About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

This is a bit off-topic for CN Reviews, but relates to how Silicon Valley celebrates Chinese New Year. Last night, we attended a Chinese New Year gala hosted by Yew Chung International School (YCIS) Silicon Valley. My older son who is now six goes to the Yew Chung Afterschool Program (YALP) to take Chinese lessons. (My son used to attend pre-school and Kindergarten full time at YCIS before we moved him to our local public school. This was a tough decision because we really liked YCIS. But I pay a ton of property tax to live in the #1 or #2 ranked K-8 district in the state, so I felt we had to save some money on private school tuition.)

Yew Chung is a foundation that now has campuses in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Qingdao and Hong Kong. The Yew Chung Silicon Valley campus is about 7 or 8 years old and has had its ups and downs in recent years. But I was so proud of what the school and the YCIS-SV Parents Organization accomplished this year with this Chinese New Year gala. One parent from China told me it “gave them a good feeling of completeness” to celebrate Chinese New Year. He had been missing this before he had kids, and the school helped bring Chinese New Year to him here in Silicon Valley

Lion dance team from a local Kung Fu group

Yew Chung Afterschool Program (YALP) Martial Arts performance

YCIS-SV Pre-Kindergarten-1 Welcoming the New Year with Great Health

Yew Chung Afterschool Program (YALP) Gong Xi!

My 6-year old son is one of the 2 boys making the announcement at the microphone. He is wearing the Chinese outfit that fellow blogger Min and I purchased when I was in Beijing this January. He was a bit shy and silly in his announcement!

\

Yew Chung Afterschool Program (YALP) Fan Dance

YALP has all kinds of electives that the kids can take. The program is from 3 pm to 6 pm so working parents can pick up their kids after work. The girls have lots of fun electives like this Fan Dance class!

YCIS-SV First Grade class performing “The Mice Family”

These are my older son’s former classmates. We miss them!

YALP Talent Show - Chinese YoYo

Another elective is called Chinese YoYo. I don’t get it because I didn’t really see anything that looked like an Western YoYo. And the Google But it was a very elegant dance by the girls in YALP.

Here is my wife and younger son at the gala. We both had to work hard to keep him entertained! He enjoyed all the dancing and music, but started getting restless!

YCIS-SV Parents Organization (YCIS-PO) volunteers

So these were the 6-9 people who gave up 3 months of their life to organize this event! There was an incredible attention to detail and it was a great event. This is a huge turnaround from 2-3 years ago when there was a massive problem with teaching staff turnover and low morale. These parents are some of the ones who made the turnaround happen!

Live Auction begins

The Auctioneer is a parent, Enoch Choi, who did a great job coaxing money out of the parents pockets for hand crafted products and other awards. People can get out of hand in these kinds of auction situations, which can help theg school raise more money. People like to win and to be recognized for their generosity. On the other hand, I think Chinese people in general also have a value of being frugal, or even cheap! So I was interested to see how this would play out at the auction. We ended up leaving early because my toddler had to get to sleep! But not before willing a gift basket of toys and books, and 3DVD set of Doraemon!

What we won - a 3 DVD set of Doraemon

Right now, we plan to send our #2 son to YCIS as well for pre-school and maybe Kindergarten as well. So we will have many more of these galas to drop some more cash in the school’s bank account! But I think bilingual education here in Silicon Valley is a worthy cause, and I’m thankful for all these parent volunteers who have continued to move this forward!

UPDATE:   some additional photos of the event here.

Shanghai recorded the lowest temperature of this winter on Feb. 13, 2008, the first official working day of Chinese New Year. Good news is that the weather in most places of South China (except southwest China) is getting better and better. According to news reported at 10 a.m. on Feb. 13 by National Transportation Department, no traffic jams on freeways across the country. Here are some numbers about this freezing rain (aka. ice rain) natural disaster reported by Xihuanet (I pulled out the numbers from here and here).

