road and looked up to see the source; the throat-clearing efforts of a thirty-something business woman dresssed in a suit and otherwise looking quite executive.  She at least had the ladylike decorum to deposit her output into a paper napkin rather than hurl it directly against the piano.  Nose-picking abounds.  

Washrooms almost never provide hot water. Except for those at the hotel or in very upscale restaurants, hand-washing takes place in ice-cold water.  In many cases there is no soap either.  Paper towels?  You’re kidding, right? And as I mentioned before, just about every bathroom, including those at the hotel, has a sewer smell.

As part of a small buffet, the company cafeteria offers two varieties of soup each day. These are served in five-gallon orange Home Depot-style buckets placed on the floor.  It is self-service: you use long-handled ladels to reach in to reach in and scoop out what you want.  Because no one here drinks any beverage with their meal, not even water, the soup is the closest thing to a liquid you see consumed at lunch.

 

See new photos here.

From outside the Forbidden City

An illustration that is rarely seen on menus back home.

I knocked off early yesterday after just eight hours of work rather than the usual twelve and struck off for downtown Beijing to meet up with Lesley Lan, a friend who works at our downtown office, for a welcome break from hotel dining and a chance to enjoy a five-cent tour of central Beijing with someone who knows both the ropes and English.  

We started at the Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant, which itself had been high on my list of places to visit.  The meal was extraordinary and like everything else around here, very reasonable.   Along with Peking duck and sauteed vegetables, we had and an interesting first course of lotus root with glutinated rice; a dish that rarely appears on the McDonald’s Extra Value Menu, though it should.

Lesley and I then ventured over to the Silk Market but arrived just before closing time.  The building is a warren of narrow corridors with small shops set up like booths along the sides of each. Imagine an overstocked and incoherently arranged flea-market cobbled together by the survivers of a nuclear war and you get some idea of the place.  The staff there are extremely aggressive and will literally grab you by the arm and pull you into their shop to pitch you on whatever they are offering.  We only had time to see a tiny sliver of the market last night but we did see was overwhelming.  Pretty much all of the brand-name goods in there there are knockoffs, varying in quality from somewhat convincing to; “that ain’t foolin’ nobody. Rorex??” 

I picked up an erzats North Face Summit jacket for 150RMB (about $21US) after some high drama negotiations getting the price down from the starting offer of 560RMB.   No sale is complete here unless it involves your walking away, them chasing you down the hall shouting “come back” while making three or four more counter-offers, and finally the salesperson moaning that he or she is losing money on the deal (hardly) even as they grudgingly agree to the final terms. 

After slipping on my new jacket and pulling it closed enough to cover my “Free Tibet!” T-shirt, we headed off in a cab to see the awesome Tienananaman Square.   Much more later.