Back from China Trip

Well I'm back from a month long holiday in China. The goal was to spend time with my wife's family and then relax on a sort of honeymoon.

We spent the first two weeks in Beijing (east of china), staying in a family apartment in Nanmencang Hutong (near ghost street, the military hospital, and the old grain warehouses from the Yuan Dynasty), only 20 minutes walk from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We visited many of the sights including the Great Wall at Badaling, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, Beihai Park, the Temple of Heaven, the Bird's Nest and Water Cube, and lots of markets (I bought mostly clothes, gifts, and a cool microlight helicopter for pocket change).

The markets were really interesting from the perspective of the selling culture. Every purchase involved a little dance of the seller trying to talk up the product and extract as much cash as possible from the buyer, and the buyer faining disinterest in the product, questioning the quality, and attempting to achieve the lowest price possible. Too aggressive, and the dance abruptly finished. From trinkets to bags of fake polo shirts to fake watches, a balance had to be negotiated to ensure the seller got their margin and the customer walked away happy. Once you achieved a purchase, tested each others metal, you could then bargain for other items the seller was pushing with a lot less resistance.

The interesting part for me was the aggressiveness of the sellers to push their wares, from yelling at you to grabbing you, to putting products in your bag and asking for the money. A 'get a sale at any cost' mentality. I was also very impressed that these young girls could switch languages and be functional (persuasive) so rapidly. Mandarin and English were the main two, but I was cases of girls trying Russian, German, and Spanish. More than that, I could clearly see differences in persuasive strategy between nationalities. More coy and playful with European men, child like to Russian men, confrontational with Chinese women, etc.

Besides the the tourist thing I was watching out for technology and captured some observations:

• Mobile phones were everywhere from the tourists, to the shoppers in department stalls, to grandmas riding bicycles through the hutong
• Most phones were simple handsets, although i did see a handful of unrecognizable smart phones and even a few iPhones.
• Sales staff in small shops and department stalls glued to PC's either watching divx TV shows or on chat clients. I learned that chat is used a lot for direct Q&A with stores. We even used it ourselves to ask questions about flights and tours.
  
• A friend spent some time in a poor village where a boy used the hold music on his telecom service number as a radio (an interesting case of exaptation)
• I saw a heap of fake iPhones in the markets although failed to make the effort to see any in action
  

October 1st was the national day and marked 60 years since liberation (communists oust the nationals in the Chinese Civil War A.K.A. war of liberation). In the preceding weeks, security at train stations, tourist sites, and in the CBD (down town) was ramping up with x-ray bag checks and soldiers on street corners. Around the square where the action took place there were a clear and strong military presence - I'm talking big guys waring armor with big scary guns. The city went into lock down the day before and even the airport was shutdown on the day of the celebration.

We watched the parade on TV (city residents were instructed to stay indoors, or so I was told) and could see the jets and helicopters buzzing through the city just before they appeared on the telecast. It was quite a thing to watch, and we all had fun watching, eating, and drinking the local beer.

After Beijing we went to Xian (middle of china) and saw the Terracotta Warriors, climbed Hua Shan, and played around in the city for a few days including a bicycle ride around the old city wall which was great fun.

Finally, we spent just under a week in Lijiang (south west near Tibet) in Yunnan province. We stayed in a quiet hotel right in old town. Yunnan has some of the most beautiful geography in China, and Lijiang has one of the most beautiful vistas in the country (at the black dragon pool). Old town is an ancient village that has been converted into a tourist town with old cobbled roads, each with a little canal. At night, the town is lit up with lanterns, and the restaurants are accessed with little bridges - all very romantic and relaxing. We climbed the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (4500 of its 5500 meters, yes they sell oxygen up there), visited the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and went boating and horse riding in a near by valley.

A thoroughly relaxing time all in all, and I found some time to catch up on some reading and science podcasts which I should blog about soon enough. It's good to be home.