8 people are missing.
107 people died.
21 Provinces were suffered.
354,000 houses clasped.
1,512,000 people were re-settled.
1,927,000 people were helped out from blocked vehicles and trains /train stations.
22.12 million households (93% of total of those lost electricity ) regained electricity by Feb. 11, 2008.
13.98 million RMB is granted by the government.
11.95 million RMB is donated.
1 billion RMB is compensated by insurance industry. [this could be the costliest catastrophe for the insurance industry in China ever.]
111.1 billion RMB is direct loss. [21,000 billion RMB is the total GDP of China in 2006]

I have thought the disaster was caused by snowstorm which made me feel a little guilty in celebrating snow in Shanghai. But later I found out that it is a similar disaster as the one happened in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick for 6 days in January 1998, when freezing rain coated everything 7-11 cm (3-4 in) of ice. Blame the ice not the snow. Here are some images collected the images from the web. that record this historical natural disaster. [keywords: 冻雨，冰灾，冻灾]

I recently discovered these infographics by Yang Liu (hat-tip to Global Voices, OneManBandwidth, and Adino Chang). Sorry if you have already seen these, but I’m going to zhuanzai (repost) them anyway!

Sense of Time

We posted about this topic earlier on a CN Reviews Mind the Gap post about Chinese and Western attitudes toward time. I think unreliable transit and unpredictable traffic are more important reasons for why people are late. Availability of low cost labor is another reason why time (especially other’s time!) is less precious.

Queues

I love this diagram! We also posted on Chinese and Western attitudes toward queues earlier. Tip: when in line to pay for something at the cashier’s window, follow the diagram on the right, and hold the correct amount of cash firmly in your hand and shove it into the cashiers window. Wait patiently but do not yield until the cashier takes your money and hands you the change and your receipt.

Parties

I guess this represents the difference between a cocktail party and a Chinese banquet. I personally find the blue diagram more efficient even though I am really an introvert at heart. Also, the idea of a “power lunch” is different in the West vs. China. For example, in the Silicon Valley scene, you might eat at Il Fornaio, Buck’s Woodside, University Cafe, and “see and be seen.” But in China, the equivalent might be getting a private room with a lounge at a well known restaurant, and eating with business partners in privacy!

Opinions

This is a stereotype that may be more true in some areas than in others. When I met with my company’s engineers in Beijing, I thought they were pretty blunt and direct. I did not know whether to be blunt and direct back, so I opted for the more indirect approach. So its dangerous to apply this stereotype with all people. China is changing!

Way of Life

This may be a general pattern, but I’ve found Chinese in the generations born in the 70s and 80s to be extremely individualistic and diverse. So I would like to learn more to see if Chinese society is moving closer to the West.

Contacts

Hmm. I think the insight here is that there may be more types of relationships in play in Chinese society. Its widely recognized that you do best working with people that you trust, especially when you are in a less predictable legal and institutional framework. You would rather work with the person you trust than the person that is “best” at whatever you need done. This results in the diagram to the right! Example #1: I invested in a friend’s company, and the partnered with his wife on a consulting project. Example #2: Our chief search architect’s niece is running our Beijing office. Not something that is as common in the West.

Handling Problems

Does anyone else see differences toward the approach of problem solving? Is it true that Western people confront problems directly while Chinese people avoid (or circumnavigate) problems? And which approach is better in what situation?

Transportation

The private automotive industry in China is just getting started, and the car represents freedom, independence, individuality, and progress. We wrote about zijiache, or self-driving, which is a new trend in China. Meanwhile, environmentalists like Al Gore are winning the Nobel Peace Prize and American neoconservatives are advocating “energy independence” as an alternative to restructuring the Middle East. So this picture is pretty accurate, don’t you think?

The Boss

We just posted on the topic of authority in China vs. the West. The question for Western-trained leaders is: how do you adapt your leadership style to fit the expectations of your employees? Is a consultative, egalitarian leadership style viewed as weak and ineffective?

The Child

I’d love to talk to my friends who were born after the One-Child Policy and ask, “Were you surrounded by your 2 grandparents or even your 4 grandparents? ” Maybe the picture needs to be corrected: a child surrounded by 4 grandparents and 2 parents. For more of these infographics, check out the original post at Adino Chang or Yang Liu’s website.

When it comes to dealing with those in power in China or in the West, it can be a real… nightmare, if you’re not ready for it.

