China - Day 46 - A (tourism) star is born

July 31
When my boss's boss asked me to give a speech about American college, I said sure, figuring that it would be more like a conversation with some Chinese college students, like the conversation I had with ZheDa students a month ago. Well, I was kinda wrong. I realized it wasn't exactly what I expected when I saw the note posted on the company billboard advertising it to the entire company. After a few powerpoint missteps (it's funny to see that those presentation issues are universal), I got started with the speech, but things got tripped up pretty quickly when I realized that most of the audience didn't speak English and I had to pause for my boss to translate the speech. There were about 25 assorted people from the company there and I'm not sure how much of the speech translated, but they did laugh occasionally, so I think it went fine. When we got to the Q and A session, I was expecting questions about American colleges, but I ended up getting many more personal questions. Apparently everyone has to ask for themselves if I have a girlfriend. Following the speech, we went to a hotel restaurant in Xiasha that I'm sure was the classiest restaurant in Xiasha (which isn't saying much). The food was fine, although it was buffet, so it was rather tepid. Overall, a strange but somewhat fulfilling day.

China - Day 36 - A (basketball) star is born

Work was not terribly interesting today, but after work was a lot of fun. The Allied basketball team had a practice today before our game against the police and apparently people have been talking up my basketball skills. I didn't want to disappoint, and in this crowd, I didn't. Even though I'm a mediocre at best basketball player at home, I'm pretty good here, definitely good enough to start on the company team. I tried to keep my own stats, but lost track around halfway through. If I had to guess, I think I ended up with about 24 points, 15 rebounds, 5 blocks and a steal in 90 minutes. I think I represented American basketball quite well; I was able to play a power game and run over guys all night. Baseline dribble penetration worked really well for me and I surprised them by hitting a few from the elbow after dominating the glass for the better part of the game. It's somewhat strange, the Chinese are positively obsessed with the NBA, but they don't play particularly good basketball, at least at the rec league level. I think the reason for that is that they grow up watching the NBA and try to emulate the things they see NBA players do without working on the fundamentals, which underlie American youth basketball. For the most part, the guys I played with were very sloppy. There were tons of dropped passes, fumbled hand offs and chasing the ball on the floor; I felt like Tim Duncan (The Big Fundamental) out there. However, what the Chinese lack in fundamentals, they make up for in energy. I've never seen the fast break run so many times in my life. I had to sub myself halfway through the first quarter to catch my breath and to let some of the other guys get in the game. I noticed that the Chinese guys would only go off when they were about to pass out tired which said two things to me: 1) These guys are very committed to the game 2) They hate to be on the bench even if it means half-assing it on the court.

After the game we went out to dinner with the team, which is actually the first time I've been taken out to dinner by the company. I've been told to expect a few things when being taken out to a dinner by your coworkers: strange food, lots of drinking and fascination with me, the laowai. All of these expectations came true. Strange food got off to an impressive start with chicken feet, the classic weird Chinese dish. Following my policy of trying everything, I had it and I was disappointed. It was basically chicken skin over very small bones and had no taste whatsoever. The Hundred Year Egg was a bit more off-putting, it looked and smelled like death, but it tasted and still had the texture of a boiled egg (not my favorite). I tried to follow the conversation, but it mostly went right past me, although I did pick up on a few words that I think they were using to describe me (meiguo, laowai). One of the things they were curious about that my mentor translated for me was a question of how many beers I could drink (note: in China, beer is generally served in 600mL bottles (about 22 oz) and is 3.1 percent ABV) and I said twelve, which I could probably drink over the course of an evening. I don't think that last part translated well and it seemed that everyone at the table took that to mean that I would have twelve of those bottle by the end of the meal and they accepted that challenge by toasting me every 5 minutes (ganbei - empty the cup). I ended up going through five and half bottles by the end of the meal and was still able to walk out not drunk (tipsy, sure, but not drunk). I think I did a good job representing American basketball and drinking today.

China - Day 31 - A Star is born

The end of last week at work was not terribly interesting. I spent the entirety of it working in CAD, although I did branch out and begin to learn Pro/E in addition to Unigraphics (thanks to an online course from Carnegie Mellon), which is good because I understand that Pro/E is the industry standard in CAD, but I could be wrong. I think I've covered every possibly machining angle of the workpiece and fixture Michael assigned me, so now I need something else to work on. Thursday was payday, which was nice; however I was disappointed to find out that I would be getting paid for just June and that I wouldn't get my July paycheck until August 15. This development means that it would make the most sense to travel near the end of summer, although I might be able to get an advance on my salary if an early trip comes up. I will say, however, that I'm kind of annoyed that I will end up with a large amount of cash shortly before I leave China. I think there are ATMs where you can make deposits in China, but I haven't confirmed that yet. I ended up working on Saturday because I'm trying to build up good will so that I can take some time off near the end of my internship to travel (hopefully I'll make it up to Beijing and go to Shanghai again).

Sunday, however, was much more fun. I got to sleep in, which was fantastic, and then I made my way over to downtown Hangzhou where I planned to meet my friend Ricardo to hang out/return the iPod he left in Shanghai last weekend. Before we were planning to meet I went to a coffee shop for lunch (another 85C, I'm starting to get addicted to their sea salt coffee). While I was drinking my coffee, I heard a familiar song come over the PA system, Waving Flag by K'naan, but there was something off about it. It took me about a minute to realize that the song was alternatively being sung in English and Chinese, which is not a particularly dulcet combination.