Showing posts with label Xiangtan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Xiangtan. Show all posts
Saturday, November 28, 2009
No, the trip didn't happen
A week and a half ago I posted about a dinner with clients, and a possible trip to the Xiangtan steel plant this weekend. Well, it didn't happen. I'm not too surprised - that's the way things go when a client makes drunken promises during a big night out!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Fact: dinner + clients = hangover
Last night I went out to an impromptu dinner after work with the Director of Sales and the CEO of the Chinese branch of MOX, the company that I'm working for over here. It sounds strange when I say it out loud (or type it, as the case is here obviously), as I would never interact with that level of management in my own company back in Australia. But over here, I'm the foreign expert that everyone loves...or at least, wants to show off to customers. So when a client is in town that has bought (or is thinking about buying) the software that I help to write, I'm inevitably invited along to a dinner during the week to interact with them on a social level.
I have no problems with this whatsoever - the dinners are usually great fun, and it gives me a chance to practise my (extremely limited) Chinese in a social setting. Last night's dinner was no exception. We were located in a great spot, on the top floor of the Super Brand Mall which is right on the bank of the Huangpu River in Pudong. Actually, this dinner was a little different, as there were only 7 people at the dinner (normally there are 10 or more) and two of the attendees were old friends of the CEO (they all went to University together).
This revelation was shared with me pretty early in the evening, and it of course meant that there was going to be a lot of drinking and reminiscing. When the food was ordered, I was asked what I would like to drink, and immediately said 'pijou', which is Chinese for beer. The rest of the guests at the dinner went with a fiery Chinese rice wine which is a lot more potent. At this point, I was given a challenge by the CEO:
"Andrew, we will all drink one bottle of wine each over dinner. This wine has more alcohol than the beer you are drinking. That means you must drink five bottles of beer!"
"Five bottles?" I said incredulously. "How big are we talking?"
The bottles were brought out and to my relief they were only 500ml. However, in dinners like this the problem is not so much the alcohol content, but the sheer amount of liquid that you are consuming over a pretty short period. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Chinese dinners are all about showing your respect to the other guests by toasting them. This meant that I was in for a tough time, as I was drinking about 200ml of beer for every toast, while the other guys were only drinking about 50ml of wine.
Not being one to pass up a challenge, I entered proceedings with gusto and before I knew it had polished off a couple of bottles in quick succession. The food arrived and was quite delicious (peanut based dishes are a fun challenge with chopsticks after you've had a few drinks). One of the customers was from the Xiangtan Steel company, a city which I've been to before (twice) to help them fix some problems they were having. We hadn't met on my previous visits, but we got along so well that he invited me to go along next weekend for the formal site acceptance testing process, and then offered to take me to see the birthplace of Chairman Mao, which is about an hour's drive away from the city. I was also promised 'spicy food and spicy girls', as the Hunan province is famous for both. So that should be interesting if it happens.
Anyway, after numerous rounds of toasting, I had finished my five bottles of beer...and the others still hadn't finished their wine. So a sixth bottle was brought out for me to continue the toasting. By the time the dinner had finished at 9pm, I had drunk 3 litres of beer...in the space of only 2 hours. I was pretty tipsy by this stage, and ridiculously full of liquid. Sometimes we'd head out to a karaoke place or continue drinking at a bar after a dinner, but the other attendees had flights to catch early the next morning, so we wrapped it up. Which was probably a good idea, as I don't know how else I could have physically fit anything into my stomach. I had a terrible night's sleep and woke up feeling extremely average. Not the worst hangover I've ever had, but worse than I was expecting to feel on a Thursday!
If I end up going on the trip next weekend you'll be able to read all about it right here. Stay tuned.
I have no problems with this whatsoever - the dinners are usually great fun, and it gives me a chance to practise my (extremely limited) Chinese in a social setting. Last night's dinner was no exception. We were located in a great spot, on the top floor of the Super Brand Mall which is right on the bank of the Huangpu River in Pudong. Actually, this dinner was a little different, as there were only 7 people at the dinner (normally there are 10 or more) and two of the attendees were old friends of the CEO (they all went to University together).
This revelation was shared with me pretty early in the evening, and it of course meant that there was going to be a lot of drinking and reminiscing. When the food was ordered, I was asked what I would like to drink, and immediately said 'pijou', which is Chinese for beer. The rest of the guests at the dinner went with a fiery Chinese rice wine which is a lot more potent. At this point, I was given a challenge by the CEO:
"Andrew, we will all drink one bottle of wine each over dinner. This wine has more alcohol than the beer you are drinking. That means you must drink five bottles of beer!"
"Five bottles?" I said incredulously. "How big are we talking?"
The bottles were brought out and to my relief they were only 500ml. However, in dinners like this the problem is not so much the alcohol content, but the sheer amount of liquid that you are consuming over a pretty short period. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Chinese dinners are all about showing your respect to the other guests by toasting them. This meant that I was in for a tough time, as I was drinking about 200ml of beer for every toast, while the other guys were only drinking about 50ml of wine.
Not being one to pass up a challenge, I entered proceedings with gusto and before I knew it had polished off a couple of bottles in quick succession. The food arrived and was quite delicious (peanut based dishes are a fun challenge with chopsticks after you've had a few drinks). One of the customers was from the Xiangtan Steel company, a city which I've been to before (twice) to help them fix some problems they were having. We hadn't met on my previous visits, but we got along so well that he invited me to go along next weekend for the formal site acceptance testing process, and then offered to take me to see the birthplace of Chairman Mao, which is about an hour's drive away from the city. I was also promised 'spicy food and spicy girls', as the Hunan province is famous for both. So that should be interesting if it happens.