In the West, most of us assume or have come to terms that your boss is just about as equal as you are (although he or she still holds a slim yet commandeering lead over you). If your boss messed something up, he or she is expected to own up and say that it was a bad or stupid move. In China, the boss is just about always right — well, sort of. Criticism of a boss at just about any level is risky business: at best, you get stared at; at worst — wait, was that a pink slip — your pink slip?

Authority is more pronounced at the level of those in power — in public office. Having met the person who is supposedly there to nix all instances of Chinglish (to the tune of “Love road is the responsibility of everyone”) just today, I felt that it was real hard to keep an air of equality during our hour-plus-long conversation. To me, the incoming visitor, the lingdao (领导) or head wasn’t exactly un-accommodating (I loved the tea, by the way), but he had his agenda (of course I can’t blame him — do realize that the guy has a job on his hands). But can you say exactly equal treatment — every inch of it? Did I not sense an aura of “I know my bit, I’m just telling you” — that was just a tad more weighty on his end — and that I felt?

Authority sometimes falls flat on its face — of Chinglish signs that some guy at the top failed to correct…
Contrast that with Switzerland, where urban legends tell of the average man in the street approaching a Federal councillor or congressperson in a tram (or “streetcar”, if you must…) and telling him how Bern should be run. Or the case of a Federal official surfing the Internet — “just like that”, like the average Swiss citizen, of which I was a witness to. Or, better still, a meeting with the head of Macintosh Users Switzerland, where we were given total equal treatment. MUS is about 1,500 in headcount; BeiMac just managed to sneak over 600. Yet there we were, on totally equal terms; the scene, “old man versus young guy”, a scene where in China the “old guy” is supposed to “indoctrinate” the “young guy”, was one of complete equality.

Authority is a tacky issue. Yours truly prefers a very Swiss version, especially in the BeiMac user group which he runs: a semi-unwritten rule has it that 50 members (already!) can form a recall and put that to vote. If the President has to go, well, so be it. The President is always held accountable for big boo-boos, and he dresses just like any other guy in ordinary meetings.

Spot the President. No, seriously. Turns out he’s just another ordinary guy in the pack…
It’s not that only Swiss citizens in China can afford to get more “human-ish” as in more like the average man in the street; nope, there was a clearly well-reported case where even the former Mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan, got a bit more “Swiss” (so to speak) than the average capital-ist expected. Word has it that Wang actually apologized for some policy botch-up (which one I forgot) over the airwaves, on radio. The average man in the street’s response in the street: What a nice mayor, saying stuff near and dear to many a citizen’s heart.

See, sometimes it pays to be human — even if you’ve all the “power joysticks” (so to speak) within your reach.

Chinese New Year eve dinner has been the most important event of Guo Nian (过年，celebrating the new year) for a few thousand years. I remembered that people were all talking about dumpling (饺子, Jiaozi) on TV for CNY dinner since I was young. And if you happen to read any history about Chinese New Year, you will know Jiaozi is almost a “must-have” food on the new year eve. But in fact, my family never have Jiaozi for our CNY dinners, and I am sure that I haven’t eaten Jiaozi until I went to middle school. This is not weird if you understand how diversified Chinese food culture is.

This year, I did a small survey by asking six people (including myself) who are from difference provinces of China a same question:

“What are the must-have three dishes in your families’ Chinese New Year eve dinner?”

to satisfy my curiousity about FOOD: a. are all other people have Jiaozi for their CNY dinners? b. If not, what do they have for the dinners?

Before I announce the result of the survey, here is my answer as a Cantonese:

1. Chichen (白斩鸡， baizhanji)

2. Soup (老火汤， lao huo tang)

3.Sweet dumpling (汤圆，tangyuan)

Curious as I am? Check out the Chinese New Year Food Map I’ve created below.

 

 

| View | Upload your own

What did you have in celebrate the Year of Rat (Mouse) this year?

When I was a kid (which, believe it or not, was not too far away — or long ago, which ever term you favor), I was given into giving people fives. High fives, low fives, and heck, even a squashy five from time to time (no idea? I forgot how the squashy five went, too), and as I always say, “stuff like that”.

Now it’s time for Beijing — and the entire People’s Republic and all Chinese everywhere — to break fives.

That’s right.

Beijing tonight is, once again, a total war zone. There’s a reason behind this — this is the fifth day of the new year in the lunar new year, and letting things break, in essence (that’s what they mean by the Chinese word “po” (破)), is what you’re supposed to do. If I’m not mistaken, we have a perfectly harmonious society for the first 96 hours of the new year, only to be broken and shattered on the fifth day.

Well, nearly. Po Wu (破五) is what Beijing is going through — and any Chinese city at that. Tradition goes that on the fifth day of the new year in the lunar calendar, you break things. You let the fireworks have the mic, so to speak, and you eat dumplings (which you had about four days ago for the big festival on the first — at midnight).

In terms of just how or what is behind Po Wu, yours truly would like to know as much as you’d like to know (to be totally honest with you). Your now confused-but-still-cheerful blogger has only been in China for Chinese New Years since 2002 for good, so there’s a lot of tradition that slips behind view (and remains invisible to David Feng eyes — at least for now).

However, as you can see (or hear, if you’re around in the capital — read: war zone), fireworks and dumplings aren’t too far away. The price of fireworks, by the way, has dropped by around 20%. However, rather strong winds (to the tune of Beaufort Level 5) are threatening the capital, so the Fire Department is ready.

And by the way, if you’re inside the 5th Ring Road, you can only let your “artillery and flame” (as the Chinglish have it) let rip until midnight. If you want to let them rip for as long as your spirit decrees, you’ll need seek shelter — outside the beltway. The police will be on the streets in full force — a fine isn’t cheap, by the way…

I remember the good old days of the 1980s, when there was nary a traffic jam, nor were there so many cameras around trying to second-guess what you do. These days, I’ve done probably more work at the Beijingology Network of sites (including the 2008 2008 book coming up — think of it as a photo album, 2,008 photos in number!) than is healthy for me. Subway articles revised — time and again, as new standards are all the rage. Choosing the right photos. Heck, even doing a subway map — the way the network would be come the Olympics. Did I tell you that to me, Chinese New Year is a non-event after Danian Chuyi (大年初一), or the first day of the lunar new year?

Amongst those things I remember the most were those bridges going up all over town. I left Beijing in 1988 for Switzerland, but that didn’t mean that I forgot about the capital of the PRC for 12 years straight! Nope, beginning from 1991, I’d make trips back to Beijing every now and then. When I was really homesick, I made three trips a year — stacking up quite considerably on those frequent flyer miles. (This was why I flew back to the capital in style on Swissair Business Class one August 25, 2000!)

Out of the bridges I remember the most, one particular bridge is Xiaojie Bridge. I used to head back to Hepingli (which is now served by Subway Line 5) to grandpa’s place for soup, watermelons (which I used to stick a spoon into!) and toying around with a half-dead VCR. Xiaojie Bridge sprung up in 1991 (or thereabouts); it was a rude surprise for the cars (due to the construction site), but once it went up, traffic flew over it smoothly at about 80 km/h (or 60 km/h when you were heading down those days).

I like those newer, glitzier bridges they’re building, but a bit of me still long for the older bridges. They’re now only reality in faraway places like Fangshan in southwestern suburban Beijing. The signs — they’re what they used in the city center. Still holds a special place in my heart…

Buildings, too, will always have a special place in my innards. Those buildings that looked so new when they were completed in the early 1990s now look like remnants from the 1980s. I used to study at the University of International Business and Economics; their white building, built in the 1990s, still has that “daredevil-ish” look that graced 1990s buildings, no longer perfectly square in form. And yet every time I head to the public conveniences (or even hear the flush — perfectly from the next room), I’m reminded that this is something more like a building that was built around the time of the Cultural Revolution. They look so old and so new at the same time!

As more and more buildings are built, they will serve their tenants / owners / __fill in the blank__. They will look new when completed and will age as they go — as time goes by. Beijing is no longer about those big, boxy buildings of the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. Crazier, slicker and neater buildings are all the rage — as Beijing grows up, more and more.