Anyway, after numerous rounds of toasting, I had finished my five bottles of beer...and the others still hadn't finished their wine. So a sixth bottle was brought out for me to continue the toasting. By the time the dinner had finished at 9pm, I had drunk 3 litres of beer...in the space of only 2 hours. I was pretty tipsy by this stage, and ridiculously full of liquid. Sometimes we'd head out to a karaoke place or continue drinking at a bar after a dinner, but the other attendees had flights to catch early the next morning, so we wrapped it up. Which was probably a good idea, as I don't know how else I could have physically fit anything into my stomach. I had a terrible night's sleep and woke up feeling extremely average. Not the worst hangover I've ever had, but worse than I was expecting to feel on a Thursday!
If I end up going on the trip next weekend you'll be able to read all about it right here. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Steel plants, Facebook and stir-fried dog
As I mentioned yesterday, I'm stuck in the small city of Xiangtan at the moment doing some troubleshooting work at a steel plant here. Xiangtan is about 1000km southwest of Shanghai, and is in the Hunan province. It's only got about 1 million residents, so is quite small compared to the other cities I've visited during my travels here.
I spent most of my trips to China in 2006 and 2007 working at the Jigang steel plant in Jinan, and I'd forgotten what it was like. I've been here for only two days, and it's all coming back to me. Getting to work at 8am and leaving at 7pm, everything is dirty, dusty and hot hot hot (you can tell I'm a sheltered programmer used to working in air-conditioned comfort, can't you?). I'm staying here until at least Friday night - the way things are going I'll be here for part of the weekend as well, as they've got a lot of problems to sort through. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but as I'm heading off to the USA on one months holiday next week, I'd kind of like to get back to Shanghai to prepare for my trip.
I'm here with a couple of other engineers from the company that I'm working for. It's funny coming to places like this because unless you can speak Chinese very well, you're basically coddled. I get picked up in a taxi each morning, taken out to a nice restaurant for lunch, taken to exactly the same restaurant for dinner, and then dropped off back at my hotel in a taxi afterwards. Yes, there seems to be only one restaurant they're willing to take me to, and don't trust me to be able to get a taxi from one place to another even though I have a card with my hotel written in Chinese on it.
I shouldn't complain too much about the food here, because it is very tasty (although eating at a different place before I leave might be nice). Hunan is a spicy-food province, and lots of the dishes I have eaten have been covered in different peppers and chillis, which I love. One thing I didn't love was the option to eat 'stir fried dog with potato and green peppers', pointed out in the menu this evening. I politely declined, though I promised my colleagues that I'd happily eat some donkey the next time it was on the menu (I had that back in 2007 and found it was actually pretty good).
On a completely unrelated note, Facebook has been blocked here in China due to the civil unrest going on in Xinjiang (I'm sure you've seen it on the news). Surprisingly, it's on the news here as well - normally the authorities like to sweep this sort of stuff under the rug as much as possible (by ushering out foreign journalists) but in this instance they don't seem to be doing that. It's mentioned on the local news, although I'm getting most of my details from the BBC, who have pretty good coverage thanks to their reporters being allowed to stay near the action. At any rate, even with my special program to bypass the dodgy Chinese firewall, access to both Blogger and Facebook is extremely slow/suspect for the time being.
I spent most of my trips to China in 2006 and 2007 working at the Jigang steel plant in Jinan, and I'd forgotten what it was like. I've been here for only two days, and it's all coming back to me. Getting to work at 8am and leaving at 7pm, everything is dirty, dusty and hot hot hot (you can tell I'm a sheltered programmer used to working in air-conditioned comfort, can't you?). I'm staying here until at least Friday night - the way things are going I'll be here for part of the weekend as well, as they've got a lot of problems to sort through. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but as I'm heading off to the USA on one months holiday next week, I'd kind of like to get back to Shanghai to prepare for my trip.
I'm here with a couple of other engineers from the company that I'm working for. It's funny coming to places like this because unless you can speak Chinese very well, you're basically coddled. I get picked up in a taxi each morning, taken out to a nice restaurant for lunch, taken to exactly the same restaurant for dinner, and then dropped off back at my hotel in a taxi afterwards. Yes, there seems to be only one restaurant they're willing to take me to, and don't trust me to be able to get a taxi from one place to another even though I have a card with my hotel written in Chinese on it.
I shouldn't complain too much about the food here, because it is very tasty (although eating at a different place before I leave might be nice). Hunan is a spicy-food province, and lots of the dishes I have eaten have been covered in different peppers and chillis, which I love. One thing I didn't love was the option to eat 'stir fried dog with potato and green peppers', pointed out in the menu this evening. I politely declined, though I promised my colleagues that I'd happily eat some donkey the next time it was on the menu (I had that back in 2007 and found it was actually pretty good).
On a completely unrelated note, Facebook has been blocked here in China due to the civil unrest going on in Xinjiang (I'm sure you've seen it on the news). Surprisingly, it's on the news here as well - normally the authorities like to sweep this sort of stuff under the rug as much as possible (by ushering out foreign journalists) but in this instance they don't seem to be doing that. It's mentioned on the local news, although I'm getting most of my details from the BBC, who have pretty good coverage thanks to their reporters being allowed to stay near the action. At any rate, even with my special program to bypass the dodgy Chinese firewall, access to both Blogger and Facebook is extremely slow/suspect for the time being.
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