To many an incoming visitor, Beijing is what you see — the Beijing of 2008 (as things now stand). I feel pretty honored seeing the capital — which is also my cradle — grow every year. People talk about the city as it is in one moment; my story’s more like a continuous tale that I’m all too happy to share. And already, I’m already looking forward towards the capital, post-Olympics…

I love learning about the differences between North and South among the Chinese. Then factor in the differences between East and West, and you have a two-by-two matrix! (sorry, ex-consultant humor)

In the West, Chinese New Year is quiet. But I got to vicariously enjoy about 0:50 seconds of the constant shelling in Shanghai via YouTube via Marc van der Chijs. Then I saw both Kaiser Kuo’s facebook status and David Feng’s twitter to STOP THE SHELLING ALREADY. That was enough for me. So for Chinese New Year, West = peace, East = simulated war zone.

Then, you have to factor in North vs. South. One of my colleagues is from Tianjin, and another from Sichuan. For most northerners, Chinese New Year = dumplings. My colleague from Tianjin happily ate the dumplings that his wife made. And my other colleague, who grew up in Beijing but is originally from Sichuan, also ushered in the New Year with dumplings.

But for Guangdong and Hong Kong people, dumplings are less central to the tradition. For the last dinner of the old year, we ate chicken–which represents a celebration of the past year’s prosperity. Chicken = prosperity. For the first dinner of the new year, our nanny from Hong Kong prepared a set of “lucky” food. For example, fish, or yue in Cantonese, represents sufficient wealth or plenty. If you eat fish, you are likely to have enough wealth and savings for the year. We also ate vegetables, su cai, a mix of vermicelli, tofu, and green vegetables. This represents frugality–starting the year right by not using up your wealth up front. Finally, we ate some pork (ideally BBQ pork), which also represented some other aspect of prosperity. So for some Southerners, Chinese New Year = “lucky” food.

My son, after reading a book about nian gao, was inspired to make a Southern style of nian gao that my nanny then fried up. I forgot to take pictures of it, but it looked sort of like this:

(By the way, most Chinese would agree that the Yangtze (Changjiang) River is the dividing line between North and South. But for my Guangdong mother-in-law, the Fujianese are decided North! And for someone from Heilongjiang, even Beijing people are decidedly South even though the word North is in the name of the city!)

Many Westerners think of China as a single, unified culture, but in reality there are many rich differences between people from different backgrounds–North vs. South, mainland vs. Hong Kong vs. Taiwan, East vs. West.

I also enjoyed a great episode of Sexy Beijing where our heroine Su Fei travels to Hong Kong for the holidays, and considers Beijing vs. Hong Kong. Notice that most Hong Kong people would rather speak English rather than Mandarin to Su Fei.

Anyone else observe the differences between regions of China in celebrating Chinese New Year?

Photos: courtesy of avlxyz, sheilaz413

Before Swissair collapsed in 2001, one of its most well-known slogans was Time is everything. The Swiss continue to “brainwash” the Chinese as the nation of watches. To me as a Swiss citizen, time plays an extremely important role: persons near and dear to me know the effort I put just to arrive ontime.

To the Swiss, timing is crucial. The Swiss have, indeed, invented a new way of asking the time: “Wie spät isch es?”, or “How late is it?”, is heard much more often than “Do you have the time”? Swiss Federal Railways and Mondaine have come out with a very Swiss clock: the second hand stops for a full second at the twelve o’clock marker before the minute hand moves.

One of the most famous “Swiss timing moments” can be seen at Zurich Main Station. Before the big timetable shakeup in the mid-2000s, there was absolutely always a train at 17:07 bound for south Switzerland on Track 9. The announcement was always made at around 17:06:30 (in two languages no less — German and Italian), and the whistle always blew without fail when the minute hand moved to seven minutes past the hour. Within 15 seconds, the doors would be locked and the train would have left Zurich Main Station.

Were it not for the fact that I hold not just the passport of the Swiss Confederation, but have been literally indoctrinated (time-wise) to be prompt for the best part of 12 years, I would have never learned to stick to a schedule. The Swiss view timing as absolutely crucial — to the extent that the renqing wei’er, or human-ish factor (人情味儿 in Chinese), can sometimes get lost. Recently, though, in part to reduce traffic accidents, the Swiss traffic authorities have come out with the new slogan: Better late for a few minutes than an accident!

And this, indeed, is the sticking point — traffic. While the underground jaguar (that’s the Beijing Subway) runs without a hitch (with Mozart no less — or as that used to be the case), the rest of us, stuck on ground level, are used to seeing more and more of this:

It got to the extent that I, quite literally, brainwashed a Chinese friend (who lived in the US for quite a while) to nix a deal with an incoming guest. The incoming guest wasn’t late by 30 seconds; nope, the guy was late for a full 30 minutes.

For Swiss people, they’re pretty much used to ontime trains, ontime appointments and even ontime trams (I mention this because to stick to a schedule, some Zürich trams will actually slam the doors shut on people rushing to the tram because they’re about a second late). They’re like that because (like me) they’ve planned a whole day out, in order. For the Chinese, though, nothing’s really as well planned as things are in Zürich (I’ve had personal experience in this!), so they often have the tendency to “run late” and are less offended when one delay drags everything else back. Personally, I prefer that everyone arrive ontime (I guess I am Swiss enough to even SMS my girlfriend stuff like “We will meet in 30 minutes; let’s make it ontime today!”), but in the case of delays, I’ve got some “extra time” to let things run a tad late and still make it ontime for the next appointment.

Timing in China is a mad mix. Big corporate bosses, known (fearfully) as the laozongs (老总), don’t give each other hell for being about 15 minutes late. But if a fellow employee comes in just about a minute late, the laozongs can (at times; I’ve heard about this) let rip at will. There goes that extra yuan that would have belonged to the innocent employee if he or she arrived on time.

So how do you find your way around this? Believe it or not (I tried, it worked), the weapon is by SMS text message. Remind people that traffic will be more than ferocious. Remind fellow microphone maniacs that the KTV fiesta is tonight. They will know — and they’ll turn up on time. The last BeiMac meeting and the KTV fest before that started ontime — thanks to good communications by SMS. The point here is to send the SMS as a kind reminder — use language like “Let’s get together ontime” instead of “You must arrive at 15:00!”, so that they’ll want to arrive ontime.

It’s not that the Chinese don’t want to come on time — believe me, they do — but in a place where a thousand new cars hit the road every day… you know, sometimes the math doesn’t really work out.

(Yet. That is, until Beijing is home to 561 kilometers of subway.)

(Hey, can we wait?)

For the rest of the year (until late September 2008) Beijing will be in Olympic Fever. Here, though, is when the capital gets a bit more traditional. Take a look at the capital in Spring Festival Fever — all around the city…

Out on Chang’an Avenue — Beijing is definitely in Spring Festival mode. On those big, new buildings hang big lanterns and the Chinese words — Happy New Year. A bit of a more Christmassy twist — here at the Minzu Hotel. It looks like a Christmas tree with Chunjie characteristics! Probably one of the nicest photos around — a string of lanterns. Very neat. The nianhuo market at Fengzeyuan, just south of Chang’an Avenue. Time to get your “Spring Festival goods”… never forget the fireworks! Streets are in a very festive mood — South Xinhua Street is, in particular, in a lantern-ish mood. The very best of Lao Beijing! Lanterns are everywhere — even on county highways out there in Shunyi District! Houhai is probably the best place for a few Spring Festival photoshots. There are lanterns just about everywhere. A very festive mood for one of the more traditional parts of this international metropolis. Oh, the tradition — the ever-so-Beijing tradition! Duilian, lanterns, everything red… fitting for the capital of China! Lanterns are just about everywhere — these are near the Dongdan crossing. Finally, even the road info panels are in the festive mood — telling people where they can set off fireworks. (Details to follow.) Oh yeah — it also reminds you that drunk setting-off of fireworks (lethargic language) is just as bad as — drunk driving!If you’re around in the capital, and are within the 5th Ring Road, you can blow up just about anything legal for the whole day on February 6 and February 7, 2008. Fireworks and firecrackers are also yours to light at will from 7 AM through to midnight from February 8, 2008 through to February 21, 2008. After that — it’s no more. You’ll have to wait until 2009.

David Feng, by the way, is staying put in Beijing. Updates will pour in throughout the week as usual. But as it’s the time to get in a festive mood, so — Happy Spring Festival!